Volume 2023, Issue 280 - Special Issue: Bringing the Language Forward: Engagements with Quechua Language Planning and Policy; Issue Editors: Frances Kvietok and Nancy H. Hornberger

Q’estesqa Unu raymay killapin, iskay waranqa chunka isqonniyoq watapin, Perú suyupiqa hoq mana hayq’aq ruwakusqanta ruwarani, qhelqaspay, chaymanta mamitaypa churawasqan Qosqomanta runasimiywan, harawimanta hatun k’uskiyniyta hark’arani. Kay qhelqaqa hoq hatun mosqoymanta willarikuyninmi kakun, noqaq kawsayniymantapacha awasqa kakun, aylluykunawan kawsayniymantapachawanpas awasqa kakun, llaqtarunakunawan kawsayniymantapachawan ima awasqa kakun, warmiruna hina kawsayniymantapas tarikun, runasimipi rimaq llaqtakunamanta qhawarichiqnin hina, hark’aqninpuwanpas kaspa, hamut’asqa k’uskikunaq qhelqaqnin kaspa ima.

Framed within a critical and ethnographic approach to language policy, my study addresses the phenomenon of language commodification and the construction of neoliberal subjectivities in contemporary Perú. Specifically, I address a project of Quechua teaching in the city of Lima called Quechua para Todos, or Quechua for All, promoted by young Quechua activists developing interventions to change historically established imaginaries. Taking this project as a starting point, I analyze what is behind the extremely high demand these Quechua courses are having among youth in the capital city, where Quechua has been historically silenced. My argument is that a significant group of the young students from the courses have begun to integrate the Quechua language to the figure of the entrepreneurial subject for whom both personal and national branding is central. While speaking Quechua has historically indexed ‘indianness’ linked to backwardness, rurality, ancestrality and ignorance, it is now being associated with other linguistic and non-linguistic signs (such as being a professional and knowing English) to enregister a multicultural citizenship within a context of neoliberal economic growth and state policies of cultural branding. Although the demand to study Quechua in Lima is shifting the meanings and values of Quechua, at least within a domain of speakers, it may also be erasing ongoing processes of racialization of indigenous peoples in Peruvian society and fundamental gaps in access to education and economic resources.

Resumen El propósito de este artículo de reflexión es doble: en primer lugar, damos cuenta de la metodología participativa que aplicamos en el proyecto “Mejorando la vida de las mujeres a través del rol de las traductoras sociales en el Perú rural”. Este proyecto, desarrollado entre los años 2018 y 2019, tuvo como objetivos visibilizar y resaltar el rol desempeñado por lideresas comunitarias de Puno y Ayacucho, en el sur andino del Perú, como intérpretes y traductoras ad hoc , en beneficio de miembros de sus comunidades, muchos de ellos y ellas hablantes de quechua o aimara y español, con diferentes niveles de bilingüismo. En segundo lugar, sobre la base de esta experiencia, abordamos el alcance de las metodologías participativas como un recurso para crear conciencia sobre los procesos de construcción de ciudadanía “desde abajo” en Sudamérica.

Resumen Durante los últimos 30 años, Ecuador ha visto transformaciones importantes con respecto a las políticas relacionadas con las lenguas indígenas en el país. Por otra parte, estudiosos extranjeros y locales han llevado a cabo numerosas investigaciones lingüísticas y antropológicas sobre varias de las lenguas indígenas habladas en el país; sin embargo, estas han tenido bajo o ningún impacto en el mantenimiento de las lenguas, las mismas que muestran una tendencia persistente al desplazamiento. Enmarcado en prácticas de documentación activa-revitalización, este artículo se propone mostrar brevemente las tendencias de desplazamiento del kichwa en Ecuador, ilustrar y analizar procesos de investigación que basados en el quehacer colaborativo entre hablantes y no hablantes, pasan de ser una documentación que beneficia exclusivamente a la comunidad científica lingüística, para centrarse en los hablantes como los primeros agentes-beneficiarios de procesos revitalizadores; y describir algunas de las estrategias de revitalización que emergen de activistas kichwahablantes. Finalmente, reflexionaré brevemente sobre las metodologías utilizadas y la necesidad de avanzar hacia verdaderas prácticas de interculturalidad basadas en interrelaciones más equitativas que lleguen a impactar en los niveles micro, meso y macro.

Over the last two decades, the United States has increasingly become a site of Quechua language use and reclamation. Reclamation programs have emerged, both promoting the language and fostering community empowerment, particularly among Latinx youth. In this essay, we draw on our experiences as U.S.-based Quechua-language educators and organizers to explore the participation of diasporic Quechua reclamation movements in the global advance of the language. We frame these U.S.-based projects not as discrete entities, but as initiatives in constant connection with their counterparts in the Andes. This reflection piece provides a timeline of academic and community organizations in New York City, a global urban center with one of the largest bilingual Quechua-Spanish communities outside of the Andes. We conclude that these diasporic bottom-up language policy and planning (LPP) efforts are natural agents of dialogue on Quechua-language education and an integral part of the international Quechua reclamation movement.

In this paper, I draw on the ethnography of language planning and policy to consider how urban Indigenous language education might benefit from understanding the meanings and processes behind other language planning and policy activities migrant youth participate in, specifically, family language policymaking activities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in the region of Cusco, Perú I examine the experiences of two youth from rural hometowns and of their families. My analysis discusses how family language policies influenced youth’s shifting repertoires towards and away from Quechua, how youth drew on their Quechua–Spanish bilingualism to act as family language policy agents guided by local crianza and raciolinguistic ideologies, and how youth experienced Quechua language education in urban high schools. I argue that urban Quechua education efforts need to consider how migrant youth experience and shape their bilingualism and that of their families across rural-urban continua in order to craft safe and meaningful spaces where youth can participate in the strengthening of their Quechua language practices and identities.