1 Brazilian crisis, pandemic, and emancipatory paths for the teaching of Mathematics:

2 dialogic with the global South

3
4
5 Abstract:
6 This article is intended to challenge the teaching of Mathematics that is being promoted in Brazil as a
7 result of the social politics, but also educational politics, of the federal government, during COVID-
8 19 pandemic times, which has been contributing to the exacerbation of the profound social
9 inequalities in the country. In this sense, we look to denounce and broadcast the denialist way of
10 thinking that inspires the Brazilian government, reclaiming the emancipatory thought dynamic of
11 Paulo Freire, alongside the voices of intellectuals of Southern epistemology. Denouncing the
12 reckless governmental decisions to which we are subjected, especially given their impacts on
13 education and the learning of mathematics, consists of a scale without which no project of
14 emancipation can take place. The broadcasting, equally indispensable, is made on the text when we
15 articulate different possibilities of political-pedagogical projects inspired by the proposals of Latin-
16 American indigenous folk, that have destabilized the uneven relations of power/knowledge seeped in
17 modern schooling. Such relations, as we have argued, are sharpened with the promoting of a
18 mathematical education maintained in service of projects related to modernity/coloniality, instead of
19 a mathematical education fundamentally linked to life, existence, and the issues arising from/within
20 it.
21
22 Key words: Southern epistemology, Buen Vivir Pedagogy, Pedagogy of the Mother Earth,
23 Ethnomathematics, Decoloniality.
24
25 Resumo: Este artigo tem como propósito problematizar o ensino de Matemática que está sendo
26 promovido no Brasil como resultado das políticas sociais, mas também educacionais, do governo
27 federal em tempos de pandemia “Covid-19”, que tem contribuído com o agravamento das profundas
28 desigualdades sociais no país. Neste sentido, procuramos denunciar e anunciar, resgatando a
29 dinâmica do pensamento emancipatório freireano, o pensamento negacionista que inspira o governo
30 brasileiro, junto às vozes de intelectuais do sul epistemológico. Denunciar as inconsequentes
31 decisões governamentais a que estamos submetidos, especialmente a partir de seus impactos na
32 educação e na educação matemática, consiste em uma dimensão sem a qual não se dá qualquer
33 projeto de emancipação. O anúncio, igualmente indispensável, se faz no texto quando enunciamos
34 possibilidades outras de projetos político-pedagógicos inspirados nas propostas de povos indígenas
35 latino-americanos que têm desestabilizado as relações assimétricas de poder/saber que permeiam a
36 escolarização moderna. Tais relações, como argumentamos, se agudizam com a promoção de uma
37 educação matemática que se mantém à serviço de projetos relacionados à
38 modernidade/colonialidade, ao invés de uma educação matemática comprometida fundamentalmente
39 com a vida, a existência e os problemas que nela/dela emergem.
40
41 Palavras-chave: Epistemologias do sul. Pedagogía del Buen Vivir. Pedagogía da Mãe Terra.
42 Etnomatemática. Decolonialidade.
43
44

45 1. Introduction – The Pandemic and the Brazilian Context.

46 The day is the 16st of February and we account for 18.894 deaths in Brazil, in
47 addition to a drained Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS (Single-Payer Healthcare System, in

1
48 English) that keeps collapsing from Amapá to Rio Grande do Sul and from Mato Grosso to
49 Ceará. Lives interrupted without a goodbye; silence broken by pots and pans banging and
50 shouting from windows. On the bulletin published on the 30th of April, São Paulo (one the
51 richest states in the Federation) was the first to present organized data, regarding the
52 mortality rate of both suspect and confirmed cases of COVID-19 based on the variable of
53 race/skin-color, adjusted by age. This bulletin highlights that, in addition to the total number
54 of obits (with partial statement of the database of April 17th, 2020), the mortality rate and
55 relative risk of death by COVID-19 is greater among black people (1.62) and brown people
56 (1.23), when taking into account the mortality rate of white people as reference (1). This
57 means that black people are 62% more likely to die in comparison to white, and brown
58 people have a 23%1 higher risk.

59 In the state of Amazonas, for instance, among the people who developed severe
60 cases of COVID-19, the deaths of black people are more frequent than those of white
61 people. According to the Public Agency “for every 2.4 black people in critical condition,
62 one death occurs. Contrastingly, among white people, one death is registered in every 3.2
63 patients in serious condition”. In this same state, more than 13 black people die for every 1
64 white person. This alarming proportion can be seen in figure 1.

