Guana: A language worth rescuing
Paraguay is a South American country that has a linguistic peculiarity not quite often observed in other countries from the region. It has a diglossic situation occurring in the country since Spanish and Guaraní are spoken here. Both languages share the feature of official languages. Both, Spanish and Guarani are in the same level of importance although Guarani language has been inherited by our aborigin ancestors. In this line, there are other aboriginal languages that are spoken amongst specific groups. In this regard, it should be noted an interesting fact about Paraguay is that it has 19 aboriginal languages. The Guana language belongs to the Linguistic family of Maskoy. In Paraguay, there are five linguistic families of Maskoy which are divided into different communities such as Toba Maskoy, Enlhet Norte, Enxet Sur, Sanapaná, Angaité and Guaná. Among these, Guana is one of them and it is currently an endangered language due to the fact that the community’s circumstances do not favor the preservation of such language as well as lack of policies from the national government to deal with the current needs of this community and also because the cultural heritage has not been ensured so that this language may be preserved.
It is important to point out that circumstances in general do not help this community to preserve their language. Access to roads may be seen as the very first circumstance this community needs to face. As the roads are merely made of gravel and in some cases only clay roads are available, any possible drizzle or heavy rain causes this community to be isolated as the roads become impasible. This is evident as the access road from Concepción to Vallemí has been quite difficult for a long time due to the poor road infrastructure. Moreover, the Indigenous community is 7 kilometers away from the city of Vallemí. The road is easily accessible under normal conditions but this becomes complicated as rain falls and the accumulation of water makes transit on this road a whole stoic experience. The lack of access is definitely a hindrance for any possible development of trade, since offering handcrafted products or agricultural items or the mere access to job opportunities in the surrounding cities becomes impossible at times.
Additionally, another important circumstance worth mentioning is the lack of policies from the national government towards the preservation of the Guaná culture, including their language.
In theory, the Paraguayan state guarantees the survival and functionality of aboriginal culture and languages as a means to strengthen the ethnic identity of aboriginal groups.
In reality, the specific policies carried out by the government do not clearly show this. The distribution of lands for the aboriginal groups is the first example of the lack of clear policies. As the ownership of land for aboriginal groups is limited to a small number of parcels, ensuring strong policies for the development of agricultural plans are just a matter of being stated in papers but not being put into practice.
This seriously jeopardizes the survival of Guaná language as the inhabitants cannot be together as a community working together and receiving ongoing help of the authorities to foster agriculture not only for self-consumption but also for prospective development of trade agreements with other surrounding cities in order to sell their goods. Instead, the lack of opportunities makes them move to other spots of the country and the sense of belonging is lost, together with the opportunity of using the language, Guaná, with their peers and the opportunity of passing the knowledge from one generation to another.
Guaná language is also endangered since the learning and promotion of such language is not part of any current education plan of the government. Since the syllabus from the Ministry of Education of Paraguay is mainly developed in Spanish and in Guaraní in some cases, there is no room for Guaná language to be used in schools, and specifically in the communities where this language is spoken.
Additionally, the lack of policies from the national government to implement educational syllabus in this language is further contributing to sentence Guaná language to death. Since children no longer use this language on their everyday basis, the changes of survival are limited to the existing speakers of this language and any other possible learner that may be interested in speaking Guaná. This is a serious matter since the promotion of this language should be a priority for the national government through different policies. If this is not carried out in the coming decades, the Guaná language will be sentenced to become part of the extensive number of dead languages.
Another circumstance that Guaná language experiences is the lack of status compared to other indigenous languages. Different linguistic researchers suggest that Guaná language has not reached full recovery status compared to other indigenous languages around the world. This is supported accordingly by the fact that the non existing policies and the preference in the usage of Guaraní language over Guaná language leads to an unfortunate situation for the Paraguay culture because when a language dies, a part of the civilization dies with it. When it comes to losing the language, this also implies the loss of a life style, loss of a culture, of away of seeing the world, of feeling it, of being part of nature.
All the aforementioned brings us to a reality that explicitly shows that the cultural heritage of Guaná language has not been ensured in order to survive. Take the context of not being able to communicate with the surrounding communities. Being isolated brings nothing but desperation to migrate to other areas. Since the number of Guaná speakers decreases as time goes by, the fact of keeping the culture elements such as folklore, tales, recipes to cook, knowledge on medical properties of plants and other aspects of everyday life may definitely be the underlying causes of putting Guaná language in danger of extinction. This phenomenon is the result of the alienation created by the other official languages of Paraguay around the context of Guaná language since this language is deemed to be a language with lower status compared to the other ones. This may be evidenced in the number of actual speakers of Guaná which have been identified as only four.
Moreover, the survival of Guaná language has not been ensured since the small number of speakers will not ensure the existence of such language in the future if measures are not taken in order to do so. As a result, a whole culture surrounding it will be gone, including the way of living, hunting, and the stories around centuries of dwelling in an area of Paraguay which seems as if they have never been part of.
Since this is a priority from my personal viewpoint, I would strongly propose certain policies to solve this existing issue. An important solution policy may be evidenced in fostering Guaná language as part of their root to the place where this language is spoken. This may be carried out having the help of the national government through giving them property titles so that they may officially be the owners of their ancestral lands. By doing this they could be able to develop their lives on a normal basis and without fearing any possible evictions as they will be owning the lands legally.
