Buckingham Smith translated Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language from an unpublished Spanish manuscript and it was published in 1861. In a 1993 survey by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 15 people in the Mexican Federal District self-identified as speakers of Ópata. This may not mean, however, that the language was actually living, since linguistic nomenclature in Mexico is notoriously fuzzy.
Buckingham Smith translated Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language from an unpublished Spanish manuscript and it was published in 1861. A 1993 survey by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista found that 15 individuals in the Mexican Federal District identified as speakers of Ópata, but this identification does not necessarily indicate the language's actual existence or vitality, given Mexico's complex and often ambiguous linguistic landscape.