Puerto Rican scholar Ricardo Alegria dies at 90

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Ricardo Alegria, a Puerto Rican scholar known for his pioneering studies of the island's native Taino culture and who is credited with preserving the capital's colonial district, died Thursday. He was 90.

Alegria died at the Cardiovascular Center of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean from complications of heart disease, said his son, Ricardo Alegria Pons. The elder Alegria had been treated for two weeks at the hospital in June and then was hospitalized again Sunday.

"Thanks to his long life of 90 years, he has had a major impact on all aspects of the culture of all Puerto Ricans," his son told reporters. "That work and dedication and love of his country does not disappear with his death."

Gov. Luis Fortuno declared five days of mourning in the U.S. territory, ordering American and Puerto Rican flags to be lowered to half-staff in honor of one of the island's leading cultural figures.

Alegria in 1955 helped found and later served as executive director of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, where he was long a passionate advocate of preserving the island's artistic and archaeological heritage. He went on to launch the Graduate Center for Advanced Studies on Puerto Rico and the Caribbean in 1976 and received the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's Picasso Medal in 1993.

Born April 14, 1921, Alegria earning a master's degree in anthropology and history at the University of Chicago and a doctorate in anthropology at Harvard University.

Source: Associated Press

Indigenous Peoples Address Ways to Ensure Participation

Excerpt from United Nations Press Release on 22 May 2007:

MILDRED GANDIA REYES, representing the Indigenous Caucus of the Greater Caribbean, said her organization had submitted recommendations at other sessions, but had received no follow-up. She asked the Forum to urge the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to support the recovery of Caribbean heritage, culture and writings, and, further, to sponsor special regional meetings with indigenous experts as it worked with endangered education.

She pressed States and UNESCO to provide resources to develop language and cultural exchange programmes, in order to support ancient languages that had been virtually wiped out by dominant languages. Further, she encouraged States, including Puerto Rico, to review public education material and remove erroneous historical accounts that had rendered indigenous peoples invisible, or had misrepresented them in any way. She asked Caribbean States, particularly Puerto Rico, to work with indigenous Caribbean islanders to promote indigenous human rights and ensure that Constitutions recognized them, as such. She urged the Association of Caribbean States, the Rio Group and Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to establish a special regional fund for indigenous representatives, so they are able to attend Forum events throughout the Second Decade.

To review the full statement presented at the United Nations visit:
http://indigenouscaribbeancaucus.blogspot.com/

NEW UN TREATY TO PRESERVE WORLD’S RICH CULTURAL DIVERSITY

NEW UN TREATY TO PRESERVE WORLD’S RICH CULTURAL DIVERSITY TO COME INTO FORCE IN MARCH 2007

New York - A United Nations-backed international treaty to preserve the rich diversity of the world’s means of cultural expression from the dangers of globalization, including its many languages, will enter into force on 18 March after it topped the needed total of 30 ratifications yesterday.

“The rapidity of the ratification process is unprecedented,” UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

Director-General. Koïchiro Matsuura said today of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, adopted by UNESCO’s General Conference in October 2005.

“None of UNESCO’s other cultural conventions has been adopted by so many States in so little time,” Mr Matsuura added. Another 13 countries, as well as the European Community, yesterday deposited their instrument of ratification at UNESCO’s Paris headquarters, bringing the total to 35.

As examples of the kind of cultural consolidation threatened by globalization, UNESCO notes that 50 per cent of the world languages are in danger of extinction and that 90 per cent of them are not represented on the Internet. In addition, five countries monopolize the world cultural industries. In the field of cinema, for instance, 88 countries have never had their own film productions.

Besides promoting diversity in those areas, the Convention seeks to reaffirm the links between culture, development and dialogue and to create a platform for international cooperation, including the creation of an international fund for cultural diversity.

It highlights “the importance of intellectual property rights in sustaining those involved in cultural creativity” and reaffirms that “freedom of thought, expression and information, as well as diversity of the media, enable cultural expressions to flourish within societies.”

It also supports UNESCO’s Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity adopted in 2001, which recognized cultural diversity as “a source of exchange, innovation and creativity,” a common heritage of humanity that “should be recognized and affirmed for the benefit of present and future generations.”

The new Convention reaffirms the sovereign right of States to elaborate cultural policies with a view “to protect and promote the diversity of cultural expressions and reinforce international cooperation” while respecting human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Indigenous Languages in Final Throes

By Diego Cevallos*

MEXICO CITY, (Tierramérica) - Hundreds of languages disappeared from Latin America and the Caribbean over the past 500 years, and many of the more than 600 that have survived could face the same fate in the not-so-distant future.

