Indigenous languages in the Legislation of Hispano-American nations

Abstract

In recent decades, in most Latin American countries a similar process occurs: the promotion of indigenous languages to an educational, social and legal level, including, in some cases, their status as co-official languages. Despite some common starting points, the current situa-tion is very different in the different countries if we compare the constitutional acknowledge-ment of these indigenous languages and the present language legislation, ranging from mere symbolic proclamations to very ambitious proposals. The article presents the evolution and the indigenous languages policies and regulation in Latin American countries, from a quali-tative and comparative point of view, presenting their classification, as well as chronology.