Language politics in Latin America

Kanavillil Rajagopalan
State University at Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil

This paper is an attempt to take stock of the politics of language as it has been
playing out in Latin America, ever since the countries in this region were colo-
nized by European powers, mainly Spain and Portugal. Linguistic imperialism is
by no means a new phenomenon in this part of the world. In more recent times,
the relentless advance of English as the world’s leading lingua franca has only
brought to light the difficult North–South relations that have underpinned the
geopolitics of the region.

. Objectives

The aim of this paper to present the reader with a bird’s eye view of the politics of lan-
guage as it has played out in Latin America in its 500 years or so of recorded history,
with a view to zeroing in on the current situation which, as I hope to show, is riddled
with ambivalence and outright contradictions. After a cursory examination of the co-
lonial history of the nations that make up the region, an attempt will be made to look
at the impact of globalization, with special emphasis on language policies and language
planning in the face of the relentless advance of English. Also in focus will be the fate
of minority languages — especially local, indigenous languages — in the region, many
of them under threat of extinction.

2. Scope of the study

The scope of the present study may be seen on a vertical as well as a horizontal axis. On
the vertical, that is to say, time axis, the study traces the history of the continent since
its colonization in the 15th and 16th centuries by European powers, mainly (though
not exclusively) Spain and Portugal. Such a restriction of the scope was felt neces-
sary because, although the continent is believed to have been occupied by humans
for 12,500 years, there is very little concrete information available, except through
speculation based mostly on some archeological finds. But scholars have identified as

AILA Review 18 (2005), 76–93.

issn 1461–0213 / e-issn 1570–5595 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
 Language politics in Latin America 77

many as 34 indigenous language families (mostly remnants), in addition to a dozen or

so isolated stocks with an estimated 1,000 languages. This number is impressive indeed
when considered against the fact that there are only 21 language families in Asia, Af-
rica and Europe put together.

3. Some preliminary thoughts on language and politics

Language and politics are inextricably bound up with each other (Edelman 1964,
1971). “The politics of language,” writes Davies (2001:580), “concerns policies and de-
cisions about official and standard languages, language planning, language academics,
and educational policies.” Such a broad brush definition of the field may be seen as
leaving practically nothing out of its remit and, as one might hasten to add, rightly
so. Even the very business of theorizing about language — not mentioned explicitly
by Davies in his definition — may be seen to be shot through with political interests,
although many theoretically oriented linguists might most certainly take umbrage at
the suggestion.
Concerning the first two items listed in Davies’ definition, Wright (2004: 1) ob-
serves that “although formal language policy making and language planning is a rela-
tively recent development in terms of human history, as an informal activity it is as
old as language itself, plays a crucial role in the distribution of power and resources in
all societies, is integral to much political activity and deserves to be studied explicitly
from this political perspective.”

4. Latin America: An overview of the linguistic landscape

4. Latin America

When one refers to Latin America, one is actually referring to a cluster of 33 countries,
with another 13 political units that do not qualify as full-fledged nations. It covers most
of South and Central Americas and, in addition, Mexico, which is strictly (i.e., geo-
graphically and, more recently, economically) speaking, part of North-America. What
gives them the common appellation though is not geography but the fact that the prin-
cipal language spoken in each of these countries is a modern, Romance language. But
this claim stands in need of some further qualification. In Paraguay, a large number of
people (probably the majority) speak Guarani as their first language, although Spanish
remained, until recently, the sole official language — a situation further complicated
by what has been claimed to be a showcase model of national bilingualism (Rubins,
1974), or diglossia (Meliá, 1973), though not without serious reservations (von Gleich,
1993). On the other hand Francophone Canada is not regarded as belonging to Latin
America nor is Puerto Rico (despite its very name).
78 Kanavillil Rajagopalan

In most Latin American countries, however, the idea of a monolingual and mono-
cultural society is a complete myth (Mori 1999, Oliveira 2000). Spanish is by far the
predominant language, but Portuguese, spoken in Brazil — a country that occupies 40
percent of the total land mass and a third of its population — is also a major presence.
But to put it in these terms is itself, as we shall see below, to make a political statement.
Because, the truth of the matter is that the myth of linguistic homogeneity is in many,
perhaps most of these countries, maintained at the cost of great injustice meted out
to the speakers of indigenous languages and, in some cases, languages of European
origin, who are coerced to get “assimilated” in the name of national unity.
With reference to state-sponsored education in Mexico, Munoz Cruz (1999) re-
ports on some major and refreshingly welcome changes in recent times. On his part,
D’Angelis (1999) is highly critical of the imposition of Western models of schooling on
the indigenous communities, often with the best of intentions, echoing the complaint
by Orlandi and Souza (1988) and Cortazzo (2001) that active intervention by the white
man (be he a missionary, an anthropologist or a linguist) into the affairs of the local
communities is, more often than not, intrusive, and all too frequently detrimental to
local interests.

