Tzotzil

The Tzotzil are an Indigenous Maya people of the central highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. As of 2000, they numbered about 298,000. The municipalities with the largest Tzotzil population are Chamula (48,500), San Cristóbal de las Casas (30,700), and Zinacantán (24,300), in the Mexican state of Chiapas.

The Tzotzil language, like Tzeltal and Ch'ol, is descended from the proto-Ch'ol spoken in the late classic period at sites such as Palenque and Yaxchilan. The word tzotzil originally meant "bat people" or "people of the bat" in the Tzotzil language (from sotz' "bat"). Today the Tzotzil refer to their language as Bats'i k'op, which means "true language".^{: I:p.162, 234}