Coronel Molina -- Language Ideologies of the High Academy of the Quechua Language in Cuzco Peru

Language Ideologies of the High Academy of the Quechua Language in Cuzco, Peru

Overview

The High Academy of the Quechua Language, founded in 1990, is a Peruvian organization dedicated to preserving the Quechua language.
The Academy is known for its members' strong belief in the necessity of saving Quechua from extinction and their conviction that they should lead its revitalization due to their authority and expertise.
This article examines the Academy's assumptions, underlying ideologies, and their influence on the organization's decisions and practices.
The analysis focuses on the Academy's nationalistic tendencies, linguistic ideologies, construction of expertise, and internal and external tensions.
The article argues that the Academy's stances and practices hinder its ability to contribute to Quechua revitalization, obstruct other efforts, and are influenced by class values that alienate Quechua speakers.

Introduction

The central questions addressed are whether endangered languages can be saved, whether they should be revitalized, and who should lead the revitalization efforts.
The Academy members firmly believe that Quechua should be revitalized and that they are the most suitable agents for this task.
They hold strong opinions on all aspects of Quechua revitalization, including the alphabet and teaching methods.

Underlying Ideological Project

The Academy's deeper ideological project is more sociopolitical than linguistic, aiming to (re)create an Andean nation with Cuzco as its political and cultural center.
A common language is seen as a factor that fosters solidarity and unity among citizens.
The Academy's linguistic aspirations are a step towards (re)building the Andean nation.
Scholars have criticized the Academy's practices and ideologies, noting their obstruction of other revitalization initiatives and the negative consequences of certain practices.
This article analyzes the Academy's ideologies and their consequences for the organization's stated goals, based on ethnographic research carried out in 2002.
The analysis adopts a macro-linguistic approach, examining the influence of societal and political factors on language use through language ideologies, attitudes, societal multilingualism, and language policy and planning.
The social aspect of language is emphasized over micro-sociolinguistic aspects, focusing on the larger social and political contexts of Quechua promotion and use by the Academy.
The analysis incorporates theories of nationalism and nation-building to understand the actions and ideologies of the Academy members.

Significance of Language Ideologies

Linguistic culture and language ideologies are relevant for discussing the Quechua Academy and its relationships with other language planning institutions.
Linguistic culture includes behaviors, assumptions, cultural forms, prejudices, folk belief systems, attitudes, stereotypes, ways of thinking about language, and religio-historical circumstances associated with a particular language.
It encompasses the beliefs (or myths) that a speech community has about language in general and its language in particular, which influence attitudes towards other languages.
Attitudes, beliefs, and ideologies towards a language impact the definition of language policy and planning, the approach to the endeavor, and the perception of actions by other actors.
Language ideologies influence individual, community, and societal language-use patterns, impacting language maintenance, revitalization processes, and standardization efforts.
Ideologies are sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use, often indexing dimensions of power and identity.
They are the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, along with their loading of moral and political interests.
Ideologies are generally unexamined assumptions that operate behind the scenes rather than appearing as a theme.
Individuals think from their ideological frameworks rather than about them, so the implications for actions and behaviors may not be obvious to themselves but apparent to others.
Language maintenance and planning efforts are among the actions and topics about which individuals and groups express attitudes and opinions.
Attitudes toward language often reflect attitudes toward members of various ethnic groups, influencing how teachers deal with pupils.
Language ideologies, particularly regarding dialectal variation among different Quechua-speaking groups, may subtly influence the outreach work of the Quechua Academy.
Understanding the positions, ideologies, and practices of the Academy members towards Quechua, Cuzco, Lima, and the rest of the nation will help elucidate their actions and how these actions articulate with various social phenomena.
Such understanding will be useful for analyzing the ultimate success or failure of the Academy’s approach to language policy and planning and the implications for racial and cultural politics in Peru.
If the Academy is seen as successful in invigorating Quechua use and contributing to the integration of Quechua peoples into the nation, it might be vindicated and become a national-level institution with a role in racial and cultural politics.
If the Academy’s efforts are deemed less than successful, it would be important to clarify the extent to which its ideologies and practices explain the failure.

