This paper highlights the systematic nature of word order variation in Chanka Quechua. In the Peruvian Andes, social norms require Western practices for formal situations, while traditional Andean customs suggest familiarity, even inadequacy. These ideologies transfer onto language use: Spanish, the majority language, is standard speech and Quechua, the minority language, is non-standard (Zavala 2014). Rapidly increasing urban migration and assimilatory pressure in the city have thus led to a widespread shift to Spanish for economic and social gain. This means that urban Quechua has more contact with Spanish than rural speech. The diglossia nonetheless disregards possible Quechua-internal variation, and the dearth of variationist studies on Quechua propagates this perception. The quantitative analysis found that less educated speakers (often older, female, rural, and/or nonfluent in Spanish) have higher rates of preverbal objects (SOV). Case marking is almost always present, while an innovative use of determiners is increasingly found for younger, more educated speakers. Linguistically, a preverbal object is more likely to appear if the phrase has an overt subject, a pronoun or nominalized verb object, an object phrase of two or more words, an object with an overt determiner, or an object marked for topic or focus. These results indicate a contact effect of Spanish on Quechua usage: speakers with more education and Spanish systematically show more Spanish-like syntactic productions, namely post-verbal objects, and use of determiners. Recognition of this variation in education will encourage language maintenance by Quechua speakers who utilize non-canonical forms.