Latin Americans fight odds to keep Indian tongues alive

HUAMPAMI, Peru: In his first year at San Marcos University, Hermenegildo Espejo barely spoke, and certainly not in class.

His Spanish was rudimentary, his accent an embarrassment. Classmates in Lima, a two-day trip from his Amazon home town, laughed at his grammatical stumbles and odd pronunciation.

"I didn't understand anything. I couldn't pronounce words well," the 22-year-old Peruvian Indian recalled, wincing as he gazes out a taxi window on a rutted jungle road near his home.