History and Origins of the Academy

The association between Cuzco and the Inca empire has a long history in Peru, with which the Quechua Academy feels particularly connected.
This history reaches back to the 17th century and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, a mestizo born of an Inca princess and a Spanish noble.
He learned Inca history, myths, and legends from his mother and her relatives and received a European education from his father.
In his later years, he wrote the Comentarios Reales to vindicate the worth of the Inca empire and its contributions to world culture.
Since then, Peruvians, particularly those from the Andean provinces (especially Cuzco), have asserted the greatness of the Inca empire, its roots in Cuzco, and the rights of its descendants to claim that greatness.
Those who stake this claim tend to come primarily from the upper-class and middle-class mestizo citizens of Cuzco, who are more likely descendants of wealthy provincial landowners than of the rural Quechua peasants who made up the majority of the Inca Empire.
While significant miscegenation occurred during the early period of conquest and colonization, it would be difficult for any individual to prove lineage of royal or noble Incan blood.
In the late 1920s, historian and anthropologist Luis Eduardo Valcárcel explained the Cuzco-centric vision, stating that Cuzco and Lima are opposing hubs of Peruvian nationality.
Cuzco represents the millenary maternal cultural heritage that the Incas bequeathed, while Lima represents the yearning for adaptation to European culture.
Cuzco already existed when the Conqueror arrived, while Lima was created ex nihilo.
Lima is foreign-inclined, Hispanophile, an imitator of exoticisms, and Europeanized, while Cuzco is vernacular, nationalistic, and pure, portraying the hoary pride of legitimate American aristocratic ancestry.
There are really two Perus: one based in Lima, founded by the Spaniards, and one based in Cuzco, the center of the Inca empire.
Many cuzqueños, including the members of the Academy, feel a stronger allegiance to Cuzco and their putative Inca ancestry than they do to Peru as a nation.
The Academy members reject all things limeño that express any kind of expertise or authority over the Quechua language, peoples, or culture.
Gumperz (1982) asserts that background differences may lead to misunderstandings between groups.
In intergroup encounters, judgments of performance and ability may break down when people do not share the same background.
Interactions that are normally seen as routine often meet with unforeseen problems.
Difficulties do not disappear with increasing intensity of intergroup contact, but rather increase and become most acute after groups have been in contact for several years.
Isolated situation-bound communication differences at the individual level may harden into ideological distinctions that become value-laden, creating further differences when problems of understanding arise.
This seems to be at the root of the Quechua Academy’s conflicts with Peru’s Ministry of Education, other organizations, and individual linguists and language planners.
Feeling themselves as the ‘owners’ of the Quechua language and heritage, the Academy members also feel that anyone who does not agree with their positions and practices is rejecting, refuting, and denying the Quechua language and culture.
For them, the Academy is the language.
They do not seem to recognize that there are many groups and individuals at all levels working on behalf of indigenous communities and in favor of Andean indigenous rights, including linguistic rights and language and cultural revitalization.
According to the Quechua Academy, the efforts of all of these other organizations and individuals are generally undertaken for personal or professional gain, without any real interest in benefiting the indigenous communities.
They often accuse these ‘outsiders’ of trafficking in Andean culture.

Unfortunately, those who are trafficking in Andean culture impose principles and norms that are not in agreement with the cultural manifestations of the Andean-Inca world. Among them, there are some linguists who are ex-priests, who no longer have a job but who are involved in the Ministry of Education, claiming to be advisors, right? They are distorting, unfortunately chopping up the true sense, essence, and spirit of the Quechua language. That’s what those of us in the High Academy of the Quechua Language will not let them do; we will unmask these individuals. (Interview with Fabio Peñalosa, Associate Member).

When the Academy members say that the outsiders ‘are not in agreement with the cultural manifestations of the Andean–Inca world,’ they mean that they are not in agreement with the vision proposed by the Academy.
It is difficult to reconcile the Academy’s vision with the considerable production of historical, cultural, and linguistic studies of Andean cultures and languages both pre-conquest and post-conquest.
The Quechua Academy’s strong antipathy towards anything non-Cuzco and non-Inca brings to mind Chatterjee’s discussion of ‘eastern nationalism,’ in which a colonized society recognizes that they are a blend of two original societies – the conquering and the conquered.
From the conquered society – in this case, the Incas – come the identifying elements that will make the new society unique from all others in the world, while from the conquering society – the Spanish or European – come all of the tools necessary for the new society to be competitive in the modern world.
The Academy’s desire to remake Peru and the other Andean countries as one pan-Andean Inca nation with all the advantages of any modern society can be seen as:

