Indigenous Language Day in Peru

The purpose of this celebration is to promote the use, preservation, development, recovery and dissemination of native languages as intangible cultural heritage.

The commemoration was established during the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces by General Juan Velasco Alvarado through Decree Law 21156, of May 27, 1975 as a way of recognizing the multiculturalism of Peru, where very diverse cultural formations coexist for thousands of years or nations that speak their own languages and preserve their own culture. In this process of recognition of the original languages, the Peruvian writer José María Arguedas made a great contribution, who in his works reproduced the situation of oppression in which the indigenous people of Peru lived because of not mastering the Spanish language.