By Heather Physioc
In a rustic adobe building in the Andean mountainside, cool light filters in through small windows that look out over a misty valley below. The hut is constructed from bricks of mud mixed with straw and highland grasses. The roof is corrugated sheet steel and thatch. The clay walls are brushed white and adorned with simple, hand-painted depictions of local scenes and animal life.
A slight boy with tousled black hair smiles at me from his wooden stool against the wall. Cool natural light illuminates the boy’s face. Four-year-old Abel dons warm wool pants, and a gray turtleneck peeks out from underneath a green Ninja Turtles t-shirt. Abel and his family live in the rural highland community of Patacancha, Perú, near the village of Ollantaytambo.
Behind a heavy wooden door, Abel’s father, Nemecio Avilés, prepares a hearty breakfast for the family and me with fresh fruit, potatoes, eggs, and a sweet quinoa apple porridge. The night before, Avilés welcomed me into his home, his family members and neighbors greeting me at the entrance in traditional dress with music and dance.
In rudimentary Spanish, I ask Abel, “Cuál es tu animal favorito?” He gives a sheepish grin and points his tiny index finger at the wall behind my head at a crude alpaca. I spot a children’s workbook overturned on the floor near Abel.
Flipping through it, I realize the stories and exercises are not in Spanish, but in Quechua, Abel’s first language. The Peruvian government distributes these workbooks to provide Indigenous children with educational materials in their native tongues, complementing the dominant Spanish-language curriculum.
Quechua is a family of Indigenous languages spoken mainly in the Andes Mountains of South America. The workbooks are part of an initiative that aims to promote bilingual education and preserve the Indigenous languages of the region, which are spoken by a significant portion of the Peruvian population – but a declining one.
Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas – and yet, it’s endangered.
Though accurate estimates are hard to come by due to the number of distinct varieties of Quechua, an estimated 7 to 10 million people speak one of its variants. This makes it the most widely spoken Indigenous language family in all the Americas, ahead of Aymara (2 million speakers) and Uru (30,000 speakers). All together, Quechua speakers are estimated to make up a population nearly the size of São Paulo.
In 1940 over half the population of Perú spoke an Indigenous language. By the 1980s, only one-quarter claimed some proficiency in one of them. Currently, Quechua as a language is classified as “vulnerable” according to UNESCO, meaning it faces risks of language loss, and some variants are severely endangered. Contributing to declines are the rise of Spanish and English, migration from rural to urban areas, social stigma and discrimination against Indigenous communities, and having limited public spaces where the language is used actively. Today, Quechua speakers are mainly concentrated in the Andean highlands of Perú, Bolivia, and Ecuador, but some varieties are spoken in the Amazon and parts of northern Chile and Argentina.
Quechua was once the lingua franca of the Incan Empire.
Quechua flourished as the official language of the Incan empire in Perú between the 12th and 16th centuries. It became a lingua franca, or common language, for trade and communication in the region. However, the earliest evidence of Quechua culture and language dates back even further to the Pre-Inca period. Archaeological findings in the region have uncovered ancient pottery, textiles and stonework that exhibit characteristics associated with Quechua-speaking civilizations as far back as 2,000 years ago.
The Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 1530s, and their domination of the Inca Empire led to the subjugation and displacement of the Quechuan people. They imposed European language, culture, religion, and population-devastating diseases like smallpox and measles upon them. Spanish became the official language in the region, pushing Quechua and other Indigenous languages to the margins.
Even as countries gained independence from the Europeans, the Spanish language predominated.
After Perú gained its independence in 1821, Spanish remained the dominant language, though some government efforts have since been made to recognize Indigenous languages. In 1979, the Peruvian Constitution formally acknowledged the nation’s linguistic diversity and named Quechua and Aymara official languages in the nation’s Indigenous cultural heritage that should be promoted and protected.
Bolivia has gone furthest in South America to recognize Indigenous languages, naming 36 in its constitution alongside Spanish, including Quechua, Aymara and Guarani. Ecuador also recognizes Quechua, and Paraguay recognizes Guarani, which is spoken by an estimated 70 percent of the population.