4.2 The linguistic landscape

In Latin America, the politics of language has a long history that dates back to the “dis-
covery” and subsequent colonization of the “New World” by European powers. Little is
known about the exact number of people who inhabited this vast land mass at the time
of the arrival of Spanish and Portuguese seafarers and adventurers. As a matter of fact,
this fact alone may more than justify the claim made by Wodak and Chilton (2002)
that there is a close link between the politics of language and the language of politics:
the very use of the expression “New World” to refer to the Americas is backed by a po-
litical agenda of consigning to the dustbin of history all that preceded the “discovery”
of the continents by European seafarers. Estimates about the population of indigenous
peoples before the arrival of the Europeans vary from 15 to 40 million. As for the num-
ber of languages spoken at that time, one’s guess is as good as anybody else’s. This has
to do with the fact that the only reliable written records bearing on the topic date back
from the middle of the 19th century, thanks principally to diaries maintained by lone
adventurers and the Jesuits who arrived in the region to catechize the native Indians
and their systematic efforts to learn the local languages so as to be able to translate the
Holy Bible into the vernacular. Many observers argue that this trend has survived till
today, except that the Jesuit missionaries have been replaced by experts with training
in linguistics and financed by the Summer Institute of Linguistics. The single-minded
proselytism of these experts has come under scathing criticism from concerned schol-
ars in many countries of Latin America such as Brazil (Cardoso de Oliveira, 1981).
 Language politics in Latin America 79

5. The history of linguistic imperialism in Latin America

5. A note on “Linguistic Imperialism”

When Robert Phillipson (1992) famously coined the phrase “linguistic imperialism”,
he had the imperialism of English mostly in mind, although he did not rule out the
imperialistic origins of all the world’s major international languages that, to quote him,
bear “evidence of conquest and occupation, followed by the adoption of the invader’s
language because of the benefits that accrue to the speakers of the language when the
dominant language has been imposed.” (Phillipson, 1992: 31).
But, even with reference to the global spread of English and its consequences,
Latin America is seldom if ever under the spotlight. This has prompted the editors
of a special number of World Englishes on ‘English in South America’ to lament that
the continent has been sidelined or been given short shrift by both the media and
academia. “Like Africa,” they write, “South America too has been referred to as a ‘for-
gotten continent’ [….]. And the analogy is apt.” (Friedrich and Berns, 2003: 83). As we
shall see below, there is growing resentment right across the countries of Latin Ameri-
ca against what is referred to as “big stick diplomacy” widely perceived to be practiced
by the United States vis-à-vis its neighbors to the South. “The entire continent,” wrote
Brazilian sociologist Emir Sader (2001: A3), referring to talks currently under way for
the total elimination of trade tariffs across the Americas and the formation of a com-
mon market encompassing the north and the south, “is under threat of becoming a
free trade zone for North-American corporations.” The long tradition of uneasy ties
between the North and the South has helped spawn stereotypes that persist even today.
In the words of Pike (1992)
The lazy greaser asleep under a sombrero and the avaricious gringo with money-
stuffed pockets are only two of the negative stereotypes that North Americans
and Latin Americans have cherished during several centuries of mutual misun-
derstanding.

5.2 The roots of Linguistic Imperialism in Latin America

But, as already pointed out, the history of linguistic imperialism in Latin America
goes right back to the “discovery” of the so-called “New World” and the subsequent
occupation of the vast land mass by European powers. Of these Spain was the most
successful, with Portugal coming a close second, and France, Holland, Britain, Sweden
with varying histories of limited success in their attempts to get a piece of the cake.
In fact, the linguistic map of Latin America bears the strong imprint of the changing
fortunes of European powers as they vied with one another to “secure a place under
the tropical sun”.
As with the recent history of English as the world’s number one lingua franca,
so too the history of the imposition of other European languages in Latin America is
80 Kanavillil Rajagopalan

strewn with violence — be it outright, as in forced dispersion from ancestral lands,

