Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

CULTURE: Alternative Congress Celebrates Linguistic Diversity

Maricel Drazer

ROSARIO, Argentina, Nov 19 2004 (IPS) - Many people realise that legendary Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara’s name was actually Ernesto, and that “Che” was a nickname given to him by his Cuban comrades.

It refers to the frequent use of the term “che” in his native land of Argentina, and other nearby parts of South America, as an interjection in informal conversation, or a way of calling someone’s attention – similar to “hey” in English.

But what very few people know – including those who actually use the expression on a daily basis – is that “che” comes from the language of the Mapuche Indians, the original inhabitants of much of modern-day Chile and Argentina.

In the Mapuche language, “che” means person, and “mapu” means the earth. Hence, the Mapuches’ name for themselves is “people of the earth”, a reflection of their close ties to the land and their culture’s emphasis on the balance between humans and nature.

Paying tribute to this and other languages of Latin America is the reason behind the 1st Congress on LanguageS (ending in a capital “S”), taking place Monday through Saturday in the city of Rosario, in east-central Argentina. The congress has been organised as a parallel and alternative event to the “official” 3rd International Congress on the Spanish Language, currently underway in the same city.

“We have a few discrepancies with the Congress on the Spanish Language,” noted Argentine activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and head organiser of the alternative meeting.

“We are troubled by some of the statements made regarding the need to preserve a single, unified language, whose purity is being compromised by the interference of other languages,” he told IPS.

This approach, he maintained, is based on a fallacy, because there are no “pure” languages. All languages are hybrids, enriched by the contributions of others, he said.

“That is why one of the main objectives of the Congress on LanguageS is to recover the identity, the cultures and the values of the original languages of the region,” he explained.

“Ama sua, ama llulla, ama quella,” said Angélica Mendoza, greeting the Congress participants.

These are the words of greeting used, even today, by the Colla indigenous people of Chile and Argentina, she explained. Literally translated, they mean, “Don’t steal, don’t be lazy, don’t lie.”

“Through their language, they express their cosmovision, their relationship to everything around them. These are precepts to be lived by,” said Mendoza, an indigenous languages specialist and one of the event’s organisers.

Throughout the congress, panellists and workshop participants have contributed examples that incontrovertibly demonstrate the way particular languages distinctly reflect the culture from which they stem.

“In the Mayan language, the word ‘development’ doesn’t exist, but the word ‘balance’ does,” noted one of the participants.

And as Pérez Esquivel pointed out, “When the aboriginal peoples talk about ‘Pachamama’, they are referring to a communion with Mother Earth, whereas in the highly technological Western world, the earth is something that happens to exist in order to be exploited.”

Pety Piciñan is a “sister” from a Mapuche community (all of the congress participants refer to each other as sisters and brothers) in the southern Argentine province of Neuquén, home to the country’s largest population of this indigenous group. She is a teacher and is attending the event on behalf of 50 communities with a total of around 8,000 inhabitants.

“We speak Spanish out of obligation, but I dream in my own language, because in my dreams, I communicate with my ancestors, and we wouldn’t understand each other in another language,” she told IPS.

According to the estimates supplied at the congress, there are roughly three million people living in indigenous communities in Argentina today (out of a total population of 37 million), and two million still speak their native languages.

Lucio García, 33, is a member of the Guaraní indigenous group, the original inhabitants of a large portion of South America, encompassing northern and eastern Argentina, Paraguay, southern Brazil and north-western Uruguay.

He comes from Tartagal, in the northern Argentine province of Salta, where he directs a weekly radio programme broadcast in seven indigenous languages spoken in the surrounding area. Almost apologetically, he adds that he “only” speaks three of them, in addition to Spanish, of course.

The subject of indigenous languages was also taken into consideration at the opening session of the 3rd International Congress on the Spanish Language, on Wednesday.

“We cannot overlook the fact that the heritage of our common language is enhanced by the multilingual richness of the Spanish-speaking community,” stated King Juan Carlos of Spain.

“In full recognition of this, the organisers of this Congress have set aside two sections to study the fertile relationship between Spanish and the numerous indigenous languages in the Americas, and between Castilian and the other languages of Spain,” he added, directly alluding to the criticisms aimed at the event for its emphasis on a single “Spanish” language.

The language officially known as Spanish is in fact the Castilian dialect, and it is only one of the languages spoken in Spain, which also include Basque, Catalan and Galician.

For his part, Argentine President Néstor Kirchner said, “If Latin America were to refrain from intercultural dialogue today, it would be denying its very nature, and ignoring the indigenous cultures and their linguistic wealth.”

But the critics remain sceptical.

“While they may address the subject of aboriginal languages, they are going to talk ‘about’ the aboriginal peoples, but not ‘with’ them. There is a substantial difference between doing things ‘for’ and doing things ‘with’ people. That is what is different about our congress,” said Pérez Esquivel.

“We weren’t invited to the other congress, which is just another demonstration of the lack of recognition of this country’s cultural and linguistic diversity,” added Piciñan.

The participants in the alternative congress include delegates from Mapuche, Colla, Toba, Mocovi, Guaraní, Tehuelche, Wichi, Quechua and Aymara indigenous communities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Uruguay.

Intercultural bilingual education, bilingual teacher training and the recovery of indigenous maternal languages are among the state policies and measures that the congress is calling on the region’s governments to adopt.

Almost half of the roughly 1,000 native languages in Latin America are in serious danger of dying out. And with the death of each one of them, an entire way of understanding the world will be lost.