The Quechua of Some and the Quechua of Others: Challenges of Learning the Indigenous Language in the City

In the context of an initiative to disseminate Quechua in the city of Lima called Quechua for All, I will discuss the growing demand to learn Quechua by young students or professionals, many of whom come from upwardly mobile middle-class Quechua migrant families. Although these interventions are making Quechua visible in the city, they are simultaneously constructing new divisions between types of citizens who speak the indigenous language: those who are vulnerable and racialized Quechua speakers and these new learners, for whom Quechua adds to their identity as multilingual citizens. From the paradigm of critical sociolinguistics, I will show how speaking Quechua in the city is being articulated with other signs, such as having knowledge of English and being a professional or in the process of becoming one, to enregister a multicultural citizenship in a context of neoliberal economic growth.