What is educación intercultural bilingüe in Latin America nowadays:

results and challenges

Luis Enrique López

FUNPROEIB Andes, Bolivia

Abstract

This chapter offers a critical appraisal of educación intercultural bilingüe (IBE), an educational
model with at least five decades of conceptual development and implementation in Latin
America. When this term was coined and IBE began to influence educational and cultural
decision-making, Indigenous populations were mostly monolingual and their settlements mostly
rural and distant from the seats of cultural hegemony and power. The situation is now radically
different, since Indigenous individuals and families have also reached the cities and centres of
power, claiming their indigeneity more than before. With these profound social, cultural and
economic changes in mind, the evolution of IBE is examined to determine whether it still
responds to the varying needs and expectations of Indigenous children, youngsters and adults
as well as to different sociolinguistic settings, since Indigenous individuals may now be mostly
passive or active bilinguals or even increasingly monolingual in the language of power. We look
at EIB with the lens of language ideology, policy and planning, and also through educational
ones. In so doing, we attempt to outline the main contributions of EIB to public policies vis-à-vis
cultural and linguistic diversity. A twofold perspective is followed, a top-down one characterising
official or governmental EIB, and a bottom-up one resulting from Indigenous agency. The
chapter closes with an analysis of the challenges faced by IBE and identifies possible new
horizons for these and other Indigenous political-pedagogical undertakings.

Keywords: agency, bilingualism, educational reform, indigeneity, interculturalism, language

policy and planning, multilingualism, multiculturalism, power, linguistic and cultural revitalisation

1. Changing times and the Indigenous education question

Latin America has been home to intercultural bilingual education or Educación Intercultural
Bilingüe (EIB) for almost five decades (López & Sichra, 2008, 2017). Before the intercultural
paradigm was adopted by most educational systems throughout the region, the educational
model applied in Indigenous territories was known simply as bilingual or in a few countries also
as bicultural. In fact, the education of Indigenous peoples has been at stake since the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Then, Indigenous communities were mostly rural and
monolingual in their ancestral languages and occupied territories both in the highlands and in
the tropical forests.

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 It was only in the 1940s when governmental attention was systematically placed on the
education of Indigenous adults and children, although most generally under opposition from
landowners, clerics and politicians who feared that educating Indigenous individuals could lead
into claims of civil and political rights and thus threaten their privileged position in society. This
issue was even more pressing in countries where Indigenous populations were numerous
(Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico and Peru). The ideology underlying these initial efforts
was assimilationist with the goal to eradicate Indigenous languages and cultures; and with
assimilation regarded as the only means to modern nation-building. Cultural heterogeneity was
considered unsuitable for the nation-state model copied uncritically from post-revolutionary
France; ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity was approached as backwardness and as part of
the so-called “Indian problem” the modern state had to solve.

Seven decades later the situation is different. Resulting from Indigenous agency, bilingual
education models have become more culturally responsive and also more in tune with socio-
political Indigenous demands, although improvement is required. With few exceptions
governments have adopted EIB as their official model to extend their educational services in
Indigenous territories, a practice increasingly supported by legislation and also by international
conventions and agreements (López & Sichra, 2017). The education of Indigenous populations
is now seen as a right or even as a resource, since a politically correct discourse has pushed its
way into the Latin American racially structured societies that still regard Indigenous individuals
as second-class citizens.

Nonetheless, access to basic education is almost universal, illiteracy rates in Indigenous

settings have severely decreased (World Bank, 2015), and there are rising numbers of
individuals who struggle to complete their university studies and obtain advanced degrees in
languages other than their own, mainly Spanish and English. Indigenous educational progress
correlates with increased migration since the 1950s to urban settings and the cosmopolitan
Latin American capitals (López, 2009a).

In fact, Indigenous environments are now mostly urban, although families and individuals
living in cities maintain on-and-off interaction with their rural communities of origin or of their
ancestors’. For instance, in Peru over 65% of Aymaras and Quechuas live in cities, and a
district of metropolitan Lima has the highest number of Quechua speakers in the country

2
(Panizo, 2017). The Mapuche population in Argentina and Chile have also become mostly
urban and approximately only 30% of them remain in rural settings (López, 2009a).

