Aymara (Aymar aru) is an Aymaran language spoken by the Aymara people of the Andes. It is one of only a handful of Native American languages with over three million speakers. Aymara, along with Quechua and Spanish, is an official language of Bolivia. It is also spoken to a much lesser extent in Chile and in Northwest Argentina.

Some linguists have claimed that Aymara is related to its more widely-spoken neighbour, Quechua. This claim, however, is disputed — although there are indeed similarities such as the nearly identical phonologies, the majority position among linguists today is that these similarities are better explained as areal features resulting from prolonged interaction between the two languages, and that they are not demonstrably related.

The Aymara language is an agglutinating and to a certain extent polysynthetic language, and has a subject–object–verb word order.

The old suggestion that the word "Aymara" comes from the Aymara words "jaya" (ancient) and "mara" (year, time) is almost certainly a quite mistaken folk etymology. Many linguists now favor the theory that the term came from an ethnic group from the Apurimac region known as the Aymaraes, but the etymology remains unclear. A full discussion of the possible origins of the word can be found in the book Lingüística Aimara by the respected Peruvian linguist Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino.

The Aymara or Aimara (Aymara: aymara  listen (help·info)) are an indigenous ethnic group in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America; about 2 million live in Bolivia, Peru and Chile. They lived in the region for many centuries before becoming a subject people of the Inca, and later of the Spanish in the 16th century. With the Spanish American Wars of Independence (1810-1825) Aymaras became subjects of Bolivia and Peru and after the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) Chile acquired an Aymaran population.

Zulma Yugar (born January 6, 1952) is a Bolivian politician and folk singer with international recognition and influence. She serves as the current Minister of Culture of Bolivian President Evo Morales' second term. Zulma is not part of the Democratic Cultural Revolution that President Evo Morales proclaims, as she has been saying, she got lucky and was given the opportunity to continue with the new "Ministry of Cultures" and since January 2010 she has been structuring her office, not giving continuity to the projects the newly Ministry left for her.

Yugar served on the jury for the UNESCO programme Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity and is credited by her friend Mr. R. Albro with lobbying successfully for the Oruro Carnival to be proclaimed a masterpiece in 2001.

Yugar has been Director for the Promotion of Culture within the Ministry of Culture, President of the Bolivian Association of Artists and Musicians, and President of the Bolivian National Council of Popular and Traditional Culture. She has received numerous awards and is a UNESCO Artist for Peace.