“We love this country, we love Perú,” says Percy Ayala, a Perú guide who grew up speaking both Quechua and Spanish. “But also we feel we need to be recognized by Congress. The government finally understood that we are a multicultural society, and that the culture, heritage, traditions are located mainly in the highland communities and jungle tribes. Now there are many projects trying to preserve first languages, and they’re working harder at it.”
In recent decades, the government of Perú has tried to further promote Indigenous language and culture through policy, bilingual education resources, and promoting the acceptance of Indigenous language use in public life. Yet, globalization and urbanization make it more difficult for Quechua speakers to maintain their skills. Spanish is still the default language in social spaces, economic prospects, and schools.
“We are always surrounded by two languages, Quechua (Kichwa) and Spanish, with the latter perceived as the prestigious language,” says Soledad Chango (she/her/pay), a graduate student at MIT’s Department of Linguistics and Philosophy and contributor to the university’s Indigenous Language Initiative. Chango belongs to the Kichwa Salasaka community, one of the 18 Quechua Indigenous groups in Ecuador, and Kichwa refers to their variant of the language.
With most media and communications in the region in Spanish, and the pressure to participate in a global economy, people have reduced opportunities to learn and use the Indigenous language in daily life, leading to increased cultural and linguistic homogenization.
“Based on my life experiences, the research and projects I have done regarding Kichwa, I have repeatedly been shocked by the incredible power the dominant culture has over the Indigenous communities,” Chango says.
Providing “bilingual, intercultural education” to Quechua children in a predominantly Spanish-speaking society
“Primary school is compulsory, so even in the faraway highland communities, they have to send their children to have education,” Ayala explains. “The government is investing money in preserving the native languages, mainly in the rural areas, and many of the books are in the native Quechua.” In high plateau areas like Lake Titicaca the books cater to another ethnic group with a different Indigenous language, Aymara.
In 2007, the government of Perú adopted a policy of designating schools in Indigenous areas as intercultural and bilingual, increasing the emphasis on reading skills and assessments in Indigenous languages, in addition to Spanish as a second language. The Peruvian government provides some school books and school meals for highland communities, but funding for resources is limited, and most of the curriculum is still taught in Spanish.
“There are often insufficient resources for teaching and learning Kichwa, including a lack of textbooks, trained teachers, and educational programs in the language,” says Chango. “In Ecuador, government policies have historically favored Spanish, with limited support for Indigenous languages.”
Scholars like Dr. Américo Mendoza-Mori (he/él/pay), linguistics and cultural studies expert in Latin American, U.S. LatinX and Indigenous Studies at Harvard University, applaud positive progress from placing value on Indigenous culture and language, but also point out limitations of the bilingual, intercultural education (BIE) approach for primary and secondary school students.
“The goal was to offer classes in the target language for Indigenous language speakers – it could be Quechua, Aymara, or Ashaninka – so they could eventually transition and learn Spanish, and insert them in a meaningful way into society,” says Mendoza-Mori, who founded the Quechua Initiative on Global Indigeneity.” This is something positive, he says, but the approach has drawbacks. “Do you want to just offer public schools so students can first learn in their main language – say, Quechua – and then the only goal is for them to learn Spanish? Is the only goal of bilingual education assimilation?”
The government of Perú has struggled to strike a balance between standardizing education and sustaining a multicultural national identity. Experts acknowledge positive outcomes from government efforts, like improved classroom participation and attitudes toward Quechua, and ripple effects like reducing child labor and improving education outcomes for Indigenous children. However, critics say that the approach has been inconsistently implemented, and bilingual education alone is insufficient to maintain and revitalize the language.
Recognizing Indigenous knowledge systems has the potential to redefine language and knowledge.
Some Indigenous language scholars question traditional definitions of “language” that privilege certain languages that have writing systems over those that do not, to create hierarchies. “If we follow that classical definition, we could argue that many Indigenous communities were in that prehistoric classification,” says Mendoza-Mori, who cites examples like storytelling through textiles and graphic language systems as methods of communication.
“Whatever [the Indigenous communities] did, those manifestations weren’t measured or perceived with the same respect or value as Western traditions,” Mendoza-Mori says. “This is expanding our notion of archives, and recognizing it not just a curiosity but an instructor where knowledge was kept for the benefit of those people.”