65 Figure 1: Data on patients infect by COVID 19 in the state of Amazonas.

66
67 [COVID-19 data in Amazonas. White people. Black people (black + brown). Severe cases. Fatalities]
68 Source: The Public Agency, 20202.
69
70 As we have argued, the impacts of the pandemic on the Southern world are both
71 reiterated and echoes the effects of a colonized past, of coloniality of power, of knowledge,

1
Source: https://apublica.org/2020/05/em-duas-semanas-numero-de-negros-mortos-por-coronavirus-e-cinco-
vezes-maior-no-brasil/
2
Source: https://apublica.org/2020/05/em-duas-semanas-numero-de-negros-mortos-por-coronavirus-e-cinco-
vezes-maior-no-brasil/

2
72 of the being and of nature, that have submitted the black population to structural racism,
73 which violates de right to life and dignity of black people, as well indigenous people,
74 Quilombolas, Ribeirinhos and peasants. This scenario would not be different during the
75 pandemic because, as said by Achille Mbembe (2004, p. 66-67), “racism and race are
76 concepts attached to the State, in such a way that it will always use these definitions to
77 maintain the normalization of the crimes it commits. The practice of violence is justified
78 based on the legal order elaborated by and for the State.

79 Thus, within the alarming context that delineates the country, with the reproduction
80 of these patterns, the days of the pandemic in Brazil have been very turbulent. There is no
81 peace. Every single week, we have plenty to grieve. An example of this occurred on
82 Monday, 18th of May 2020, when João Pedro Mattos Pinto, a young black man of 14 years
83 of age, was murdered by the police, during a joint operation between the Federal Police and
84 the Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro, in the Complexo Salgueiro (Willow Complex, in English)
85 in São Gonçalo.

86 Three rifles and a pistol of the policemen involved were apprehended. The
87 procedures are reserved for ballistic confrontation, which can show
88 whether the shot was fired from one of these guns. According to the
89 experts, the shot was of “high kinetic energy” – possibly a shot of a rifle3.

90 A 14-year-old black boy shot by a rifle in his own house. We must deal with what
91 continues to be our sad reality, in the middle of the biggest sanitary crisis in the history of
92 the planet. This continues to be our history, because João Pedro is not the first black youth to
93 be brutally murdered in the country. Before him, Marcos Vinícius da Silva, 14, Maria
94 Eduarda, 13, Ágatha Félix, 8, Vanessa Vitória, 10, and many others. We have not overcome
95 our colonial and slave past, and the genocide of the black population goes on.

96 When we observe the data available about the main causes of death sorted by
97 race/skin-color in Brazil, there is no doubt of the graveness of the scenario: for the white
98 population, causes of death related to brain a pulmonary disease stand out, whereas there is a
99 significant increase in death by homicide among the black and the indigenous population.

100 External causes have been acquiring great significance in the profile of
101 mortality among the younger population (15 through 29 years-old),
102 especially males. Between 2000 and 2012, there has been an increase in the
103 gross mortality rates by homicide in both sexes, more markedly between
3
Source: https://g1.globo.com/rj/rio-de-janeiro/noticia/2020/05/20/o-que-se-sabe-sobre-a-morte-a-tiros-de-
joao-pedro-no-salgueiro-rj.ghtml

3
104 2005 and 2012. The male sex continued to present higher rates, keeping the
105 risk at ten times that of the female sex. The noticeable increase in the gross
106 mortality rates of brown people can be highlighted, compared to the
107 smaller increases in the black and the indigenous rates. Contrastingly, there
108 has been a decrease in the rates of white people and Asian people.
109 (Ministry of Health, 2016)

110 The news of the murder of João Pedro absolutely prevents us from considering any
111 act of celebration for the postponement of Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio – ENEM
112 (National High School Examination, in English), the biggest exam required for entering
113 Higher education in Brazil. On Tuesday, the 19th, one day after the murder of the young
114 man, the Brazilian Senate voted with a wide majority to postpone the examination, under the
115 pressuring of educators, social movements, and progressive politicians4. The main argument
116 for the postponing – ignored by Brazilian government – is founded on the observation that
117 the occurrence of the exam will only deepen the enormous socio-economic inequality that
118 defines us.

119 It is necessary to emphasize that this massive inequality is expressed, for instance, in
120 the way water is supplied or in the basic needs like sanitation, with unequal coverage
121 throughout the national territory, for the detriment of the same populations to which we have
122 been referring. To learn about such scenarios, we strongly recommend the study of maps
123 designed by professors Larissa Mies Bombardi and Luiz Maio Napomuceno, of the
124 Laboratory of Agrarian Geography and of the Laboratory of Aerial Photo Geography and
125 Remote Sensing, at the University of São Paulo (USP)

126 Figure 2: Population without sewage collection in the Brazilian territory

4
By 75 votes favoring the postponement and only 1 against (from Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the president Jair Bolsonaro),
the Senate decided for the postponing of the examination.