Such profound changes have made an impact on Indigenous languages and cultures.
Conquering urban spaces and cities has derived in Indigenous language attrition and loss and
also in the interruption of intergenerational transmission of language and ancestral values,
knowledges and practices. Indigenous monolingualism is now an exception whilst most
Indigenous individuals are now either bilingual -to varying degrees- or monolingual in Spanish or
Portuguese, or in certain areas -mostly in the Caribbean coast of Central and South America-
also in Dutch, English or French (Ibid.). Becoming Spanish monolinguals often results from a
deliberate desire either to overcome racism and discrimination or to resist and contest
subalternity. In any case, that implies putting the patrimonial languages to sleep and socialising
the youngsters in the hegemonic language (López & García, 2016). Even Quechuas and
Aymaras who constitute demographic majorities in the Andes, with a population of over 10
million, do not have other alternatives than learning Spanish and even gradually abandon their
languages of origin.

Yet there are also numerous on-going individual and collective processes of ethnogenesis
whereby Indigenous identity is reclaimed and essentialist strategies adopted, including linguistic
demands before the State. Although identity politics also exert influence in rural settings.
ethnogenesis is more typical of cities and particularly among Indigenous university students,
professionals and political leaders. Indigenous language revitalisation in schools is also in
increasing demand due to claims that schools should devolve the languages they helped
eradicate.

In such complex settings where Indigenous diversity has become more obvious than ever,
governments and particularly ministries of education most generally persist on a simplistic and
somewhat dichotomic reading of cultural heterogeneity, perceiving Indigenous worlds as
homogeneous settings. Thus, language and educational policies -disregarding marked
sociolinguistic differences- generally impose one single EIB model for every Indigenous
community and school. Furthermore, there is very little awareness about the strategic
importance of involving non-Indigenous sectors of society, and to date intercultural education
still targets Indigenous populations.

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 Nonetheless, EIB policies have been adopted practically in the whole region, with very few
exceptions -Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay-, where there are no longer active
Indigenous language speakers. There are national, regional and/or local national agencies
responsible for implementing EIB, teachers are trained, educational materials in numerous
Indigenous languages are available, but nowhere have governments managed to meet the
cultural and linguistic needs of all K-12 Indigenous pupils. Moreover, in most countries EIB
reaches only the most populated Indigenous peoples whose ancestral language(s) may still be
active. There is little or no interest on language endangerment and loss and ministries of
education consider that Indigenous language revitalisation need not be one of their concerns.

There is consensus among most Latin American states on the notions of multilingualism and
multiculturalism, as long as they imply the provision of social services and do not “destabilize
the social and political structure and the gears of the established power, expressed in the
control of strategic aspects of social life” (Moya, 1998, pp. 108-109). That is why governmental
responses to Indigenous educational claims have historically prioritised pedagogical
technicalities rather than its political underpinnings. Governmental EIB implementation does not
necessarily entail democratising, expanding, nor making the structure of power more flexible.
But, notions like multilingualism, multiculturalism, interculturalism and even EIB constitute
political constructions and not only categories belonging to the social sciences, including
sociolinguistics and pedagogy. This is also the case in Bolivia and Ecuador, countries whose
constitutions endorse the notion of plurinationalism and recognise all or at least the most
spoken Indigenous languages as official alongside Spanish.

These contradictions explain why government appropriation and implementation of EIB,

which in most contexts was the result of Indigenous struggles rather than a state initiative, has
merited Indigenous disaffection. In countries like Colombia, and in certain regions of Brazil,
Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru, Indigenous intellectuals, leaders and organisations
have innovated the field, implementing their own educational models. These models, although
also intercultural and bilingual, attempt to move a step further, question the ontology of school
and academic knowledge, and place particular emphasis on the curricular inclusion of
Indigenous knowledges and values; they have also gradually shifted from government to
community control so as to break away from ministerial bureaucratic straitjackets and thus
question the established power structure. The term educación propia -education of our own- has
been coined to designate “educational planning focusing on Indigenous culture [and language]

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as the enveloping conceptual framework” (Rappaport, 2005, p. 277). In Colombia 1 and
Nicaragua these new models have been negotiated with the state and obtained official
recognition and financing, whilst in Chiapas, Mexico, they form part of the autonomous
government system supported by the Zapatista Movement. In fact, the United Nations 2007
Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in its Art. 14 (1) grants all Indigenous peoples
the right to: “[…] establish and control their educational systems and institutions providing
education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching
and learning”.