annihilation through spread of lethal germs causing diseases as a result of contact and
planned, systematic decimation of recalcitrant tribes through massacre, or gradual
and systematic, as in deprivation of identity through conversion and assimilation. Be-
fore the advent of the Europeans, as many as 30 million aboriginals are believed to
have walked the face of the huge land mass, extending from the Isthmus of Panama to
Tierra del Fuego and, more impressively, forming great civilizations of which we know
very little today.
What we do know is what happened to those peoples after the arrival of the Euro-
pean conquistadores. In the words of Mariani (2004: 25):
The ideological effects of colonization materialize in tandem with the process of
linguistic colonization, which takes for granted the imposition of ideas about lan-
guage prevalent in the Metropolis, and the colonizer’s fantasy of rolling the lan-
guage and the nation into a unitary project.

Mariani goes on to illustrate her point by citing the example of Tupi (Lingua Geral)
whose influence on Brazilian Portuguese is undeniable, although seldom if ever openly
acknowledged — let alone discussed — in the “official” histories of the language where
the emphasis is almost exclusively on its Latin heritage.

5.3 Early history

In 1492, the same year in which Christopher Columbus and his crew set sail, an ex-
traordinarily gifted Renaissance humanist, historian, astronomer, poet and philologist
by name Elio Antonio de Nebrija presented Queen Isabella of Spain with a proposal
that was destined to mark an important watershed in the history of the continent of
South America. “Language,” argued Nebrija, “has always been the consort of empire,
and forever shall remain its mate.” Nebrija is credited with having been the first ever
to compile a grammar of Spanish (1492) and a dictionary of the language (1495). Both
bear testimony to his important role in history as a political visionary, perhaps more so
than to his formidable intellectual wherewithal to undertake such a daunting task.
In retrospect, Nebrija’s words may be seen to be imbued with a prophetic overtone
and to hold the key to a proper understanding of the politics of language that was to be
put in place in the New World in general and in Latin America in particular. The colo-
nial powers made a point of imposing their language — Spanish or Portuguese — on
the vanquished peoples. Sherzer (1991) reckons that at the time of the arrival of the
Europeans, there were as many as 1,750 indigenous languages spoken in what today is
Latin America. That number has since then dwindled to anywhere between 700 and
550, according to Campbell (1997). Kaufman (1994) estimates that there are, all in all,
some 56 language families and 73 isolates.
In the case of Brazil, it is believed that, around the time of colonization, there were
some 1,175 different languages spoken by an estimated 6,000,000 indigenous peoples
 Language politics in Latin America 8

of different ethnicities (Rodrigues, 1993) — the corresponding figures today speak vol-
umes for the death and destruction wrought on the local populations by the ravishing
conquerors: between 160 and 180 different languages, spoken by some 216 different
ethnic groups, 12 of which being on the verge of extinction (Ricardo, 115 — cited in
Braggio, 2003: 115). “These estimates,” Seki (1999:259) warns us, “must be taken into
consideration with some caution, because the Indian languages are currently under a
lot of pressure, thanks to the growing contact with the population outside [the reserva-
tions] and the dominant language.”
Irrespective of doubts concerning the trustworthiness of the numbers, the situa-
tion of native languages in Brazil is further brought into relief by the fact that, as early
as the 16th century, the language of the Tupinambá (of the Tupi branch) had already
achieved the status of a lingua franca throughout the Atlantic coastline and even the
Portuguese settlers are believed to have been reasonably conversant in it. Widely re-
ferred to as Brasílica, this language was adopted by the Jesuits for catechizing the local
population. In 1595, José de Anchieta, a Jesuit preacher of Spanish origin, published
Arte de Gramática de Língua Mais Falada na Costa do Brasil (The art of the grammar of
the language most spoken along the coast of Brazil) and a 1621 manuscript contained
what may be regarded as the first dictionary of the language, Vocabulário na Língua
Brasílica (The vocabulary of the Brasílica language). By the middle of the 17th century,
this language had evolved to the extent of having two distinct dialects, the paulista and
the amazônica, and was, from now on, referred to as Língua Geral (General Language).
It was widely spoken in the country by native Indians as well as the children of the
Portuguese settlers.
Portuguese continued to remain a minority language for another century. It was
only by the middle of the 18th century that the language was elevated to the status of
the country’s principal language, thanks to the discovery of natural wealth in the form
of gold and diamond which in turn brought droves of new immigrants from Portugal.
Even then, the local population remained largely bilingual until, on August 17, 1758,
a decree issued by Marquês do Pombal made Portuguese the colony’s sole official lan-
guage, and simultaneously banned the use of Língua Geral (In the following year, the
Jesuits, who had been suspected of aiding and abetting the indigenous populations,
were expelled from the country). The decree by Marquês do Pombal may thus be seen
as the first decisive move towards language planning in Brasil (Mariani, 2004).
The Diaguita and the Guarani, the two main indigenous groups that inhabited be-
fore the arrival of the Spaniards what is now recognized as Argentina were more suc-
cessful than their counterparts in Brazil in fending off foreign domination for a long
time. What finally led to their defeat was the introduction of diseases by the white man,
rather than the latter’s military prowess. The two major groups that bravely survive till
to date and have managed to preserve their cultural and linguistic identities are the
Quechua of the northeast and the Mapuche in Patagonia. Quechua is spoken also by
roughly a quarter of Peru’s population, thus qualifying as the most widely spoken Am-
erindian language, with over 8 million speakers. As for the Mapuche, a large number
82 Kanavillil Rajagopalan