4
127
128 [Brazil Sanitation. Population without sewage collection. Proportion of the population that is not covered by
129 sewage collections service in comparison to the total population of the Municipality (%)]
130 .Source: https://diplomatique.org.br/covid-19-desigualdade-social-e-tragedia-no-brasil/
131

132 If we still have to resolve our inequality - not only regarding the offer of basic
133 sanitation, then we must think seriously about how this very inequality reflects on digital
134 inclusion, especially of our children and young adults, such as João Pedro and Ágatha Félix.
135 This is due to “having a computer at home” and “having access to the Internet” not being
136 guaranteed to the totality of the Brazilian population in the 21st century (see figure 3). This
137 makes an authentic and emancipatory digital inclusion even more challenging for current
138 social and educational policies, especially regarding science and technology, which
139 mathematics has been in dialogue with on official curricular documents for a few years in
140 Brazil.
141 Figure 3 – Map of households with microcomputer with Internet access.

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142
143 [Microcomputer with Internet access 2010. Households with microcomputer with Internet access. No. of
144 Municipalities, per class]
145 Source: IBGE, 2010.

146 Understanding the gravity of the scenario presented by the previous maps helps to
147 shed light on how inequality expresses itself in the acquisition of basic durable goods, such a
148 microcomputer, and of basic services, such as Internet access. When we return to the story
149 of João Pedro to think about how inequality damages, especially, black families, we notice
150 that even within a scenario of unequal distribution of goods and services, this population
151 keeps on being the most harmed, like the following data makes evident:
152

153 Figure 4 – Percentage of people of 10 or older that accessed the Internet or possessed a mobile personal
154 telephone, by race/skin-color in Brazil.

155

156

157

158

159

160

161 [People aged 10 or older that accesses the Internet or possessed a mobile personal telephone. Have
162 accessed the Internet (%). Had a mobile personal telephone (%). White people. Black or brown people]
163 Source: IBGE, 2019.

6
164 When speaking of durable goods in the case of Brazil, we must emphasize that
165 television appears as the most accessible good, rather than the microcomputer, as it can be
166 seen in the mapping bellow:
167
168 Figure 5 – Map of households with Television

169
170 [Television 2010. Households with television. Percentual. No of Municipalities per class]
171 Source: IBGE, 2010.
172
173 Incidentally, it was on TV that young Brazilians watched, in the first week of May,
174 the promo that announced the ENEM, designed and disclosed by the Ministry of Education,
175 on national television5. During the commercial, the young actors stated phrases like: “Study,
176 from anywhere, anyhow, through books, the Internet, with remote help from teachers”.

177 And still, “We need to go to battle, reinvent and surpass ourselves”. How does the
178 Ministry of Education expect the Brazilian youth to “reinvent themselves” when they do not
179 have water and basic sanitation? As well as a computer and Internet Access. How does the
180 Ministry of Education expect young black Brazilian kids to “study, anywhere, anyhow” if
181 they are being murdered like João Pedro, in their own houses?

182 The Brazilian Minister of Education Abraham Weintraub in fact does not want more
183 young people, especially black and poor, coming from public schools, to take up spots in
184 public university, which is why he would have said, in a meeting with senators, that “ENEM

5
Available on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apufjiGlIY0

7
185 wasn’t created to correct injustices, but to select the best”6. His positioning corroborates our
186 argument that the educational policies of the current Brazilian government - inspired by the
187 strong denialism of the sanitary crisis - are worsening our inequality, making it even harder
188 for young black people to enter university, where they are still underrepresented, as we can
189 see in the map bellow.

190 Figure 6 – Percentage of black people in public universities in Brazil.

191
192 [Black people]
193 Source: Hugo Nicolau Barbosa de Gusmão 7, 2018.
194 ENEM was postponed, as we have seen. However, within the denialist way of
195 thinking that inspires the Brazilian government, there are still other educational policies that
196 keep denying kids and young adults, especially black and poor, quality education. Such
197 policies challenge the existence of this population. Because of it, we argue – inspired by
198 epistemologies of the south intellectuals – about the urgency of a mathematical education (in
199 research-practice-politics) to undertake a position of counter conduct in relation to the
200 educational policies adopted in times of pandemic.

201 2. Perspectives of the South on Emancipation.

202 To jumpstart this movement, we consider relevant to ponder over the statement by
203 Argentinian professor Water Mignolo (2005, p. 95) asserting that Latin America is as we

6
Available on: https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/educacao/2020/05/em-reuniao-com-senadores-weintraub-diz-
que-enem-nao-foi-feito-para-corrigir-injusticas.shtml
7
Available on: https://desigualdadesespaciais.wordpress.com/

8
204 know it “today, in the world order, the product of the original colonial difference and its
205 rearticulating of the imperial difference that gestates in 17th Century Northern Europe, and
206 that reinstates itself in the emergence of a neo-colonial country like the United States of
207 America”.