As noted, since its adoption EIB has been a concern of Indigenous organisations,
governments and academia. It has also been studied from different and complementary
approaches: as a domain of language policy and planning (Brice-Heath 1972, Escobar, Matos
and Alberti, 1975, Hornberger, 1988, López y Moya, 1989, Sichra, 2003, Hamel, 2008), as an
area of educational reform in the search of quality and equity (Churchill, 1976, Moya 1998,
López & Sichra, 2017), as a privileged setting for the acquisition of literacy and biliteracy (King,
2001, Hornberger, 2003, Sichra, 2017), as a means to combat the long-standing history of
discrimination and racism, and to introduce interculturalism into the conceptual framework of
modern citizenship in multiethnic contexts (López, 2009b), and also as a possibility for the
accomplishment of Indigenous peoples’ rights. It is worth noting that the 2007 United Nations
Declaration approaches education, culture and language also as collective rights.

2. EIB and its contributions to language policy and planning

Regardless of persistent widening gaps between policy and practice (López, 2014), the
implementation of EIB has triggered processes of language policy and planning in countries
where little attention had been placed on such issues. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Peru
provided us with the first example of deliberate language policy and planning within a context of
national ethnic and cultural redefinition, that triggered nation-wide structural transformations vis-
à-vis the subaltern situation of its large peasant and Indigenous populations. Then, only 30% of
the Peruvian population was urban and Indigenous monolingualism prevailed in rural areas and
tropical forests. Within that context a group of highly trained linguists was commissioned by the

1
Influenced by ethno-development theories, in the late 1970s the Colombian Ministry of Education in accord with
Indigenous organisations adopted policies of ethno-education -a model also attempting to be intercultural and
bilingual- implemented within the framework of an innovative Indigenous territorial recognition policy. In fact, EIB is
there known as Etnoeducación.

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government to design a strategy to extend the formal use of Quechua in the country (Escobar,
Matos & Alberti, 1975). Thus, six main macro-regional varieties of this language were identified,
codification processes carried out arriving at a unified alphabet, pedagogical grammars and
dictionaries prepared, a national bilingual education policy approved, and in 1975 the language
was legally recognised as official alongside Spanish. As a result of these measures Quechua
was also used in some radio and TV programmes.

Similarly, within the framework of a radical educational reform launched in 1970 (Bizot, 1975,
Churchill, 1976) several governmental decisions affected, from then on, educational
conceptions and practices of the hegemonic and subaltern sectors of society. Firstly, the right of
Indigenous students to be schooled in their mother tongues was recognised and, secondly,
attention was also given to Spanish regional and social variation and attempts were made to
use some of these dialects in education. Such framework allowed for the implementation of
ambitious bilingual education programmes in the Andes and in the Amazon basin. Since this
reform was implemented within a context of major political transformations that had an impact
on other socioeconomic and sociocultural spheres, and, particularly, on land re-distribution
within the framework of a radical agrarian reform and on the recognition of other Indigenous civil
and political rights, bilingual programmes also became intercultural.

The innovations carried out by the Peruvian Educational Reform (1970-1980) attracted
international attention (Churchill, 1975, López & Moya, 1990, Hornberger & López, 1998) and
exerted influence on its neighbouring countries, mainly Bolivia and Ecuador, where EIB had also
been adopted as the most appropriate educational model in Indigenous settings. In these
countries, unlike what occurred in Peru, EIB became part of a social movement and reclaimed
not only by Indigenous organisations but also, particularly in Bolivia, by other Spanish-speaking
subaltern sectors. Such social participation also had an impact on the strategies commonly
adopted in language policy and planning. Thus, new ways of dealing with language issues
arose. For instance, in the late 1970s Ecuador a Kichwa led movement allowed for consensus
building over a unified Kichwa alphabet, and efforts were made to arrive at a unified variety to
be used in schools and in mass media, most notably the radio, since the ideal was to gradually
construct a standard (Moya, 1990, King, 2001, Hornberger & Coronel-Molina, 2004).
Comparably, in the early 1980s in Bolivia, as result of the governmental desire to implement a
massive literacy campaign in a country where illiteracy reached 32% of the population, Quechua
and Aymara leaders, peasant unions and other social organisations became involved in a