‘both imitative and hostile to the models it imitates ….’ It is imitative in that it accepts the value of the standards set by the alien culture. But it [is hostile in its] rejection … ‘of the alien intruder and dominator who is nevertheless to be imitated and surpassed by his own standards’. (Chatterjee, 1986, p. 2).
This contradictory reaction is visible in many of the Academy members’ remarks.
The High Academy of the Quechua Language was founded in 1953, during a period in which indigenista sentiment and interest in Inca culture were running high in Peru.
The original statutes were registered in 1958, and the Academy was recognized in 1990 by federal law as the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua, with headquarters in Cuzco.
Its members include teachers, lawyers, journalists, economists, engineers, accountants, nurses, and other professionals who are self-taught Quechua aficionados, with no real training or expertise in Quechua linguistics or in language policy and planning.
While it was common for language academies to include members who were not linguistically trained in the past, such expertise is the norm in the present.
As mestizo bilingual speakers of Spanish and Quechua, many older members of the Academy feel that they are ‘organic intellectuals’ of the Quechua community, with the inherent right to speak on behalf of and plan for that community.
Many younger members are products of the Academy’s own language program, learning Quechua as a second language.
The statute of the Academy defines different categories of membership, including Full and Emeritus Members and Associate and Adjunt Members.
The members of the Academy feel so strongly identified with the Quechua community that they claim the right to speak out for the linguistic rights of these peoples.
They also view themselves as the best-qualified educational experts to pass on the Quechua language to new generations of learners.
According to the statutes of the Academy (Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua, 2001), the organization’s main objectives include:
rescuing, vindicating, and fully revaluing the Quechua language as part of the cultural patrimony of the Tawantinsuyu Nation;
achieving a generalized, habitual use of Quechua by the Quechua-speaking population;
using Quechua in the process of eradication of illiteracy;
identifying the Quechua-speaking populations and their dialectal variations;
improving legislation on the Quechua language and its official use;
promoting the effective exercise of the right of the Quechua-speaking communities to receive a complete education in their own language;
promoting the active participation of the Quechua-speaking population in the development process of the Peoples of Tawantinsuyu;
establishing the High Academy of the Quechua Language, with headquarters in the city of Qosqo, as the only institution authorized to elaborate the official dictionary with contributions from the different investigators of Quechua, with the purpose of unifying its semantics and writing system;
creating service activities for the Quechua-speaking society, through the creation of organizations of conciliation and other similar institutions;
fully participating in the planning, educational training, and academic execution of Intercultural Bilingual Education and literacy programs, with the Ministry of Education, for the Quechua-speaking populations; and
participating in all important activities related to Tawantinsuyu culture.
The statutes indicate that the Academy intends to work closely with native Quechua- speaking communities to help integrate them into the nation.
At the same time, it wants to foster the communities’ understanding of what it calls Tawantinsuyu culture (which is essentially the culture of the Inca elite) in order to promote its more ambitious vision of an Andeanized nation.
Its ideologies lead to subtle forms of discrimination against the very people it claims to support, the indigenous Quechua-speaking communities.
The Quechua Academy provides an interesting example of the clash of race and class within the same population: its members lay claim to Inca (i.e. Quechua) blood, but as upper-middle-class mestizos they ultimately cannot bring themselves to fully identify with the rural indigenous communities they want to serve.

Nationalism and the Language Ideology of the Quechua Academy

Valcárcel touches upon one of the key ideologies of the Quechua Academy: its nationalism.
A senior member of the Academy states: ‘What we want is to contribute to the development of the national identity, of the national consciousness, which is the most important thing’ (interview with Esteban Roque, Full Member).
The Academy’s sense of nationalism does not necessarily coincide with Peruvian national identity; rather, they assert that the Quechua Academy works for the betterment of the Peruvian nation by reinstating the glories of its purported predecessor, the Inca nation.
Like most cuzqueños, the Academy members believe that Cuzco and the Inca empire represent the authentic basis of the Peruvian nation.

