Droit et Cultures (Sep 2016)
Les relations hiérarchiques entre femmes dans le sud des Andes
Abstract
In the Andes large numbers of people speak indigenous languages such as Quechua, spoken by approximately 95% of the rural population of the southern Peruvian highlands. In this context, when government and NGO officials speak Quechua it is assumed that their communication with first-language speakers of Quechua will improve. Drawing on interactions between government employees and village women in a community in southern Peru, I suggest that even when government and NGO employees speak Quechua as a second language, the way they use their language reinforces hierarchies between them and women who speak Quechua as a first language. In other words, bilingual speakers–women and men–perpetuate forms of domination that typecast Quechua-speaking people not only in Spanish, but also in Quechua. These forms of domination reproduce the stereotype of Quechua speakers as deviant, as people who lack social judgment, and who do not have the social requisites to live a «modern» or «civilized» life. These forms of domination can be conveyed above or below the threshold of awareness of the participants, regardless of whether they are bilingual or monolingual. To put it briefly, for government or NGO employees to speak Quechua as a second language does not in itself reduce the production of hierarchy in rural settings, because it is produced interactionally apart from the best (conscious) intentions of all concerned and the Constitutional rights to aboriginal languages. I draw examples from social interaction in public transportation (a combi service), a clinical setting, and Quechua-speaking households.
