Friendship and indigenous languages: Quechua's dynamism in Paris

It was Verónica Valencia Baño's project for an inter-university and international Quechua festival in Paris that first brought us together former and current Inalco students of Quechua at different levels. The festival included three major events: a workshop on orality and psychoanalysis co-organized with Paris 7-Denis Diderot, a one-day meeting between Ecuadorian and French linguists at the Maison de la Recherche, in partnership with Paris 3-Sorbonne nouvelle, and the scientific and cultural days on the Quichua oral tradition in Ecuador, which brought together international speakers and specialists and were held at Inalco on December 15 and 16, 2016. These events were highly successful both in France and Ecuador, and helped forge lasting links between Inalco and various Ecuadorian institutions. They also gave us an idea of what can come out of a simple student initiative, when it is driven by a strong team spirit and the pleasure of coming together around a shared passion, with the support of our teachers César Itier and Pablo Landeo Muñoz.

Thus, in December 2017, we set up the "Archaeologists in America" exhibition of photographs from archaeological missions in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia, in partnership with Paris IV Paris-Sorbonne, the Musée de l'Homme, EHESS, the CeRAP (Centre de recherche sur l'Amérique préhispanique) and the heads of missions in these three countries. Throughout 2017 and 2018, we also organized no fewer than ten "Cafés Amériques", semi-informal meetings with recognized speakers from the world of research and civil society on interdisciplinary topics related to the Americas (poetry, education, archaeology, oral tradition, feminism...). These events, which are open to all and straddle the line between research and popular science, have attracted a large and varied audience, as have our introductory workshops in Quechua and Andean music during the Inalculturelle over the past two years.


In 2019, we plan to continue this action to promote and disseminate American cultures and languages as part of Unesco's International Year of Indigenous Languages. One of our objectives is to encourage mutual support between the different graduating classes in Languages and Cultures of the Americas, in order to promote continuity of learning for students who are often called upon to spend long periods abroad as part of their research.

As far as Quechua is concerned, we have undertaken, with the support of Inalco's technical team, a digital enhancement of César Itier's grammar courses, the result of which is available on the Institute's moodle platform. We also strive to create connections between students and native speakers of indigenous languages living in France, by occasionally teaming up with other collectives linked to Andean and American cultures, such as the association Ayllu. Culturas andinas, the Alerta Feminista association or the "Genre et féminismes dans les Amériques latines" seminar.

We will also continue to offer regular events open to all within Inalco. For 2019, we are thus planning presentations-debates on Andean music, trans-American migrations, Mayan and Quechua oral traditions - following on from the Café Amériques held on this theme in April 2018 - or the Manuscrit de Huarochirí and its legacy in contemporary oral tradition.

We will also be organizing an evening in honor of our teacher Pablo Landeo Muñoz, 2018 winner of the National Prize for Literature in the Native Language in Peru for his novel Aqupampa, for which we are also preparing, in collaboration with native speakers, a dialectal translation from South Peruvian Quechua to Ecuadorian Quichua, to be published in 2019 under the auspices of the French Institute of Andean Studies (IFEA).


Inalco, through the Language and Civilization diploma training offer, provided us with the ideal meeting place to forge personal and interdisciplinary links around a common interest in the languages of the Americas. The generous support of our teaching and technical staff has made it possible for us to work together in fertile collaboration. The mutual support we nurtured with each other from the outset enabled the development of original cultural and scientific initiatives. The combination of these conditions has created an exceptional synergy, which contributes to the visibility of Inalco's Languages and Cultures of the Americas section, thanks to events that encourage research and its dissemination.


Marie Arias, Sarah Dichy-Malherme, Ana Gendron Correa, Morgana Herrera, Tania Romero Barrios, Louison Sockel, Verónica Valencia Baño and Caroline Weill.