The Inca people used quipu knots in yarn to record numerical and historical information, such as census records and tax obligations. Decorative artworks tocapu contained symbols and discrete geometrical motifs using a graphic language and communication system. While not the written word, these methods of communication are important parts of Indigenous knowledge systems that warrant rethinking and redefining the concept of language.
Urbanization, globalization and stigmatization are influencing the trajectory of Quechua culture.
The concept of duality was core to the Inca worldview, and reciprocity (ayni – “Today for you, tomorrow for me.”) remains a fundamental tenet of Quechua culture today. But maintaining that cosmic balance becomes increasingly tenuous for speakers as the bridge between the traditional and modern worlds.
Young people are leaving their rural communities where Quechua is spoken to go to cities for opportunities and jobs. Many struggle to maintain their cultural identity through language, tradition and land while navigating and adapting to rapid change, and a more globally connected world is accelerating the decline.
“My son and daughter don’t speak Quechua anymore because English opens more opportunities for them,” Ayala says. “When we migrate to urban areas we don’t have opportunities to be successful in our own communities [in Quechua] so we use other languages.”
Ayala grew up with his grandparents in a small community located between two lagoons in the highlands south of Cusco, Mosoqllacta, at nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. The main economy of the area is herding llamas, alpacas, sheep, pigs and cows. Despite some Catholic influence with the occasional procession, the area otherwise lives an Indigenous Quechua lifestyle, passing down the skills, traditions and local culture through the generations.
At that time, the only language spoken in the area was Quechua. In his home and community, Ayala spoke Quechua, but in primary school, he began to learn rudimentary Spanish. When his grandfather died, he moved to the city of Cusco, where his “city grandparents” lived and where Spanish was the dominant language.
“When we go back home, if we don’t still speak the language, we won’t be able to communicate with our own communities and our own people, and we will lose our heritage,” he says. “But as long as we still speak it, we will be able to communicate with our people. Somehow, we recognize each other. The best way you can preserve the culture is through the language.”
The loss of a language means the loss of a people.
The decline of Quechua also reflects broader societal inequality issues. “Kichwa have historically been marginalized, with speakers facing discrimination for using their native language,” Chango says. “Public places still today are often restricted spaces for Indigenous languages. The negative attitudes toward Quechua have been internalized by its speakers, leading them to abandon the language.”
Declining numbers of speakers of Indigenous languages like Quechua risk losing generational knowledge and traditions. Grandparents and parents are less likely to teach the language to their children, weakening communities and intergenerational ties.
“The best way you can preserve the culture is through the language.”
– Percy Ayala, quechua guide in peru
“Kichwa expresses concepts and connections to nature, community, and identity that are deeply woven into our daily lives,” Chango says. “It’s not just a language but a living embodiment of our cultural heritage, carrying the wisdom, history, and worldview of the Salasaka and other Indigenous communities. If our language dies our whole world will die.”
The loss of a language has concrete impacts.
When language revitalization enters the public conversation, some say that too few people speak the language to invest in it. “But focusing only on Quechua as something from the past actually has very concrete consequences,” Mendoza-Mori points out.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Perú’s capital of Lima are estimated to speak Quechua, and some rural communities in the Cusco and Puno regions of Perú have very high concentrations of native speakers, with limited Spanish usage. In many highland villages of Perú, Bolivia, and Ecuador, it’s still the primary language of daily communication.
“If we think of 10 million Quechua speakers in the Andean region, then we should think of 10 million citizens that deserve to exercise their rights,” he says. “Access to education, access to healthcare, related to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It’s a matter of delivering rights and working on a fairer society, rather than just approaching Quechua as an ancient, distant and timeless intellectual curiosity.”
Although Perú made Quechua an official language in the 1970s, only recently did the government lay out long-term policies for delivering public services to the 4.5 million citizens who speak one of the country’s 48 Indigenous languages.
“If you are a public servant or if you’re crafting public policies, and your population has a characteristic of the big majority of people, no matter what characteristic it is, you should craft policies that incorporate that into whatever you do,” Mendoza-Mori says.
Passed in 2011, Perú’s law for the use, preservation, development, revitalization, and use of Indigenous languages established a fundamental right of Indigenous citizens to receive public services like schooling, health and justice in their primary languages.
