On the non-creole basis for Afro-Bolivian Spanish

This article provides a sociohistorical and linguistic account for the development of Afro-Bolivian Spanish (ABS), an Afro-Hispanic vernacular spoken in Los Yungas, Department of La Paz, Bolivia. Previous research has indicated that ABS might be the descendent of an Afro-Hispanic pidgin (Lipski 2008), which first creolized in colonial times and eventually decreolized due to contact with Spanish after the Bolivian Land Reform of 1952.

The present study argues that ABS was probably never a creole, but rather a language relatively close to Spanish from its inception. The basis on which this claim is built consists of sociodemographic and linguistic data. The findings strongly indicate that the historical conditions for a creole language to emerge were not in place in Bolivia for the period under analysis (15th–19th century).