#language rights
In 2007, María Sumire led new legislation to implement Article 48 from the Peruvian Constitution. Law 29735 introduces individual rights on the use, preservation, growth, recuperation, and diffusion of Indigenous languages. A public information campaign promoted the new laws (“Speak your language, it’s your right). The law facilitates regulated access to an interpreter when accessing social services, new public service hiring laws, and targeted bilingual education policies.
Cusco, Ayacucho, and other Indigenous regions funded not-for-profits to improve language services, schools were mandated to teach Quechua and other local Indigenous languages, and courts and other public services also incorporated bilingual processes.
In Cusco, Quechua is an official regional language, meaning that public servants must speak at least basic Quechua. It has one of the largest budgets and governance structures, due to high revenue from tourism, allowing the region to invest in Quechuan language autonomy.
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On Sunday, Chileans elected Elisa Loncon, a Mapuche activist, professor, and linguist, to lead their constitutional convention. After a year of protests over income inequality sparked initially by a raise in subway fare, Chileans are holding a convention with elected representatives to re-write the old constitution left to them by the Pinochet dictatorship. The election of a woman from Chile’s largest indigenous group is an incredible gesture that, just a few years ago, would have seemed unfathomable.
As a linguist and professor, one of the many changes she advocates for is minority language rights. In her acceptance speech, she uses several words and phrases from Mapudungun. There are approximately 250,000 speakers of Mapudungun in Chile and Argentina, despite colonial practices that sought to eradicate the language. Here is what she says:
Feley = así está, así es
Mari mari (pu lamngen) = hello (brothers & sisters)
Mari mari (kom pu che) = hello (everyone)
Mari mari (Chile mapu*) = hello Chile
She then begins to greet each part of Chile by region (I don’t know enough Mapudungun to transcribe that accurately) before repeating the same greeting in Spanish.
At the end of her speech, she again speaks Mapudungun, using a slogan that has been popular on the Latin American left for decades:
Marichiweu = diez veces venceremos!
*Mapu means “earth,” and “che” means “person,” therefore Mapuche means “people of the earth.” The ancestral territory of the Mapuche is called Wallmapu (roughly, “universe”), and is located in southern Chile and Argentina.
