[kspacewalk2]

There are a number of Native American languages that have numerous speakers, but until recently have been marginalized, repressed and ignored (and some to this day). Guarani is the most numerous, but also Quechua, Nahuatl, and the various Mayan languages (spoken by around half of Guatemalans, and another 2.5 million Mexicans).

[klipt]

I am shocked, shocked to learn that countries identifying as Latin America suppress non-Latin derived languages!

[jacobolus]

This is a very weird statement.

The problem is not the Spanish language. The problem is a colonial peasant economy/society that turned into a post-colonial peasant society, with land-owning quasi-nobility ruling over disempowered (in this case, indigenous) laborers and freely exercising their power to steal, rape, kill, etc., without penalty; it is a situation more or less comparable to peasant societies around the world and throughout history, which are always very exploitative and often racist.

Working class Spanish speakers living in towns were in many ways also economically exploited, but considered “better than indigenous people” to be a core part of their identities, and also felt free to beat them, steal from them, etc. where they found the opportunity. It’s a situation broadly comparable to race relations in the US south, where poor whites considered “better than blacks” to be a defining part of their identity.

Perhaps counterintuitively, the history of exploitation of indigenous communities, and the way indigenous people were shut out of many social and economic activities, led to the preservation of native languages.