Full Description
During the mid-1990s, a bilingual intercultural education initiative was launched to promote the introduction of indigenous languages alongside Spanish in public elementary schools in Bolivia's indigenous regions. Bret Gustafson spent fourteen years studying and working in southeastern Bolivia with the Guarani, who were at the vanguard of the movement for bilingual education. Drawing on his collaborative work with indigenous organizations and bilingual-education activists as well as more traditional ethnographic research, Gustafson traces two decades of indigenous resurgence and education politics in Bolivia, from the 1980s through the election of Evo Morales in 2005. Bilingual education was a component of education reform linked to foreign-aid development mandates, and foreign aid workers figure in New Languages of the State, as do teachers and their unions, transnational intellectual networks, and assertive indigenous political and intellectual movements across the Andes.Gustafson shows that bilingual education is an issue that extends far beyond the classroom. Public schools are at the center of a broader battle over territory, power, and knowledge as indigenous movements across Latin America actively defend their languages and knowledge systems. In attempting to decolonize nation-states, the indigenous movements are challenging deep-rooted colonial racism and neoliberal reforms intended to mold public education to serve the market. Meanwhile, market reformers nominally embrace cultural pluralism while implementing political and economic policies that exacerbate inequality. Juxtaposing Guarani life, language, and activism with intimate portraits of reform politics among academics, bureaucrats, and others in and beyond La Paz, Gustafson illuminates the issues, strategic dilemmas, and imperfect alliances behind bilingual intercultural education.
Contents
About the Series ix
Acknowledgments xi
Acronyms xv
On Languages and Labels xix
Introduction. Ethnographic Articulations in the Age of Pachakuti 1
Part 1. Resurgent Knowledge
1. Soldiers, Priests, and Schools: State Building in the Andes and the Guarani Frontier 33
Interlude. To Camiri 61
2. Guarani Scribes: Bilingual Education as Indigenous Resurgence 65
Interlude. To Itavera 95
3. Guarani Katui: Schooling, Knowledge, and Movement in Itavera 101
Part 2. Transnational Articulations
Interlude. To La Paz, via Thailand 135
4. Networking Articulations: EIB from Project to Policy 143
Interlude. Bolivia or Yugoslavia 171
5. Prodding Nerves: Intercultural Disruption and Managerial Control 175
Part 3. Return to Struggle
Interlude. La Indiada, como para Dar Miedo 209
6. Insurgent Citizenship: Interculturalism beyond the School 215
Interlude. Interculturalism to Decolonization 247
7. Shifting States 253
Notes 285
Glossary 301
References 303
Index 319