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lengthy but fruitful process of constructing unified alphabets for these two majority languages. In
a deliberate effort to reach the underprivileged masses literacy primers were initially prepared in
Aymara and Quechua and, for the first time in history, also in a regional peasant variety of
Spanish: Castellano Chapaco (López, 2005). The social impact of such measures led to a
profound education reform in the 1990s that introduced EIB in all Indigenous locations in the
highlands and in the Guarani region, as well as participatory strategies for the development of
alphabets and orthographies for most of the 33 Indigenous languages spoken in the Bolivian
lowlands (Ibid.). Unlike what occurred in Peru, where these transformations resulted from the
collaboration government-academia2, in Bolivia and Ecuador national language policies were
socially constructed from the bottom-up, triggered by Indigenous agency.

The Andean examples briefly analysed here did not develop in isolation, but were part of
regional political-pedagogical movements that focussed on Indigenous cultural and linguistic
rights. Hence, EIB adopted many forms depending on the level of Indigenous agency in a given
country or in a specific region of a country. In Nicaragua, for example, those concerned with the
implementation of EIB in the Caribbean Coast with Miskitu, Sumu and English-Creole
populations were also responsible for the formulation of a national policy on Indigenous
territorial autonomies and later involved in drafting a new law of language rights. Panama was
another example of the linkage between the emergence of EIB and the recognition of territorial
and cultural rights. Attention need also be called to the fact that in Peru (1970-1980), Ecuador
(1979-1983), Bolivia (1983-1985) and Nicaragua (1980-1990) such policies developed under
progressive leftist reformist political regimes. Nonetheless, when such favourable political cycles
ended subsequent governments founded it difficult to withdraw from such policies, since a
correct political discourse in favour of Indigenous rights had pushed its way into national and
international circles.

Beginning with Brazil (1988) and Colombia (1991), Indigenous struggles throughout the
continent -in which many EIB advocates and graduates were involved- motivated the reform of
national constitutions. For the first time in 200 years of independent ruling, such reforms
recognised certain individual and collective rights, and among them EIB principles and
practices. Nowadays, with the only exception of Guatemala where emphasis is placed on
bilingualism rather than on interculturalism3, EIB constitutes the governmental model applied in
Indigenous territories and settings from Mexico to Argentina and Chile.
2
In the late 1970s the situation in the Peruvian Amazon basin changed with the emergence of an Indigenous
confederation that demanded and became involved in EIB implementation.

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 In some countries like Argentina (1994), Colombia (1991), Guatemala (1985), Mexico (2001),
Nicaragua (1995, 2000) and Peru (1993) these constitutional reforms led to the approval of
specific norms dealing with Indigenous language rights, instituting -at least on paper- national
policies to secure Indigenous language maintenance and development in schools. In numerous
countries, these languages are now official or co-official with Spanish, either nationally or in the
regions where they are predominantly spoken. But, once more, the distance between legal
rhetoric and social practice is astonishing. In spite of the plurinational political regimen now
endorsed by Ecuador (2008) and Bolivia (2009) in neither of these two countries are the
Indigenous languages used in national or regional public administration, and even in those
regions with an important presence of Indigenous populations Spanish is still the only language
of government. That occurs also in Colombia, Nicaragua and Panama where Indigenous
communities enjoy constitutional autonomy and exercise control over their territories. A partial
exception to this rule is Peru, where after the approval of a national Indigenous-language-rights
law in 2011, the government is implementing specific measures to give visibility and use in
public administration to some major Indigenous languages, in the regions where they are
spoken and also nationally (Panizo, 2017). Most generally, education is the only official niche
Indigenous languages retain; although only partially since -in spite of a promising legal
structure- EIB is still regarded as a compensatory and transitional educational strategy.

