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By Walker Simon
Reuters. Source:
The Washington Post, Sunday,
December 6, 2009.
LATACUNGA, Ecuador (Reuters) - A
shaman blows a bull's horn on
festival day and pivots to clouds of
burning incense in a purification
ceremony, all shot on video.
The snapshot of native American life
opens "Nukanchik Yuyay," a
twice-daily newscast in Quechua, the
language spoken by millions of
people across the Andes and enjoying
a revival as even presidents take up
its cause.
The program's newscasters speak
below a woolen tapestry of Cotopaxi,
a glacier-capped volcano within
sight of the station, Ecuador's
channel 47. Besides the station's
cameras, a wolf mask bares white
fangs.
Based in Latacunga, 80 km (50 miles)
south of Quito, Channel 47 says it
is the world's first television
station for Quechua speakers. On air
since July, it features 30 percent
Quechua programs and aims to go
mostly monolingual as its audience
increases.
"Our next project is Quechua
cartoons ... to draw in children,"
says station manager Angel Tiban.
Channel 47's appearance is a part of
broader efforts to inject new life
into Quechua, repressed by late
Spanish colonial powers. New
constitutions in Bolivia and
Ecuador, enacted under leftist
presidents, enshrine Quechua as an
official language, and Bolivia this
year founded the first
Quechua-speaking university.
In Ecuador, Rafael Correa is the
nation's first fluent
Quechua-speaking president in
memory.
Quechua speakers live along the
Andes, from Argentina and Chile in
the south to Colombia in the north,
where it's called ingano. Most are
in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
First spread by the Incas, Quechua
expanded its reach under the Spanish
who used it to spread Roman
Catholicism.
For centuries, university professors
taught the language at the region's
premier university, San Marcos.
Quechua books and theater on Inca
history flourished. But that
suddenly halted and classes were
banned after colonial authorities
crushed an Indian rebellion in 1781
led by Jose Gabriel Condorcanqui,
who adopted the name of Inca ruler
Tupac Amaru.
Estimates of Quechua speakers range
from 6 million to 13 million, but
linguists say that even now some
Andeans still won't tell census
takers they speak the language
because of its long association with
backwardness and low social status.
"Kichwa (Quechua) used to have no
prestige ... If you wanted prestige,
you learned English, French or
German," says linguist Jose
Maldonado, a presidential adviser
who provides a weekly recap in
Quechua on national television of
Correa's activities.
Now, Ecuadoreans outnumber Americans
in Quechua classes at Maldonado's
university and bodyguards, police
and civil servants at the
presidential palace are signing up
for in-house classes.
With an eye on younger generations,
Quechua educators and broadcasters
are also seeking to promote the "cosmovision"
of Indian peoples once ruled by the
Incas. It invokes intricate balance
of dualities that make up the world.
"In geography, we want to teach that
there are male mountains and female
mountains, and sometimes a smaller
mountain between is a child," said
Alberto Conejo, academic director of
intercultural bilingual education at
Ecuador's education ministry. He
wore a blue poncho and many
bureaucrats on the high-rise floor
wore traditional Indian dress.
To illustrate "cosmovision" to a
recent vistor, Channel 47 manager
Tiban rolled tape of a native
flutist's Quechua interview, and
interpreted:
"He is saying some wind pipes are
masculine, others are feminine, and
that they have to be in equilibrium
for harmony,"
Quechua "cosmovision" dualities
include hot and cold, and night and
day, said Lucila Lema, a bilingual
poet who until this month hosted the
Quito-based Quechua newscast "Kichwapi"
or "In Quechua." It is the first
national newscast of the day on an
otherwise Spanish-language network
RTS.
Kichwapi colleague Enrique Conejo
said some terms defy easy Quechua
translation: "The word inflation is
a headache." But other translations
have gained traction. Kichwapi now
calls a car "antawa"-- derived from
the Quechua word "anta" or metal.
Quechua promoters are campaigning to
turn national legislatures into
bilingual bodies but the Ecuadorean
bid has already met resistance, says
congressman Pedro de la Cruz.
Congressional authorities told him
it cost too much to pay for
simultaneous interpreters and
translation cabins.
As a compromise, he said, the
National Assembly allows a quartet
of Indian legislators to speak five
minutes in Quechua on top of
lawmakers' standard 10-minute
Spanish time cap.
The Web sites of Ecuador's National
Assembly and Peru's Congress now
feature extensive Quechua sections.
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