I don’t know if I totally agree with the characterization of Guaraní in Paraguay as the only language that managed to stay relevant at the national level. For most of the last five hundred years, the language was not the language of those in power. The language of the government, the language of schooling, the language of the elite, and the language of fine art was castellano. Also, Guaraní was not the only indigenous language to survive contact with Europeans to remain important. Though not recognized as national languages, hundreds of indigenous languages are spoken in the Western Hemisphere and are often extremely important regionally for indigenous people. Guaraní, like those other indigenous languages, was looked down upon and repressed for most of its recent history, and yet, its prevalence in colonial and national Paraguayan society is striking. How did this happen?

First, it is important to note that Guaraní was a language family, not a language. Indigenous people in what is today Northern Paraguay and Southern Brazil had different dialects than people in Eastern or Western Paraguay. Modern Paraguayan Guaraní is a more recent creation that grew out of the colonial cultural exchange starting in the 1500s. Once the Spanish arrived in the Río de la Plata region, they quickly settled in Paraguay, abandoning Buenos Aires in the process, in favor of the semi-sedentary agriculturalists of central South America. Once this happened, the language of both the colonizers and the colonized immediately began to change. The two languages mixed together in Spanish and indigenous settlements. Depending on who was interacting, speakers either spoke predominantly castellano with key Guaraní words mixed in or Guaraní with some castellano mixed in. Early on, it became a mixed language that facilitated communication between various interacting parties. This happened in both Spanish settlements and in isolated indigenous villages, where previously separated groups mixed together for the first time as a result of the arrival of Europeans. In general, Guaraní was much more affected than castellano. In fact, it might better be described as a creole or mixed language that eventually became regularized.

In addition to isolated Guaraní communities, the colonial context helped preserved the hybrid language. The famous Jesuit missions of Paraguay concentrated hundreds of thousands of indigenous people for centuries in religious and economic communities. Though they have always been controversial (historians like Branislava Susnik and Philip Caraman demonstrated that the missions were often brutal places), more recent historians like Barbara Ganson and James Schofield Saeger have shown that the missions allowed indigenous people a large amount of freedom to preserve their culture and protect their interests.

In the beginning, the Jesuits tried to spread Spanish, but this was abandoned in favor of Guaraní, since the semi-settled populations spoke several dialects of the language that were mutually intelligible. Cajetan Cattaneo, an Italian Jesuit in a letter to his brother in 1730, explained his experience with the language: “The only thing that gave me some pain, was the difficulty of the language. I have applied myself so assiduously to it that these two months I have catechized the children...Tho’ I now and then mistake one word for another, I find they understand me pretty well, as I do them by their answers. Those that answer best, I reward with pictures, and dismiss all my people well satisfied” Cattaneo shows that the language provided the Jesuits with a medium of communication through which they could spread the gospel. It also allowed them to quickly teach European values and agricultural methods. All of these were central to Spanish goals throughout the New World. As historian Lyman Johnson points out, Guaraní language became centrally important to trade in the region and allowed various individuals from all over South America to communicate. Eventually, to counter the growing threat of Brazilian slavers who were preying on the missions, the Jesuits organized Guaraní military forces, who spoke their native language, further protecting and fostering a sense of cultural and linguistic identity. Additionally, Guaranís who objected to life in the missions or in the colonial world could flee, finding communities of unincorporated natives deep in the rugged and forested terrain of central South America. Here too, the language survived largely outside of Spanish or Portuguese control. Finally, Paraguay remained on the fringes of the two major European empires. Lacking substantial, exploitable natural resources, the region and its indigenous inhabitants were (relatively) spared from the levels of involvement seen in other regions of the New World. Far fewer immigrants came to the region, and thus, Spanish speakers remained a significant minority. In 1750, there were roughly 150,000 Guaraní in the missions alone, while the Spanish and mestizo population combined hovered around 30,000. Those that spoke castellano often took Guaraní wives and mistresses, further increasing the population of Guaraní speakers who would have been raised by the mother in a culture of sharing. Following 1767, the Guaraní exited the missions en masse, allowing the language to diffuse throughout the Río de la Plata. In this way, Guaraní continued to thrive, slowly incorporating more Spanish elements like grammar and writing, but maintaining its overall integrity. The Spanish elite tried to stop it and often vilified it as the language that prevented progress, but they remained such a small sliver of the population that it made virtually no difference. Those that spoke castellano marked themselves as foreigners.

Following independence, Paraguay shut itself off from the world, pursuing a policy of nationalistic self-sufficiency, and given the penetration of Guaraní language and culture in Paraguayan society, this move promoted a more homogeneous population and culture. Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson point out that there was even a ban to prevent foreigners and Spanish elite from marrying among themselves. The education system and the government throughout the 1800s emphasized castellano, but Guaraní remained the language of the pueblo. During the Paraguayan War and the Chaco War, Guaraní was used by the military, which fostered easy communication between officers and soldiers. Also, Guaraní grew into more nationalistic and artistic forms during these periods when the language was strongly cultivated. Guaraní remained widely spoken by the lower and middle classes throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The language was slighted during national period by the wealthy elite, but during the twentieth century, pride in indigenous and working class heritage grew, eventually helping the language recognized as a national language in the 1960s and an official language in 1992. The language we know today though is very different from the one spoken by the original inhabitants of Paraguay. It is simpler and mixed, but it managed to remain the language of the people for centuries.