Additionally, equal distribution of lands among members of the community will be beneficial since equality will bring positive consequences as they will be able to bring their life quality to the next level. In this regard, once the conditions necessary for living as a community is generated, individuals will automatically be rooted to their community and thus, the language could be able to flow spontaneously in different daily environments.
Another benefit this rooting will bring is the number of projects currently being carried out by the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock through its PRODERS project. This is a remarkable project from this ministry since it fosters the self sustainability of communities and at the same time it looks for getting benefits from what the land of that area has to offer. The results of this project may be evidenced in the reduction of violence and small drug dealing cases in areas of application of such project.
Furthermore, this project helps language to be shared in a working environment such as the agricultural gardens and at the same time it generated a bound of communication from the oral perspective, which is a proper feature of Guaná language. This is so since Guaná language has been able to survive for many decades through oral communication only although today it is struggling with a possible extinction.
Transmission of a language may become the worst enemy of its subsistence. This situation may be generated as this is helped by external factors such as the case of Guaná language and that may be triggering events of its own extinction in the event this is not made accordingly in a shared space between speakers of the language and the people in charge of its revitalization as well as the community as a whole.
Regarding this point, one of the biggest achievements in Paraguay is the commencement of literacy in native languages. The Ministry of Education and Sciences has a department responsible for contextualizing education in the Indigenous languages that cohabit in Paraguay, or at least in its great majority.
Another point in favor is that if children are capable of learning in their own language at schools, this will be a good solution option for the revitalization of the Guaná language since children having a first contact from learning the first languages will be able to become people who know the importance of their people, their culture and above all the conscience for the revitalization of their language.
However, the School faces two important problems: The lack of resources to hire teachers, preferably indigenous and that students do not complete the basic education cycle that other residents of Paraguay comply with since they do not have a building suitable for educational purposes.
Likewise, the lack of indigenous teachers available to be hired as well as the uprooting evidenced when they leave the community in order to search for better horizons weakens the community and its culture, especially when community residents send their children to other schools in the surrounding communities, since there they have to handle a different language such as Spanish and their mother tongue.
An alternative for helping to improve the level of the language is the creation of places within the school, where one can see the language written without subtitles, a place where you can find the language in its natural state and a place where the language may flow easily as children are those who learn a language faster. It may be used as a space for the guardians to find the place for the transmission of the language through stories that help children understand culture.
The Paraguayan government has to carry out a policy aimed at improving the quality of these languages with financial support from the Ministry of Finance, making an investment in languages in danger of extinction instead of paying a fine for the extinction of it.
The elders who speak Guaná language should also be considered the guardians of this language. They have to pay attention to any changes that may be generated from external factors as the linguists of Guaná,although it is worth mentioning that one of the language principles is that it cannot be static but it is subject to changes. Revitalization of Guaná language must be subject to a delicate process that must be monitored by the community’s leader who will be able to generate the space necessary for discussions as part of a co-governance strategy with speakers of the language.
As per the workers, who mostly go to a cement factory to work located in “Vallemí”, often have the fear of speaking in their own language since most of them have very low self-esteem and do not take Guaná wealth consciousness, and therefore they are in the dilemma of learning another language that is not the native one.
Based upon my personal perspective, I strongly believe the strategy to be used should be finding a place inside this community where native speakers could contribute with scholars and linguistic experts so that the language may be written accordingly and may change the linguistic status as this is essential for a language to be called as such.
Another factor that I consider to be relevant to be mentioned is that the elders may collaborate with the younger speakers so that the latter may use this language at home on a daily basis since these speakers are the fundamental elements in passing the language from one generation to another. For example, creating conversation groups and practising the Guaná language for those who wish to learn the language and the underlying factors of culture and practices that come with it.
Although the transmission of language is currently made orally, the dances that the Guana adopted as theirs in their beginnings are another fundamental edge for the conservation of their language, since the majority of dances are performed through songs and shouts, ancestral rituals, phrases very typical of their community. Additionally, it is the voice of a people that transcends borders and centuries of struggle in their favor since they are extremely unprotected.
Another challenge inhabitants of the Guaná community should overcome is finding ways to help younger generations to deal with the external cultural alienations that may play a negative role in helping them grow as a community. Although this is not possible to stop,as we are part of an even globalized community, the fact of maintaining the tradition thought the language should always be the ultimate goal to be achieved.
In this case, external factors may be evidenced as the ones that do not help in the revitalization, as well as the identification of the problem and to determine one of the most important aspects in the community that may be beneficial to rebuild the social and cultural image of Guaná tribe, from the social foundation and a social policy in favor of the people who need it, based on consultation with the indigenous peoples, since in this way they may comply with international treaties and they feel that they are executing a project for the good of their people.
Although grandmothers promote this from the everyday actions, there is still a point at which the language must evolve to a point that adopts new characteristics, features that may bear their own characteristics In this moment of risk where there is a very large deterioration in the language, the main action to be carried out should be documentation, as well as the preservation of the traditions that make GUANA CULTURE, unique in the world.
The International Year of Indigenous Languages, as declared by UNESCO, should be the great start for them to take a significant place in the countries where they are still spoken. The native peoples are undoubtedly a very important tenet for cultural development which should be based on the knowledge of history, the bases that form a community, and above all the language, which will become the mark of the peoples in Paraguay .