of them find themselves within the territorial limits of Chile and are currently engaged
in a protracted struggle of self-affirmation and recognition of indigenous rights. As a
matter of fact, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia — so-called Rio de la Plata
countries — have shared common histories, constituting as they once did the viceroy-
alty established by Spain with the port city of Buenos Aires as its capital from 1776.
Referring to the colonial language policy in Peru, Cerrón-Palomino (1989: 19) ar-
gues that the attitude of the Spanish crown vis-à-vis the indigenous languages, notably
Quechua, was riddled with contradictions. On the one hand, the colonizers were eager
to guarantee the subjugation of the natives and “the propagation of the Catholic faith
was used a powerful argument to legitimize the physical and moral subjugation of the
Indians.” The initial policy of catechizing the Indians in their own native languages, as
decided at the First Council of Lima (1552) soon met with resistance of all sorts. The
parallel policy of the “Castilianization” (the process of teaching the speakers of local
languages to be fluent speakers of Castillian — the South American word for Spanish)
of the native nobility was one. Among the arguments used against the continued use of
Quechua to catechize people was one that said that “the indigenous languages, though
grammatical systems, were nonetheless ‘barbarian’ languages, and therefore unfit for
conveying the biblical message which would run the risk of being distorted” (Cerrón-
Palomino, 1989: 21).
Paraguay has likewise been the site of ethnic-cum-linguistic persecution. General
Alfredo Strossner, the military dictator who ruled the country with an iron fist (from
1954 to 1989, the year in which he was overthrown and forced to flee the country)
imposed a ban on speaking Gurani in public places on the allegation that it was the
language of the “ignorant”.
Since then things have improved a lot, and the language has gained official sta-
tus alongside Spanish, as has Quechua in Peru. In Bolivia, where more than half of
the population is claimed to be indigenous (Human Resources Development and Op-
erations Policy (1993)), both Quechua and Aymara have gained official status, in ad-
dition to Spanish. But the following remark by Cerrón-Palomino (1989: 31) about
the situation of native languages in Peru may be readily seen as applicable to Latin
America as a whole:
[…] throughout Peruvian history, the cause of ancestral languages and of the
speakers themselves was supported only by the moral scruples of the ruling
groups, and decisions about language policy were made without regard to the
interests of the peoples concerned.

In Brazil, it was only with the constitution of 1988 that the rights of the indigenous
peoples were recognized for the first time. Until then the state policy was one of pro-
gressive “assimilation”, a euphemism for the forced deprivation of their identity and
language (Oliveira, 2001).
 Language politics in Latin America 83