Important questions remain vis-à-vis Indigenous language policy, planning and actual
practice: Are Indigenous leaders and intellectuals and moreover all Indigenous communities
critically aware that the collective rights they fought for need to be exercised through committed
local action and political militancy? Are they also knowledgeable that time is pressing and there
is no need to wait until governments decide to act in line with the national legislation and the
international agreements they have subscribed? The legal and normative landscape may have
changed but the coloniality of power and knowledge (Quijano, 2000) determines the favourable
position enjoyed by the European languages of the hegemonic sectors. As expected, these
sectors exercise their political, economic and cultural power under prevailing Eurocentric views
and rationalities. Hence, most governments and academic institutions still abide by the
predicament that Spanish or Portuguese must be mastered by everyone, and that
monolingualism is the ideal condition for modernity; hence, all Indigenous children should be
3
In Guatemala the acronym EBI responds to the discursive prevalence of Indigenous language teaching in the official
model applicable in Indigenous settings. In Colombia, ethno-education is the official denomination and since 2010
EIIP (intracultural, intercultural and plurilingual education) in Bolivia.

8
Hispanicised. Nonetheless, those in power endorse bilingualism and multilingualism as long as
they relate to other hegemonic European languages and not to subaltern ways of speaking. In
so doing, elite bi and multilingualism is overestimated whilst subaltern bi and multilingualism is
underrated.

Despite the recognition of Indigenous peoples’ rights, the coloniality of power and knowledge
is central to the analysis of language ideology, policy, planning and practice in Latin America.
Hence, academic Eurocentrism, a racialised ideology and the domination-submission rationale
regulating social interaction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups prevail. Indigenous
languages are thus seen as incomplete and efforts are placed on Indigenous language
standardisation, normalisation and also on the conversion of Indigenous societies into literate
environments, in an attempt to emulate the evolution of European languages, disregarding the
differentiated nature of Indigenous languages and their radically different social histories.
Similarly, Indigenous language speakers are perceived as people with limited linguistic
capabilities, hence the need to force them to assimilate to the dominant language orally and in
writing, in order to achieve linguistic “completeness”. Even though, as a result of increased
Indigenous agency certain Indigenous individuals and organisations are subverting this order
and language policy and planning is also being approached locally and at community level.
Thus, the top-down approach in language planning is giving way to bottom-up ones.

3. EIB and its contribution to educational reform

The close connections between EIB and educational transformation were highlighted above,
when reference was made to the Peruvian language planning case and to the influence this
process exerted in other Andean countries. Nonetheless, it is also worth noting that in numerous
countries EIB projects and programmes were judged marginal and EIB did not really achieve a
“legitimate” status in educational systems, and regarding it only as a temporary and transitional
endeavour.

Beginning in the 1990s most countries reformed their educational systems as a result of
profound economic transformations most countries underwent due to the adoption of
neoliberalism. Such reforms either coincided with or followed a global agenda (Jomtiem 1990,
Dakar 2000)4, and the emphasis placed on universal access and educational quality triggered a
4
The first world conference on education for all took place in Jomtiem, Thailand, in 1990. In 200, a follow-up
conference was carried out in Dakar, Senegal, sponsored by multilateral and bilateral cooperation agencies.

9
series of innovations in an otherwise conservative field. Under the new neoliberal order and the
premise that public education needed to be modernised, these reforms included issues of
school autonomy and decentralisation, efficiency, efficacy, quality, equity and universal access
to basic education (Grindel, 2004), which in Latin America was understood as synonymous to
primary education. Being part of, or conditions for, other structural transformations educational
reforms attracted the attention of different international donors, more importantly the World Bank
and the Interamerican Development Bank, organisations that in the long run set the continental
educational agenda in connection to economic growth5, and privileged the so-called codes of
modernity: reading, writing and numeracy.

Paradoxically, access to this new globalised world considered the adoption of EIB policies
since teaching to read and write through the mother tongue was judged cost-effective, and its
impact positive on persistent Indigenous student repetition and drop out. EIB was also seen as
an instrument to overcome educational disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
students. Moreover, since Indigenous resurgence also had an effect on constitutional reform,
the notions of multiculturalism and multilingualism gained political momentum and the
intercultural paradigm was adopted as a crosscutting issue alongside other topics pertaining to
the strengthening of democracy and active citizenship (López, 2009b). Thus, interculturalism
and intercultural education for all became part of the educational reform agenda (Moya, 1998).