‘For Cuzco intellectuals, the status of Cuzco as the ancient Inca capital, along with their belief in the Cuzcan origin of Quechua, was adequate justification for reclaiming Inca history as their own’ (Niño-Murcia, 1997, p. 144).
Hence their determined focus on rebuilding the Tawantinsuyu – the original Inca empire that spanned today’s Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, and parts of Colombia, Chile, and Argentina.
One of the first things that a casual reader will note in the writings of the Academy members is that they consistently refer to the ‘Andean–Inca cultures.’
This nomenclature stresses their focus on the Inca past and Inca culture – in reality, an idealized, romanticized version of it.
Woolard mentions the often distortional, illusory, or mystical nature of ideology:
‘Ideology is seen as ideas, discourse or signifying practices in the service of the struggle to acquire or maintain power’ (1998, p. 7).
The members of the Academy may not be truly aware of manipulating history in this way, they certainly have a strong interest in establishing their own power, or authority, in terms of controlling the Quechua language and the shape and direction of this Tawantinsuyu nation they want to see (re)created.
Such a focus on the past makes sense within a nationalist ideology.
Chatterjee explains:
‘Nationalist doctrine … decrees that just as nations exist, so nations by definition must have a past.’ So every nationalism has invented a past for the nation; every nationalism speaks through a discourse, ‘historical in its form but apologetic in its substance,’ which claims to demonstrate the rise, progress and efflorescence of its own particular genius. Modern European intellectual fashion not only decrees that a nation must have a past, it also demands that it have a future. (Chatterjee, 1986, p. 9).
The Quechua Academy, in its nationalistic fervor, has created a past for the Peruvian nation.
It seeks to invent a future for Peru based on this less than historically accurate past.
Language is a fundamental element in creating this imagined community.
Kramsch asserts that language:
‘is intimately linked not only to the culture that is and the culture that was, but also to the culture of the imagination that governs people’s decisions and actions far more than we may think’ (1998, p. 8).
Niño-Murcia (1997, p. 137) emphasizes that linguistic nationalism is a logical corollary of nationalism in general, and linguistic purism is a natural byproduct in the search for a national identity.
This kind of imagination and linguistic nationalism is at work in the Academy’s construction of itself as the ultimate authority on Inca culture and language.
In many of their assertions, the Academy members tend to present their opinions, strongly influenced by a mythic Inca past, as historical fact.
They do not offer concrete evidence to support their assertions, which makes it difficult for others to accept them.
In the following statement from a long-time member of the Academy, we see the Inca past tied to an Inca future, as well as the Inca–Cuzco link:
We cuzqueños have to dress ourselves in ‘Inca-ness’ because the Incas are us cuzqueños. To modernize, for me, is to bring up to date again the great culture of the Incas. The cuzqueños feel colonized because modernization came from the outside. Present-day societies are monkey-like because they imitate everything that comes from foreign sources. (Interview with Pedro Barriga, Emeritus Member).
This quote emphasizes the Academy’s attachment to the Incas and Cuzco.
It reveals a more fundamental nationalistic fervor that conforms to Chatterjee’s description of ‘eastern nationalism.’
As Marr (1999) notes, it is interesting that the greatness of the Incas only takes shape in comparison with foreign but apparently equally great civilizations, in particular Spain and Western Europe, much as the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega compared the Inca empire with the Greek and Roman empires (Garcilaso de la Vega, 1609).
This observation gives further support to the idea that the Quechua Academy practices an ‘eastern nationalism,’ constantly waging a subconscious love–hate battle in their desire to reject the foreign paradigms and, at the same time, their recognition of the need to acknowledge those paradigms in order to be able to surpass them.
While much of their ideology is overtly hostile to the influence of Hispanic or European society on Peruvian culture, the members of the Academy do not seem to recognize that they copy many Western paradigms themselves, including the very notion of a language academy.
A number of Academy members, both in interviews and in their official publications, compared their Quechua Academy with the Real Academia de la Lengua Española (Royal Academy of the Spanish Language), in terms of both their function and their structure.
The Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua has the same stature as the Real Academia de la Lengua Española based in Madrid, you understand? Our Academy is based in Cuzco, and it is the one that should regulate teaching — really, everything that has to do with teaching, writing, etc. for all of Peru, plus the affiliates that it has abroad. (Interview with Pedro Barriga, Emeritus Member).
In comparing themselves with the Spanish institution, they are tacitly recognizing its validity and usefulness, and at the same time their desire to imitate and surpass it.
Pacheco Farfán refers to the use of ‘philosophical Western categories and the resultant Spanish–European bibliographical production, which will allow us to objectively demonstrate that there did indeed exist an Inca philosophy, superior to that of the Spanish and the Europeans’ (Pacheco Farfán, 1994, p. vii).

