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 Ramírez de Velasco between 1595-1597. He was replaced by Hernando Arias de Saavedra. Juan Ramirez de Velasco died in February 1597 in the City of Santa Fe, Argentina. 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