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 de Velasco de Quito" is important in the history of Ecuador and of the city of Quito because it alleges the existence of a pre-Inca kingdom in what is now Ecuador and which is known as "Reino de Quito" ("Kingdom of Quito"). The book is mentioned, discussed and criticized by several historians such as Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, Federico González Suárez, Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño, Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco, Misael Acosta Solís, Enrique Ayala Mora and Galo Ramón Valarezo. A picture of Juan de Velasco was in a 1947 60-cent postal stamp of the Ecuadorian postal service . Juan de Velasco Juan