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
Luis de Velasco y Velasco, 2nd Count of Salazar remembered for his role in the Spanish conquest of Calais (1596), Steenbergen (1622) and the failed Siege of Bergen-op-Zoom (1622). He became a Knight in the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1622. He died from disease when he was in Dunkirk to inspect the defenses. Luis de Velasco y Velasco, 2nd Count of Salazar Luis de Velasco y Velasco, 2nd Count of Salazar, 1st Marquess of Belvedere, (Valladolid, Spain, 1559 – Dunkirk, Spanish Netherlands (present-day France), 1625), was a Spanish military commander during the French Wars of Religion and the Eighty Years' War. His parents were Juan de Velasco,