5.4 ‘Postcolonial’ times

5.4. From the colonial frying pan into the post-independence fire
The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 also sounded the death-knell of the Spanish
empire in the New World. Rebellions led by Jose de San Martin in Argentina, Bernardo
O’Higgins in Chile and Simon Bolivar in Venezuela eroded the sovereign power of
Spain and it soon became evident that the empire was teetering on the brink of col-
lapse. The new republics were anxious to get the blessings of the United States but US
President James Monroe and his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, were some-
what reluctant to extend a hand of friendship immediately. On December 2, 1823, the
president delivered his seventh annual message to the Congress in which he declared
that, at the behest of the Russian Imperial Government and also the Government of
Great Britain “the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in
which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American con-
tinents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and main-
tain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any
European powers […]” (http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/monrodoc.html). Thus was put
in place what was to become known as the “Monroe doctrine”.
What that emphatic declaration of freedom from interference by European pow-
ers really amounted to was that, as from then on, the continent was to be regarded as
being within the sphere of influence of the United States. As a matter of fact, this idea
remained strong but latent until the end of the 19th century when the US Government
was suddenly forced to act in response to the blockade of Venezuela’s ports by Brit-
ish, German and Italian gunboats in retaliation to that country’s unilateral decision to
declare a moratorium on its debt repayments. On December 6, 1904, in what came to
be known as “The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine”, the US government
reiterated its commitment to its neighbors to the south, making sure that the impact of
the stark message was well cushioned by diplomatic jargon.
The fact remains though that the U.S. has assiduously held the strings, making
sure that the countries to its south remain within its sphere of influence. During World
War II, Brazil’s Getúlio Vargas only joined the Allies at the behest of US President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But when he ultimately did, he turned the fury against
the inhabitants of the German and Italian enclaves in the country, even prohibiting
overnight the use of their respective languages, with strict penalties including impris-
onment for failure to comply.

5.4.2 The US as the role model versus the drive for national self-affirmation
Between the end of the Spanish-American war (1898) and the Great Depression
(1929), the United States militarily intervened in Latin America 32 times, invoking
the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in order to justify each one of those
interventions. Although there is no doubt that the North–South relations were invari-
ably unilateral, with the north always calling the shots, it is equally true that the US
also served as a role model for the nations of Latin America.
84 Kanavillil Rajagopalan

This may explain in part, the surge of national self-affirmation in many countries
of Latin America, where for a long time the prevailing spirit had been one of setting
out to explore the vast natural resources of the continent, rather than “build a ‘city on a
hill’ as in Massachusetts” (Topik, 1992: 408). In the sphere of language, the new attitude
translated into affirming the total independence of the “transported variety” from that
of the metropolis. Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of English Language (1828) was
a declaration of linguistic independence of the erstwhile colony. In fact such pioneer-
ing figures of (North) American linguistics as William Dwight Whitney were as much
motivated by the desire to declare their linguistic independence from Great Britain,
as they were to delve into the mysteries of human language (cf. Andresen 1990). John
Adams, a founding father and second president of the United States, not only wanted
English to become the language of his country and but also wanted the language itself
to be made distinctively American, suggesting for the purpose the establishment of a
language academy modeled on the French and the Spanish academies.
“The period that stretches from 1920 to 1945 is indisputably the most intense and
tense during the entire history of the Portuguese language in Brazil,” writes Pinto (1981:
xiii). She goes on to discuss the long-drawn-out debates during the Primeiro Congresso
da Língua Nacional Cantada (the First Conference of Sung National Language) that
took place in São Paulo in 1937. The participants were unable to decide the exact term
to be adopted in order to differentiate Brazilian Portuguese from its parent language,
the competing candidates being, among others, língua nacional (national language),
linguajar nacional (national idiom), nosso linguajar (our idiom), língua brasileira (Bra-
zilian language), brasiliana, and brasíliano. What was above all contestation was the
idea that the language of Brazil had a right to separate and independent existence.
The very existence of the competing words español (Spanish) and castellano
(Castilian) attests to the presence of unresolved linguistic tensions in the Spanish-
speaking world.

5.4.3 The post-World War II scenario

The end of World War II saw the emergence of the US as a major presence in world
politics. The ensuing Cold War convinced the US even more of the need to keep an
eye on its neighbors to the south, its “backyard”. In order to justify their decision to
support South Vietnam, President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice-President Richard
Nixon put forward the “domino theory”, according to which, the moment one country
fell into the hands of the communists, the others would follow suit. When in 1960,
John F. Kennedy was elected president, he lost no time in reiterating the pledge made
by Dwight Eisenhower to protect South Vietnam against the communist threat from
the north.
When in July 1959, Fidel Castro assumed full powers of the state, Cuba had al-
ready begun sliding from its position as the country in Latin America with the third
highest per capita income (following Venezuela and Argentina, in the same order). But
the fall of Cuba into the hands of the communists did not confirm the domino theory,
 Language politics in Latin America 85

