Education Reform and Language Politics in the
Coroico Municipality of the Nor Yungas of Bolivia

Victoria Stockton

full paper (PDF)

ABSTRACT. Aymara, one of four national national languages in Bolivia, has become endangered within the past generation in the Coroico municipality. Top-down education reforms implemented in 1994 have adopted a language-as-resource orientation to alleviate the degradation of Bolivia's indigenous languages. Bottom-up grassroots movements nationwide reveal a tenuous shift away from colonial-era language attitudes. The gap between the language policy of Bolivia, as enacted by the Education Reform, and the practice of that policy at the grassroots level characterizes the contentious and shifting social atmosphere of Bolivian sociolinguistic culture. My focus centers on historical legislation and language attitudes against multilingualism, as well as legislation and language attitudes promoting multilingualism. This case study exemplifies efforts to curb language abandonment in the face of globalization and the growth of world languages.

Victoria Stockton recently graduated from the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado. She can be reached at tory_stockton@yahoo.com.

Colorado Research in Linguistics - Volume 18, Issue 1 - June 2005