Aymara language has a good official alphabet called "único" released via the law DS 20227 (05/09/1984) by the Bolivian government. Also it was recognized via the law RS 1218 (11/18/1985) by the Peruvian government. This alphabet has 26 consonants y 3 vowels. Each Aymara word has an unique stressed syllable. Normally they are stressed next to last syllable. However the contracted words, with loss of the last vowel, may have the stress on the last syllable. For instance Walikiwa(=O.K.) by contraction becomes Walikiw. Since the readers interested on Aymara books are few, the publications are very limited. However, there are non government efforts from organizations which are publishing in Aymara. An example of such organizations is RADIO SAN GABRIEL de LA PAZ, la voz del pueblo aymara. It is very significant to see that the entire transmission of this radio is in Aymara. The productors, the programmers, the broadcasters, etc. are authentic Aymara speakers and, furthermore, it has a little Aymara library selling Aymara books published by themselves.

Aymara language is an agglutinating system of roots and suffixes. It has been shown that it has more than 130 suffixes. By composing adequately the roots and suffixes M.J. Hardman had estimated an Aymara vocabulary with more than 363.394.720 words. A single example of such construction: consider the verb(root) aruña(=to speak) and 14 suffixes, then by combing them is obtained the word aruskipasipxañanakasakipunirakïspawa(=It is my personal knowledge that it is necessary for all of us, including you, to make the effort to communicate).
Also, Aymara language has 4 grammatical persons: Singular: 1)Naya= I, 2)Juma= You, 3)Jiwasa= You and I, 4)Jupa= He/She. Plural: 1)Nänaka= We (interlocutor excluded) 2)Jumanaka=You, 3)Jiwasanaka= We (interlocutor included) 4)Jupanaka=They.
All the European languages, included the English, obey the two-valued Aristotelian logic, i.e., any sentence may have only two values either true or false. Based on the three-valued logic paradigm of the Polish professor J. Lukasiewicz, Ivan Guzman de Rojas proposed a model of Aymara sentences with 3 values: true(jisa), false(jani) and maybe-true/maybe-false(ina). Finally, there are a list with 190 words which are commons for both Aymara and Quechua. But, according to M.J. Hardman, a structural analysis of the respective grammars along a comparative analysis of the different regional dialects of the Quechua lead to conclude that such a list of common words must be a result of interligual borrows instead a common origin.

Aymara People History

Ethnically the Aymara people are from the same group who populated all the Americas since 12000 BC and who are mostly known as indians. There are strong and deep ties between the Titicaca lake and the Aymara people. Such ties begin with the name titicaca which comes from to Aymara words titi(=cat), and qaqa(=grey colour), that is, titicaca means "the grey cat". The Titicaca plateau is over 12.000 feet above the sea level, therefore it should have a non-living climate, but the waters of the lake warm all the region allowing to live millions of persons. Pedro Cieza de Leon tell us that this plateu was the most populated territory of the entire Inca Empire.
The language of Tiwanaku is still a controversial issue. In the XIX century the frenchmen Castelnau and others proposed that the builders of Tiwanaku were from a dissapeared race, probably from Egypt, and the present Aymara "imbecilic race" had not any chance to be descendants of these skilled builders. On the other hand Arthur Posnansky asserted that Tiwanaku was the cradle of the american man. For him the builders of Tiwanaku migrate to other places of all the americas engendering all the pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas. Although this, Posnasky gave not any credit to the present indians inhabitating the Titicaca plateu as descendants of the builders of Tiwanaku. Recently the historian/anthropogist Alan Kolata is proposing a new theory based on new excavations and the experimentation of the "field raised" agricultural method. According to this theory Tiwanaku was a multilingual state with Aymara, Pukina and Uru/Chipaya living together in a harmonic way. After Tiwanaku, the most important Aymara societies with independent political organizations were the Lupaqas, the Collas(Qullas), the Paqajes, the Carangas, the Canas, the Canchis, and the Charcas. Among the Aymara states, it seems that the Collas were the first to either contact or resist the Inca expansion. The Incas after conquering this region and the south called such territory as Collasuyo (Qullasuyu). Cieza de Leon followed such a denomination, that is, for him Colla meant Aymara people and the Titicaca region. Today, Colla is equivalent to Aymara.
The conquest of the Aymara states by the Inca empire, also, has not an accurate version. One hand of historians say that the Inca empire attached the Aymara people in a pacific and respectfull way and the empire learned and took the Aymara culture as the Romans took the Greek culture. On the other hand some other historians theorize that the conquest of the Aymara states were after bloody wars and under the Inca dominance there were many uprisings. Whatever the right version on the Inca's dominance, for a some reason the Incas did not were able to impose the imperial Quechua language over the Aymara language, at least not around the Titicaca lake. Only under the Spanish domain began the penetration of the Quechua language by the North side. However, nowadays the Titicaca plateu still have Aymara sepakers majority.

The conquest of the enormous Inca empire began when a bunch of one hundred and half Spaniards, suposedly attending a party invitation of the Inca emperor, deceived and took him as hostage. Such a situation was a completely new one because in the theocratic Inca state its emperor was believed as a god. The astonished Inca army was unable to have a quick reaction to face such a crucial circumstance. Meanwhile these few Spaniards were able to do alliances with some native nations conquered before by the Incas. These nations saw the Spaniards as the warlords to lead them to its independence from the Incas. After murdering the Inca emperor, the Spaniards, allied with thousands of native fighters, especially from the Cañaris and the Wankas, were invincible in the decisive battles. A few years after the comsummation of the conquest, much of these native allied were very repentant from its fatal mistake, but was too late.
Under the Spanish rule the situation of the Aymara people and all the other native people was even worse than the African slaves because these last, at least had a money price. The natives (indiada) were considered objects found into the encomiendas and completely free for the Spanish lord of such encomienda. Thus, they were forced to do the most harsh/dangerous work inside the mines where millions of natives died, especially at Potosi. This was a real genocide committed by Spain which needs, at least, a formal statement of both repentance and apologies.

