The Congreso de laS LenguaS (Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Congress of the Languages) was a cultural event that took place in Rosario

Rosario

Rosario is the largest city in the province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It is located northwest of Buenos Aires, on the western shore of the Paraná River and has 1,159,004 residents as of the ....

, Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, from 15 November to 20 November 2004. It was a series of meetings and lectures devoted to the discussion of cultural and linguistic diversity in Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

, intended initially as indirect criticism and counter-event for the Third International Congress of the Spanish Language

Third International Congress of the Spanish Language

The Third International Congress of the Spanish Language was a cultural event that took place in Rosario, Argentina, on 17, 18 and 19 November 2004....

 which was being celebrated at about the same time. It was presided over by the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...

 Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel is an Argentine sculptor, architect and pacifist. He was the recipient of the 1980 Nobel Peace Prize.-Biography:Pérez Esquivel was born in Buenos Aires to a Spanish fisherman who emigrated to Argentina...

.

The very name of the Congreso attempted to emphasize the plurality of traditions of the region, over the de facto dominant status of Spanish brought about by the colonization

Spanish colonization of the Americas

Colonial expansion under the Spanish Empire was initiated by the Spanish conquistadores and developed by the Monarchy of Spain through its administrators and missionaries. The motivations for colonial expansion were trade and the spread of the Christian faith through indigenous conversions...

 and the ensuing decimation of the indigenous languages of the Americas

Indigenous languages of the Americas

Indigenous languages of the Americas are spoken by indigenous peoples from Alaska and Greenland to the southern tip of South America, encompassing the land masses which constitute the Americas. These indigenous languages consist of dozens of distinct language families as well as many language...

. It is due to this emphasis that the S marking the plural

Plural

In linguistics, plurality or [a] plural is a concept of quantity representing a value of more-than-one. Typically applied to nouns, a plural word or marker is used to distinguish a value other than the default quantity of a noun, which is typically one...

 in the article las "the" and the noun lenguas "tongues, languages" is in uppercase.

Rodolfo Hachén, a professor of ethnolinguistics at the National University of Rosario and one of the organizers, stated that they objected the Third International Congress of the Spanish Language because it was intended to affirm the appropriation of Spanish by the Association of Spanish Language Academies

Association of Spanish Language Academies

The Association of Spanish Language Academies is the entity which regulates the Spanish language. It was created in Mexico in 1951 and represents the union of all the separate academies in the Spanish-speaking world....

, which officially regulates the language. Hachén countered that the only "owners" of a language are its speakers. The organizers of the Third Congress pointed out that such criticism are out of date, since the Association of Spanish Language Academies has revised its policies on the acceptance of linguistic innovation and variants

Spanish dialects and varieties

Spanish dialects and varieties are the regional variants of the Spanish language, some of which are quite divergent from one another, especially in pronunciation and vocabulary, and less so in grammar....

.