vile employees for Spanish and Creole overlords (Vega, 1989, pp. 31-38).) This population shift has left the Andean highlands dominated by indigenous Native Americans. The actual ethnic breakdown of the Peruvian population, based upon 1990 estimates, find Native Americans comprising 45% of the population; Mestizos (mixed Native American/European ancestry) at 37%; Creole (white ancestry, usually Spanish) at 15%. Other estimates put the Native American population as high as 52.5% of the population. Among highland Native Americans, the Quechua linguistic group is predominant, accounting for the eight major dialects of the region (Garcia, 1991, p. 557).
As a matter of social status, the position of the indigenous peoples, and native speakers, is very low in Peru. Until 20th century attempts at corrective social legislation, Native Americans were all but excluded from social participation beyond serving as a bound labor force to the Spanish and Creole autocracy. The Mestizo population is almost completely urban and Spanish-speaking; with the coming of national independence in the early 1800s, Mestizos joined the Creole minority in oppressing the indigenous peoples. As a typical sign of "assimilation" and status today, the urbanized Native American will speak only Spanish, denying the ability to speak an indigenous language: bilingualism, officially recognized, is not a socially respected cultural skill (Hudson, 1993, pp. 95-102; Morales, 1989, pp. 17-18).
The Quechua word that Native American Peruvian highlanders use for themselves is Runakuna - native people. The Runakuna are a pre-Columbian people. The first great migrations into the Andean highlands are estimated to have begun 20,000 years ago. Coca cultivation and chewing date back to the first definitively dated settlements, circa 2500 B.C. At that time it was generally associated with rituals and religious practices and was not a widespread custom among the gener...