Notwithstanding, interpretations of interculturalism and intercultural education differ

depending on the standpoint and the locus of enunciation of those who evoke them. For
Indigenous leaders, these notions are part of their political claims before the state, and involve
recognition and acceptance of their ancestral values, knowledges and social practices and their
inclusion in school curricula; while for the technocracy in government, they constitute
contemporary pedagogical issues related to the development of certain social competencies
learners ought to develop vis-à-vis the recognition of diversity. For the latter, curriculum
orientation and content are not negotiable whereas for Indigenous leaders and intellectuals
these are precisely key factors in their political-pedagogical projects, and, thus. a field of political
contention that calls for intercultural negotiation.

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“There is little doubt today that human development is one of the most, if not the most, important determinant of
long-term competitiveness and productivity growth. For example, healthy and well-educated workers lose fewer work
days to illness, are more productive at work, have greater intersectoral mobility, and have longer working lives. A
healthy and well-educated labor force is crucial for raising overall productivity” (Javed and Perry, 2007, p. 67).

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 After over two decades of the formal adoption of intercultural education for all, one can
conclude that ministries of education have paid insufficient attention to the interculturalisation of
society, primarily, concerning the historical obligation Latin American states have with their first
nations. Furthermore, in most cases Indigenous sectors and not the main-stream are identified
as the target group of interculturalism when it should be exactly in reverse, if one of the
objectives is to fight racism and discrimination and come to terms with social injustice and
inequality. Only through critical awareness of these facts that impinge on the construction of a
true democracy could Indigenous and non-Indigenous sectors learn to live together. Hence, a
transformative perspective of interculturalism is called for and not the functional and pragmatic
one governments generally adopt (López, 2018).

In spite of these paradoxes, some of the sociocultural and pedagogical principles intercultural
education and EIB are based on coincide with some of the new orientations these reforms
adopt. Among them are the notions of cooperative learning (Johnson & Johnson, 1989),
sociocultural theories of learning (Vygostky, 1978), situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991),
the prominence of the learner and of his previous knowledge (Ausubel, 1976) and the key role
social participation plays in school management and in education in general. Such
correspondences and connections allowed for a smooth incorporation of EIB plans into national
reform frameworks.

The Bolivian educational reform (1993-2002) perhaps provides one of the most interesting
examples of how EIB can be systemically incorporated as an aspect of educational quality
(Grindel, 2004), but also of how can an innovation be easily dismantled. As mentioned, the role
of Indigenous languages and cultures as media of instruction was reclaimed during the early
1980s by Indigenous organisations and by other social actors; later that decade a successful
literacy campaign in Indigenous languages was followed by an equally effective primary school
project in selected Aymara, Guarani and Quechua communities and EIB became part of the
national educational policy in the 1990s (López, 2005). As part of an intense educational reform
(1993-2002) Bolivian EIB moved forward in different domains, such as curriculum design,
teacher training and mentoring, educational materials development, and also in social
participation in education (Horberger and López, 1998, Grindel, 2004, Albó & Anaya, 2004,
López, 2005). The turn of the decade brought about political insurgence, the radicalisation of
Indigenous claims and the emergence of new and decisive political actors who demanded
decolonisation and autonomy (Gustafson, 2009), precisely what EIB needed to radicalise what