“It’s a matter of delivering rights and working on a fairer society, rather than just approaching Quechua as an ancient, distant and timeless intellectual curiosity.”
– DR. AMÉRICO MENDOZA-MORI, LINGUISTICS EXPERT
One area of focus is increasing certification for Indigenous language interpreters to communicate medical, financial and legal terminology accurately. Proper interpretation can reduce unconscious bias or outright discrimination, impacting outcomes for Indigenous citizens.
“It is impossible to ignore the deep structural inequities that keep my people living in an unequal society,” Chango says. “It’s motivation to work for the strengthening and pride of the Kichwa language, and to find the most accurate mechanism to fight for peace-building and social reconciliation, poverty reduction, inclusiveness, and cooperation with other nations and cultures.”
Quechua is not a relic of the past, but a source of innovation in the future.
There is a growing movement to preserve and revitalize Quechua. Documentation and preservation efforts include creating dictionaries and grammars with Indigenous communities, recording oral histories and traditions, and developing digital archives, databases and applications. Bilingual education programs and developing teacher training and classroom materials, and cultural preservation workshops incorporate elements of Andean culture to provide context for the language.
Partnerships have formed between Indigenous communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and government agencies to develop and implement language revitalization strategies. Government policies like those in Perú recognize Indigenous cultures as part of their heritage. However, the mission to preserve Indigenous languages is complicated. For starters, the remarkable diversity of Indigenous languages, variants and dialects presents both opportunities and challenges for preservation.
“The Quechua language family reflects the rich cultural diversity of the region,” Chango says. Kichwa Salasaka, Chango’s dialect, is notably different from the other six variants in the highlands. “While the variety of Quechua dialects underscores the deep cultural roots of Andean peoples, it also requires tailored preservation strategies that respect these nuances.”
Chango’s work at MIT has involved designing a Kichwa language teaching book for basic Kichwa learners and developing a mobile app for Spanish and English speakers to learn Kichwa. Now, she is launching a podcast channel plan and has started work on new Kichwa storytelling books.
Chango advocates creating resources and educational materials specific to each variant, promoting bilingual education that values and integrates Quechua alongside Spanish and English, and providing resources and training for teachers in Indigenous languages.
Technology and culture are helping connect the traditional to the modern.
“Preservation efforts must also focus on increasing the visibility and prestige of Kichwa through media, arts, and technology, making it relevant in both traditional and modern contexts,” Chango notes.
Increasingly, Indigenous language content can be found on radio programs, television shows and online media. There is also a groundswell of creative emergence in the visual arts, literature, theater, and more. Andean pop and hip-hop artists like Renata Flores, Milena Warthon and Liberato Kani have earned large followings for their music produced in part or fully in Quechua.
Social media has been a powerful place to connect speakers, share resources, and raise awareness. Technology is playing a pivotal role in capturing the language and culture, as well as creating language learning materials and access, enabling people to learn and use Quechua through digital tools, platforms and apps. In 2006, Microsoft Word and Google Search became available in Quechua. More recently in 2022, Quechua was added to Google Translate alongside 23 other South American indigenous languages.
Preservation and revitalization: experts call for forward thinking.
Another area of complication is the difference between preservation and revitalization. From a scientific standpoint, the loss of Quechua variants would mean a significant loss of linguistic diversity and irreplaceable linguistic data and knowledge. Perhaps reasonably, significant effort is dedicated to the observation and documentation of Quechua culture, history and language. However, Indigenous language experts are often asked to justify the continued, contemporary relevance of the language if speaker numbers are declining.
“It’s like the classic stereotype of somebody from the global north – Europe or the US. – going to a place to ‘discover’ it when people were there and living their lives,” Mendoza-Mori explains. “The idea was to go there and study them, not to go and learn [from them].”
With the survival of so many smaller Indigenous languages threatened across the continent, it’s understandable that much of the emphasis falls on how endangered Quechua is. But only classifying Quechua languages as endangered and treating them as relics of the past can be problematic, as it hinders efforts to revitalize and expand the language, some say.
