Paraguayan Language Policy and the Future of Guaraní Shaw N
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Western Washington University Western CEDAR Modern & Classical Languages Humanities 2001 Paraguayan Language Policy and the Future of Guaraní Shaw N. Gynan Western Washington University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://cedar.wwu.edu/mcl_facpubs Part of the Other Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Gynan, Shaw N., "Paraguayan Language Policy and the Future of Guaraní" (2001). Modern & Classical Languages. 59. https://cedar.wwu.edu/mcl_facpubs/59 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Humanities at Western CEDAR. It has been accepted for inclusion in Modern & Classical Languages by an authorized administrator of Western CEDAR. For more information, please contact [email protected]. P a r a g u a y a n L a n g u a g e P o l i c y a n d T h e F u t u r e o f G u a r a n i Shaw N. Gynan Western Washington University A b stract. Paraguay is unique among countries of the Americas in that a substantial majority of the population speaks an indigenous language, Guarani. Socioeconomic and demographic dimensions of Paraguay Guaranf- Spanish bilingualism appear to favor the vitality of Guarani, especially in the rural sector, well into the 21st century. The early nineties saw significant advances in language policy. Guarani is now co-official with Spanish and bilingual education has been implemented in compliance with the standards for linguistic human rights of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States. Despite these positive signs, education for literacy in Guarani is limited mainly to urban areas. Large num bers of speakers of Paraguayan Guarani and other indigenous languages live in economiczones of exclusion.The challenge facing Paraguay is how to find the political will and economic resource to provide language education and other basic needs to all children in the country.* Introduction. Paraguay has been of interest to sociolinguists because of its unique situation of national bilingualism, but outside of Paraguay much less at tention has been paid to the language policy that has been developed to manage Spanish and Guarani. If the situation of language contact itself is worthy of atten tion, surely official reaction to these two languages merits analysis. The macro- sociohnguistic perspective provided by linguistic demography is particularly useful for this examination of the important events in language planning that have oc curred in Paraguay. The standard against which Paraguay’s language policy is measured in this study is the Proposed American D eclaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, * This report was made possible by a Fulbright Scholar Award and by a professional leave granted to the author by Western Washington University. 1 52 SOUTHWEST JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 20, NUMBER 1 (2001) drafted in 1996 and published in 1997 by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (lACHR), a principal organ of the Organization of American States (OAS). Paraguay’s response to the challenge of multilingualism has been mainly through the Paraguayan Ministerio de Educacion y Culto (MEC), which has pro duced a considerable number of policy documents and demographic analyses. This information, along with language data from Paraguay’s census bureau, on-site visits by the author to elementary schools throughout the country, and interviews with individuals directly involved in language policy, is used to assess the kind of lan guage planningthat has emerged and the demographic dimensions of Paragnay’s bilingualism. 1. The Evolution of Language Policy in Paraguay.The application of the OAS draft standard to the situation of Guarani is not straightforward. The provi sions of the declaration are applied to those peoples who self-identify as indigenous (OAS 1997:635). Although Guarani is indisputably an indigenous language with such non-Romance characteristics as post-positions and morphological, as opposed to intonational interrogative, markers, speakers of Guarani' are not classified by the government as indigenous. MEC (Paraguay PR-MEC 1994c:5) argues that Para guayan Guarani is distinct from ethnic Guarani, dialects of which are still spoken by peoples who live in traditional tribal societies and keep alive numerous aspects of their autochthonous culture. Meli^ (1992:107) documents the early and success ful Europeanization and Christianization of the Guarani by Franciscans and Jesu its, explaining how the current population descended from them. Whether the OAS standard would apply to the case of Paraguayan Guarani is therefore not clear. The lACHR declaration includes significant statements on language rights consonant with those in UNESCO’s historic 1953 declaration on vernacular lit eracy education. Although the lACHR declaration was made subsequent to the policy documents analyzed here, the UNESCO document, referred to by Para guayan language planners (Paraguay PR-MEC-CARE 1991:25), establishes