[1] According to Alan Durston,[2] on November 8, 1953, Faustino Espinoza Navarro[es] ("El Inca"), working with other Quechua-speaking artists Santiago Astete Chocano, Father Jorge A. Lira and Andrés Alencastre Gutiérrez (Killku Warak'a), founded the Academia de la Lengua Quechua (Sp: 'Academy of the Quechua Language').
On December 10, 1958, the government of Manuel Prado Ugarteche enacted Law 13059, which formally recognized the Peruvian Academy of the Quechua Language.
The Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua operates independently of the Peruvian State, though it considers itself an integral part of it.
There is ongoing debate regarding whether the currently operating Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua (AMLQ) is the legal entity under public law as established by the regulations.
The preamble of the ministerial resolution on this issue articulates what remains the official legal stance of the State regarding the AMLQ.
[15] In 2010, four members of the Academy initiated a hunger strike lasting two weeks as a protest against the lack of budget and the absence of regulation of their statutes, which they also claimed were outdated.
In 2016, an arbitration commission of Indecopi determined that the existing Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua (AMLQ) was not the public entity as defined by current regulations.
Likewise, it is noted that the law of creation of the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua is not in accordance with the current regulations in force.
It follows that said institution de facto develops activities without having authorization from the Ministry of Culture; as well as it lacks existence, due to the fact that it does not have legal status in force, therefore, the Commission agrees to specify that the accused insofar as he directs said establishment and uses the denomination of Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua, through two signs, with the purpose of attracting users, becomes a beneficiary of the publicity disseminated.
As of December 2023, the board of directors included Fernando Hermoza, David Quispe Orosco, Miguel Sánchez Andia, Julia Qquenaya Apaza, and Ronal Cjuyro Mescco.
[22] Members of the AMLQ maintain views on the origins and spread of the Quechua language that are considered outdated by specialists, given dialectological and historical evidence.
For example, in 2020, then-president Juana Rodríguez Torres claimed that Cuzco Quechua was the variety spread northward by the Inca Pachacútec, who, according to her, was primarily responsible for the Quechuization of the Andean region.
[23] David Samanez Flórez, another member of the Academy, has continued to assert that Quechua originated in the Cuzco area, where he believes it has been present since the preceramic period—an idea refuted by specialists since the 1960s.
001 of October 12, 1990, "ratifies the 1975 Basic Alphabet of Imperial Quechua," which consists of 31 graphemes: five vowels and 26 consonants for the Qosqo-Puno region.
Members of the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua (AMLQ) frequently refer disparagingly to language policymakers within the Ministries of Education and Culture, as well as to academics specializing in the Andean region.
Recommendations also included encouraging affiliates to distribute language-related publications so that the institution could archive all works as part of its heritage.
[32][33] In November 2010, the VI World Congress of Quechua, titled Pachakutip K'anchaynin ("New times of prosperity and change are shining on us"), was held in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
The AMLQ has influenced various local and regional regulations, often receiving support from Cuzco authorities who viewed its pentavocal system as a regionalist stance.
Furthermore, the ordinance mandates the compulsory teaching and learning of the Quechua language at all levels of initial, primary, secondary, and non-university higher education, especially in predominantly Quechua-speaking areas of the Cusco department.
Although the ordinance does not mention the Academia Mayor de la Lengua Quechua (AMLQ), it reflects the institution's influence on regional language policies.
Article Two.- TO PROVIDE that the use, oral, written management and compulsory teaching of the Quechua Language variety Qosqo - Qollao pentavocal in all levels and educational modalities (initial, primary, secondary, higher university and non-university) of the Department of Cusco, according to the linguistic cultural identity that corresponds to the Andean and Amazonian inhabitants of the Department of Cusco, using it indistinctly with other languages such as Spanish, be incorporated into the regional educational curriculum in a mandatory manner.One of the objectives of this regulation was to establish that intercultural bilingual education in the region would use the AMLQ orthography.
The ordinance cited a technical report from the Department of Linguistics at the National University San Antonio Abad of Cusco as support.
[38] In 2019, after requesting another technical-linguistic report from the same university—which was provided by its Department of Linguistics on November 8, 2021[39]—the educational authorities decided not to implement the pentavocalism mandated by the ordinance.
For example, chairwoman Juana Rodríguez Torres affirms that it was the Cuzco variety that was diffused northward by the Inca Pachacutec and who was the main responsible for its diffussion within the Andean world.
001 from the 12th of October in 1990 "ratifies the Basic Imperial Quechua Alphabet of 1975, composed of 31 graphemes: five vowels and 26 consonants from Qosqo Puno."
In that context, many AMLQ members and alumni have equated writing with three vowel letters as using a non-Cuzco variety of Quechua (usually labeled as "Chanka" or "ayacuchano").
"[47] The organization has also opposed the use of the macro-dialectal category "Southern Quechua" in Peruvian state policies, such as in the development of intercultural bilingual education materials.
[...] judging by its shortcomings, the work does not contribute to the achievement of the autonomy of the language learner, so it is not a thinking tool for encoding or decoding.
Finally, if the DAMLQ (1995) is a kind of academic material, encyclopedic and tourism manual; then it is a hybrid and flawed lexicographic work.
Critics describe the AMLQ's position as lacking technical rigor, not aligning with established phonological theory, and question the intellectual honesty of the arguments presented.