Immediatly after the last battle of the independence war in 1824, the entire territory where live the Aymara people was inside the Peruvian Republic. One year later, in 1825, the Alto Peru region separates from Peru becoming the Republic of Bolivia. Such separation broke the Titicaca plateau and hence the Aymara people in two chunks, each one belonging to two different countries. Years later, in 1879 broke out the war of Chile against both Bolivia and Peru. Chile won the war and hence it conquered some Aymara regions from Bolivia and Peru. In this way, nowadays the Aymara people are divided into three countries.
With the arise of the new republics the supossed enhancement of the Aymara and other native people was not real. Furthermore, some historians think that it was worse than the Spanish colonial times. Until the first half of the XX century; the pongos, almost slave indian servants, were very common into the houses of rich white hacendados. Nowadays, the new native Aymara speakers mostly born in remote regions and for the improvement of their lives they are forced to go to the urban centers where, soon they feel silly because their Aymara origin.
The Spanish speakers of Bolivia, Peru and Chile do not tolerate the native languages. Hence, the urbanized native Aymara speakers are forced to hide its mother tongue before the society and its sons. This results in the high level of decreasing rate of Aymara speakers. During almost all the years of the XX century there were organizations claiming to be representatives of the Aymara and other native indians. The people have a very limited confidence on the leaders of these organizations. This happens because these supposed leaders abandoned the native cause after they had got benefits for himselves. On the other hand, it is very significant notice that there are some people with Aymara/native origin enjoying good social positions after either working or studying hardly. Because their honesty, they did not used the Aymara cause in their careers. In Bolivia, by the first time, during the presidential period 1993-1998 the native Aymara speaker Victor Hugo Cárdenas was elected vice-presindent of the Republic of Bolivia. In Puno city, which is the capital of Puno departament in Peru, the native Aymara speaker Gregorio Ticona Gomez was elected as the major of the city for the period 1998-2003. At September 2000, the Aymara leader Felix Quispe, el Mallku was recognized as a national wide figure in Bolivia after a victorious strike demandig for rights of the indigenous people.

Aymara Culture

It is comprehensible that along with the bumps of the political Aymara structures, the Aymara culture underwent in its sequenciality with advance and backward movements. One of the highest points of the development of the Aymara culture was forced by the, almost, 12.000 feet above sea level of the Titicaca plateau. This altitude was (and still is) a limitation for the maize's grow that was the nourishing base of almost all the towns of pre-Columbian America. Ancient Aymaras solved this nutritional problem obtaining the potato crop from a wild variety which, still today, can be found in almost any place of the Titicaca plateau during the austral summer months and which is well known as qamaqi ch'uqi(fox's potato). When the Spaniards conquered the Inca empire found the potato in all the places of the Tahuantinsuyo, but they perceived that the intensive variation was only given in the Titicaca plateau where there were more than 200 varieties of this tubercle. The potato was relegated, it was not accepted, as eatable during two centuries in Europe until the Irish, without having no other nourishing option began to cultivate it and later depending exclusively on the potato. Such dependency reaches dramatic levels when appears a plague to destroy whole harvests which causes the famous Irish famine. The later welcome and world-wide acceptance of potato as food of first order allows to affirm that the legacy of the potato is the main contribution to humanity of the ancient Aymara culture .

The Aymara music and dance are one of the most significant fundamentals for the so called andean music and danzas folkloricas which now is widely accepted and practiced. Because of the discrimination of the indians the Aymara musical instrument siqu (zampoña) and other andean instruments as the charango(khirkhinchu), quena, were performed only by the native people(indians). But the western wave of the rebellious youth of the sixties extends to Latin America and in Chile this youthful revolt is pronounced using musical instruments of the indians. Thus, in the 2nd half of the sixties it was born the then called, nueva música or música protesta which was music composed and executed by Chilean students using Andean instruments. Such music had a message of left partner-political-ideological content. The flourishing Latin-American dictatorships of 70's and 80's did whereupon the Latin-American youth to adopt the nueva música as its instrument of manifestation of their art and ideas. This gave a prestigious aureole to this musical theme so that its commercial acceptance was unavoidable. Other instruments were added and was a change of music label nueva música for the one of commercial acceptance musica andina(andean music)as it is world-wide known in the present time.

There are many dances with aymara origin. This diversity has turned to Oruro and Puno like the folkloric capitals of Bolivia and Peru, respectively. Native dances and mestizo dances are classified in two groups. The origins of the native dances go back to times previous to the Spanish conquest, therefore they have few elements of European origin. Unfortunately, these dances have few acceptance in the Altiplano cities, solely being practiced by countryside native people. Examples of these dances: Chaqallus, Lawa K'umus, Chuqilas, K'usillos, etc. On the other hand the mestizo dances are the ones with later origin to the Spanish conquest. Thus, they have European and native elements in a balanced way. At the times of celebrations, specially catholic, widely they are accepted and executed in the urban centers of the plateau of the Titicaca. Its suits, called traje de luces(suit of lights), for the similarity of the suits of the Spanish bullfigthers, are richly ornamented by false gem stones causing that his acquiring/rent be expensive. Examples of these dances: diablada, caporal, morenada, etc.