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Indigenous South American tongues a challenge
By LEAH RAE
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: November 29, 2005


Some of the newest immigrants in Rockland County speak Spanish as a second language with English a distant third.

Their first is Quechua, an indigenous language in South America with roots that predate the Incan empire.

The number of Quechua speakers from Ecuador has grown large enough that at least two county agencies are searching for interpreters who can help communicate about programs ranging from special education to tuberculosis prevention.

"Even though we can get by in Spanish, if Quechua is the primary language, there is a big difference in how patients respond if you're speaking Quechua," said Dr. Germaine Jacquette, director of Rockland's TB program.

Three years ago, she was puzzled at the difficulty she had communicating in Spanish with Ecuadorean patients. An anthropologist then working with the Health Department gave her an explanation: The local Ecuadorean population was largely Quechua-speaking, from the province of Cañar.

Quechua speakers in Rockland probably number around 1,500, said the anthropologist, Jason Pribilsky, who has studied migration between Ecuador and New York.

In Westchester County, health-care providers in Sleepy Hollow encounter Quechua, but have fewer communication problems than in Rockland's Spring Valley, according to an ongoing immigrant health study by New York Medical College.

Quechua translators are in demand in South America also, said Ana Silva, a caseworker at the Port Chester Carver Center. Having grown up speaking both Quechua and Spanish, she served for a time as a Family Court translator in Quito, Ecuador.

Efforts are growing to preserve the language, which was spread by the Incas and later by Spanish missionaries.

"It has been diminishing for years, and at this point they're trying to actually get back to it, because a lot of indigenous people have been educated and they want to keep their culture and their language alive," Silva said.

In Westchester, she's encountered Quechua only once, while working at the Open Door health center in Rye Brook.

Twenty-five years ago, schoolteachers in Ecuador taught only in Spanish, said Gregorio Lema, a Spring Valley resident who was born in Cañar. He grew up speaking Quechua at home and Spanish in school. Now his two children in Ecuador are studying both Spanish and Quechua.

For his part, Lema is learning English at his job as a tree cutter.

"I'd like to know many languages," Lema said. "Sometimes that's not important to people."

The need for Quechua translation in Rockland comes up about twice a week at the county Chest Clinic in Pomona, Jacquette said. At Family Preventive Services, a program within the Department of Social Services, about 10 open cases involve Quechua-speaking families.

Social services personnel said they've been frustrated by language and cultural barriers as they try to address problems such as language development in children.

"We clearly are missing the mark," caseworker Peggy Gordon told a committee organized earlier this month by the Rockland Immigration Coalition.

A Quechua-speaking Ecuadorean woman who attended the meeting explained that families in her community were deeply fearful that county workers could take custody of their children. A child was removed from the home of a Quechua-speaking family in an ongoing court case, caseworkers at the meeting said.

Preventive Services aims to "prevent" foster care by linking families with food programs, parenting courses, immigration assistance, special education, addiction services and other help.

Families from remote parts of Ecuador would be completely unfamiliar with such programs, said Oscar Santillan, a Quechua-speaking musician from Ecuador who took part in the meeting.

Another problem, he said, is that indigenous people encounter racism in Ecuador that carries over to the United States. As a result, he said, they hide their identities.

Rockland administrators said they were having trouble finding a Quechua-English translator with legal working papers. Telephone translation services are another option, but Quechua is only available for a limited, pre-scheduled period of time, Jacquette said.

A further challenge is the language's variation. Quechua is actually a family of languages, comparable to the Romance family of Spanish, French and Italian, said Liliana Sanchez, an associate professor and linguist at Rutgers University. So a Quechua speaker from Peru might not understand someone from Ecuador.

Dialects vary widely even within Ecuador, said Bernardo Encalada, a contractor who lives in Spring Valley. He grew up speaking Spanish, but he later used Quechua with customers when he sold personal-care products in Ecuador. His mother spoke the language with others from her generation.

Encalada, too, has seen people hide their Quechua heritage. "My race is Quechua itself," he said. "One should never feel humiliated."

In the United States, Quechua speakers are closing off a part of their minds if they lose their language and culture, said Santillan, who played his Andean music during a Spanish-language Mass at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Spring Valley.

"Music is one of the elements that helps a lot," he said, "to break those schemes, to break those superiority and inferiority complexes â€â€