Language Policy and Planning in Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay: Some Common Issues

Richard B. Baldauf Jr.

Associate Professor of TESOL, School of Education, University of Queensland, QLD 4072 Australia

Robert B. Kaplan

Professor Emeritus, Applied Linguistics, University of Southern California Mailing Address: PO Box 577, Port Angeles, WA 98362 USA

Introduction

This volume brings together three language policy and planning studies related to Latin America. (See the 'Series Overview' for a more general discussion of the nature of the series, Appendix A for the 22 questions each study set out to address, and Kaplan et al. (2000) for a discussion of the underlying concepts for the studies themselves.) In this paper, rather than trying to provide a thorough introductory summary of the material covered in these studies, we will want to draw out and discuss some of the more general issues raised by these studies; we will provide enough summary to position those general issues.

Although Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay do not represent a neat geographic cluster, they do have several things in common:

• they are all in Latin America;

• they all have Spanish as their official national language;

• they all have significant numbers of long ignored indigenous languages;

• they all have made recent attempts to correct the situation regarding indigenous languages;

• they all have experienced internal and external migration;

• they all demonstrate significant urbanisation;

• they all have experienced substantial emigration;

• they all have experienced difficulty in gathering accurate demographic data;

• they all suffer from the dearth of qualified teachers of indigenous languages;

• they all suffer from administrative complications and resource shortages;

• they all suffer from conflicting ideologies concerning the suitability of indigenous languages for school contexts;

• they all suffer from disparate definitions and interpretations of interculturalism and bilingualism;

• they all experienced religious conversion into Christianity – particularly into Catholicism. Missionary work had a huge effect on the socio-genesis of languages. This is not to say that, prior to colonialism and Christianity, there were no indigenous languages, but rather to suggest that some contemporary ways of thinking and imagining indigenous languages have their origins in Christianity and literacy;

• they all have recently experienced greater recognition and respect for the languages, cultures and linguistic rights of indigenous groups, but

• they all have experienced a significant gap between policy and rhetoric on the one hand and reality on the other.

As Sánchez and Dueñas (2002) point out, the arrival of Spanish and its subsequent teaching in Latin America was not a policy of the King of Spain and his legislators, i.e., there was no early language spread policy, but rather as there were a large number of small languages that were spread over small territories, except for Quechua, Spanish became the administrative lingua franca and was increasingly used as a powerful tool for the expansion of the Christian religion. It has been estimated that by the end of the 17th century, about 200 years after the arrival of the colonisers, much of the indigenous population could understand Castilian. This linguistic homogeneity also served the Libertadores well in the 18th century when they united to break away from Spain, forming independent states, but these new Spanish-speaking elites then reinforced its use, rather than adopting an indigenous identity. Except perhaps in Paraguay, it is only more recently that indigenous languages, education and language rights have become issues. This emphasis is reflected in the studies listed in the 'further references' section of this paper. The three following sketches illustrate the importance of these common issues in the language situations of the several polities examined in this volume.

Ecuador

The Republic of Ecuador sits on the equator on the northwest coast of South America, limited by Colombia on the north and by Peru on the south and east. It is one of the smallest countries in Latin America, occupying some 272,045 sq. km., and supporting a population of slightly more than twelve million (12,616,102). It is divided into three major geographic regions: la Costa (the Coast), la Sierra (the Highlands) and the Oriente (the Amazon Basin), each marked by indigenous groups that together characterise Ecuador as a multilingual, multiethnic and multicultural country. In addition to Spanish, roughly a dozen indigenous languages are spoken.

Shortly before the arrival of the Spaniards, the Incas had conquered the Highlands and a portion of the Coast imposing their language, Quichua, on the other groups in those regions. Ecuador's history as a Spanish colony began in 1532. Spanish became the de facto official language of Ecuador, and the existing socio-political and socio-economic systems were restructured and modeled after Spain. At independence (1830) the new national government aimed to assimilate the indigenous population into mainstream society, to the detriment of indigenous identity and culture; indeed, the government proposed to eradicate all trace of Indianness and to Christianise the Indians so that they might learn how to develop political reasoning in order to permit them to participate in building the nation. Despite the strenuous efforts of the government, even after more than four hundred years of contact with Spanish under hugely unfavorable circumstances, many of the Indian languages have survived.

The largest part of the population is currently made up of mestizos (individuals of mixed indigenous and Spanish heritage) and indigenous people. The so-called whites, most of whom are descendants from Spanish settlers, constitute around 10 per cent of the total population; however, they have exercised – since the 1532 conquest of the country by the Spaniards – and they continue to exercise – political and economic power, defining national Ecuadorian culture in terms of the country's Hispanic heritage. The middle class consists largely of mestizos and less well-off whites – individuals occupying positions in administration, in the military, or in the professions and smaller...