Juan Velasco Alvarado of the land, the day of winter solstice. The education reform of 1972 provided for bilingual education for the indigenous people of the Andes and the Amazon, which consisted nearly half of the population. In 1975, the Velasco government enacted a law making Quechua an official language of Peru equal to Spanish. Thus, Peru was the first Latin American country to officialize an indigenous language. However, this law was never enforced and ceased to be valid when the 1979 constitution became effective, according to which Quechua and Aymara are official only where they predominate, as mandated by law – a
Juan Ramírez de Velasco Juan Ramírez de Velasco Juan Ramírez de Velasco (c.1539 – 1597) was a Spanish conquistador of Chile and Argentina. Founder of the province of La Rioja. Juan Ramírez de Velasco was born in the village of Estollo, son of a noble family of Castile, and descendant of the King of Navarre Ramiro Sánchez. In 1570 Ramirez was married in Seville with Catherine de Ugarte, a Spanish noblewoman, daughter of Pedro Santiago de Ugarte and Ana de Velasco. In his youth Ramírez fought in Flanders and Italy during the Italian War of 1551–59. Arrived in America Ramirez was appointed governor of