Paraguay

The farmers of Paraguay demand the complete and integral officiality of the Guaraní language in all of Paraguay

Message from the farmers organisations to the 2008 presidential candidates

MCNOC, et al.

22/03/2007

Opinión

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We demand to achieve justice, truth, equality and prosperity with the Guaraní language! We are tired of electoral lies, deceits and false promises! We demand justice!

We, the undersigned, the farmers organisations of all of Paraguay directly or indirectly represent 2,234,761 people living in rural areas (43.28 per cent of the national population, according to 2002 data), as well as hundreds of thousands citizens born in or whose families live in rural areas (in 2002, almost 40 per cent of the population of Asunción was not born in the city). We address our demands to the future 2008 Presidential Elections candidates. And we do it one year in advance in order to get our message across loud and clear, for all to understand.

Our thirst and hunger for justice is infinite. Our need for justice is one we have carried with us for centuries, a need that includes access to land, health, infrastructures, education, water, the price of our products, work, our Guaraní language.

We are tired of being robbed and of being invisible, of the violence, contempt, deceit, lies, suppression, swindles, murders, poverty and starvation. Decades of migration and the fact that even today hundreds of thousands of people are forced to migrate have left us exasperated. We are fed up with a corrupt State that in turn corrupts, marginalises, ignores, suppresses and fights against us. A state that murders, impoverishes and leaves us illiterate. Yes, illiterate.

Never did we understand –because we were never taught nor prepared for it, neither at school nor through the media– the role languages had in Paraguay, the roles of Guaraní and Spanish, in maintaining and perpetuating the marginalisation, exploitation, poverty, deceit and violence against us. Now we are slowly beginning to understand. We are beginning to open our eyes, and what we see fills our hearts with rage and fury. Rage against the colossal and brutal deceit we have endured for so long. Denying Guaraní the equality and justice it deserves has destroyed our fathers and forefathers, as well as it destroys us and will in turn destroy our children.

According to data in 2002, 3,946,904 people of the 5,163,198 inhabitants living in Paraguay speak Guaraní (76 per cent of the population). For almost 30 per cent of the national population, Guaraní is the only language they speak. Sixty per cent of all Paraguayan households speak Guaraní, and this number reaches 82.5 per cent in rural areas (compared to only 8.5 per cent who speak Spanish). The number of households where Guaraní is spoken in urban areas is of 42.6 per cent.

For two hundred years (1811-2007), Paraguay has maintained a policy of “linguistic apartheid” against Guaraní and against us. This policy has marginalised the part of the population that only speaks Guaraní, most of them farmers. Paraguay has been and still is a land of farmers. In fact, we all have farming roots. Our State oppresses the Guaraní language, where everything is in Spanish and nothing in Guaraní. The Guaraní language has only served when dying to defend our Fatherland. Among the leading class of our country there are thousands of people who only speak Spanish (or German and Spanish, English and Spanish, Portuguese and Spanish, or even Spanish and Guaraní), but not one of our national leaders only speaks Guaraní. Not one of them. Why is this so? Is Guaraní not the first, indigenous, and majority language of Paraguay? Hasn’t this always been so? Didn’t Guaraní speakers, fighting in Guaraní, even use their language as a “national defence weapon”? Didn’t we die by the thousands in the War of the Triple Alliance and the Chaco War? Or are we still living by the old colonial model of masters and servants, instead of all being equal human beings? Should Spanish still be considered the karai ñe’ê, “the language of the master”, the exploiter, the landowner? Should Spanish, or the German of the Mennonites, or the Portuguese of Brazil, be the karai ñe’ê? But then what are we and our language? Are we perhaps not the owners of our country? Was the “Spanish-Guaraní” pact, so highly praised and acclaimed by the well-fed pack of “howling nationalists”, a pact to kill the Guaraní language, marginalise and impoverish its speakers, and turn it all over to Spanish? Why can a citizen who only speaks Spanish work as a civil servant, attending to a population largely made up of Guaraní-speakers, but there are no civil servants –our own sons and daughters for example– who only speak Guaraní?

The Paraguayan State and its implicit “linguistic apartheid” policy, together with prohibitions against Guaraní during long periods of time, have left us illiterate. Never since 1811 have Paraguayans been taught to read and write in Guaraní. Never. However, the country’s population, and villagers in particular, have never been adequately, efficiently or appropriately taught to read and write in Spanish either. This has never been a national priority. Within the context of “linguistic apartheid” of Guaraní, this has resulted in two centuries in which we, millions of Paraguayans, millions of people in rural areas, have not been able to fully participate in the social, cultural, economic and intellectual life of our nation. We were not allowed to participate using our first language, Guaraní. Nor were we adequately taught to do it in Spanish. We have been deceived and marginalised in a conscientious manner –which is the worst of it all, and which can be condemned in any human rights court– by the leading class of Paraguay in order to take advantage of our being in a relegated, humiliated and unprotected situation. We do not and will not forget this. A country where monolingual Spanish-speakers must learn Guaraní, against their will, when they begin to work or live here, although the Paraguayan State never uses Guaraní as a working language, is not a normal or just country! Paraguay is an abnormal state that would be severely sanctioned for serious violations of human and linguistic rights if it were a member of the European Union.