In Praise of qhapaq simi

Language use is an essential aspect of the Quechua Academy’s nationalist ideology and their devotion to Inca Quechua.
The terms the Academy uses to refer to Quechua make it clear that, for them, Quechua is the language of the Incas and therefore the only conceivable appropriate language for the Tawantinsuyu nation.
Some of these terms are simply spelling variations of either Quechua or runasimi (which literally means ‘tongue [language] of man’), but others reveal the Academy’s Cuzco-centered, Inca-oriented, purist, and nationalist ideologies.
Terms used by members in interviews and frequent in Inka Rimay include:
- ‘unadulterated Quechua’
- ‘classic Quechua’
- ‘Inca Quechua’
- ‘imperial Quechua’
- ‘legitimate Quechua’
- ‘pure Quechua’
- ‘authentic Quechua’
- ‘the imperial language’
- ‘the authentic national language’
- ‘the autochthonous language’
- ‘the language of the Incas’
- ‘the language of the Andean Gods’
- ‘the language of the nobles’
- ‘the language of Cuzco’
The language is all-important because it belongs to the Incas and because it originated in Cuzco.
The Academy’s discourse seems not to take into account that the Incas did not originally speak Quechua but adopted it as their lingua franca when they conquered the region.
There is also further proof that the language was not native to Cuzco.
The Quechua Academy has based its entire language ideology on a myth that they refuse to recognize as such.
The Academy refuses to acknowledge that current research reveals Quechua was spoken in the area long before the Incas arrived and that it did not originate in Cuzco.
According to Cerrón-Palomino (2003, p. 32), the Spanish introduced the notion that Quechua was the language of the Incas.
Designations of ‘the language of the Incas’ and ‘the language of Cuzco’ were originally used by the Spanish, not by the Incas themselves or the non-Inca Quechua speakers of the region.
The Quechua Academy establishes its own ideologies and paradigms on Spanish, rather than Andean knowledge.
The Academy’s insistence on the purity of Quechua over Spanish is just one more attempt to surpass the Spanish influence and establish the Inca/Quechua superiority over the Spanish.
Spanish is for mestizos, the Academy members say, but Quechua is for the pure Peruvian, the pure Andean, the pure Inca from Cuzco.

