"We work as bilinguals": Socioeconomic Changes and Language Policy for Indigenous Languages in El Impenetrable (Chaco, Argentina)

UNAMUNO, VIRGINIA; BONNIN, JUAN EDUARDO

Oxford Handbook of Language Policy and Planning

Oxford University Press

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2018; p. 379 - 397

Bilinguals in Chaco respond to a twofold problem that is characteristic of the formulation of national public policies within the context of regional integration processes. On one hand, the State interacts with international and multilateral organizations, thus "relinquishing some sovereignty and economic autonomy, in order to join a supranational regional group for prosperity and security purposes" (Wright, 2004, p. 182). On the other hand, the State also interacts with local actors (landowners and natives) to reduce social conflict: within a process of progressive re-appropriation of the land as a means of subsistence for native populations, their social and economic demands are partially appeased with new government-provided jobs (Unamuno, 2014). The bilingual can be seen as a figure that works simultaneously at both levels. At the supranational level, it seems to respond to diplomatic commitments acquired in organizations such as the Unión de las Naciones del Sur (UNASUR) or the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) by somehow integrating so-called ´native people´ in educational and health institutions. At the local level, it helps to free roadblocks and decrease belligerence by indigenous organizations towards landowners in exchange for well-paid government-provided jobs (Unamuno, 2014). As subjects in-between, the social and political meaning of the bilinguals is not homogeneous. On the contrary, different linguistic ideologies frame diverse conditions of understanding and encouraging the role of these new, emergent social actors. To the modern nation-State, the bilingual is a key actor in the access of minority populations to universally defined human rights. The ideology of access attributes to bilinguals the role of translators on the basis of two principles: a) every minority should subordinate its particular identity to State-defined, Western universalistic policies (therefore adapting to dominant languages); and b) language is a transparent code that objectively conveys information that can be completely translated from one code to another. To the communities, on the contrary, both principles are contested on the basis of an ideology of identity, which refuses to abandon their own worldview, based on a heteroglossic conception of language − not only bilingualism.