For decades politicians have sermonised and harangued us in Guaraní during their electoral campaigns. They have made thousands of promises in Guaraní. None have been kept. But they have never promised to do anything for the Guaraní language. And they have never done anything for it. They have barked out their promises and then travelled back to Asunción, without offering training or information in Guaraní that would enable us to participate fully in our country’s affairs as normal citizens, as well as control their activities. Even those who shout out their false promises in Guaraní have not passed down their language to their children and grandchildren. Instead, they have preferred to give them a “bilingual” education, in Spanish and English, or some other language, if possible in the USA or in Europe. The Guaraní language has been used to subjugate, manipulate and deceive us. It has not been used to help us advance and improve economically, socially or culturally as a group or as individuals.

We want our sons and daughters to know Spanish. We understand how important Spanish is in the world. And we also want our children to speak other languages, as many as possible. However, we also want to preserve our own language; we want justice, truth, equality and prosperity in Guaraní. We want to preserve our cultural identity because we are not Spanish, Brazilian, Argentinean, Italian or German, nor were we ever. We are Paraguayan, simply Paraguayan and regardless of the blood that flows in our veins, and our first language is Guaraní. We want to hold on to our identity in a more and more globalised and homogenous world. Social justice and identity, and both in Guaraní. Our linguistic and cultural identity is what makes us unique in this world. We have seen how Danish farmers and the Danes in general want to live using their language, while they also speak English and other languages. We have seen how Dutch farmers and the Dutch in general want to live using their language, while they also speak English and other languages. We have seen how Catalan farmers and the Catalan in general want to live using their language, while they also speak Spanish and other languages. We want to live in Guaraní and speak Spanish and other languages.

The draft of a Paraguayan Language Law has recently come to our knowledge. We applaud this initiative and hope it will be approved and passed. And we hope it will have a large enough budget and clear implementation dates. But we refuse to believe any longer in false promises or empty laws. No. We are now going to believe in ourselves and in what we do. And we are going to systematically use Guaraní and we will announce to the world the situation of “linguistic apartheid” that has existed and still exists in Paraguay. This new law should additionally include, without doubts or hesitation, lest it be another lie or deceit, that all Paraguayans, with no exceptions, adequately learn Guaraní, Spanish and a third language in school. The speakers of other Paraguayan languages must also be able to maintain their languages. This is an indispensable condition in order to achieve equality amongst all Paraguayans.

We have already experienced the failure of the Education Reform, provoked by the very government and backed by the media in favour of our country’s “linguistic apartheid”. Without implicitly abolishing the policy of “linguistic apartheid” and without changing the social image of Guaraní created by the media, the reform has not reached any of its objectives, such as achieving that all Paraguayan schoolchildren learn Guaraní, Spanish and another third language. Not only that. It has done something even worse. We, as fathers and mothers who only speak Guaraní or who have Guaraní as our first language, ask for our children not to be taught in our language after seeing that nothing had been done to change this “linguistic apartheid”. In what normal country could something like this happen? Schoolchildren in Spanish-speaking schools have not learned Guaraní, and the language has been limited to the educational field, without allowing it to be present on television, radio, the press, music, etc. in a normal and constant manner.

We ask the presidential candidates, What is your programme for the Guaraní language? What is your programme to achieve linguistic justice in Paraguay? Where is it? We would like to hear it. We want to spread it throughout the nation. We want to explain it to the entire nation. Lastly, we ask you, the candidates, to speak in Guaraní as much as you can in Asunción, so as to remind the apartheid supporters that Guaraní is the first language of the nation. And so as to soften their hearts against the pitilessness, the injustice and the lack of humanity perpetrated against millions of Paraguayans during the past two hundred years.

Signed,

MCNOC – Mesa Coordinadora Nacional de Organizaciones Campesinas, Luis Aguayo, mcnoc@conexion.com.py

OÑP – Okaraygua Ñemongu’e Paraguáipe- MCP Movimiento Campesino Paraguayo, Fermín Bobadilla, mcp@highway.com.py

OLT – Organización de Lucha por la Tierra, Narciso Ruiz Díaz, oltparaguay@gmail.com

ONAI – Organización Nacional de Aborígenes Independientes, Mario Rivarola

UCN – Unión Campesina Nacional, Daniel Duarte

CNSL – Coordinadora Nacional Sebastián Larrosa, Mercedes Fleitas

OCN – Organización Campesina del Norte, Asunción Duarte, ocnpy@hotmail.com

OCM – Organización Campesina de Misiones, Mario Talavera

OCP – Organización Campesina de Paraguarí, Sergio Orsuza

ACMD – Itapúa

CONAMURI – Coordinadora Nacional de Organización de Mujeres Trabajadoras Rurales e Indígenas, Julia Franco, conamuri@rieder.net.py

FNC – Federación Nacional Campesina, Odilón Espínola, fncparaguay@gmail.com

ONAC – Organización Nacional Campesina, Angel Giménez, onac@telesurf.com.py

CNUCIP – Coordinadora Nacional de Unidad Campesina, Indígena y Popular, Tomás Zayas, tomaszayas@yahoo.es

OCRC – Organización Campesina Regional de Concepción, Edilberto Saucedo, ocrc1995@yahoo.com

ACADEI- San Pedro

MAP – Movimiento Agrario Popular, Jorge Galeano, agrariopopular@yahoo.es

https://www.alainet.org/pt/node/120204