The real mestizo language is Spanish. Runasimi is original, authentic and pure. We will not say variety because the so-called Quechua is a single language with different varieties according to their zones, also according to time [period], of course, right? Another thing, ‘Quechua’ needs to be changed because the word ‘Quechua’ is not from the time of the Incas. The real name in any case would have to be runa or Inca, the Inca language. (Interview with Pedro Barriga, Emeritus Member)
The Quechua language – who cultivated it? In our case, it is not the cajamarquino [someone from Cajamarca], nor the tacneño [someone from Tacna] who has cultivated it, but rather, the cradle of the Quechua language, the truly Inca Quechua, is, of course Qusqu llaqta [Cuzco]. (Interview with Eusebio Mamani, Full Member).
These statements focus on the importance of Inca and Cuzco in determining the purity and authenticity of the Quechua language.
The Academy also exhibits ideologies on the inherent qualities of the language itself, independent of the people and place of its purported origin:
To speak of Quechua is to speak of a scientific language, an academic language, a technical language. Quechua is not only a medium of communication, in Quechua itself is its technology, its science, its philosophy, its mathematics, a whole set of human knowledge. … Quechua grammar has its own design, it has its own doctrine, it has its own ideology, it has its own structure, and therefore it has its own technical language. It follows, then, that it has its own scientific method. Truly not in vain was Quechua the language of the Andean gods, of the greatest wise men. … Its way of seeing the world is totally different from the West and the East. It has had its own self-conception [understanding]. In general terms, that would be the importance of the Quechua language, that it is much more profound than the Spanish understanding, than the English understanding, than the German understanding, than the Japanese understanding. (Interview with Eusebio Mamani, Full Member).
This senior member of the Academy places Quechua in a superior position above European and Asian languages.
He believes that having the necessary vocabulary in a given language to talk about topics gives that language the attributes of the vocabulary.
He almost makes it seem that simply speaking that language is going to give the speaker the knowledge to use the vocabulary in question, regardless of his or her reasoning skills or knowledge base.
We cuzqueños are universal. If you know Quechua, you learn to speak another language better than a native speaker of that language’ (interview with Pedro Barriga, Emeritus Member).
These testimonies demonstrate the validity of Woolard’s observation:
‘[w]hen a linguistic form-in-use is thus ideologized as distinctive and as implicating a distinctive kind of people, it is often further misrecognized, in Bourdieu’s terms, or revalorized, as transparently emblematic of social, political, intellectual, or moral character’ (1998, pp. 18–19).
The speakers are setting up the Quechua language as superior in some way to other languages.
The argument is inherently faulty because it does not take into account the need for reasoning skills or special knowledge on the part of a speaker and because it argues that the mere ability to express such things proves the superiority of the language.
The argument fails to consider that all languages have the ability to address such subjects and that no language is inherently more logical than another.
The Quechua Academy considers itself to be the ultimate arbiter of qhapaq simi, the preferred name for the elite, supposedly Inca-derived variety of Quechua.
runasimi (‘the language of man’) to refer to Quechua, when they talk about the language they want to spread and revitalize, they speak of qhapaq simi (‘the language of the nobles’).
In this context, runasimi becomes the language of the common people, those whose linguistic skills the Academy wants to correct, perfect, purify; in other words, it is a less-than-perfect Quechua, flawed, common, and subpar.
This becomes an important distinction when we begin to consider the Academy’s limited work in the field, in the rural communities where the bulk of native Quechua speakers live.
qhapaq simi is a sociolect more than a dialect or variety (Godenzzi, 1992, p. 63).
It is an artificial construct of the Academy itself, the refined and purified version that it has created without having sufficient recourse to the Quechua-speaking communities to check for validity of terminology or community acceptance of coinages.
Qhapaq simi is only spoken – or even truly understood – by very few people outside the Academy:
And even when we are in the communities and we want to use academic Quechua, the Quechua of the Academy, sometimes they don’t understand us, you know? So then there is a gap that we need to fill. (Interview with Esteban Roque, Full Member)
Sometimes the members of the Academy use some words that the campesinos don’t understand because they [the words] are taken from the ancient dictionaries. They [the Academy members] try to speak in what they call imperial Quechua, which is a pretty academic Quechua, but which doesn’t meet the current needs [of the speakers]. (Interview with Cuzco musician)
All these members of the Academy are mistis [mestizos], and they don’t speak Quechua very well. The real Quechua speakers are in the surrounding communities, not in the city of Cuzco. In P’isaq, for example, all communication is only in Quechua. I will take you there so you can talk with the people and the members of the municipality. (Fieldnotes, conversation with a native of P’isaq).
The last comment was made by a high-ranking member of the Academy in the town of P’isaq, where Quechua is more commonly spoken than Spanish.
This member did not hold the Academy’s expertise with the Quechua language in very high esteem.
He called them mistis (mestizos), with a note of disdain in his voice, and then referred to the ‘real Quechua speakers,’ implying that the Academy members are not authentic speakers.
He reclaimed the authority and expertise in the language for his own people of P’isaq, as opposed to those from Cuzco where the primary language is Spanish.
This native speaker’s reaction illustratesOne unintended effect of the Academy’s Cuzco-centric attitudes.
A consequence of the Academy’s emphasis on the superiority of the qhapaq simi sociolect is that it does not demonstrate much respect for the individuality and autonomy of the many Quechua peoples and their numerous dialects, which has the rebound effect of encouraging them not to respect the Academy.
Some Academy members claim that there are no dialects, that Quechua is a single language, and that people speaking other dialects of Quechua are actually speaking other languages entirely.
Other members maintain that those who speak other dialects simply do not know how to speak Quechua properly.
In all cases, they see themselves as having the answer, the ‘cure’ to the ‘problem,’ and their goal is to teach the ‘true’ Inca Quechua to all those who already speak some variety of Quechua or are learning the language from the beginning.
Their linguistic approach is prescriptive rather than descriptive.

