Indigenous languages careening into extinction in Latin America

By Ignacio Naya

Native tongues are becoming extinct at an alarming rate in Latin America.

The only way to save them seems to be to turn to modern methods, like setting up a Twitter account in Aymara, launching a large-circulation newspaper in Quechua, establishing legal documents in Nahuatl or creating an Android application in Guarani.

It sounds far-fetched but some experts believe this might be the only way for these minority languages to survive pressure from Spanish and Portuguese in the region.

“Never before have so many languages been destroyed, and destroyed so rapidly,” said Spanish journalist Alberto Gascon, who last year received an award from the Organization of Ibero-American States for his investigation into European aid for projects in Latin America in linguistic diversity.

In a 250-page book, Gascon describes the situation of indigenous languages in Latin America and analyses the way the European Union, a region acknowledged for the seriousness of its efforts to protect minority languages, has contributed to helping this cause.

But, the truth is, “very little is being done,” Gascon told DPA in an interview.

He explained that the European Union, which contributes the most funding for culture all over the world, donates barely 5% of its aid to Latin America.

“Considering that most of the investment goes to recover and protect national heritage monuments, languages have only a marginal place,” he said.

Gascon, 35, is aware that in a world facing economic crisis it is hard to convince governments to invest in projects that are not humanitarian emergencies.

“But failing to invest in culture undermines our future,” he said. The main causes of massive migratory movements, social exclusion, marginalization and even wars have to do with cultural, ethnical and national identity conflicts, Gascon said.

That is why Europe, with a bloody and cruel history in the 20th century, based its union on strict respect for different nationalities and ethnic groups.

Languages receive special protection.

The European Union spends around 1% of its yearly budget of nearly 130bn euros on translating its documents into its 23 official languages.

It is also the only place in the world that has a Charter for Regional or Minority Languages with regulations to encourage and protect them.

“Ibero-America is still distant from that Charter,” Gascon said. “But important steps have been taken in the last 50 years. They have gone from hardly considering indigenous people to practically all Latin American constitutions recognising indigenous linguistic rights.

“In some countries, such as Bolivia, this is obligatory,” he said.

“But now the second step is needed, that citizens be able to exercise those rights. And that requires investment in all sections of the administration,” he said. A lot of money needs to be spent on teachers, judges, officials, books, official documents.

Latin America has one of the highest rates of language diversity in the world.

There are an estimated 250 to 450 living languages in the region. But languages are disappearing. About 600 languages all over the world are on the verge of extinction and one dies out about every two weeks. Many of them are in Latin America.

“A language is among the first things that people are willing to give up,” Gascon said, “if there is the promise of a better life and greater opportunities.”

Language survival is similar to Darwin’s survival of the species. Languages that best adapt to the global conditions are those most likely to survive. Those linked to powerful states with strong financial interests do better.

It is hard to find a backer for a Quechua editorial project or a communications group in Aymara.

Nonetheless, some regional languages are fighting back. A language is also a market. In India there are now more Hindi sites than there are English sites on the web, something unthinkable just 20 years ago. The weaker language is overcoming the stronger one, but it has a powerful weapon: literally millions of users.

Although increasing, Latin American indigenous communities’ access to the Internet continues to be limited.

Gascon said that would be the first digital gap that needs to be filled.

He said that minority languages need to “appropriate” new technologies to generate their own software and content. Quechua is spoken by 13mn people and could easily make use of its own Internet sites and digital apps.

Indigenous awareness raising and creating minority networks and political lobbies help keep languages alive.

“The rise of leaders such as Evo Morales (in Bolivia) is not by chance,” Gascon said. However, even Bolivia, a poor country where indigenous people make up 60% of the population, needs international aid to protect its minority tongues.

Gascon, who lives in Zaragoza, located between Catalonia and the Basque Country, is familiar with the two different methods to protect languages applied in those two regions and that are considered the most successful in the world.

“Catalan and Basque are recognised as role models,” he said. “It is paradigmatic, because those two languages were persecuted during the 40 years of the dictatorship in Spain and in barely 30 years they were able to overcome that gap and are totally alive.”

It is hard to draw lessons that could be easily applied to indigenous languages in Latin America.

Catalonia and the Basque Country are two of Spain’s wealthiest provinces. They are highly industrialised with revenue and per capita income above the national average. Local communities have money and power to negotiate.

The two regions applied a linguistic immersion education programme in the local language. In Latin America, the major indigenous tongues cross borders and six or seven countries would have to work together to implement such a programme.

Gascon said that “social prestige” is key to a language’s survival.

“The base for a language to endure is found in that language’s prestige,” he said. “It has to be the speakers themselves who fight for a language, as the Guarani people are doing currently by creating their own academy,” he added.

But Gascon said that financial backing is the bottom line to rescue languages that could die out and help must come from local governments and entrepreneurs.

“The true challenge is to obtain a critical mass so that a language becomes worthy of investment,” said Gascon. A critical mass that would make Google develop a search engine in Guarani or help fund a local software company using Aymara. — DPA