In this article, I apply Fishman’s 1990 Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS) for threatened languages to Bolivia’s indigenous languages. In doing so, I demonstrate the complexity of implementing language maintenance and revitalization policies in extremely multicultural and multilingual countries like Bolivia as a result of the different stages of the GIDS at which the languages in their territories are. First, I offer a language profile of the country. Second, I analyze recent legislation, namely the 1994 Educational Reform and the 2009 Constitution. Last, drawing on the aforementioned documents and on data from Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Lewis, 2009) and the Bolivian 2001 census (República de Bolivia, 2001), I discuss the endangerment situation for a number of Bolivian indigenous languages in terms of intergenerational transmission, which constitutes the most used factor in language vitality assessment (Brezinger et al., 2003).

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Various researchers (see Hornberger & King, 2001; Malone, 2004) [2] have employed the GIDS (Fishman, 1990; further revised in Fishman, 1991, 2001) as an endangerment assessment tool. It is through this framework that I analyze the indigenous languages of Bolivia in this article. Table 1 shows Fishman’s model as summarized by Malone (2004, p. 14).

TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 1. Fishman’s Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale for Threatened Languages

LANGUAGE PROFILE OF BOLIVIA

Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Lewis, 2009) lists 45 languages for Bolivia: 37 living languages, one second language with no native speakers (Callawalla), and seven with no known speakers (Canichana, Cayubaba, Itene, Jorá, Pauserna, Shinabo, and Saraveca [3]).

Although all living languages were given official status in the 2009 Constitution (República de Bolivia, 2009), the de facto majority language is Spanish. Bolivia’s indigenous languages could be further divided in two groups: major minority languages (Quechua, Aymara, and Guaraní) and lesser minority languages (the rest).

Figure 1 shows the data regarding the mother tongue of Bolivians 4 years of age and older in the 2001 Census. This chart gives a clear idea of the numeric superiority of Spanish (59.6%).

Figure 1. Native Language of the Bolivian Population 4 Years of Age and Older

Note: Percentages do not add one-hundred due to rounding.

Source: 2001 Census, Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Bolivia

Many of the lesser minority languages have a small number of speakers but are stable, that is, they are being transmitted intergenerationally, and are spoken by all, or almost all, the members of the ethnic group as is the case for Araona, Yaminahua, and Yuqui. Other languages (seeTable2) are reported as nearly extinct.

Table 2. Nearly Extinct Bolivian Indigenous Languages

STATUS PLANNING AND LANGUAGE POLICY

Status planning constitutes a crucial step in both language maintenance and revitalization. According to Wiley (1996, p. 108), it has two main dimensions: (1) official recognition given by governments and (2) attempts to extend or limit language use in certain domains. The 2009 Constitution of the Republic of Bolivia and the 1994 Bolivian Educational Reform exemplify these two dimensions.

Language Officialization: The 2009 Constitution of the Republic of Bolivia

The official recognition of an indigenous or minority language plays an important role in the perception society has of the language and its speakers. The new Bolivian Constitution adopted on February 7, 2009, states in Article 5 that “the official languages of the State are Spanish and all the languages of the indigenous nations and peoples” (My translation). But have Bolivia’s indigenous languages always had official status?

The 1967 Constitution of the Republic of Bolivia (República de Bolivia, 1967) completely ignored the country’s multiethnic and multilingual reality. It was not until it was amended in 1994 that this reality was acknowledged for the first time. The 1994 amendment to the 1967 Constitution (later approved as the 1995 Constitution; República de Bolivia, 1995) recognized the country as multiethnic and multicultural (Article 1). However, indigenous languages were mentioned only in Article 171, which addressed the cultural rights of indigenous peoples and guaranteed the use and development of their resources, values, languages and institutions. Although these two articles obviously constituted a step forward for indigenous languages, there was still no explicit mention of an official language. Thus Spanish continued to profit from the implicit official language status it had had up to that moment. Fortunately, this state of affairs changed in 2000 when President Banzer passed a law (Decreto Supremo 25894; República de Bolivia, 2000) making 35 indigenous languages official languages of the state (Taylor, 2004).

Making all of the country’s languages official in 2000 and including them in the 2009 Constitution constituted two major steps toward their maintenance and revitalization. However, the 2009 Constitution not only includes all the languages but also provides support for indigenous languages through promotion of multilingual education and language revitalization. The new constitution supports multilingual education by saying that “education is intracultural, intercultural, and multilingual in the entire educational system” (My translation, emphasis added) in Part II of Article 78. The important role of multilingual education as a means of intercultural understanding and respect is clearly stated in Article 80: “education shall contribute to . . . the identity and cultural advancement of all . . . indigenous nations and peoples and to the intercultural understanding and enrichment within the state” (My translation).