The Construction of Expertise by the Quechua Academy

A very important element of the Academy members’ identity is their deep-seated need to be recognized as the experts on all things Andean, not just the language.
In the Academy’s official discourse and in their personal interactions with others, the members present themselves in this light, trying to project an image of expertise on Andean issues ranging from linguistics to politics and everything in between.
They tout themselves as the only authority on these matters and as the only actors capable of speaking for and about Quechua.
At the same time, they make a point of showing their contempt for the expertise and research of non-Academy scholars (particularly linguists) and the work and contributions of language planners, government officials, and non-governmental organization activists.
Cooper notes that such behavior is typical for any elite group seeking to establish its hegemony:

[E]lites view the symbols of their distinctiveness, linguistic or otherwise, as evidence of their superiority and as justification for their privileged position (Koch, 1978). It is in the interest of the elites to promote their own language variety as the single model of correctness, not only to elicit the ‘veneration of the masses’ but also to confer legitimacy upon [their] pronouncements … (Cooper, 1989, p. 135).
In my interviews, some individual members made comments that occasionally seemed to contradict the Academy’s official stances.
These contradictions weaken the official discourse and the image of expertise that the senior members of the Quechua Academy constantly seek to reinforce.
As discrepancies, they provide evidence of dissension within the organization but may also offer the possibility for new directions for the Academy to grow in the future.
One of the ways in which the members establish their expertise, as alluded to earlier, is by taking an essentialist view of Andean language and culture, which only ‘authentic’ Andeans such as themselves can understand and explain.
Hornberger and King point out, ‘the Quechua Academy members [see] the ability to speak Quechua as fundamental to having the authority to decide on it’ (1998, p. 396).
Most Academy members view themselves as the sole ‘owners’ of the relevant knowledge and therefore as the only actors with the authority to seriously discuss the Quechua language and the Andean–Inca culture:
The Quechua Academy is the only entity that has expertise in the Quechua language. Nobody in the Ministry of Education speaks Quechua. They are ignorant of the Quechua language and they attribute to themselves the authority to make decisions about the language without even knowing it. [But] that is what the Quechua Academy is for. [It is] the one that is going to define how it should be spoken and how it should be written. (Interview with Saturnina Conde, Full Member)
I have made the [Lima-based] linguists wet their pants with my contributions in the conferences, because nobody has done what I am doing for Quechua. I am creating grammatical terms in Quechua. When I ask the linguists, they don’t know the answers and they are people who don’t speak Quechua and confuse things. (Fieldnotes, quote from conversation with Eusebio Mamani, Full Member).
These assertions illustrate the members’ haughtiness and the scorn they heap on others who may be seeking to influence the use or teaching of the Quechua language and culture.
The last quote in particular exposes the kind of arrogance that could easily alienate not only the alleged competitors, but anyone listening to it.
This overbearing attitude has social roots.
The Academy members belong to the Cuzco elite, which characteristically flaunts a strong regional identity as ‘Andeans from Cuzco.’
Because of their Andean origin, and despite their racial profile as mestizos, they view themselves as the authentic Peruvians and reject everything that comes from non-Andeans.
Their views, discourses, and language practices may be more an expression of a politicized regional identity than a matter of stances about language itself.
Some members make reference to their isolation but do not recognize themselves as the source.
Instead, they insist that the other actors must acknowledge their own authority and expertise:
There is an isolation of the Academy on the part of the so-called cultural societies and institutions, for example, the National Institute of Culture. These institutions always look at the Academy as something of a lower order, you know? They have never said, for example, ‘guide us, as members of the Academy, you should guide us.’ The social and religious authorities should enroll in the Academy so they can enter into contact with the communities, but this is not done. (Interview with Pedro Barriga, Emeritus Member).
This long-time member would like to see the Quechua Academy in the role of a gate-keeper for all contacts between the communities and the non-Quechua-speaking ‘outside world.’
The fulfillment of the aspiration to control access to the language and to the people who