Public policies are needed that address the scale of the problem according to its urgency, and this is not what the administration of Dina Boluarte and Alberto Otárola seems to be emphasising.
The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the International Decade of Indigenous Languages (2022-2032) in December 2019 to draw attention to the serious loss of indigenous languages.
An estimated 7 000 languages are spoken in the world, of which 6 700 are indigenous. Forty percent of the languages are in serious danger of disappearing.
At least 3 000 languages are at risk of extinction, while other indigenous languages are dying at the rate of one every two weeks, says the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
There is a need to draw global attention to the plight of many indigenous languages and to mobilise stakeholders and resources for their preservation, revitalisation and promotion.
The Decade is led by UNESCO in cooperation with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and other UN agencies.
The Decade provides an opportunity to collaborate in the areas of policy development and to stimulate a global dialogue in a true spirit of multi-stakeholder engagement.
International initiatives
The Ibero-American Institute of Indigenous Languages Initiative (IIALI) has its origins in the XXVII Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, held in Andorra in 2021.
It was created with the aim of promoting the use, preservation and development of the indigenous languages spoken in Latin America and the Caribbean, supporting indigenous societies and states in the exercise of cultural and linguistic rights.
In Bolivia, the President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Luis Arce Catacora, enacted a law declaring the period 2022-2032 as the Decade of Indigenous Languages in the country.
Colombia has just built its first digital archive of indigenous languages of the Amazon and has more than 100 audios in Murui, Miraña and Magütá languages that can be consulted.
The newly launched archive is housed in the digital bookshop of the National University of Colombia and the project, which was launched in February, is looking for partners and funding.
Its purpose is to expand to register the 45 languages of the Colombian Amazon and the 200 languages of the entire Amazon region.
The initiative, which has precedents in European countries, was headed by Colombian anthropologist Juan Álvaro Echeverri and a team of indigenous linguists and researchers.
In a conversation with the newspaper El País, Echeverri explained that the languages housed in the archive are classified by UNESCO as “endangered languages” and in a critical state of extinction.
In Mexico, the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples (INPI) signed an agreement ordering the creation and operation of the University of Indigenous Languages of Mexico (ULIM).
The campus, which will begin classes in September 2023, aims to recover and promote the use of national languages, which are currently threatened and at risk of disappearing.
“The results we hope for with all these academic activities of the ULIM will have to be to increase the effective number of speakers. That we don’t lose one more language,” said Bertha Dimas, coordinator of the INPI.
The university will be located on a 2-hectare plot of land donated by a peculiarity, Susana Flores, in the Milpa Alta district of Mexico City (CMDX).
To begin with, the university will offer four-degree courses whose pedagogical model was built by researchers and academics from various universities, said Natalio Hernández, coordinator of the project to create the ULIM.
The bachelor’s degrees are: Teaching of Indigenous Languages; Interpretation and Translation of Indigenous Languages; Literature in Indigenous Languages; and Intercultural Indigenous Communication.
And how are we doing in Peru?
The lack of a successful and continuous management in the Ministry of Culture – due to the political crisis aggravated by the current government of Dina Boluarte – conspires against efficient management in favour of indigenous languages.
In 2022, former minister Betsy Chávez and vice-minister of Interculturality Rocilda Nunta directed the Colpa Amazónica project to preserve indigenous languages in the Loreto region.
With an investment of more than 6 million soles, the project aimed to promote intercultural exchange services for the benefit of the Bora, Murui-muinani, Ocaina and Kichwa indigenous peoples, located in the middle basin of the Putumayo River.
Aware of its importance, the officials in charge indicated that the project would become a space for meeting, recognition, dissemination and revitalisation of cultural and linguistic diversity.
But there have been no new announcements about Colpa Amazónica after the change of authorities. For the week of Cultural Diversity 2023, a relevant activity is the Inauguration of the XVIII Course for interpreters and translators of indigenous or native languages.
The workshop, designed by the previous administration of the Vice-Ministry of Inculturality, was held on 22 May in Pucallpa, Ucayali region, organised by the Directorate of Indigenous Languages.
If you look at the week’s programme, you will see that most of the activities are talks, workshops or micro-workshops, and film screenings, but no major activity that concerns a public policy of linguistic revitalisation.
Without detracting from the activities programmed during the week, one senses the absence of actions that respond to the seriousness of the problem.
The seriousness of the problem
Peru has seen the extinction of native languages before the 20th century, such as the Tallán language, the languages of Paita, Catacaos, Olmos and Sechura. The Hibito-Cholon language (Seeptsá) and the Hivito language (Hibito, Hivito) have also been recorded as extinct.
Other languages that have disappeared include the Chiribaya language, spoken by the Chiribaya culture on the coasts from Camaná, and Arequipa, to the coasts of Tarapacá and Atacama.
Other extinct languages include the Uru-Chipaya language (Uruquilla), the Mochica language (Muchik), Quingnam (Chimú, fisherwoman), the Culli language (Culle) and Puquina.
The Ministry of Culture currently identifies 48 indigenous languages, 44 of which are spoken by various peoples of the Peruvian Amazon. The problem is that many of these languages are seriously endangered.
For example, the Resígaro language and the Munichi language – both in Loreto – are said to be spoken by only eight people. Other languages such as Madija (Culina) is spoken by 300 to 400 people in Purùs.
The same is true of the Nahua language (Yora) spoken by approximately 200 people in the Ucayali region, specifically in the Paranapura, Carhuapanas and Huallaga river basins.
The Maijiki language (Maijuna, ex orejones) is spoken by 200 people in the basins of the Napo and Apayacu rivers, in the department of Loreto.
The problem is not only in the Amazon but also in Andean areas where the Kawki language is barely spoken by 100 people, in the province of Yauyos, Lima region.
Obviously, public policies are needed to address the scale of the problem according to its urgency, and this is not what the administration of Dina Boluarte and Alberto Otárola seems to be emphasising.
The value of an indigenous language
When an indigenous language becomes extinct, knowledge is no longer passed on, and in the case of indigenous peoples this is knowledge about the most biodiverse places on the planet.
Indigenous territories are home to the greatest diversity of flora and fauna, and by living there ancestrally, the communities have a system of knowledge about these ecosystems.
This is explained by Fernando García of the Bilingual Teachers’ Formation Programme of the Peruvian Amazon (Formabiap), who explains that each people knows which are the most nutritious or curative plants.
They know which are the most appropriate woods for it to make a house, a roof or a canoe. If you don’t know which tree to use, you can make a canoe that won’t last long.
In schools without an intercultural approach, it is taught that houses are built with noble materials. But the people know which palms to use to make the roofs of their houses to prevent the rain from preventing them from sleeping, as is the case with calamine roofs.
Mother tongues also allow understanding and exchange with the people who live in the forest, continues Fernando García.
“For indigenous peoples, there are beings in nature that take care of us, there is the mother of the river, the mother of the language. If we don’t request their permission, the resources disappear. There is a whole cosmovision, a moral-ethical commitment of human beings to nature”.
“If an indigenous language is no longer spoken, this whole process is silenced. It’s like setting fire to the US congressional bookshop. There is a wealth of knowledge of humanity accumulated there”.
“If you set fire to that, what is not digitised goes up in the air, it becomes nothing,” concludes the Formabiap teacher, a vital experience for linguistic revitalisation that lacks the support of the Peruvian state and must seek resources to survive.