208 This understanding, as defended by the authors whose works are produced in the
209 epistemology of the South, leads us to the very issue of the establishment of America – as a
210 construction of modernity, as we’ll see soon – and, particularly, of Latin America.

211 Under this perspective, Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano (2005, p. 121) defends
212 that:

213 The incorporation of such diverse and heterogeneous cultural histories into
214 a single world, dominated by Europe, meant that for this world a single
215 cultural, intellectual configuration, intersubjective in short, equivalent to
216 the articulation of all forms labour control surrounding capital, to establish
217 worldwide capitalism. To this effect, all cultural experiences, histories,
218 resources, and products ended up also articulated into a single cultural
219 global order around European or Western hegemony. In other words, as
220 part of the new standard of world power, Europe also concentrated under it
221 hegemony the control of forms of subjectivity, of culture, and especially of
222 knowledge, of production of knowledge.

223 As a result of the history of colonization, responsible for the founding of what these
224 authors call “framework of colonial power”, Quijano highlights two significant implications.
225 The first leads us to the fact that the peoples who constituted the history of composition of
226 Latin America were stripped of their own singular historical identities. The second consists
227 of the awareness that “their new racial identity, colonial and negative, implied the stripping
228 of their place in humanity’s cultural production” (Quijano, 2005, p.127). From there, given
229 that these men and women would be considered members of inferior races, capable of
230 producing inferior culture, all their construction became “the past”.

231 Much of the work of the Peruvian author helps in the understanding of how such
232 cultures came to be seen as “the past”, as if the economic, political and epistemological
233 history of the peoples that constituted Latin America was converted into a stage prior to the
234 European development. Also dependent on that, as we will see, was the framework of
235 colonial power.

236 In Non-Europe at the same time, in the 19th century, all forms of non-
237 salaried of labour existed. But, from the days of Saint-Simonianism until
238 today, within Eurocentrism, that is the “pre-capitalism”, “pre-industrial”

9
239 past. That is, these social classes are either “pre-capitalist”, or they do not
240 exist. In Non-Europe, there had been imposed non-European or “non-
241 white” racial identities. But, like age or gender among “Europeans”, they
242 correspond to “natural” differences of power between “Europeans” and
243 “non-Europeans”. In Europe, “modern” institutions of authority were
244 already formed or in the process of being formed: the “modern nation-
245 states” and their respective “identities”. In non-Europe, only tribes and
246 ethnicities were perceived, that is, the “pre-modern” past. (QUIJANO,
247 2010, p.99).
248 The act of understanding such cultures as more than inferior, antecedent, associated
249 colonization to a civilizing character, constructing – as these authors assert - not only a new
250 standard of power but, in equal measure, a cognitive standard. That is, an epistemological
251 perspective under which all non-European knowledge and construction corresponded to a
252 primitive past, prone to be outdone and stripped in favour of the civilizing mission.

253 Therefore, according to Mignolo (2017, p. 12), this colonial framework or standard
254 of power, which includes a cognitive standard, amounts to a concept of coloniality that can
255 be described as “a collection of relations that hides behind the rhetoric of modernity (the
256 assertion of salvation, progress, and happiness), which justifies the violence of
257 colonization”. For the Argentinian author, from this understanding, an answer becomes
258 necessary to “the fallacies and fiction of the promises of progress and development
259 contemplated by modernity, such as the violence of colonialism”.

260 Another author, in line with the perspective, is Venezuelan sociologist Edgardo
261 Lander (2005, p. 22), whose work, like those previously cited, recognizes that:

262 The search for alternatives to the deeply excluding and unequal agreement
263 to the modern world demands an effort of deconstructing the universal and
264 natural character of a liberal capitalist society. This requires the
265 questioning of the claims of objectivity and neutrality of the main
266 instruments of naturalization and legitimation of this social order: the set of
267 knowledge that is globally known as social sciences.

268 The issue, as described by Lander, is aggravated when we realize that it is an

269 Eurocentric construction we wish to deconstruct, because of its deeply unjust character. As
270 stated by him, it is unjust because “it thinks and organizes the totality of time and space for
271 all humanity from the point of view of its own experience, putting its cultural and historical
272 specificity as a standard of superior and universal reference” (p.32). By turning the
273 determination of others into a rule and measure, the colonial initiative transformed the

10
274 peoples that would come to constitute Latin America not only into something different, but
275 into “lacking, archaic, primitive, traditional, pre-modern”.