though the US was from now on, determined not to “bungle” it anymore. Thus began a
series of behind-the-curtains interventions in the rest of Latin America that resulted in
the installation of military dictatorships — puppet governments designed to serve the
strategic interests of the US and carry out the policy of nipping in the bud movements
that smacked of Marxist or leftist ideologies.
It is fair to say that postwar US policy generated a lot of resentment in Latin
America (whose long-term effects persist till today). The Marshall Plan that literally
resurrected Europe from the debris of World War II had made no provision for help-
ing Latin America recover from the disastrous consequences of the same war, that
included loss of international trade, economic recession coupled with inflation (so-
called ‘stagflation’), uneven distribution of wealth, rising levels of unemployment and
poverty etc. Instead, the US was single-mindedly worried about the specter of com-
munism. In 1954, there was a CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala. In 1965, President
Lyndon Johnson ordered the invasion of the Dominican Republic. A year before, the
military had already deposed a democratically elected government in Brazil. This was
followed by Argentina (1966 and again in 1973, after a brief lull that lasted less than
three years), Panama (1968), Uruguay (1972), Chile (1973), and so on — in what may,
with some irony, be described as a domino effect.
Such direct interest in the affairs of the countries to its south meant the increased
presence of US corporations and, with it, greater demand for learning English.

6. Language politics in present-day Latin America

6. The importance of English

The rising prestige of English in contemporary Latin America is best illustrated by the
following observation by Niño-Murcia concerning the linguistic reality of Peru:
Peruvians tend to imagine an implicit language prestige analogy:
Quechua : Spanish : : Spanish : English
That is to say that Quechua is to Spanish as Spanish is to English, where in each
case the latter is more prestigious. (Niño-Murcia, 2003:126)

It is not at all clear that the immense prestige of English has led to such a hysterical
state of crass depreciation of local vernacular in the rest of Latin America. But there
can be no doubt either that many people, especially those belonging to the upper in-
come groups in these countries, have resigned themselves to the widespread view that
English affords them a window on the rest of the world — and, even more importantly,
paves the way for better job opportunities. And almost everyone agrees that knowl-
edge of English is a must for those who aspire to climb a few rungs up the social ladder.
A taxi driver in Peru summed up the prevailing mood when he said: “El ingles en el
86 Kanavillil Rajagopalan

mundo de hoy es un mal necessário, lo necessitamos sí o sí ” (English in today’s world is

a necessary evil, we need it, one way or another) (cited in Ninõ-Murcia 2003: 121).
Nielsen (2003: 200) notes that in Argentina “English is now part of most of the
population’s everyday lives” and Friedrich (2003: 174) explains one of the reasons why:
“[I]n Argentina […] English has been given more emphasis in the educational system
than in many other South American countries.” In 1993, the then Mexican president
Carlos Salinas de Gortari, riding the crest of popularity and world-wide projection af-
ter having realized his dream of making his country part of the U.S. led North Ameri-
can Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), gave a famous presidential address in which he
emphasized the need to turn Mexico into a bilingual (Spanish-English) nation (al-
though, it is important to add that, there has so far been very little follow-up action).

“English has always been the foremost foreign language taught in Cuba,” write
Eastment and Santos (2000). This is particularly interesting because the country has
been on the U.S. Government blacklist for nearly a half century and, since 1962, its
government has been excluded from participation in the 35-member Organization of
American States (OAS), although the country itself is regarded a member-state.

6.2 Ambivalence

Not everything is smooth sailing for English, though. The rising importance of Eng-
lish has come at a price. Side by side with the realization that knowledge of English is
a must in today’s globalized world, there have sprung up right across the countries of
Latin America clear signs of resentment. As the present writer noted a few years ago:
The role played by the English language in Brazil, as the country jostles with the
other emerging nations all over the world to get a piece of the cake in the new
global market is shot through with contradictions. It is at once looked upon as
a precious commodity and hotly pursued as such by segments of the population
aspiring to climb a few rungs on the social ladder. Yet, it is precisely from these
very segments of the population, that one also comes across spirited voices of
protest and an increasing clamor for putting a damper on the advance of English
lest it should negatively impact the vital question of national security. It is, in other
words, love and hatred rolled into one single reaction. (Rajagopalan, 2003a: 98)

Vélez-Rendon (2003: 194) made a similar observation with reference to Colombia. In

her own words:
Colombians’ attitudes towards the English language and the United States can be
best characterized as mixed and contradictory. […]

On closer inspection, the linguistic issue turns out to be but the visible tip of a delicate
geo-political iceberg. As was mentioned earlier, the roots of the distrust of the preten-
sions of the Big Brother to the north go very deep indeed into history.
 Language politics in Latin America 87

