Church and Monarchy before the Hispanic-American indigenous languages (1503-1803)

Abstract

Although the Spanish Crown, beginning in 1503, issued different directives on the education and the use of Spanish in the Americas, the Monarchy's linguistic policy, at least until 1770, actually favoured the development of the indigenous languages rather than the diffusion and establishment of Spanish in the United States, Hispanic America and part of Brazil. Under the guidelines of papal Rome, followed ad pedem litterae by the Spanish monarchs, the religious orders created and developed a linguistic and, in part, social model that encompassed the entire vast American territory in the period in question. However, in Aranjuez, on May 10, 1770 the pro-Enlightenment monarch Carlos III signed a Royal Decree “so that in the kingdoms of the Indies the different languages used might be eliminated, and only Castilian spoken”. This royal dictate and the forthcoming linguistic policies of the fledgling Spanish-American republics would decisively shape the fate of Spanish in the Americas; and with it, the fate of indigenous the original languages.