276 By extending the criticism towards coloniality to pond over the imperialism to which
277 we are subjected, Dussel (1980, p.77) observes that “the ideological mechanisms of imperial
278 pedagogy are highly active because they get muddled in with the nature of things, in a kind
279 of tautological construction”. In opposition to imperial culture, as denominated by the
280 author, complementing its colonial character, there is only popular culture, which the
281 dominant imperial pedagogical fights to condemn as “vulgar culture”, to deny and
282 complicate it.

283 Then how can we make use of such perspectives for the construction of more than a
284 framework of theoretical reasoning, more than a political meaning for this article, weaving it
285 into a wider context? Well, dialogue with frame of theoretical references allows us to
286 question how we can denounce and broadcast the denialist way of thinking that inspires the
287 Brazilian government, reclaiming the emancipatory dynamic of thought by Paulo Freire,
288 alongside the intellectual voices of Southern epistemology. The Broadcast of the reckless
289 governmental decisions to which we are subjected, especially given its impacts on education
290 and the learning of mathematics, consists of a scale without which no project of
291 emancipation can take place. The broadcast, equally indispensable, is made on the text when
292 we articulate other possibilities of political-pedagogical projects, such as inspired by the
293 proposals of Latin-American indigenous folk, that have destabilized the uneven relations of
294 power/knowledge seeped in modern schooling.

295 Such relations have been made more distinct, as we have argued, with the promoting
296 of a mathematical education maintained in service of projects related to
297 modernity/coloniality, instead of a mathematical education fundamentally bound to life,
298 existence, and the issues from/in which arise.

299 3. Emancipatory path for Mathematical Education: weaving dialogue with the global
300 South

301 The acknowledgement of the current Brazilian scenario, whose inequality remains
302 aggravated during the pandemic, and the dialogue with researchers of Southern
303 epistemology lead us - as educators of mathematics - to look for alternatives in the field of
304 Mathematical Education capable of opposing and resisting the nefarious impacts of the

11
305 policies put in place by the Brazilian government, which authorize schools to remotely
306 develop the activities of the schoolyear, through distance learning and video lessons8. Under
307 our perspective, this movement implicates the challenge of denaturalization of the image of
308 an “educational crisis” marked only by the effect COVID-19 has had in our lives, and this
309 narrative has been distributed/reinforced by sectors related to the government. Instead, we
310 are called upon to reflect about this being one of the expressions of the general crisis of
311 modernity in place in Latin America.

312 Through the lenses of these Latin-American authors, the general crisis of modernity
313 demands not only the acknowledgement that school has been working as a civilizing
314 mechanism through different devices (VEIGA-NETO, 2003), if not also feeding it a single
315 image of Mathematics (VILELA, 2013) – that produced in the centres of colonial power -,
316 which has been contributing to the reproduction of epistemic racism that “considers non-
317 Western knowledge as inferior. Even so it is no longer possible to deny the existence of
318 histories and epistemes outside de conceptual and historiographical landmarks of the West”
319 (WALSH, 2017, p. 303).

320 In this regard, by proposing a decolonization spin on/for Mathematical Education,

321 we dedicated ourselves to think alongside educational proposals born from breast of struggle
322 and resistance of indigenous, black, and Zapatistas movements, among others, who survived
323 in many territories, even before the pandemic presenting us with such problems as: Is it
324 possible to educate with school, and if so, how? Which mathematics are those that must be
325 taught and learnt in/for the way of life we have today? For what reason such mathematics
326 and their teachings are inserted into a wider formative project?

327 For example, such alternatives derive from the contributions of conceptions like the
328 “Buen Vivir” – “Sumak Kawsay”, in quechua and “Suma Qamaña” in Aymara9 - of the

8
The Guidelines for schools during the pandemic was published on the 18th of April 2020, by Conselho
Nacional de Educação – CNE (National Education Council in English) in collaboration with the Ministry of
Education (MEC), which authorizes schools of basic education and institutions of higher education to
substitute presential classes for distance learning through means of information technology and
communication, during the coronavirus pandemic. Information available on:
http://portal.mec.gov.br/component/content/article?id=89051
9
Gudyanas (2011, p. 4) clarifies that, in the case of these two expressions which refer to Buen Vivir, it is
necessary to examine the similarities as well as the differences. For example, “in the case o Bolivia, the suma
gamaña and other concepts associated are ethical-moral notions, and they appear on the marks of their
definition of multinationalism. In the Ecuadorian case, differently, the sumak kawsay is presented in two levels:
as a mark for a set of rights and as expression of big part of the organization and execution of these rights, be it

12
329 peoples of Ecuador and Bolivia (Choquehuanca, 2011; Gudyanas, 2011) or of “Pedagogía
330 de la Madre Tierra” (Pedagogy of the Mother Earth, in English) in Colombia (Green;
331 Sinigui; Rojas, 2013), to name a few. We understand that theses educational projects, which
332 are inspired in theses concepts of feeling/thinking/inhabiting Mother Earth, comprehend
333 humans as nature and, therefore, comprehend a concept of a communitarian and integrated
334 life, in opposition to the capitalist concept of the modern-colonial world of “Better Living”,
335 in the words of Quechuan intellectual Javier Lajo (2010, p.116):

