A Shuar couple outside the door
of their dwelling.
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It would not be a good thing
for the Mixe language to disappear, because it represents our culture. We have inherited
it from our ancestors. If it were to be lost, nothing would be left from the past
and our brothers would not know each other.
Mixe
speaker (Mexico)
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For a person to feel at ease
in today’s world, it is essential that to enter it they should not be forced to abandon
the language of their identity.
Amin
Maalouf,
Lebanese writer (1949-)
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The Shuar people of the
Ecuadorian Amazon have turned their language into a powerful tool to safeguard their
autonomy and cultural identity
 The Shuar are an indigenous people of
the Ecuadorian Amazon. Long known to the outside world as the Jivaro, their tough,
independent character and their legendary technique of shrinking human heads have
been described by many travellers and missionaries. They proudly claim that they
have never been conquered. Now these one-time hunters and gatherers, who turned to
rearing cattle, growing citrus fruit or practicing traditional horticulture deep
in the Amazonian forest, have taken a route into the modern world that enables them
to keep their language and culture.
Salesian Catholic priests who came to the region to convert the indigenous people
to Christianity witnessed the land seizures, settler brutality and other injustices
of which the Shuar were victims. They answered their appeal for help by strengthening
the cohesion of Shuar society and culture so that they could meet the challenges
of rampant greed and modernization.
In 1964, the priests helped the Shuar to shape their destiny by setting up the Federation
of Shuar Centres, the first autonomous organization of its kind in Latin America.
A precursor of the indigenous Indian movement which became an important political
force in Ecuador in the 1990s, the federation became to all intents and purposes
a Shuar state within the Ecuadorian state. Its mandate covered everything from land
distribution to the administration of health and education services.
Bilingual
schooling by radio
The main agent of this
limited autonomous integration was the Bi-cultural Shuar Radio Education System (SERBISH).
Radio proved to be the most suitable means of communication in the inaccessible region
of dense forests and impenetrable mountains where the Shuar live. A radio education
scheme using Shuara and Spanish began in 1968 and four years later officially became
the backbone of the bilingual schools which had recently been set up.
The chief purpose of bilingual and bicultural education was to teach people Spanish
so they could demand equal treatment as Ecuadorian citizens and to enable Shuara
to become a vibrant modern language. Shuar families were enthusiastic from the start
about a system which did not require them to send their children away to austere
Salesian boarding schools where they would be cut off from their environment and
culture. Making bilingualism acceptable meant Shuar children no longer needed to
be ashamed of speaking their own language.
SERBISH started out with 33 schools. Within two years it was broadcasting to 120
and numbers have been rising ever since. Today, it reaches four provinces of eastern
Ecuador, and provides education for about 7,500 children—out of a Shuar population
of 70,000—in 297 schools teaching from primary to the end of the secondary level.
Linguistic
pioneers
The ministry of education
has authorized the work of “tele-auxiliaries”, Shuar teachers paid by the government
or local volunteers who receive a wage for helping children to listen and learn from
the radio programmes while the teacher attends to pupils at another grade.
The school system comprises a national curriculum which prepares children for official
exams in Spanish and another which teaches a course in Shuar language and culture.
At first, the courses kept close to the national curriculum, including its religious
bias due to the Salesians’ influence. Today coursework focuses more on the traditional
Shuar world-view, and includes components on folklore, craft techniques and local
plant and animal life as well as lessons to prepare children for modern life. In
addition to a secondary school diploma in Intercultural Bilingual Education (EIB)
and in chemistry and biology, SERBISH has for the past year offered one in farming
technology, including sustainable use of resources.
The Shuar are rightly proud of being pioneers, not just in Ecuador but worldwide,
and are not deterred by the current serious problems of their country, crushed by
heavy foreign debt, massive financial crisis and a plan to make the U.S. dollar the
national currency which may have grave consequences for the poorest Ecuadorians.
The Shuar Federation’s radio equipment has not been updated since the 1960s, which
means reception is poor in some remote communities. Agreements were signed last year
with foreign aid institutions including Germany’s GTZ, which topped up the meagre
funding from the Ecuadorian ministry of education. Many teachers, who earn just over
$40 a month, cannot travel to the remotest communities, which can only be reached
by small plane.
But it will take more than that to discourage the determined Shuar. Relying on their
organizational strength, they now have some very ambitious projects, incljuding one
for an educational television station, for which they are seeking foreign technical
assistance and funding.
In the search for an alternative to modernization imposed from above, the Shuar have
managed to reduce semi-illiteracy to seven per cent and total illiteracy to two per
cent. With the self-confidence his people are famous for, Guillermo Sensu, head of
EIB for Morona-Santiago province, declares his faith in the future. “I can assure
you we’re going to fight for our rights to education,” he says.
In Ecuador, where a third of the population speaks one or more indigenous languages,
people had to wait until the new 1998 Constitution for formal recognition that “For
the indigenous peoples, Quechua, Shuara and other ancient languages are officially
used.”
French linguist Louis-Jean Calvet notes that Shuar linguistic policy is atypical
because it is completely independent of the state. “As a policy for a minority, decided
by them and applied by them, it shows how the expansion of the world’s steadily-growing
language empires is not inevitable and that it is possible to fight to be different
in a world that’s becoming more and more uniform.”
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