Aymara (Language)

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Aymara (Language)

The Aymara people are a transnational ethnic group in South America, currently comprising farming and herding communities located around Lake Titicaca, on the altiplano of Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. They are distinguished by speaking the language of the same name, Aymara, and they call themselves the Aymara Nation.

The Spanish gave the name Aymara to the language spoken by this group, which was earlier called the "language of the qollas" (the language of the altiplano people). Aymara was the name of one of the pre-Inca cultures living on the altiplano, and after 1559 the word was attributed to one of the more widespread languages in the area but spoken by ethnic groups other than the Aymara. During their empire, the Incas called these ethnic groups the qollas, which is why the province they lived in was called the Qollasuyu. The first grammar and dictionary of the Aymara language, Vocabulario de la Lengua Aymara, was published in 1612 by Jesuit priest Ludovico Bertonio, who wrote it using Spanish orthography based on his research in Chuchito, Juli, in Puno, Peru. This work is fundamental for any student of the Aymara language.

The Aymara people are of pre-Hispanic origin; the oldest Aymara culture is Tiwanaku (in Aymara, Taypi qala, or "central stone," according to chronicler Bernabé Cobo) dating from 2000 bce. Various Aymara-speaking nations existed in the same age as the Incas and were gradually integrated into the Inca Empire or Tawantinsuyu, forming the province of Qollasuyu. The last Aymara nation to be incorporated into the Tawantinsuyu was the Lupaca.

The pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Andes raised llama and alpaca, which provided them with meat and wool and served as beasts of burden. They were civilizations that domesticated the potato, oca, mashua, olluco, and quinua, and always maintained contact with the inter-Andean valleys to obtain corn, yucca, sweet potato, and coca.

Tiwanaku was abandoned for years. Thousands of its stones were used to build churches and buildings in neighboring towns. In the early twentieth century, Arthur Posnanski came to Bolivia and drew world attention to these archeological remains, especially to the gate renowned for its depiction of a mythical being holding two scepters. This culture, based on farming and raising livestock in the high Andean altitude, began to collapse as a result of great ecological changes, possibly freezes, droughts, or famines.

In July 1538, Pizarro decided to conquer the fourth suyu or Inca province. He sent an expedition of two hundred Spanish soldiers and five thousand indigenous people to the altiplano. The Lupaca were able to resist, but other opposing groups gradually yielded. Pizarro governed the new territories through the cities and the "residents," to whom he granted lands and Indians. Thus, the city of Chuquisaca (Charcas) was founded in December 1538. The rich mines of Potosí were not discovered until 1545 and by 1561 there were three Spanish cities in the area, Chuquisaca, Porco, and Potosí. La Paz was founded in 1548 (with forty-two residents, all Spanish encomenderos).

Under Spanish rule, thousands of Aymara died, especially in the Potosí mines. The Aymara participated in the struggle for independence, particularly in the uprising of Tupaj Katari. In 1824, when independence was won at the battle of Ayacucho, the Aymara people were located within Peruvian territory, in an area called Alto Peru. In 1825, however, Alto Peru became the independent republic of Bolivia and the Aymara people were thus divided, some remaining in Peru and a larger portion in Bolivia.

In 1870, when Chile won the war of the Pacific, it seized territory that had mainly been inhabited by the Aymara from both Bolivia and Peru. Thus in the early twenty-first century these people live in three different countries. There are currently 1,600,000 Aymara speakers, and they share a strong ethnic identity. The 1993 Peru census and the 1992 Bolivia and Chile censuses counted 1,237,658 Bolivian Aymara, 296,465 Peruvian Aymara, and 48,477 Chilean Aymara.

See alsoPrecontact History: Latin America in the Precontact Period; Quechua; Tiwanaku.