Language Policies: The 1994 Educational Reform

Status planning “involves some type of official and/or medium-of-instruction policy” (McCarty 2008, p. 142). In the case of Bolivia, these policies have come in the form of educational reforms in 1905, 1955, and 1994.

The 1905 reform centralized the country’s education and sought to strengthen education available to indigenous communities. However, language diversity was seen as a problem “to be overcome through castellinización [4]”(Taylor, 2004, p. 8). In the 1955 reform, language diversity continued to be viewed as an obstacle to national unity; this time, however, a concession was made regarding instruction in indigenous languages: They could be used as a means for attaining Spanish literacy in regions where the indigenous languages were the majority language (Taylor, 2004, p. 10). For more than 80 years, the Bolivian educational system promoted a single national language, that is, Spanish. It was not until July 7, 1994, that a new educational reform introduced bilingual education.

The main contribution of the Reforma Educativa de 1994(Ley No. 1565; República de Bolivia, 1994)is that it declares Bolivian education to be intercultural and bilingual (Article 5). It further clarifies in its Article 9 that language education comprises two modalities: monolingual (L1 Spanish with an indigenous language as L2) and bilingual (L1 indigenous language with Spanish as L2). Another merit of this reform is that it encourages active popular participation in the planning, organization, and evaluation of education through the establishment of the Consejos Educativos de Pueblos Originarios [5] (Article 11, Section 5). According to the reform, the four councils―Aymara, Quechua, Guaraní, and Multiethnic Amazon―and others have a national character and can participate in the development and application of educational policies, especially those related to multiculturalism and bilingualism. Other regulations equally relevant for indigenous languages are equal access for lower income children (Article 53), an adult literacy campaign (Article 26), and the organization of the núcleos educativos [6] (Article 31), which takes into account the community’s interests, culture, and language, thus making language (and culture too) an important criterion in the organization of the educational system.

DISCUSSION

In my analysis, I apply Fishman’s GIDS to Bolivia’s three major minority languages, namely Aymara, Guaraní, and Quechua, as well as to six lesser minority languages, specifically Araona, Baure, Itonama, Uru, Yaminahua, and Yuqui.

Taking into account only the 2009 Constitution and the 1994 Educational Reform could potentially lead to the idea that all Bolivian indigenous languages are now on the strong side of Fishman’s GIDS, that is, Stages 4 to 1. However, this is not the case; different indigenous languages are at different stages as the following analysis shows.

As previously seen in Figure 1, Aymara, Guaraní, and Quechua have relatively high numbers of speakers compared with the country’s other minority languages. All three are also transmitted intergenerationally (consider the large numbers of children and youth that speak the language as shown in Table 3).

Table 3. Number of Speakers of Three Major Minority Languages by Age Groups

Source: 2001 Census, Instituto Nacional de Estadística de Bolivia

Von Gleich (2004) speaks of a La Paz newspaper, Presencia, which published daily for a year (1999-2000) one page of local and international news in Quechua and Aymara, as well as the Revista Nawpaqman, Revista rural bilingüe para la nación quechua [7] and a Quechua radio network. As for Guaraní, López (2001) stated that “the Guaraní language is not only used in radio transmissions and programs but also in posters, signs, leaflets” (p. 218). Adding the existence of local mass media in all three languages to the numbers in Figure 1 and Table 4 as well as the official status granted to them by the 2009 Constitution and their inclusion in the school system as stipulated by the 1994 Educational Reform, one could claim that these languages are between Stages 3 and 2 of Fishman’s GIDS, where the L1 is used beyond its normal boundaries and lower governmental services and mass media are open to it.

In Table 4 I compare two groups of lesser minority languages―Araona, Yaminahua, and Yuqui and Baure, Itonama, and Uru―based on their number of speakers, ethnic population, and language use as described by Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Lewis, 2009).

Table 4. Six Lesser Minority Languages: Araona, Baure, Itonama, Yaminahua, Yuqui, and Uru

On the one hand, Araona, Yaminahua, and Yuqui are spoken by almost all members of their respective ethnic groups and widely used (see last column in Table 4 for Language Use), which means that they are being transmitted intergenerationally and that the children are learning the language in the community. On the basis of these data and their official status and the L1 schooling prescribed by the 1994 Educational Reform, [8] these languages should be included in Stages 6 and/or 5 of the GIDS, at which the language socialization takes place at home and in the community but where the schooling in L1 is available. On the other hand, Baure, Itonama, and Uru are spoken only by a few older speakers who are shifting to Spanish: 2.1%, 0.2%, and 1.4% of their respective ethnic populations speak the language. There are so few fluent speakers in these communities that the languages need to be reintroduced and, in order to attain this goal, outside help will be required as predicted by Stage 8 of Fishman’s scale at which, one could conclude, they are situated.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The precarious situation of languages such as Baure, Itomana, and Uru suggests that Bolivia needs to do more than give official status to its indigenous languages and include them in the school system; more work is required in the implementation of these policies. The difficulty of such an endeavor lies in the different stages of the GIDS at which the country’s indigenous languages are situated: that is, Aymara, Guaraní and Quechua at Stages 3 and/or 2; Araona, Yaminahua, and Yuqui at Stages 6 and/or 5; and Baure, Itonama, and Uru at Stage 8. This suggests that national policies like the 1994 Educational Reform and the 2009 Constitution need to be tailored to each particular language and community.