11
had already started as result of Indigenous agency. Due to the ideological urgency to break
away with all preceding reforms implemented in an era of global neoliberalism, the new regimen
decided to revisit EIB and education as a whole (López, 2005). Only in 2010 a new educational
law was approved, but by then and after almost a decade of paralysis and inertia numerous
Indigenous teachers had returned to pre-reform Spanish-medium practices. At present, under a
new curriculum of Indigenous spirit and orientation that endorses intraculturalism,
interculturalism and pluralingualism, the importance of Indigenous languages is highly
commended and entrenched in the elaborate ideological apparatus of plurinationalism, but
paradoxically teachers do not necessarily use them as media of instruction. Decolonising
education in present Bolivia seems to refer to Indigenous world-views and practices mediated
by Spanish, with Indigenous languages confined to the straitjacket of a single school-subject
with a limited number of hours a week, shared with Spanish and English (López, 2017).
However, confronted with the fact that Indigenous language intergenerational transmission is
being interrupted, the Ministry of Education has launched a scheme of bilingual nests where
children -through partial immersion- learn the languages no longer acquired at home. It remains
to be seen whether in the years to come those Indigenous leaders and intellectuals, that since
the 1980s initiated these transformations in the Bolivian society, reappraise their EIB history and
relocate Indigenous languages as full-fledged media of instruction to re-inscribe the country in
true and quality intercultural bilingual education.

What is happening in Bolivia is not that different from other countries. In countries like
Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico that historically adhered to the use of Indigenous
languages as media of education, EIB has been reduced to its minimum expression and
regarded only as a subject where more than often Indigenous children are taught the formal
aspects of their languages but seldom use them, freely and creatively, to express their thoughts
orally and in writing. The situation is rather similar in Argentina, Brazil and Chile but Indigenous
community educators -and not professional teachers- have assumed the responsibility of
teaching Indigenous languages and cultures. Peru seems to be an exception to the rule: for
nearly eight consecutive years EIB has flourished and the country has regained the leadership it
had in this field in the 1970s and 1980s. Two consecutive governments have considered EIB as
one of their priorities, and important investments have been made in the areas of policy
planning and implementation, with emphasis on pre- and in-service teacher training, mentoring,
educational materials development and with attempts also made in curriculum diversification
and on Indigenous language revitalisation. These measures are complementary to other public

12
policies that promote the use of Indigenous languages in public spheres and particularly in state
administration; for example, Indigenous citizens can obtain their birth certificates and also their
national identity card both in Spanish and in an Amerindian language, and the government
trains Indigenous translators to facilitate the administration of justice. Additionally, the ministries
of culture and social development implement programmes mediated by Indigenous languages
and cultures such as one for female and male seniors over 65 who get a monthly economic
stipend when they transmit their Indigenous languages and knowledges to youngsters in their
communities. As expected, measures as these reinforce the role of EIB and indirectly contribute
to its implementation and impact.

Nonetheless and since assimilation approaches prevail, in most countries, government

officers perceive EIB as compensatory, transitional and valid only for preschool and elementary
education and regard Indigenous languages only as means of communication. Thus, EIB
programmes in secondary schooling and in teacher training colleges are still scarce.

5. Conclusions: New horizons for EIB

A critical appraisal of the transformations that took place in the education domain in Latin
America as a result of Indigenous resurgence lead us to two contradictory outcomes: (a)
increased Indigenous national and international visibility, and significant Indigenous enhanced
capacity to voice and decide the future they want not only for themselves but also for all the
inhabitants of the countries they live in, within the framework of Life-for-the-Common-Good or
Buen Vivir, and at the same time (b) prevailing marginalisation that restrains their possibilities to
contribute to the construction of a new type of state where they would not need to renounce
their languages, cultures and identities.

Official EIB programmes and also Indigenous autonomous political-pedagogical projects

seem trapped in these contradictions, since Indigenous education and intercultural education for
all constitute issues that extend far beyond classrooms and schools. They, in fact, belong to the
political arena where new modes of relationship between Indigenous peoples and states are
under construction. Public education has become the focus of struggle over power and
knowledge and a place where the ontology of academic and school knowledge is questioned
(Trapnell, 2008). Indigenous languages are central to these processes but many of their
speakers seem to have lost confidence in them and lost track of their emancipatory potential. In

13
fact, nowadays not all Indigenous leaders and intellectuals possess an active command of their
patrimonial language.

