Historical and Sociopolitical Background
The speakers of Quechua, who total some 9-14 million people in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, Colombia and Argentina, have so far only slightly developed a common sense of identity. The various Quechua dialects are in some cases so different that no mutual understanding is possible. Quechua was not only spoken by the Incas, but in some cases also by long-term enemies of the Inca Empire. These include the Huanca (Wanka is a Quechua dialect spoken today in the Huancayo area) and the Chanka (the Chanca dialect of Ayaqcucho) of Peru, and the Kañari (Cañar) in Ecuador. Quechua was spoken by some of these peoples, for example, the Wanka, before the Incas of Cusco, while other peoples, especially in Bolivia but also in Ecuador, adopted Quechua only in Inca times or afterward.
Quechua became Peru’s second official language in 1969 under the military regime of Juan Velasco Alvarado. Recently there have been tendencies toward nation building among Quechua speakers, particularly in Ecuador (Kichwa) but also in Bolivia, where there are only slight linguistic differences from the Peruvian version. An indication of this effort is the umbrella organization of the Kichwa peoples in Ecuador, ECUARUNARI (Ecuador Runakunapak Rikcharimuy). Some Christian organizations also refer to a “Quechua people,” such as the Christian shortwave radio station HCJB, "The Voice of the Andes" (La Voz de los Andes). The term “Quechua Nation” occurs in such contexts as the name of the Education Council of the Quechua Nation (Consejo Educativo de la Nación Quechua, CENAQ), which is responsible for Quechua instruction or bilingual intercultural schools in the Quechua-speaking regions of Bolivia. Some Quechua speakers claim that if nation states in Latin America had been built following the European pattern, they should be a single, independent nation.
Read more about this topic: Quechua People
Famous quotes containing the words historical and, historical and/or background:
“The analogy between the mind and a computer fails for many reasons. The brain is constructed by principles that assure diversity and degeneracy. Unlike a computer, it has no replicative memory. It is historical and value driven. It forms categories by internal criteria and by constraints acting at many scales, not by means of a syntactically constructed program. The world with which the brain interacts is not unequivocally made up of classical categories.”
—Gerald M. Edelman (b. 1928)
“Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained—in success—and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man’s highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.”
—Martin Buber (1878–1965)
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)