REFERENCES

Brezinger, M., et al. (2003). Language Vitality and Endangerment. UNESCO. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/doc/src/00120-EN.pdf

Fishman, J. A. (1990). What is reversing language shift (RLS) and how can it succeed? Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 11, 5-36.

Fishman, J. A. (1991). Reversing language shift: Theoretical and empirical foundations of assistance to threatened languages. Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.

Fishman, J. A. (2001). Why is it so hard to save a threatened language? (A perspective on the cases that follow). In J. A. Fishman (Ed.), Can threatened languages be saved?: Reversing language shift, revisited: A 21st century perspective (pp. 1-22). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Press.

Hornberger, N. H., & King, K. A. (2001). Reversing Quechua language shift in the Andes. In J. Fishman (Ed.), Can threatened languages be saved? Reversing language shift, revisited: A 21st century perspective (pp. 166-194). Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters Press.

Krauss, M. (1992). The world’s languages in crisis. Language, 68, 4-10.

Lewis, M. Paul (Ed.). (2009). Ethnologue: Languages of the World [Online version] (16th ed.). Dallas, TX: SIL International. Retrieved from http://www.ethnologue.com/

López, L. E. (2001). Literacy and Intercultural Bilingual Education in the Andes. In D. R. Olson and N. Torrance (Eds.), The making of literate societies. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Malone, D. (2004). The in-between people: Language & culture maintenance and mother-tongue education in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Dallas, TX: SIL International.

McCarty, T. L. (2008). Language education planning and policies by and for indigenous peoples. In S. May & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education (2nd ed., Vol. 1, pp. 137-150). Boston, MA: Springer.

República de Bolivia. (1967). Constitución Política del Estado de 1967. Retrieved March 4, 2010, from http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Bolivia/bolivia1967.html

República de Bolivia. Congreso Nacional. (1994). Ley de Reforma Educativa (Ley 1565). Retrieved March 4, 2010, from http://www.congreso.gov.bo/leyes/1565.htm

República de Bolivia. (1995). Constitución Política del Estado (Ley 1615). Retrieved March 4, 2010, from http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Bolivia/consboliv2005.html

República de Bolivia. (2000). Decreto Supremo No 25894. Retrieved March 4, 2010, from http://www.congreso.gov.bo/archivo/texto/25894.htm

República de Bolivia, Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE). (2001). Censo Nacional de Población y Vivienda. Retrieved March 4, 2010, from http://www.ine.gov.bo/

República de Bolivia. (2009). Constitución Política del Estado. Retrieved March 4, 2010, from http://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Bolivia/bolivia09.html

Taylor, S. 2004. Intercultural and Bilingual Education in Bolivia: The Challenge of Ethnic Diversity and National Identity (Instituto de Investigaciones Socio-Económicas Working Paper No. 01/04). La Paz: Universidad Católica Boliviana.

von Gleich, U. (2004). New Quechua literacies in Bolivia. International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 167, 131-146.

Wiley, T. G. (1996). Language planning and policy. In S. McKay & N. H. Hornberger (Eds.), Sociolinguistics and language teaching (pp. 103-127). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, Department of French Studies, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, jrosesla@uwo.ca

Jorge Emilio Rosés Labrada, Department of French Studies, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, jrosesla@uwo.ca

[1] The numbers of languages and their speakers were all taken from the online version of Ethnologue: Languages of the World (Lewis, 2009), unless otherwise specified.

[2] Caveat: Although the importance of intergenerational transmission has been widely recognized, some scholars have objected to Fishman’s 1990 GIDS as an endangerment assessment tool. The 2003 UNESCO document “Language Vitality and Endangerment” is considered a more complete assessment tool (Brezinger et al., 2003) but Fishman’s GIDS will suffice for the purposes of this article.

[3] Three of these are considered to be extinct and four are reported as not having any known speakers.

[4] As Taylor (2004) accurately pointed out, this term refers to both cultural and linguistic assimilation into Spanish.

[5] Indigenous Peoples’ Educational Councils.

[6] Defined as the network of schools that provide education to an area or community.

[7] Nawpaqman Review: A rural bilingual journal for the Quechua nation

[8] I could not confirm whether L1 schooling in these languages is actually taking place in the communities but base this analysis solely on the provisions for mother tongue instruction of the Educational Reform.