[aymara] fw:Indian Languages and effects on radio broadcasting

["Alex Condori" <lista2@xxxxxxxxx>]

Extraigo el siguiente texto sobre la emision radial en
lenguas amerindias del trabajo de Don Moore titulado
THE SOCIOLINGUISTICS OF GUATEMALAN INDIAN LANGUAGES
AND THE EFFECT ON RADIO BROADCASTING. Solo consigno
el epigrafe dedicado a la experiencia en lenguas andinas.

http://www.swl.net/patepluma/central/guatemala/guatlg2.html

(tendrán que perdonar pero no está traducido)

Alex Condori


===========================
LANGUAGE AND RADIO IN PERU AND BOLIVIA

To put the Guatemalan sociolinguistic situation and its manifestation in
radio broadcasting in perspective, I feel it is useful to briefly examine
Peru and Bolivia, two other Latin American countries with large Indian
populations. Peru has about three-and-a-half million Quechua speakers out of
a total population of seventeen million. In addition there are about
half-a-million Aymara speakers. Although their numbers are small, compared
to the total population, the Indians are concentrated in five southern
mountain departments, where they make up as much as ninety percent of the
population. Over half of Bolivia's 5.2 million population are Indians, about
equally divided between Quechuas and Aymaras. As in Guatemala, the Indians
of Peru and Bolivia were subdued by the Spanish and then relegated to the
roles of peasants at the bottom end of society.

However, there is a major difference between Guatemala, on the one hand, and
Peru and Bolivia on the other hand. Both of the latter countries have had
governments which have taken a positive approach to bilingual education and
language planning. The Indians and peasants of Bolivia began receiving a
more active role in the government since that country's 1952 revolution. In
Peru, serious attention was given to the peasants after a leftwing military
coup in 1969. Although other governments have come and gone in the interim
in both cases, what was started could not be stopped.

Bilingual education has been at the forefront of both countries' policies.
In recent years "there has been a tradition of positive government policy
towards bilingual education programmes in Andean Latin America"
(Minaya-Rowe,1986, 468), and moreover, the aim of these programs "as
officially stated, is not to produce a nation of monolingual Spanish
speakers, but rather one of bilingual Spanish-Quechua speakers" (Minaya-
Rowe, 1986, 475). Bolivia's education system uses "a bilingual approach
which will educate its adult population, allowing them to retain their own
languages and cultures, while at the same time providing the opportunity to
learn Spanish (Stark, 1985, p541). Peru designed its bilingual education
program "to draw the indigenous groups into the Peruvian mainstream
efficiently and with respect shown to their language and culture"
(Hornberger, 1987, 206).

Both countries have even gone a step further. In 1975, Quechua was made an
official language of Peru (Escobar 1981, Hornberger 1987), which even
included the teaching of Quechua to Spanish speakers. Similarly, both
Quechua and Aymara were made official languages, coequal to Spanish, in
Bolivia (Minaya-Rowe, 1986). One of the manifestations of giving official
status was "the use of both Quechua or Aymara and Spanish on (the) radio"
(Minaya-Rowe, 1986). There are, in fact, some great differances between
these countries and Guatemala in regards to the use of Indian languages in
radio broadcasting.

Both countries, like Guatemala, have Catholic and Protestant stations that
use Indian languages (Ballon, 1987; Fontenelle, 1985; Gavilan, 1983; Moore,
1985; Oros, 1987; Perry, 1982; Povrzenic, 1987b, 1987c). But what about
privately owned commercial stations? In the Andean highlands of southern and
central Peru, there are at least several commercial stations known to
broadcast in Quechua and/or Aymara, in addition to Spanish (Hirahara &
Inoue, 1984a, 1984b; Llorens and Tamayo, 1987; Povrzenic, 1987a, 1987b).
These include at least one member of the Cadena de Emisoras Cruz, one of
Peru's largest radio networks (Hirahara & Inoue, 1984a). In addition, Peru's
most powerful commercial radio broadcaster, Radio Union in Lima, has an hour
long program in Quechua every morning (Hirahara, 1981; Montoya, 1987).
Likewise, in Bolivia commercial broadcasters are known to broadcast in
indigenous languages (Gwyn, 1983; La Defensa, 1986; Povrzenic, 1983).

What is most significant, though, is that in both cases the official
government stations have added Indian language broadcasts. Peru's Radio
Nacional broadcasts in both Quechua and Aymara (Povrzenic, 1987a), as does
Bolivia's Radio Illimani (Moore, 1985). In fact, the Peruvian government
went a step further in 1988 when they renamed Radio Nacional with the
Quechua name Radio Pachicutec (Klemetz, 1989).

In summary, the sociolinguistic situation in Peru and Bolivia is markedly
different from that in Guatemala, although all three share Spanish as a
dominant language over various native languages. The difference, though is
that in Peru and Bolivia, efforts have been made not only to preserve, but
to give status to the native languages. Furthermore, the status of native
languages in the two countries is reflected in their use by all levels of
radiobroadcasting in each country; private, religious, and governmental.



_____________________________________________

Lista de discusión Aymara 

http://aymara.org/lista/lista.html
_____________________________________________