by Macarena Montero Lobos
This is PART I of the “Exploring Latin American contributions to education” series. All parts consist of a blog conversation and a video intervention. This part starts off with a conversation between Macarena and Aisling Walsh.
Aisling was awarded a PhD in Sociology from the University of Galway in 2023 and holds an LLM in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from the Irish Centre for Human Rights and a BA in Sociology, Politics and Spanish in the same university. Her PhD focused on feminist practices of healing justice in Guatemala and was supported by the Andrew Grene Postgraduate Scholarship for Post-Conflict Resolution from the Irish Research Council. She has over 7 years of experience working in communications, advocacy and activism with international development organisations including the UN and INGOs in Ireland, Guatemala, Mexico, Bolivia and Timor Leste. Currently, Aisling is working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick on a project exploring alternative pedagogies in Palestine. See her work in: https://aislingwrites.net/
Originating from Ireland, Aisling has lived in Latin America for over 14 years, including Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, and especially Guatemala, where she has been for the past 10 years. It has been interesting to share with her and learn from the perspective of someone who has voluntarily delved into the depths of Abya Yala[1].
We discussed the dissonances of education in Latin America, and how a region with such cultural and ideological richness, which has been a true guide in terms of envisioning social transformation, emancipation, and resistance, with proposals such as Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed or the philosophy of Buen Vivir of the Andean indigenous peoples, finds itself immersed in a series of contradictions and struggles that have not allowed it to authentically lead its own destiny.
Latin America has been historically shaped. Since colonial times, foreign policies have shaken the territory, introducing a combination of the colonial economic conceptions of ‘progress’, the Christian religious conception of ‘salvation’ and later, the neoliberal ideology. Chile, my country of origin, during the 1970s and 1980s, was the laboratory for the Chicago school of economics inspired by Milton Friedman’s free-market theories. It did so by forming a group of Chilean economists (the ‘Chicago Boys’), who, thanks to the dictatorship, were able to introduce neoliberalism into the constitution in all areas, including social rights such as health, pensions, and the environment, a model that has spread throughout the continent.
The privatisation of education reached Latin America with the premise that the private sector has greater capacity and efficiency to provide access to optimal education. However, what has actually been observed is the segmentation of the educational system, with education for the rich and another for the poor, as it is only available to those who can afford it. Aisling told me that a ‘good’ school in Guatemala is located in the most exclusive areas of the city and costs on average two minimum wages, so instead of contributing to the transformation of society, it seems to be at the service of the elites, the same reality that exists in Chile. Did ‘education’ ever seek social justice and equality? Or has ‘education’ usually sought to preserve and reproduce coloniality and power?
The education system is reproducing inequality in countries that already have structurally segmented societies. However, the school is not only crossed by class issues but also by race. My hair stood on end when Aisling told me about the Ladinos, as they are popularly called in Guatemala those who do not recognise themselves as indigenous even though they are at least part indigenous, rejecting their history and identity, even though indigeneity has so much to teach us. Tenorio says that shame is an emotional response to the perceived superiority of the “others.” That shame is real and I know it, because of my brown skin, because of the features of my face. But how is it possible to feel ashamed of being indigenous in one of the countries with the highest indigenous population in the region?
During the 20th century, schools implemented an educational model that reinforced the stigma of indigenous identity. On the one hand, the curriculum in Guatemala (as well as in Latin America) has been built on a racist basis, as it has taught the colonial time as a period of salvation of the continent that should be celebrated instead of criticised, as it brought language, culture, and religion, denying the vast knowledge reached by the Maya in various areas, such as astronomy, agriculture, and architecture. Thus, Ladino-centric schools taught their students to eat with cutlery instead of using their hands and to replace corn with bread, among other cultural assimilation practices. On the other hand, Guatemalan society maintains a colonial structure, with an oligarchy self-identified as criollos, which was the term of the colonial period to refer to the descendants of Spaniards or Europeans born in America, as a way to deny mestizaje, which is the process of mixing between cultures.
There has been progress during the later decades of the 20th century and the 21st century, with left-wing governments in the recognition of indigenous rights, but there is still much work to be done. The multicultural policies developed in recent decades have instituted a discourse that promotes diversity; however, they do not alter the structures that operate under inequality and racism, perpetuating colonialism.
We must also not forget about gender, as gender is an essential consideration in any discussion of race and class intersectionality. Aisling highlighted that binary gender was introduced with colonialism, while pre-colonial societies acknowledged sexual diversity. However, not all indigenous women identify as feminists. For example, in Chile, women from the Mapuche community consider feminism to be a Western construction focused on an identity that does not represent indigenous women and their relationship with culture and nature.
Therefore, to achieve an emancipatory education in Latin America, one that is devoid of discrimination and acknowledges individuals as agents capable of shaping their own destinies and leading their own narratives, it necessitates a racially-conscious, class-aware, and gender-inclusive approach, to then tackle issues of recognition and redistribution. Once these objectives are attained, education holds the potential to facilitate development of individual and collective identities, emerging from the inside, and embodying authentic presence.
[1] Indigenous name to the continent