Quechua endures in Peru despite centuries of discrimination

CCARHUACC LICAPA, Peru — Leila Ccaico walked slowly to the front of her class in a rural village in the Andes. But the incident also raised hopes among Quechua speakers that Peru’s new government, led by a rural schoolteacher from an Indigenous region, will give their language more visibility and increase funding for bilingual education in villages where children are often reluctant to speak the ancient tongue. It’s a situation commonly faced by Quechua speakers in South America, even though the language is used by an estimated 10 million people in the region — largely in Peru,. “For 500 years Spanish has been imposed in a way that reflects the racist and classist values of Peruvian society” said Carmen Cazorla, an anthropologist who teaches Quechua at the Catholic University of Peru. “Our teacher told us that Quechua was a very good language, and that we should speak it as well as we speak Spanish because otherwise it will disappear” Ccaico said.