Buckingham Smith translated Grammatical Sketch of the Heve Language from an unpublished Spanish manuscript and it was published in 1861.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Buckingham Smith translated a grammatical outline of the Heve Language from an unpublished Spanish manuscript and it was released in 1861. A 1993 survey by the Instituto Nacional Indigenista found that 15 individuals in the Mexican Federal District identified as speakers of Ópata, although this does not necessarily imply that the language was actually thriving, given Mexico's notoriously ambiguous linguistic classification.