Education: Learning a Written Language

Spanish is the national language of Peru, but close to half a million Peruvians in the vast Amazon jungle areas speak only primitive native tongues and have no written languages. This block to mass education has long been a worrisome problem for the Peruvian government.

In 1945 the government asked William Townsend of the University of Oklahoma’s Summer Institute of Linguistics to head a mission to teach the Indians to read and write their own languages. Townsend, a friendly, energetic man who learned his first dialect (Cakchiquel) in 1917 trying to sell Bibles to the Indians of Guatemala, went to Peru in 1945 with eleven assistants. Before they could teach, Townsend and his teachers had to learn the local tongues themselves. Deciding to concentrate on the 18 most widely used dialects, they set off for the jungle.

On with Roast Tapir. The first language barrier to be cracked was that of the Cashibo Indians, who live along the Aguaytia River. There the linguists had a lucky start. Near the village of Pucallpa, they found a Cashibo named Gregorio Estrella, who had lived on the coast and learned Spanish. Recalls one of Townsend’s team: “Gregorio led us to his tribe. They were so pleased when they found we wanted to live just the way they did that they built a house for us.” As a starter, the linguists began asking the names of everyday things: banana, fire, water, house, etc. It was tough going. They found that the only difference between many words was the presence or absence of a glottal stop (written ‘ in the phonetic system devised by Townsend). For example, ‘ino ka ‘okë ‘ikën means “The jaguar is at the other side of the river.” Pronounced without the stop before the third word, the same sounds mean “The jaguar has come.” Townsend’s team also found that the Cashibos could put the Germans to shame with multisyllabled words. In Cashibo, the single word onanmishrontëkenbaiëxdánsh-rin means “He was teaching again for somebody else several days ago.”

With the rest of the languages, Townsend’s linguists did not always have the luck to find a Spanish-speaking interpreter. But their approach was always the same: gain the confidence of the Indians by living with them and sharing their food (including such exotic dishes as monkey stew and roast tapir). Once a team had learned a language, it set about publishing a simple reading primer in it.

Away With the Boa. By now, Townsend, with headquarters in a group of 35 buildings on Lake Yarinacocha, six miles north of Pucallpa, has a staff of 108 (with 30 children, many of them born at Yarina-ocha). Townsend’s teams cover the jungle in six airplanes, keep in touch with headquarters by radio.

This summer, Townsend’s efforts to teach the natives Christian ethics landed him in trouble with the Roman Catholic Church in Peru. The apostolic vicar for the jungle area, Monsignor Buenaventura Uriarte, boomed: “Townsend’s institute is engaged in an active and purposeful campaign to convert our jungle Indians to evangelistic Protestantism.” Methodist Townsend, a member of Los Angeles’ Church of the Open Door, vigorously denied any sectarianism, but the cry was taken up by the conservative press in Lima. For a while, it looked as if Townsend’s good works were at an end.

Last week the Peruvian Minister of Education announced that a special Cabinet meeting, presided over by President Manuel Odria, had decided that the Linguistic Institute’s research and teaching among the Indians would continue with the full backing of the Peruvian government. Townsend had promised to use the Catholic version of the Bible in his religion course, and the government would increase its financial aid to the Church’s own jungle missions. Said Townsend: “Of course, when I see a jungle Indian worshiping a boa constrictor, I want to teach him to worship the Lord instead.”