Language planning with Spanish colonization. When the Spanish first arrived in Peru, Quechua served as a language of wider communication, a lingua franca, between Spaniards and Peruvian natives. As the years passed, Spaniards asserted the superiority of the Spanish language; as a result, Spanish gained prestige, taking over as a language of wider communication and the dominant language of Peru. In 1975, under the leadership of President Juan Velasco Alvarado, the revolutionary government of Peru declared Quechua an official language of the Peruvian state, "coequal with Spanish." Four years later, the law was reversed. Peru's 1979 constitution declares Spanish the only official
Juan de Velasco de Quito" is important in the history of Ecuador and of the city of Quito because it alleges the existence of a pre-Inca kingdom in what is now Ecuador and which is known as "Reino de Quito" ("Kingdom of Quito"). The book is mentioned, discussed and criticized by several historians such as Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, Federico González Suárez, Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco, Misael Acosta Solís, Enrique Ayala Mora and Galo Ramón Valarezo. A picture of Juan de Velasco was in a 1947 60-cent postal stamp of the Ecuadorian postal service . Juan de Velasco Juan