Carlos Fuentes, a leading Latin American historian and man of letters, made the
following remark in a university commencement address in 1982, shortly after the
war in Las Malvinas/the Falklands: “Nationalism represents […] a profound value for
Latin Americans simply because of the fact that our nationhood is still in question.
In New York, Paris, or London, no one loses sleep asking himself whether the nation
exists. In Latin America you can wake up and find that the nation is no longer there.”
(Fuentes, 1982:4 — cited in Davis, 1987: 36). As Davis (1987: 37) observes, Fuentes
is not alone in evincing extreme discomfort whenever there is the slightest sugges-
tion in the air about an outside intervention into the region’s internal affairs. Mario
Vargas Llosa, internationally known Peruvian novelist and playwright, has gone on
record as proclaiming: “The battle for liberty in Latin America will be won strictly by
themselves.’’ In a write-up published in the Peruvian weekly magazine Caretas, Vargas
(2000) lashed out at the OAS (Organization of American States), alleging that “it has
been a completely useless organization, incapable of contributing to the promotion
and preservation of democracy and human rights on the continent which were the
objectives with which it was created in the first place”. Other famous Latin American
intellectuals who have distinguished themselves by espousing progressive causes in-
clude Colombian-born Nobel Laureate (1982) Gabriel García Márquez.

6.3 Mixed reactions to the advance of English

The distrust that has long characterized Latin America’s attitude towards their mighty
neighbor to the north has become fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories of all
sorts. And, as only to be expected, the English language is often viewed as the potent
symbol of North-American presence in their midst (Rajagopalan, 2002, 2003a, 2004b,
2005a, 2005b, in press–1, Rajagopalan and Rajagopalan,2005).
Other linguists have been even more vociferous in their criticism of the way Eng-
lish has spread its tentacles into the daily lives of ordinary citizens in the country.
Oliveira e Paiva (1991) opens her 1991 Ph.D. dissertation with words that leave no
room for any doubt whatsoever in this regard.
Right from the moment when members of Brazil’s bourgeoisie awaken to the mu-
sic of FM/AM Electronic Digital Clock Radio, pressing down the snooze button
so as to gain an extra few minutes of sleep, while those on the seamy side of the
social divide spring out of their beds, rudely awakened from their slumber by the
deafening sound of a Westclox [alarm clock], Made in Brasil (sic), till the moment
the television set — Sharp, Philco, or Panasonic — is switched off and the General
Electric bedside lamp is also turned off, Brazil’s population is, every single minute,
literally bombarded with words from the English language.

Similar reactions are just as common in other Latin American countries.

88 Kanavillil Rajagopalan

6.4 Opposition to the advance of English

The stiffening opposition in some quarters to what many see as the unbridled advance
of English takes two forms that, in the final analysis, turn out to be based on distinct
premises, not always recognized as such in the relevant literature. The two accusations
brought against the spread of English are (a) that it is contributing to the demise of all
other languages in its path (b) that it robs native languages of their ancestral “purity”.
It is useful to consider them separately:

6.4. The thesis of language death

The idea that English is causing the death of other languages is not true across the
board, especially in Latin America. If anything, in most countries of Latin America,
the death of indigenous languages is a process that began long before English replaced
French (which in turn replaced Latin) as the world’s leading international language.
In other words, language death is definitely in progress in Latin America, but it has
nothing to do with English. Rather, it has to do with the monolingual state policies
of education in place in many of these countries, where the cause of indigenous lan-
guages and cultures at best receives occasional lip service. As a matter of general rule,
it is the white man that decides what is good for the indigenous populations. As Souza
(2005: 76) puts it, “Literacy and modern education are assumed to empower the in-
digenous subject.”
One reason why it is wrong to suggest that English is causing the death of minority
languages in Latin America is that it is scarcely in touch with any of these languages.
Rather, it is with the dominant (i.e. national, official) languages — Spanish and Portu-
guese — that English is in direct contact. And, needless to point out, both Spanish and
Portuguese are, in their own right, international languages and it seems reasonable to
argue that both can, as it were, “take care of themselves”.