336 Sumaq Kawsay (o Allin Kawsay), 'splendid existence' or simply 'living

337 well', is an important concept of the Andean-Amazonian discipline or 'way
338 of life', which has to do first of all with three commitments of the human
339 being to the pachamama: 1. Do things well (o Allin Ruay); 2. To love well
340 (o Allin Munay) and; 3. To thinkg well (o Allin Yachay). [originalmente em
341 espanhol]

342 Under the awareness that gives us the Buen Vivir, the Good Living, the human being
343 does not identify as superior to Pachamama, to Madre Tierra (Mother Earth, in English),
344 because they see themselves as part of it. Their survival even depends on the care they
345 provide for Her, in a manner that the individual and the collective coexist in
346 complementarity, among human beings and non-humans. Sociocultural practices specific to
347 each territory articulate themselves into the most diverse ways of life, into different forms of
348 interaction with non-humans, which necessarily involves the means through which they
349 produce, legitimize, validate, and make use of knowledge [mathematical] in favour of life.

350 The “Pedagogía de la Madre Tierra” (Pedagogy of the Mother Earth, in English) is
351 conceived as a political/epistemic proposal in Colombia (Green; Sinigui; Rojas, 2013) from
352 the dialogue between various indigenous peoples of Antioquia alongside de Indigenous
353 Organization of the state, seeking alternatives for an education correspondent to their
354 cosmogony and cosmovision. In these conversations, which arose from the question of
355 “where do we come from?” (GREEN, 2020)10, they concluded that education within the
356 indigenous context only has significance if it centred on spiritual ground, acknowledging
357 that the origin of life derives from a mother, the Mother Earth. In this manner, in the search
358 for a decolonization of the modern/colonial education, a “Pedagogy of Mother Earth” is born

by the State, or be it by the whole society. This is a formalization of a larger reach, as the sumak kawsay goes
beyond being just an ethical-moral principle and appears within a set of right”.
10
As presented in the conference of Abadio Green Stocel in Abril 2020, available on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_kSFM14jRM

13
359 as a way of integrating people, communities and the world, through the reconnection with
360 the mother’s womb.

361 This proposal derives from the fact that each of these peoples experiences the
362 relationship to Mother Earth differently, weaving their own visions, knowledge, and
363 projects; in addition, they must dialogue to coexist. Contrastingly, it is shows that education
364 is not only just a concern for elite groups, but, instead, a practice inherent to the lives of
365 humans and non-humans which, when in interaction, tread the path of wisdom and produce
366 knowledge that doesn’t function in a disciplined manner:

367 Official education has not only ignored this link but has imposed its
368 knowledge above the ancestral wisdom of the original peoples, and it has
369 not been able, and it hurts very much, to recognize the wisdom of our Abya
370 Yala peoples. All the time they have tried to take away our memory, as
371 they have tried to take away our mother earth, which is a fundamental part
372 of our spirituality; With this they intend to continue the looting of the
373 natural and cultural resources that many peoples have jealously guarded for
374 the good of humanity. An education from Mother Earth then means
375 learning to prepare ourselves to save her, so that we work together in her
376 permanent care and conservation. (GREEN; SINIGUI; ROJAS, 2013, p.
377 92). [original in Spanish]
378 From this perspective, researches like those of Cuellar-Lemos and Martínez-
379 Montoya (2013), Green (2012) and Cuellar-Lemos (2017), which approach this pedagogical
380 conception to think of other ways of being/inhabiting school as a political/epistemic act,
381 invite and push the non-indigenous communities to expand their meanings and uses of the
382 expressions “Mathematics”. This movement is for the thinking of “mathematics”, plural,
383 accepting that school should be a space to treat this diversity of uses linked to various
384 rationalities, and not a space that contributes to the disappearing of cultures.