United Nations agencies and many experts maintain that it is an avoidable tragedy, but there are those who see it as the inherent fate of all but a few languages.

Faced with Western culture and the dominant presence of Spanish, Portuguese and English in the Americas, indigenous languages like Kiliwua in Mexico, Ona and Puelche in Argentina, Amanayé in Brazil, Záparo in Ecuador and Mashco-Piro in Peru, are just barely surviving, the result of their continued use by small groups of people -- most of whom are elderly.

But there are others like Quichua, Aymara, Guaraní, Maya and Náhuatl whose future looks a bit rosier, because overall these languages are spoken by more than 10 million people and governments support their survival through various educational, cultural and social programmes.

Around the globe there are some 7,000 languages in use, but each year 20 disappear. Furthermore, half of the existing languages are threatened, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

This agency, which promotes the preservation and diversity of the world's languages, maintains that the disappearance of even one language is a tragedy, because with it go a unique culture and cosmovision.

But not everyone sees it that way. "The extinction of languages is a phenomenon inherent in their very existence, and it has been happening since humans emitted their first sound with a linguistic meaning," José Luis Moure, a University of Buenos Aires philologist and member of the Argentine Academy of Letters, told Tierramérica.

In contrast, Gustavo Solís, a Peruvian linguist with expertise in vernacular and author of language studies of the Amazon region, says "there is nothing in the languages that says one should disappear and another should continue."

"Every disappearance of language and culture is a great tragedy to humanity. When it occurs, a unique and irreplaceable human experience is extinguished," Solís said in a conversation with Tierramérica.

There are cases, says this expert, that show it is possible to plan the revitalisation of languages so they won't die, but such efforts in Latin America and the Caribbean fall short.

When the Europeans arrived in the Americas in the 15th century, there were 600 to 800 languages in South America alone, but with the colonisation process "the vast majority disappeared. Today there are languages on their way to extinction because of the unequal contact between Western society and some indigenous societies," Solís said.

Fernando Nava, director of Mexico's National Institute of Indigenous Languages (INALI), said languages disappear through natural evolution, which is understandable, or through cultural pressure and discrimination against its speakers, which is preventable..

It is the second cause that many governments, international agencies and academics are fighting, because it is considered an unacceptable phenomenon, Nava told Tierramérica. In this area, Latin America and the Caribbean are just in the stage of raising awareness, he added.

According to UNESCO, half of the languages existing in the world today could be lost within "a few generations", due to their marginalisation from the Internet, cultural and economic pressures, and the development of new technologies that favour homogeneity.

In May, the UN agency will publish an extensive study about the languages of the Amazon region, many of them spoken by very few individuals. The study is a bid to draw international attention to their plight.

Surviving in the Amazon jungles are isolated indigenous groups, who refuse to have contact with the Western world and its "progress". They total around 5,000 people belonging to various groups of the Amazon Basin, among them the Tagaeri in Ecuador, Ayoreo in Paraguay, Korubo in Brazil and the Mashco-Piro and Ashaninka in Peru.

According to Rodolfo Stavenhagen, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights and basic freedoms of indigenous peoples, these groups are facing "a true cultural genocide".

"I fear that under current circumstances it will be difficult for them to survive many more years, because so-called development denies the right of these peoples to continue being peoples," he said.

Although the list of languages and dialects in use worldwide is very long, the vast majority of the population speaks only a handful of languages, like English, Chinese, and Spanish.

To ensure that linguistic diversity is maintained, the international community agreed in recent years on a series of legal instruments, and experts hold regular meetings to discuss the issues.

One such meet took place Mar. 31 to Apr. 2 in the western U.S. state of Utah, where officials and academics from across the Americas studied ways to prevent the disappearance of dozens of languages in this hemisphere.

Since 1999, through a UNESCO initiative, Feb. 21 is celebrated as International Mother Language Day. There are also agreements in the UN system, like the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity and its Action Plan, from 2001, and the Convention on Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage, signed in 2003.

Also dating from 2003 is the Recommendation on the Promotion and Use of Multingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace, and from 2005 the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expressions.

The Argentine expert Moure says it is important to work towards preserving languages, even when the number of speakers is small, because "they are markers of identity that merit maximum respect and scientific attention."

But "I am not so sure that the death of a language necessarily means the disappearance of the associated cosmovision, because its speakers never stop talking (unless they themselves disappear through disease or genocide), but rather, after a period of bilingualism, they adopt another language that is more useful to them because of its greater insertion in the world," he said

"This a fact of reality, and I believe it should be recognised without turning to excessive conspiracy theories," said Moure.

*Diego Cevallos is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Apr. 8 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.