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 José Alvarado led the party of the federal government under José Francisco Morazán Quezada and resisted the separation. On 5 April 1839 his troops were defeated by Nicaragua and to the troops of Morazán in the battle of Espiritu Santo in El Salvador. On 25 September 1839, at San Pedro Perulapán, the troops of Honduras surprised Francisco Ferrera, who was wounded and fled to Nicaragua. Although Alvarado stated that he withdrew for reasons of health, the political and military pressure from Morazán contributed to it. He died in Gracias. Juan José Alvarado Juan José Alvarado (1798–1857) was Supreme Director of Honduras from