385 For instance, in his Masters research, the indigenous Guna Richard Nixón Cuella-
386 Lemos (2017) teaches us that, to know about “immal iddogedi igala”11, we need to learn the
387 social practices of his people, because measuring, counting, calculating, among other
388 knowledge, pass through the body; as well as being necessary for those who learn and teach
389 to follow the principles of the Pedagogy of Mother Earth: “Boggigwa (silence), Iddoge

11
In his research Cuellar-Lemos (2017, p 134) interviews indigenous botanist Roberto Cuellar, his father, who affirms:
“Immal iddogedi igala gunadule may be a way of interpreting the mathematical word, without saying that it is the same,
but it is similar to what appears in history as the capacity to see, to look to observe the reality of the social, political, and
economic world within the Gunadule cosmogony. Because counting ebisedi expresses time and space with meaning and
coherence, and accounts for the ways of life in society and behaves normatively from moral knowledge, also due to the
need of men and women, creating rules to build their world in a different way of what other cultures think, that's why
counting in Gunadule relates to family construction, wisdom, music, intercultural dialogue, behind that word is the
meaning”. [original in Spanish]

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390 (listen), Dagge (observe), Sobedi (weave) [...] and gaya ossigwuad (sweet word), which
391 makes possible the passing along of the learnt knowledge, because they don’t serve the
392 individual, unless they serve the community as a collective” (CUELLAR-LEMOS, 2017, p.
393 71).

394 In the same vein, Green (2020) explains, in his conference, that the fact these peoples
395 had gone back to learning with/from Mother Earth, has made it possible to see how their
396 grandparents in colonial history (though painful) researched, in the mountains, ways of
397 healing diseases brought by the Europeans, and that spread, causing death in Abya Yala12.
398 Given the current pandemic provoked by COVID-19, the grandparents will point to return to
399 the mountains, forests, to recreate the medicines and ceremonies; for example, “in Panamá,
400 so far, we have 54 Gunadule infected by the virus, and no deaths. Yes! No deaths. That is
401 because our grandparents found a plant and, with the right quantities, they make a hot
402 drink for the ill to drink, which has been aiding in their recuperation.”

403 These propositions, born from resistance movements, put in question the European
404 paradigm of rational knowledge, which is the alleged founder of Modernity/Rationality: “the
405 knowledge as product of the relation between subject and object” (QUIJANO, 1992, p. 14),
406 every time the individualist character of a subject instituted as a truth “misrepresents the
407 problem by denying the intersubjectivity and the social totality as sources of the production
408 of all knowledge” (QUIJANO, 1992, p. 15).

409 We understand each of these epistemological contributions from the indigenous

410 peoples as decolonization spins, as movements of counter conduct, that appear as
411 ethnic/political/epistemological actions, reclaiming the thinking of alternative ways of
412 education and knowledge. Such movements also destabilize the centres of power produced
413 and maintained by the institution of school. It is worth highlighting that, when we speak of
414 these proposals which are born from the breast of the struggle of Latin-American peoples,
415 can be acknowledged as movements of counter conduct, and we understand that:

416 The counter conduct designates, therefore, the movements within the
417 power plays capable of creating other possibilities of action, in the same
418 measure in which it denies, not the government per se, but the way how it
419 is governed. Thus, Lorenzizi (2016, p. 10) notes that the notion of conduct

12
Abya Yala, is a word originated from the Guna language that means “earth of life”, “earth of maturing”. The claiming of
Abya Yala emerges as territory/episteme of the enunciation to claim the rights over political, economic, and social projects
focused on the original peoples that compose this territory. It is not about a merely semantic alteration, but the fruits of a
long dating process, of a systematic movement of resistance to the colonial condition.

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420 does not appear simply as negative to counter conduct but refers to the
421 positive connotation as the possibility of the subject conducting themselves
422 when being led by other. Therefore, it is in the ambiguity within the
423 relations of government where the possibility of counter conduct resides, as
424 well as evidences the dimension of ethical-political power relations in the
425 articulation between the governing of oneself and the governing of others
426 (COSTA, 2019, p. 68).

427 These ways of conceiving education and its purposes, all intrinsically linked to life,
428 can inspire Mathematical Education to take on the existence, in its multiple aspect, as a
429 theme and an issue. Furthermore, significant resonance can be found in Ethnomathematics,
430 as evidenced by Monteiro e Mendes (2019, p.6), “as it does not break with Mathematics nor
431 does it go against the principles of the field of knowledge, but calls for another way of
432 thinking and of doing maths. This other way emerges, like the pedagogies linked to “Buen
433 Vivir” and the “Pedagogy of the Mother Earth”, bringing up new questions about the
434 oneness and universality of knowledge.

435 That being said, we highlight that D’Ambrosio (1999, p. 53) is also dedicated to
436 pondering about the relation between power – contained in these ideas of oneness and
437 universality – and knowledge: for the educator of mathematics: “the exercise of power
438 through knowledge achieved great importance in the civilization which originated in
439 Mediterranean traditions”, above all because “from its first moments, Western civilization is
440 one anchored in knowledge”. Because of this, “knowledge has been the greatest tool for
441 exercising power and is what gives autonomy for the creature to perform the greatest act,
442 procreation, which is responsible for the continuing of the species. It is understood that, in
443 this direction, ever since then, mathematics has been incorporated into school systems of
444 colonized nations, and has become indispensable throughout the whole world, as a
445 consequence of our scientific, technologic, and economic development – which allows,
446 above all, the examination of social, political, and cultural consequences of this
447 incorporation (D’AMBROSIO, 1999).