as axiomatic that the best medium for teaching a child literacy is her or his mother tongue (UNESCO 1953:11). The lACHR declares that indigenous peoples have the right to use their languages (OAS 1997:635), and are to be free from forced assimilation. The states must recognize and respect indigenous use of languages, and are called upon to support indigenous language television broadcasting and the creation of indigenous radio stations. Specifically, in ‘areas where indigenous languages are predominant, states shall endeavor to establish the pertinent lan guages as official languages and to give them the same status that is given to non- indigenous official languages’ (OAS 1997:637). The lACHR declaration also pro vides important support for indigenous and bilingual literacy programs: ‘When indigenous peoples so decide, educational systems shall be conducted in the in digenous languages and incorporate indigenous context, and they shall also be provided with the necessary training and means for complete mastery of the offi- PARAGUAYAN LANGUAGE POLICY AND THE FUTURE OF GUARANI 153 cial language or languages’ (OAS 1997:638). Finally, in Article IX, the states are called upon to take measures to guarantee access to education at all levels at least equal in quality to that of the general population (OAS 1997:638). 2. Educational Policy in Paraguay.In 1992, well before the publication of the OAS declaration, and shortly following the fall of Stroessner’s 35 year dicta torship, Paraguay’s government declared Guarani an official language of Paraguay for the first time (Paraguay PR-MEC 1994c:20,29). What has emerged since is a proposal for full-fledged mother-tongue literacy and bilingual education (Para guay PR-MEC 1995a). The initial plan, first presented in 1991, called for a com pletely balanced two-way system in which each Paraguayan child would be trained in literacy in his or her own language, with the second language being taugbt 15% of the time in first grade and increasing by five percent a year until reaching total parity in the ninth grade. The program was initiated in March of 1994 (fall semes ter) in 118 schools (Paraguay PR-MEC 1994b). In November of that same year, the National Bilingualism Commission was created by presidential decree and charged with developing language policy for the country (Paraguay PR-MEC 1994a). MEC (Paraguay PR-MEC 1994b) reports that the new bilingual program re quired the training of 174 teachers and involved 7,058 children, a ratio of one trained teacher for about 40 children. In 1994, according to MEC figures, 1,568 schools reported being essentially monolingual in Guarani, and of those, 1,098 requested inclusion in the Guaranf modality. MEC figures show that the demand by schools for Guaranf literacy education represented 35,425 students of a total of 45,470 identified as attending schools in which the student population was entirely monolingual in Guaranf. The 1,098 schools were allowed to implement the Guaranf program without Guaranf materials in what wascob termed ertu ra BLANDA. The locations of the 118 programs by department are shown on the map in Figure 1. Despite the modest size of this initial project, several challenges emerged. A newspaper report (ABC 1994:37) detailed internal MEC opposition to expansion of the program, citing lack of evaluation, budget, and texts. Parental opposition to Guarani literacy education had been anticipated, but despite the implementation of a massive program sensibilizacionof of over 10,000 parents of children attending programs in the 118 schools (Paraguay PR-MEC 1994d), parental opposition to the Guarani modality was cited by MEC (Paraguay PR-MEC 1995b: 3) as a justi fication for a significant modification ofdiseno the unico, suggesting one referred to by critics as adiseno diferencial. The technical team pointed out that with this new plan, MEC was ‘turning its back on the sociolinguistic reality of the country’ (Paraguay PR-MEC 1995c:24). The technical team notes that the proposed ehanges, which would affect the third through sixth grades, would produce an especially abrupt transition from third 1 54 SOUTHWEST JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS, VOLUME 20, NUMBER 1 pOOl) Figure 1. Departments of Paraguay With Numbers of schools involved in 1994 Guaram Literacy Program to fourth grade. Whereas following the original balanced design, after a 65% Guaraniy35% Spanish third year program, Guaram-speaking children would re ceive 70% mother tongue instruction and 30% in Spanish during the fourth year, with the new plan those children would receive 33.5% in their native language and 66.5% in Spanish, effectively reversing the originally proposed proportions of Guarani and Spanish instruction (Paraguay PR-MEC 1995c:7-15). This move, along with a reversal of percentages for native Spanish speakers, who in the fourth grade would receive 68.5% of their instruction in Spanish and the balance in Guaram', amounted to reformulating the proposed program from two-way main tenance to transitional bilingual education.