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
Miguel Alemán Velasco Miguel Alemán Velasco Miguel Alemán Velasco (born March 18, 1932 in Veracruz) is a Mexican politician, businessman and philanthropist. He is a former senator and governor of Veracruz. Alemán Velasco is the son of former Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés (1946–52), the first candidate to run for the presidency from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and Beatriz Velasco Mendoza. Alemán Velasco holds a bachelor's degree in Law from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. On August 9, 2004 Alemán was honored by the Government of Panama with the Great Cross of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa. He sought his party's nomination for