6.4.2 The thesis of hybridization

That leaves us with the other charge that contact with English is infusing alien words
into other languages. There is some truth to this. According to Vélez-Rendón (2003:
192–3), “English as a symbol of prestige and modernity is mainly realized in Colombia
through its use in advertising names for business, and clothes brand names.”
Nielson (2003) confirms the existence of a similar pattern in Argentina.
In Brazil, an indisputable sign of the prestige of English is the tendency for hyper-
correction of English words and proper nouns. The surname of the sitting US presi-
dent, George W. Bush, is often pronounced so as to make it rhyme with rush, lush and
gush (Rajagopalan, 2004c: 215).
But the thesis of hybridization (if that is the right word to describe what seems to
be going on) is a politically, ideologically and emotionally charged issue. The “unholy
contact” with the foreign language is equated with the defilement of one’s mother-
tongue (Rajagopalan, 2004b). The ideological aspect of this morbid fear of hybridity
 Language politics in Latin America 89

becomes clear as soon as one recalls that most of our fundamental ideas about the na-
ture of language reflect the Zeitgeist of the late 19th century (Hutton, 1996), when the
spirit of colonialism reigned supreme in the European psyche. The notion of discrete
identities was absolutely necessary for the colonizers in order to justify to themselves
the wanton subjugation of the “inferior” races (Rajagopalan, 1999, 2004a).
It is perhaps opportune to observe here that the thesis of linguistic imperialism,
though important insofar as it makes an important political point, is also arguably
anchored to the 19th century of view of language which saw no room for the inter-
mingling of languages in contact, despite the fact that colonialism had given rise to
several hybrid languages such as pidgins and creoles (Rajagopalan 1999, Joseph 2002,
Bhat 2005).
In Brazil, the issue of estrangeirismos (“foreignisms”) was right at the epicenter
of a national controversy that erupted in 1999 when a congressman presented a bill
designed to protect the country’s national language — Portuguese — against what it
described as the onslaught of English (Rajagopalan, 2001a, 2002, 2003a,b, 2004b,c,
2005b). The bill was, after passing muster in the lower house, reined in by the upper
house, where a senator proposed a substitutive bill which took most of the “sting” out
of the earlier one, but in effect retained the idea of some kind of legislative intervention
into the matter. In other Latin American countries, there have been similar attempts
with varying degrees of success to legislatively intervene in linguistic affairs especially
with regard to the growing importance of English.

7. Lessons to be learned

It should be reasonably clear from the foregoing discussion that the politics of lan-
guage in Latin America is shot through with ambivalence and even outright contra-
dictions. At a more practical level, it is also a political problem. It manifests itself at all
levels — from the top echelons of decision-making authority right down to classroom
practice (Rajagopalan, 2001b). An example of the former is the recent episode of Bra-
zil’s foreign minister Celso Amorim defending before a perplexed media gathering his
government’s sudden decision to no longer require of the aspirants to a place in Brazil’s
highly coveted diplomatic service a reasonable level of fluency in English, as was the
practice for years — drawing such sharp criticisms such as “The change reflects a myo-
pic view of the training of a future diplomat” and “They have scrapped English out of
pure prejudice against the USA” (reported in Veja magazine, 2005. 38. 3. p.47).
Despite such protests from a section of the society (the first of the two remarks
cited in the paragraph above was issued by a seasoned diplomat and a former foreign
minister himself), the fact remains such acts of bravado and saber-rattling do win
plaudits from amongst the masses at large. But, it is doubtful if they achieve anything
more than reinforce the stereotypical image of the Latinos as hot-blooded and given
to impulsive reactions.
90 Kanavillil Rajagopalan

As already pointed out, the opposition to English in Latin America stems mainly
from pent-up resentment against the widely disseminated perceptions of US policy
towards its ‘backyard’. And the episode just referred to speaks volumes for itself. Its
genealogy is, needless to say, eminently political. As I have argued elsewhere (Rajago-
palan, 2002, 2004 b, c, in press–2), here lies a clue to the rather dismal track record that
professional linguistics have had, not only in Latin America, but right across the world,
when it comes to weighing in on matters related to language policy and language plan-
ning where what counts is not scientific knowledge but pragmatism and ability to deal
with public opinion at large (another way of saying political acumen).
Personally, I am inclined to believe that theoretical linguistics, as it stands today, is
constitutively prevented from influencing public opinion (without which there can be
no meaningful participation in language politics), thanks to an inaugural decision by
the founding fathers of the discipline to keep lay opinion at arm’s length as a prerequi-
site for doing theory. This is where applied linguists may step in with their expertise in
virtue of the eminently inter- or transdisciplinary nature of their work (2003b, 2004c,
2005c, d).

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), a

funding agency under Brazil’s Ministry of Science and Technology, for financing my research
(Process no. 306151/88–0).

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