This groundbreaking volume describes unprecedented changes in education across Latin America, resulting from the endorsement of Indigenous peoples' rights through the development of intercultural bilingual education. The chapters evaluate the ways in which cultural and language differences are being used to create national policies that affirm the presence of Indigenous peoples and their cultures within Mexico, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala. Describing the collaboration between grassroots movements and transnational networks, the authors analyze how social change is taking place at the local and regional levels, and they present case studies that illuminate the expansion of intercultural bilingual education. This book is both a call to action for researchers, teachers, policy-makers and Indigenous leaders, and a primer for practitioners seeking to provide better learning opportunities for a diverse student body.
Taking on existing interpretations of "Peruvian exceptionalism," this book presents a multi-sited ethnographic exploration of the local and transnational articulations of indigenous movements, multicultural development policies, and indigenous citizenship in Peru.
This book addresses the social implications of climate change and climatic variability on indigenous peoples and communities living in the highlands, lowlands, and coastal areas of Latin America and the Caribbean. Across the region, indigenous people already perceive and experience negative effects of climate change and variability. Many indigenous communities find it difficult to adapt in a culturally sustainable manner. In fact, indigenous peoples often blame themselves for the changes they observe in nature, despite their limited emission of green house gasses. Not only is the viability of their livelihoods threatened, resulting in food insecurity and poor health, but also their cultural integrity is being challenged, eroding the confidence in solutions provided by traditional institutions and authorities. The book is based on field research among indigenous communities in three major eco-geographical regions: the Amazon; the Andes and Sub-Andes; and the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. It finds major inter-regional differences in the impacts observed between areas prone to rapid- and slow-onset natural hazards. In Mesoamerican and the Caribbean, increasingly severe storms and hurricanes damage infrastructure and property, and even cause loss of land, reducing access to livelihood resources. In the Columbian Amazon, changes in precipitation and seasonality have direct immediate effects on livelihoods and health, as crops often fail and the reproduction of fish stock is threatened by changes in the river ebb and flow. In the Andean region, water scarcity for crops and livestock, erosion of ecosystems and changes in biodiversity threatens food security, both within indigenous villages and among populations who depend on indigenous agriculture, causing widespread migration to already crowded urban areas. The study aims to increase understanding on the complexity of how indigenous communities are impacted by climate change and the options for improving their resilience and adaptability to these phenomena. The goal is to improve indigenous peoples rights and opportunities in climate change adaptation, and guide efforts to design effective and sustainable adaptation initiatives.
This book presents a vision of bilingual education in six South American nations: three Andean countries, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, and three 'Southern Cone' countries, Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. It provides an integrated perspective, including work carried out in majority as well as minority language contexts, referring to developments in the fields of indigeneous, Deaf, and international bilingual and multilingual provision.
Indigenous people in Latin America have mobilized in unprecedented ways - demanding recognition, equal protection, and subnational autonomy. These are remarkable developments in a region where ethnic cleavages were once universally described as weak. Recently, however, indigenous activists and elected officials have increasingly shaped national political deliberations. Deborah Yashar explains the contemporary and uneven emergence of Latin American indigenous movements - addressing both why indigenous identities have become politically salient in the contemporary period and why they have translated into significant political organizations in some places and not others. She argues that ethnic politics can best be explained through a comparative historical approach that analyzes three factors: changing citizenship regimes, social networks, and political associational space. Her argument provides insight into the fragility and unevenness of Latin America's third wave democracies and has broader implications for the ways in which we theorize the relationship between citizenship, states, identity, and social action.
Indigenous peoples around the world are calling for control over their education in order to reaffirm their identities and defend their rights. In Latin America the indigenous peoples, national governments and international organisations have identified intercultural education as a means of contributing to this process. The book investigates education for and by indigenous peoples and examines the relationship between theoretical and methodological developments and formal practice. An ethnographic study of the Arakmbut people of the Peruvian Amazon, provides a detailed example of the social, cultural and educational change indigenous peoples are experiencing, an insight into Arakmbut oral learning and teaching practices as well as a review of their conceptualisations of knowledge, pedagogy and evaluation. The models of intercultural education being promoted by Latin American governments are, nevertheless, biliterate and school-based. The book analyses indigenous and non-indigenous models based on different conceptualisations of culture and curriculum in the context of the Arakmbut search for an education which respects their dynamic oral cultural traditions and identity, provides them with a qualitatively relevant education about the wider society and addresses the intercultural lives they lead.
This open access book takes a critical and international perspective to the mainstreaming of the Global Citizenship Concept and analyses the key issues regarding global citizenship education across the world. In that respect, it addresses a pressing need to provide further conceptual input and to open global citizenship agendas to diversity and indigeneity. Social and political changes brought by globalisation, migration and technological advances of the 21st century have generated a rise in the popularity of the utopian and philosophical idea of global citizenship. In response to the challenges of today’s globalised and interconnected world, such as inequality, human rights violations and poverty, global citizenship education has been invoked as a means of preparing youth for an inclusive and sustainable world. In recent years, the development of global citizenship education and the building of students’ global citizenship competencies have become a focal point in global agendas for education, international educational assessments and international organisations. However, the concept of global citizenship education still remains highly contested and subject to multiple interpretations, and its operationalisation in national educational policies proves to be challenging. This volume aims to contribute to the debate, question the relevancy of global citizenship education’s policy objectives and to enhance understanding of local perspectives, ideologies, conceptions and issues related to citizenship education on a local, national and global level. To this end, the book provides a comprehensive and geographically based overview of the challenges citizenship education faces in a rapidly changing global world through the lens of diversity and inclusiveness.
This book is a comparative study of educational policies over the past two decades in Latin America. These policies, enacted through constitutional reforms, sought to protect the right of Indigenous peoples to a culturally inclusive education. The book assesses the impact of these policies on educational practice and the on-going challenges that countries still face in delivering an equitable and culturally responsive education to Indigenous children and youth. The chapters, each written by an expert in the field, demonstrate how policy changes are transforming education systems in Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru. Going beyond the classroom, they highlight the significance of these reforms in promoting intercultural dialogue in Latin American societies.
Indigenous people constitute a large portion of Latin America's population and suffer from severe and widespread poverty. They are more likely than any other groups of a country's population to be poor. This study documents their socioeconomic situation and shows how it can be improved through changes in policy-influenced variables such as education. The authors review the literature of indigenous people around the world and provide a statistical overview of those in Latin America. Case studies profile the indigenous populations in Bolivia, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru, examining their distribution, education, income, labour force participation and differences in gender roles. A final chapter presents recommendations for conducting future research.
Indigenous Citizens challenges the commonly held assumption that early nineteenth-century Mexican state-building was a failure of liberalism. By comparing the experiences of two Mexican states, Oaxaca and Yucatán, Caplan shows how the institutions and ideas associated with liberalism became deeply entrenched in Mexico's regions, but only on locally acceptable terms. Faced with the common challenge of incorporating new institutions into political life, Mexicans—be they indigenous villagers, government officials, or local elites—negotiated ways to make those institutions compatible with a range of local interests. Although Oaxaca and Yucatán both had large indigenous majorities, the local liberalisms they constructed incorporated indigenous people differently as citizens. As a result, Oaxaca experienced relative social peace throughout this era, while Yucatán exploded with indigenous rebellion beginning in 1847. This book puts the interaction between local and national liberalisms at the center of the narrative of Mexico's nineteenth century. It suggests that "liberalism" must be understood not as an overarching system imposed on the Mexican nation but rather as a set of guiding assumptions and institutions that Mexicans put to use in locally specific ways.