“We need to make sure we’re not just bringing the language back, but that language preservation activities are also thinking about bringing the language forward,” Mendoza-Mori posits. “We don’t question English or Spanish changing over time. They incorporate new terminologies due to different factors – new generations, new uses of technology.”
Preservation focused only on studying the past risks ignoring the needs of millions of people who still rely on the language today. It can also prevent Quechua culture from being perceived as a valuable resource in the future. Language is one way that carries points of view, knowledge, and traditions forward through communities and generations, and across cultures.
“If we only see indigeneity or these communities as a thing of the past, talking about innovation could sound like a crazy thing. But it isn’t, and it shouldn’t,” Mendoza-Mori says.
By recognizing Indigenous tongues have the same possibilities as more widely spoken languages, Mendoza-Mori believes the world will be better able to learn from Quechua communities. “We can all benefit as a society from learning from that innovation, and from making sure that those perspectives remain alive and continue expanding,” he says.
Entire communities of people continue to sustain Indigenous lifestyles, traditions and languages. Their native languages, Chango notes, enable them to express concepts and connections to nature, community and identity that are woven into daily life, but often absent in more widely spoken languages. “Recognizing and supporting Kichwa as a living language of cultural significance can be fostered to its preservation and growth,” Chango says
Chango believes her work is crucial in combating the declining statistics for the benefit of her community, her own family, including her young nephew, and others like them. “I hope that the Kichwa language not only survives but thrives, becoming a vibrant and integral part of the cultural identity of future generations in Ecuador and in every area where it is spoken.
Quechua is not a dying language; it’s a living people.
When traveling to Patacancha to meet Abel’s family, I stopped in a schoolyard to speak with a group of fresh-faced young children dressed in colorful school clothes. They were arranged in a circle, playing a chase game against an Andean mountain backdrop. During a break in the action, our team gave them biscuits and juice, and one after the other, each child shared their ages and what they hope to become when they grow up – a police officer, a doctor, two teachers, and at least a dozen futbolistas.
At Abel’s home, he was chasing chickens in the yard when one of his sisters returned home from school. Abel himself will begin school in two years. Older siblings darted between huts doing chores while the women sat in the courtyard, weaving alpaca yarn into textiles, whispering and giggling in Quechua. After a silent baby bundled in pink wool was done nursing, they passed her around, sharing the labor of holding her. These children are the next generation of Indigenous Quechua speakers in Perú.
Observing the vibrant Quechua culture in real time and hearing the living sounds of its people in the Sacred Valley of Perú, it’s hard to imagine this is a dying language. A dying language often signifies a dying culture, but millions of people around the world continue to speak these languages and carry on indigenous traditions. Their futures depend on the continued survival of the customs, language and knowledge passed down through generations. Quechua culture and language has sustained for at least 10 centuries, and with the right preservation and revitalization effort, they can continue to thrive for indigenous children like Abel long into the future.
Photographs in this post were shot on:
Canon EOS R5
Google Pixel 8 Pro
Quechua Quick Facts:
- What is Quechua (sometimes referred to as Quichua, Kichwa)? Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language family in the Americas, with deep, lasting roots in Andean culture and Incan history. Kichwa and Quichua are commonly used to refer to other dialects in the Quechua language family. More than just a language family, Quechua encompasses a historic, social and cultural identity for numerous Indigenous groups in the Andes.
- Where is Quechua spoken? Quechua is spoken primarily in the Andes Mountains region of South America, especially in Perú, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Colombia and Chile.
- How many people speak Quechua? Estimates from various sources range from 7 million to as many as 10 million people speak Quechua today. Though the language has a large speaker population, the numbers are decreasing with increased use of Spanish and English in the region, migration from rural to urban areas, social stigma and discrimination, and limited spaces where the language is used actively.
- How did the Quechua language family spread throughout the Andes? The Inca Empire adopted Quechua as its official language and spread it widely as they conquered new territories across the Andes in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Inca used Quechua administratively and promoted it throughout the empire. The language even survived Spanish colonial times, as it was recognized by the authorities as one of the region’s “general languages.”
- Is Quechua a written language? Yes, the Quechua languages can be written using the Roman alphabet since Spanish colonial conquest in Perú. Little printed material was historically available in Quechua, so it is predominantly a spoken tongue, but many efforts are underway to create more written material in the language.