After several decades of EIB social construction and implementation, Indigenous

organisations, academia and also governments have significant knowledge and experience to
face many of the challenges raised by these inconsistencies. Revisiting EIB and taking it back to
its origins of Indigenous exigency call for renewed Indigenous agency, where critical language
awareness is central. Even in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador where plurinationalism has
been constitutionally adopted there seems to be a need to relocate education as one of the
privileged areas of political action. In Ecuador Indigenous organisations seem to be awakening
from the illusion that a new progressive constitution and the appropriation by the state of
Indigenous paradigms, such as Buen Vivir and the rights of Mother Nature, would radically
change the long-standing history of cultural oppression and colonisation; they are at present
renegotiating with the government the sense, meaning and autonomous management of EIB.
Sooner or later, Indigenous leaders and intellectuals in Bolivia will also realise that
plurinationalism will only come true when the prevailing market economy and other neoliberal
and extractivist policies give way to other more humane and sustainable ones, entrenched in
the vision of complementarity nature-human beings that Indigenous societies still hold.

Contradictory as it might seem, even within the framework of neoliberalism, other

countries like Peru and Colombia have learnt to respond to Indigenous demands and/or to
construct inclusive alternatives in different social domains. The adoption of interculturalism by
the state has provided opportunities for more democratic inclusion of Indigenous peoples and
also for the development of educational programmes contributing to a more equitable society.
With increased Indigenous agency, transformative interculturalism should contribute to the
relocation of Indigenous languages and cultures and offer renewed possibilities for the
development of autonomous pedagogical-political projects, which might strategically call for
government financing and support. These projects, as in the Colombian case, reinforce
Indigenous movements, challenge deep-rooted racism and discrimination and transform
neoliberal educational reforms, in line with the paradigm of cultural and linguistic decolonisation.
Nonetheless, there is a need to move forward since extractivism and exacerbated individualism
and consumerism threaten the autonomous cultural control and survival of Indigenous peoples.
As has been remarked, neoliberalism is not restricted to the economy but affects the functioning

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of the state, society and even the behaviour of individuals; it constitutes in itself a cultural project
to which attention must be paid (Hale 2006).

It remains to be seen whether the notion of decolonisation that indeed was part of the
original spirit of EIB will contribute to transform societies into non-racialised environments where
every person, Indigenous or not, discovers the importance of living together, and also learns
from the tenacious long-standing Indigenous tradition of living in solidarity and mutual
cooperation. Renewed EIB models that respond to diverse sociolinguistic settings and the full
implementation of intercultural education for all might also provide appropriate room for the
construction of intercultural citizenship and for the recovery of everyone’s confidence in
Indigenous languages.

In this complex situation under the spirit of decolonisation we could arrive at more
appropriate settings for the reinvention and participatory implementation of EIB. Likewise, non-
racialised theories and strategies of language policy and planning are called for in order to
devolve power to Indigenous communities to regain control over their cultures and languages.
There is a need to accompany community planning and autonomous thinking in order to break
away from the Eurocentric tradition that seized power over their languages from the Indigenous
nations and handed it over to the state. Indigenous language reclaim and revitalisation is
certainly an area to be addressed as a cooperative effort and under increased community
control focusing on intergenerational transmission, active language use, and also through
alternative educational models (López & García, 2017).

IBE is then faced with five unavoidable technical-political challenges: (a) breaking away
from the underlying predominant monolingual perspective of its original conceptual framework
and its subsequent implementation strategies and methodologies, since bilingualism does not
imply the presence of two disconnected entities; (b) revisiting the historical definitions of L1 and
L2 vis-à-vis the present sociolinguistic situation where most Indigenous individuals are
simultaneous bilinguals and many of their children are socialised through a European language;
(c) redefining language teaching methodologies as language teaching in EIB follows models
more appropriate for languages of international communication that do not meet the needs of
languages and societies that have historically been predominantly oral and where ancestral
orality has played a key role in the construction of distinct ways of life; (d) approaching curricular
design as a field of social construction and cultural negotiation and no longer as an exclusive

15
technical domain; and (e) training professionals to respond to the needs and expectations of
those contexts marked by multilingualism, Indigenous language erosion, and active political
Indigenous participation (López & Sichra, 2017).

Last but not least, critical awareness and permanent deliberation are required since EIB
will continue to move in quicksand as long as neoliberalism persists and mankind does not
reinstate a friendlier relationship with nature. Notwithstanding, although through paradoxes and
possibilities, intercultural education can help us educate the cadres of active and committed
intercultural citizens that the transformation of society and the state today require.

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