Some aspects that hinder the development of indigenous languages

Juan Revollo Valencia

Cultural Manager, Cultural diffuser, Quechua Linguist.

Whatsapp +59171816007/ Email: kejureva@gmail.com

It is important to review the situation of indigenous linguistics policies and to propose actions for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2030 after the recently celebrated International Year of Indigenous Languages in 2019, proposed by Bolivia.

Bolivia has taken important steps to strengthen and develop indigenous, aboriginal, peasant and Afro-descendant languages, first by constitutionalising them and making it compulsory for these languages to be taught in the Plurinational Education System. Linguistic policies are set out in the plurinational Political Constitution of the State, which existence has been for more than ten years until now. There is an impressive set of legislative instruments that support the implementation and exercise of language policies in the plurinational territory of Bolivia. However, it must be said that these policies are not having results in favour of the indigenous languages themselves, at least in the case of some of them.

Since its birth, the Plurinational Education System, together with its Productive Sociocommunity Model (MESCP), has made the languages and cultural practices of the diverse peoples its basis, as attested to by the law and regulations and all papers concerning to education, as well as in discourse. And almost all of the regulations and legislation on indigenous languages insist on their application in educational spaces and to the speakers themselves: that is to say, that they must be "taught", strictly linked to the educational area. Therefore, the implementation of linguistic policies has only been taking place in educational spaces, in those instances structured in the Plurinational Educational System: the primary, secondary, technological and higher education subsystems. In this sense, this is the law and this is how it has been complied with, at least in written and discursive terms. If we go to strictly review the situation of native languages in schools, secondary level schools, technological institutes and universities, this is what we will find: curricular development plans that contemplate the advancement of native language content, even written in the native language. According to teachers who have been in charge of the subject of the native language, the fact that language policies do not achieve their concrete results is due to the minimal hours that are designated to these languages in comparison to foreign languages, on the one hand. In the teachers' testimonies, we also found that there is no specific staff in charge of developing the content of the native language, as is the case with the foreign language (English) and Spanish. However, although the foreign language subject has a greater number of hours than the native language, and although the foreign language is independent of the native language than the language and communications teacher must develop, the students do not manage to achieve any communicative competence in the foreign language. This being the case, the difficulties in implementing language policies or in giving indigenous native languages their place in society, at least in the region, do not depend exclusively on the allocation of teaching hours at the same level as the foreign language; rather, we must look for the factor or factors that hinder the development of the indigenous native language, but the fact that the foreign language does not achieve communicative competence with teaching hours and an independent teacher should also encourage us to debate. On the other hand, there is also the rejection of their own languages and cultural practices by same students and parents who speak the native language; from teachers the point of view, this aspect is the most important when talking about difficulties for the development of the native language.

