I wake up from my bed, under 7 layers of blankets. It is early in the cold morning when the sun shines through the window of our casita, little house. While the others are still sleeping I go take a shower. As I warm up in the shower I look out the little window and see the mountain range of the Imbabura volcano. A huge rainbow had formed, bent through the mountains. I am really here.
Almost every year students from Leiden University can visit Ecuador as part of their curriculum. This has been made possible by Martine Bruil’s connections with Elvis Túquerres and the Chirihuasi community, located just south of Ibarra, established through her research there. This trip for students is a way to experience and learn to do linguistic fieldwork. The students have the opportunity to take elicitations and organise their data, each with their own research focus. This year however, our group focused on a long-standing wish of Elvis’s — to establish a language museum. The focus of this museum will be on the Kichwa language and the history of the people, but will also include all the other languages of Ecuador. Our task as students was to gather information on how to go about this endeavor. We had interviews with several museum curators and local members of the community, and visited museums as inspiration.
To connect with the community, we taught a beginner-level English class to the kids in the village and attended a beginner-level Kichwa class in return. We went on fun (and tiring) excursions like hiking up the Imbabura volcano, visiting Cuicocha lake and visiting the Otavalo market with community members as our guides. Our host families were most welcoming, letting us in on their traditions of breadmaking and pachamanka (cooking in a covered pit), clothing us in traditional clothes.
The use of Kichwa is declining. The older generation speak it still, but parent-child interactions tend to be in Spanish. The kids do get Kichwa lessons. Even in our own interviews we noticed that the elder generation felt nostalgic towards Kichwa, while the younger kids considered Kichwa as a language from the past. The organisation Sisariy is committed to the revitalization of Kichwa. On their website there is more information on what they do, including a long-term investigation on the language use. Our host family showed us a mini-film, spoken in Kichwa, about an old Kichwa legend.
A contributing factor to the diminishing use of Kichwa is the (colonial) history of oppression and discrimination. Haciendas were big plots of land that were claimed by elites, where indigenous people had to work, only receiving water, food and animals to tend to. There was no salary. This construction held up even until the mid to late 20th century. A documentary by Mellissa Túquerres shows first- and second-hand experiences the members of the community have endured. People were not allowed to speak their language. Still, efforts have been made. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE, found in 1986), and its earlier forms (from around 1945), plead and have pleaded for a good salary, bilingual education and a right to own land. The recent violent response of the Ecuadorian state on the national strike shows that even today, they need to fight for the right of identity, culture and language.
Lisa van den Hoven
