Lenguas e identidades en los Andes: perspectivas ideológicas y culturales (review)

Abstract

CORONEL-MOLINA, SERAFIN M. AND LINDA L. GRABNER-CORONEL. Lenguos e identidades en los Andes: perspectivas ideologicas y cultureles. Quito: Abya Yala, 2005. 426 pages.Lengtias e iticntuiades en los Amies: perspectivas ideologicas y culturales is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the complex relationships between language, social identity, and educational policies in the Andean region. It is divided into three sections: Language Maintenance, Ideology and Identities, and Deconstructing Socio-Cultural Identities.The first section, on language maintenance, covers a wide variety of topics ranging from Comajoan's contribution on the application of Fishman's model of inter-generational transmission to Quechua in Peru1 to a proposal by Coronel-Molina that views digital media as a forum that offers great potential for the revitalisation of Quechua and Aymara. Other contributions in this section include a proposal by Zuniga, Cano, and Galvez to develop educational policies on language and culture that incorporate the input of regional authorities, grass-root organizations, teachers, and community members in rural and indigenous Andean areas in Peru; an overview of the sociolinguistic status of Quichua in the Argentinian Northeast by Alharracin and Alderetes; and a contemporary view of the attempts by the newspaper EL Lapiz to construct a multilingual and multicultural identity for Venezuela in the nineteenth century. The common thread that runs across this section is the continuous search for social spaces for indigenous languages in the Andean region. While in countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru the Quechua languages have gained some terrain in the arena ot educational policy, the situation of Quichua in the Argentinian northeast described by Albarracin and Alderetes, and also confirmed by language changes experienced by the northeastern varieties,- is illustrative of a generalized lack of institutional support from the educational authorities throughout the region. There is a lack of interest in the inclusion of the varieties of Quichua spoken in the provinces of Jujuy, Tucuman, and Salta in the educational system and very limited interest in the provinces of Santiago del Estero, Catamarca, and La Rioja. This is so even in the province of Tucuman, where a community of immigrant Bolivian Quechua speakers keeps the language alive in the region through the transmission of radio programs in the area.The degree of variation in the situations described by the authors in this section is indicative of the different challenges that maintenance and revitalisation have historically faced and continue to face in Andean societies. Avendano's piece on Febres Corderos's attempts to incorporate some aspects of the now-extinct indigenous languages of Merida in Venezuela as part of the construction of national identity illustrates the early efforts that were made in the region to preserve indigenous languages. These efforts were not always successful, as the example of indigenous languages in Merida illustrates; but in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, new possibilities have emerged for revitalization that are grounded in the actual participation of indigenous communities in the elaboration of language and culture policies. In contrast to the grim picture for the survival of Quichua in the Argentinian northeast outlined by Alharracin and Alderete's paper, Comajoan's and Zuniga, Cano, and Galvez's reports contain proposals to further strengthen the maintenance of indigenous languages in Peru. Of theoretical relevance for the field of language maintenance is Comajoan's discussion of the relative weight that intergenerational transmission and educational policies have in the revitalization of indigenous languages. Although he recognizes the valuable effects of educational policies that foster the development of indigenous languages, he also points out that they must be accompanied by language policies that affect other aspects of social and communal life as well. …