In northern La Paz, Bolivia, the Mosetén people, originally nomadic, have settled in an ecological transition zone where mountains and plains coexist. For centuries, they have faced pressures from Aymara and Quechua occupations to the west and missionary activities from the Amazon to the north. The recent inscription of the Mosetén-Spanish Dictionary (1874) into UNESCO's Memory of the World program represents a significant act of cultural resistance for a nation whose language, spoken by 737 individuals, is on the brink of extinction.
According to the 2012 census, 3,516 people identify as Mosetén, but only 414 men and 343 women actively speak the language, predominantly the elderly. Anthropologist Milton Eyzaguirre notes, 'The modernization process is causing children to gradually abandon the language. Additionally, teachers in the region are from the Andean area and speak Quechua and Aymara. The only language they have for communication is Spanish, although there are state efforts to promote the language.' In 2022, the Ministry of Education included its learning in school curricula.
Research links Mosetén to Macro-Pano (Peru-Bolivia) and Macro-Guaycurú (Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina). Eyzaguirre states, 'We understand that this language is spoken at a South American level because these populations were migrating permanently. Historical data suggests these migratory processes likely spanned these countries during the pre-Hispanic and colonial periods.' Despite this connection, the language is classified as vulnerable or endangered by UNESCO, with its disappearance deemed imminent.
Contact with Aymara and Quechua cultures has transformed Mosetén traditions, notably shifting from nomadism based on foraging and fishing to sedentarism. Eyzaguirre explains, 'Since the 1960s, there have been incursions by Quechua and Aymara for cacao, coffee, coca cultivation, and timber exploitation. They brought agricultural concepts and the notion of individual land ownership, contrasting with the Mosetén understanding of the Amazonian space as a vast territory traversed according to seasons and climatic conditions.'
The most intense process of acculturation occurred a century earlier through Franciscan missions, which imposed monogamous marriage, prohibited same-sex unions, and stripped away native names and spiritual practices. The missionaries produced the Mosetén-Spanish Dictionary, likely authored by Italian Benigno Bibolotti (1857-1868) or Spanish Nicolás Armentia (1873-1880). The Mosetén people’s nomadic lifestyle initially limited their interaction with Jesuit reductions established in the Amazon from 1609 until their expulsion in 1767. It was not until 1790, with the founding of the Mission of San Francisco de Mosetenes, that the Redemptorist congregation, through Franciscans, established contact with this indigenous nation.
Following Bolivia's independence in 1825, Franciscans were expelled due to their considerable city properties, but President Andrés de Santa Cruz invited them back around 1835 for strategic reasons. Eyzaguirre recounts, 'There were many areas with little state presence, and one way to articulate the country was through the Catholic religion.' The complex conversion process led to the creation of the Mosetén-Spanish Dictionary in 1874, a 341-page manuscript written with ferrogallate ink, characterized by its rough pages.
The dictionary's inscription as Memory of the World is justified by its representation of distinct communication styles between Mosetén men and women. The document illustrates gender-specific language use, a feature shared by various Amazonian societies. Eyzaguirre emphasizes, 'In these communities, there is a marked level of matrilineality, impacting language use, where women influence marriage decisions.'
The first page of the manuscript includes a sales receipt dated February 1940 from journalist León Loza to Arthur Posnansky, a renowned archaeologist. The museum plans to transcribe, edit, and publish a new edition of the dictionary, following a similar project for the Moxa language dictionary earlier this year.