Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780759115477
Publisher: AltaMira Press
Published: 2013-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

Summary of the 1646 Edicts

After the arrival of Antonio de Lara as Royal Visitor in 1646, crown policy became explicitly assimilatory. Indigenous peoples could be loyal subjects and would be, once they became Spanish speakers, adopting Spanish dress and the Catholic religion.

When Guatemala became an independent republic, the assimilationist ideology continued. Skinner-Klee (1954) noted that the founders of the Guatemalan republic saw Spanish as the unifying principle of the state. The Constituent Congress affirmed Spanish as the national official language, characterized the Indigenous languages as incomplete and imperfect, and charged the parish priests to devise means of speedily extinguishing the autochthonous tongues.

While government policy remained assimilatory, means varied. Jorge Ubico was President of Guatemala from 1931 to 1944. He sponsored legislation for universal public education, requiring that in Indigenous communities education be bilingual. While the legislation passed, sufficient enabling budgetary steps were not taken to reach all Indigenous communities, or to train a cadre of bilingual teachers. Arévalo, President after Ubico, continued the push to establish schools in rural Indigenous communities. Arévalo also favored bilingual education, but again failed to introduce a systematic program for its implementation. In 1965 the Organic Education Law was passed. This law specified that Spanish was the official language of education, but that Indigenous languages could be used in the first year(s) of school to facilitate transition to Spanish-language competence and instruction. UNESCO provided some bilingual teacher training. Bilingual castillianization classes for children and adults were established in thirteen of the twenty-one Mayan language areas of Guatemala by 1982.

Governmental policy still aimed a creating a united state by bringing the Indians into the Spanish-speaking fold. However, the 1985 constitution recognized the Indigenous cultures and languages as part of the patrimony of the country. The 1993 constitutional reforms recognized pluriculturality and the right of the cultures and languages to persist, develop, and enrich their communities and the nation now and into the future. To understand how Indigenous peoples have exercised their intellectual rights in their language to these goals, let us examine (1) standardization, (2) bilingual education, and (3) publication.

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