Bolivia: Native Languages To Be Mandatory For All State Workers

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As established by the Constitution, as of August 3 all state workers will need to speak one native language in addition to Spanish.

The Under-secretary of Decolonization, Félix Cárdenas, stressed in a news conference that it will be a condition to access public employment or maintain it. The three-year period given to learn one of the nation’s 36 native languages – all with official language status – in fact expires on August 2. The most spoken are Quechua, Aymara (both by around 1 million), Guaraní, Chimán, Guarayu and Weenhayek.

Cárdenas indicated that the second mandatory language must be that spoken prevalently in the area where the state employee works, such as Aymara in the case of La Paz or Quechua for Cochabamba. However, he specified that the language doesn’t need to be known perfectly, rather sufficiently to communicate directly with the people.

MISNA

MISNA, or the Missionary International Service News Agency, provides daily news ‘from, about and for’ the 'world’s Souths', not just in the geographical sense, since December 1997.

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