New Languages of the State

Gustafson Bret Gustafson

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.

Sujets

• Multicultural education
• Bolivia

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 10 juillet 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822391173
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

R I [ P E R K YE K I W of the State

Narrating Native Histories

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K.Tsianina Lomawaima Florencia E. Mallon Alcida Rita Ramos Joanne Rappaport

IHMXSVMEP EHZMWSV] FSEVH

Denise Y. Arnold

Charles R. Hale

Roberta Hill Noenoe K. Silva David Wilkins

Juan de Dios Yapita

F V I X K YWXE J W S R

R I [ P E R K YE K I W Stateof the

Indigenous Resurgence and the

Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia

Duke University Press Durham and London  

∫2009 Duke University Press

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Heather Hensley

Typeset in Monotype Bembo by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

For my father Ralph,

and forYarJ,

who both gave without

asking in return.

Contents

ix

x

x

i

v

xix

Part1

Part2

About the Series

Acknowledgments

Acronyms

On Languages and Labels

IntroductionEthnographic Articulations in an Age of Pachakuti

r e s u r g e n t k n ow l e d g e

1. Soldiers, Priests, and Schools: State Building in the Andes and the Guarani Frontier

InterludeTo Camiri

2. Guarani Scribes: Bilingual Education as Indigenous Resurgence

InterludeTo Itavera

3. Guarani Katui: Schooling, Knowledge, and Movement in Itavera

t r a n s n a t i o n a l a r t i c u l a t i o n s

InterludeTo La Paz, via Thailand

4. Network Articulations:eibfrom Project to Policy

InterludeBolivia or Yugoslavia?

5. Prodding Nerves: Intercultural Disruption and Managerial Control

3

6

1

3

1

6

5

95

101

135

143

171

175

Part3

285

301

303

319

r e t u r n t o s t r u g g l e

InterludeLa Indiada, como para Dar Miedo

6. Insurgent Citizenship: Interculturalism beyond the School

InterludeInterculturalism to Decolonization

7. Shifting States

Notes

Glossary

References

Index

209

215

247

253

AbouttheSeries

Narrating Native Histories aims to foster a rethinking of the ethical, meth- odological, and conceptual frameworks within which we locate our work on Native histories and cultures. We seek to create a space for e√ective and ongoing conversations between North and South, Natives and non-Natives, academics and activists, throughout the Americas and the Pacific region. We are committed to complicating and transgressing the disciplinary and episte- mological boundaries of established academic discourses on Native peoples. This series encourages symmetrical, horizontal, collaborative, and auto- ethnographies; work that recognizes Native intellectuals, cultural interpret- ers, and alternative knowledge producers within broader academic and in- tellectual worlds; projects that decolonize the relationship between orality and textuality; narratives that productively work the tensions between the norms of Native cultures and the requirements for evidence in academic circles; and analyses that contribute to an understanding of Native peoples’ relationships with nation-states, including histories of expropriation and exclusion as well as projects for autonomy and sovereignty. NewLanguagesoftheStateis an exemplary ethnography of indigenous activism in Latin America. Bret Gustafson insightfully probes the discourses of indigenous activists and of the Bolivian state that underpin bilingual education e√orts in lowland Bolivia. Moving deftly from macro-political analysis to pan-Guarani organizers’ use of interculturalist educational phi- losophies, between activist and government interpretations of intercultural- ism, and from the texts of o≈cial documents to the practice of local activists, Gustafson traces the movement from interculturalism to decolonization under the Evo Morales government. Motivated first and foremost by a deep solidarity with the Guaraní educational cause,wNeaLgnauegsis at once the product of collaboration between anthropologist and social movement, and an attempt at a reasoned critique of indigenous e√orts.