LOMA GRANTE, Paraguay (AP) — When it was time to choose a wedding venue, Margarita Geissoso and her partner, Christian Ojeda, knew exactly where they wanted to go.
Despite living in Spain, the couple traveled to their long-careed hometown In Paraguay For a ceremony that will host in the language of our ancestors.
“Everyone was crying because they feel it’s so deep in Guarani,” Gaiso said. “It’s as if the pronunciation is poured out from your soul.”
Guarani is one of the two official languages of Paraguay along with Spanish. However, linguists warn that national conservation efforts are ongoing as the flow of younger generations is slipping.
Many Paraguayans I believe that Guarani has deep emotional importance. However, because language usage is primarily oral, it rarely appears in official documents, government records, or literary works.
Even finding a Catholic priest to host Gayso’s wedding in Guarani proved difficult. Still, it was worth the extra effort. Some guests told her that it was the first local wedding they attended that was fully performed in their native language.
Why Guarani is in the heart of Paraguay
According to official Paraguay 2024 data, out of the 6.9 million people in the country, roughly 1.6 million report Guarani as the main language. Meanwhile, 1.5 million people use Spanish and 2.1 million people are identified as bilingual. The languages of other indigenous peoples account for the rest.
The guarani we are talking about today is different from the version that Europeans first encountered during the conquest of Latin America in the 1500s. Still, survival in areas where most countries have moved to Spanish is amazing. Why did it manage to be dominant?
“In Guarani culture, language is synonymous with the soul,” said Arnardo Casco, a researcher at the Department of Linguistics in Paraguay.
“I believe that for the Guarani people, losing their language is like losing their souls, because the Words are something the Lord gave them to others.”
Reflecting this deep connection to their language, the Guarani people resisted fiercely in learning Spanish. That’s why early European missionaries saw no choice but to study Guarani. Evangelization the purpose.
Saved but punished language
Jesuit and Franciscan priests produced the first written record of Guarani in Paraguay.
The alphabets and dictionaries they developed became essential to deliver sermons and helped to maintain language from extinction. Yet these efforts were not sufficient to protect Guarani from the centuries of alienation that followed.
Casco said that nearly 90% of the population was mainly Guarani speakers by the early 19th century. However, as the country regained its independence from Spain in 1811, efforts to promote its widespread use were unstable.
Although promoting national unity was encouraged during the wartime of the 1930s, postwar orders prevented teachers and students from using it in schools.
“My parents and other parents were tortured for not speaking Spanish,” said linguistics researcher Miguel Angel Veron, whose father was beaten in the mouth for communication in Guarani. “Why didn’t you speak Spanish because of him? He and my uncle abandoned school.”
In 1992, bilingual education in Guarani, Spain was made mandatory. Both languages are required in the classroom, but the law does not guarantee or broadly recognize the need to preserve Guarani textbooks.
Both Casco and Verón said dozens of families no longer talk to Guarani children. They encourage them to learn English instead, as they fear that using their native language might hinder their success.
“Paraguay continues to suffer from deep language scars,” Veron said. “It may be easy to pass the law, but it takes a lot more to change our attitude.”
Which language does it come with?
People who work to maintain their language claim that Guarani has more than words.
“The basic human values our Paraguayans hold come from that,” Veron said. “Solidarity, reciprocity, sacred respect for nature.”
For example, “Jarýi” is a word from Guarani that has no Spanish translation. It describes a godlike protector of the land, according to some people like Veron’s father, who need years of rest to regain that wisdom and strength during the harvest.
“If you destroy and eat the forest, you won’t get into trouble. But if you do that to make money just by doing it, Jali will come,” Veron said.
Casco also learned a variety of lessons from the medicine man who cured people in his hometown. “To know that prayer is healing is a legacy from the Indigenous people,” he said.
Hundreds of other testimonies link language to faith throughout the rural areas of Paraguay. However, no written records of these beliefs have been made up until now.
To create a registration of these collective memory, Casco leads a project to interview Guaraní speakers over the age of 60. His team has spoken to 72 people so far, and interviews will be posted on the Faculty of Linguistics website when the transcript is completed.
“Our goal is to save connections with roots and history through language,” Casco said.
Guarani’s rescue
Several interviewees live in Roma Grande, the town of Ojeda and Geiso, where they married.
Juana Giménez, 83, has a deep understanding of medicinal plants. Desperate parents with a crying baby were taking their children to her. And Gimenez, a mixture of herbs, smoke and prayers, helped to reduce stomach inflammation, which regularly shed tears.
Marta Duarte, 73, studied Spanish and moved to the capital Asunción, where he worked as a tailor for many years. She returned to Loma Grande in her 30s and is currently helping out at a local church where attendees read the Bible in Spanish, discussing Guarani’s writings.
Carlos Kurt, an 85-year-old descendant of German immigrants, fell in love with the words of his Paraguayan ancestors at a young age. He still laughs, remembering the day his second-grade teacher sent a note to his German-speaking parents.
“I just love this language,” he said. “I learned that, and nothing escaped me. Now, my grandson doesn’t talk about it. He doesn’t like it.”
Other Paraguayans repeated how their descendants were giving up their language, with the exception of Sofia Ratazzi. She lives in Asuncion with her mother and grandmother Nancy Vera.
Following Vera’s belief in a concept known as the treasure of “Yvyguy” hidden by the rich Paraguayans during the wartime of the 1800s, the family regularly digs holes in their backyard.
Ratazzi said Vera had always had a particular intimacy to the land. “She found a place where the earth and the water had broken down and where they would place the rings and other things,” she said.
Ratazzi said she suspected her grandmother was involved in a language project. But she encouraged her.
“I want her to see how important my history is,” Ratazzi said. “If she’s gone now, something’s left from her.”
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