Another aspect to be analysed that hinders the implementation of native indigenous linguistic practice in the Plurinational Education System has to do with the educational agents, the teachers, in practically all the subsystems. Although all the teachers have attained a bachelor's degree through the Complementary Training Programme (PROFOCOM) and have also completed postgraduate courses such as Apecialisations, Diplomas and Master's degrees, in all cases to implement the Productive Socio-Community Education Model, and that since 2010, the schools in the region have been working on the implementation of the Productive Socio-Community Education Model, the Higher Teacher Training Colleges (Escuelas Superiores de Formación de Maestros-ESFM) have been training and promoting "Plurilingual" Teachers (Maestros Plurilingües), but paradoxically they have not managed to put the indigenous or native language into practice, nor have they strengthened the cultural practices of the indigenous peoples. After the teachers have completed all these programmes, they are supposed to be able to implement the Productive Socio-Community Model in educational spaces and, as far as the indigenous peoples are concerned, the teaching of the native language and in the native language, the recovery of cultural forms and practices of these peoples and, with this, the concretisation of the practice of the native indigenous language and culture. So, there is a small number of teachers who are dedicated to the concern for indigenous languages, whether they are speakers or not, but they are aware that indigenous languages should be considered as part of curriculum development. Another group of teachers, although they are from the area of languages and communications, are not interested in developing native languages; one or another presents content related to these native indigenous languages and cultures in their plans but does not develop it in the classes, perhaps because they are not speakers of these languages, they do not have sufficient knowledge to develop this content or their conception is practically to strengthen Spanish monolingualism. But, above all, an important group that makes it difficult to put the native indigenous language into practice in the Plurinational Education System has to do with the rest of the non-linguistic areas. Teachers are aware that the mission of the pedagogical treatment of native languages has been entrusted only and strictly to teachers in the area of languages or communication; the rest are exempt from interfering in anything to do with native languages, except for a very small number of teachers who are concerned about the issues of native indigenous peoples, as we pointed out earlier. This must surely be in the rules. The same thing happens in the Higher Education Subsystem: only social and humanities degrees have some subject for native languages, but it is compulsory for practically all degrees to include English. The postgraduate courses for teachers do not include the subject of native indigenous languages and cultural practices, but only Communication and languages, cosmovisions or some other similarly named subject; the rest continue to strengthen Spanish and universal knowledge without proposing their own knowledge for universalisation. Thus, the teachers in the language area kill themselves teaching or developing in some way native language content, but the rest of the areas do not help to strengthen what has been developed by their peers in the language area. In this case, compared to the distribution of hours, it is an aspect that hinders the development of the native language in the Plurinational Education System, practically in all its subsystems.

In addition to what we say above, there are some important factors. When the students of any of the education subsystems leave the native language class, if that is the case, in the playground communication between students and between teachers and from students to teachers and vice versa is taking place in Spanish, the shop attends to the students in Spanish during recess, the civic hour takes place in Spanish. The educational community goes outside the school premises, the shop at the door serves the students in Spanish, the teachers say goodbye in Spanish, and the taxi driver serves the students in Spanish. Students go to the market, the shop, the snack or the supermarket, all business is conducted in Spanish. In rural areas, the shops and fairs already serve in Spanish, if the client initiates the conversation in the native language, the communication starts in that language. And we continue, the fashionable music for students is in Spanish, the radio that students listen to is broadcast in Spanish, television is broadcast in Spanish, and practically there are no programmes in the native language directed by students, adolescents or young people for the same age group. The news is broadcasted in Spanish, those that are aimed at students, in which the authorities at different levels speak in Spanish, the representatives of social organisations and indigenous peoples' organisations speak during their meetings in Spanish. Practically everything around the students is in Spanish, signs, banners, spots, any mural is in Spanish. Those responsible for their academic training interact in Spanish, we have already mentioned this. The native language has been taught or developed as a subject for decades in teacher training institutions, but we are seeing that there are no results with the professionals who have graduated from these institutions in the educational field, is this not one of the key aspects that hinder the implementation of native indigenous linguistic practice? The teachers of this speciality or those who are teaching the subject of Native Language do not use this language in their social network accounts, nor do the university professors. Check the accounts of teachers or professors of indigenous languages on Facebook, they have not published any productive concerns in the indigenous language, but they ask their students to do homework in the indigenous language and even postpone the postulants to become professionals at the time of graduation. There are testimonies. The students see how their role models, i.e. teachers, authorities, institutions, social organisations and society as a whole, act in a biased way in favour of Spanish as the language of communication and do not alternate with other languages of indigenous or native denomination. Consequently, students conclude that they do not need any language other than Spanish to interact in society. This is the issue of need. There is no need. So, what is lacking in language policies and in the Plurinational Education System is to generate that need in which the use of native languages is required. We have already said on a number of occasions that language policies in Bolivia do not have a clear objective in that they only entrust the education sector with the teaching of indigenous native languages; in other words, they entrust the teaching of native languages without saying what it is for. There are other, more far-reaching aspects to analyse, which we will continue to question on other occasions.

Autoridades originarias de los Ayllus Tawqa y Aysuqa [Kepallo], en ocación del desfile cívico por el aniversario de Bolivia, 2022.