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
José María Velasco Ibarra José María Velasco Ibarra José María Velasco Ibarra (March 19, 1893 – March 30, 1979) was an Ecuadorian politician. Five times he became president of Ecuador: 1934–1935, 1944–1947, 1952–1956, 1960–1961, and 1968–1972. But only once (1952–1956) did he complete the full term. In his four other exits he was removed by military force; indeed several times he was installed as president through a military coup. Ecuador was notably unstable – with 17 constitutions after independence in 1830, . Velasco Ibarra was a fiery populist who did not have a formal party organization. Rather it was his populist rhetoric that attracted