448 More specifically, for the same author, the most serious distortions caused by the
449 exacerbated Scientism, also a result of this incorporation and widespread by modern
450 education can be identified as: (a) the interpretation of the differences between human
451 beings as multiple stages in the evolution of the species; (b) the explanation for the non-
452 fulfilment of basic material needs as a spectrum that goes from diligence to laziness, and the
453 search for the dissatisfaction with spiritual needs because of a lack of scientific rationality;

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454 and (c) the preservation of natural and cultural heritage seen as an obstacle for progress
455 (D’AMBROSIO, 1997, p. 45).

456 That being said, it is necessary and relevant to find paths that understand that
457 mathematical knowledge cannot remain connected to the distortions above, which have their
458 share of responsibility for the devastating experiences lived by many Brazilian regions and
459 communities, as result of the pandemic in the context of intense inequality. The
460 mathematical knowledge must be understood, instead, in the scope of a project linked to the
461 understandings of Buen Vivir, in opposition to those that support the logic of “better living”:

462 “better Living” presupposes an ethic of unlimited progress and

463 encourages us to compete with others to create more and more conditions
464 for 'living better'. Yet for some to be able to 'live better' millions upon
465 millions have and have had to “live badly”. It is the capitalist
466 contradiction" (BOFF, 2012, s/n) [original in Spanish]
467 In this sense, even after finding important education initiatives that emerged in these
468 pandemic times, favouring the teaching of Mathematics, disciplinarily organized, and taking
469 the COVID-19 pandemic as way of contextualizing, we bring attention to the fact that such
470 initiatives keep reproducing a punishing and disciplinary school, which subjugates the
471 bodies of children they have access to, and, undoubtedly, remains silent about the millions
472 of black and indigenous young adults that will not be able to keep up with schooling that –
473 now more than ever – is agonizing.

474 4. Final considerations

475 In the face of the crisis we have denounced, heightened by the deep inequality that
476 characterizes Brazil, we end this text as a statement of the reality we can build, should we be
477 able to dedicate ourselves to confronting the social and sanitary problems that affect us. It is
478 about following in Paulo Freire’s footsteps; in his work, he explains the necessity of
479 understanding announcements-denouncements as inseparable dimensions of every
480 emancipatory movement. In his words, we read that the exercise of reading the world
481 “necessarily demands the critical understanding of reality; on the one hand, its
482 denouncement, on the other, the announcement of what still does not exist” (FREIRE, 2014,
483 p. 46).

484 In favour of what “does not exist” or of which, not being hegemonic, has been
485 considered inexistent, we proposed, also following Freire, the announcement of possibilities

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486 in the dialogue with voices of oppressed subjects, because they outline educational
487 alternatives born from the indigenous Latin-American movements, in which the whole of
488 knowledge must implicate the intention of knowing in favour of life; for example, of the
489 “Buen Vivir” and of “Pedagogía de la Madre Tierra” (Pedagogy of the Mother Earth, in
490 English), and not life in favour of knowledge.

491 Though different burgeoning Mathematics education initiatives during the COVID-
492 19 pandemic are committed to contextualize the required content - which means, as we see
493 it, life according to mathematical subjects -, we assert the urgency of putting mathematical
494 knowledge according to life, as Emmanuel Lizcano had already stated, in 2012.

495 The aforementioned author asks us educators of mathematics to pressingly include

496 questions in research agendas such as these: how to put life as a basis for problematization in
497 education? Would another education during pandemic times be possible, knowing public
498 policy steadfastly defends a school system that deepens the social inequalities, as an effect
499 of its control mechanisms? Is there any value in having a school system that runs without
500 considering the large share of students who can’t “access” it? And, if it does (which we
501 know is true for a fair share of the Brazilian population), what are the mathematics of an
502 learning experience that does not take into account life as centre of education? Do these
503 types of mathematics contribute to the “Buen Vivir” or to the “Better Living”?

504 These and other question are clustered together on the horizon, as we live through a
505 crisis in which all our manners of thinking/feeling/doing were literally put-on hold because
506 of the pandemic. Now, it is up to us to establish with whom we will dialogue in our search
507 for possible answers. In this work, we recovered certain contributions able to aid us at the
508 moment: in a Brazil characterized by its intense inequality, the effects of the pandemic steers
509 us to seek the epistemologies of the South and of the decolonization spins on/of
510 Mathematical education, as distinct ways of solving/answer the issues we face.

511 As it was seen, the Brazil we presented has been impacted by the pandemic, adding
512 on to the entire colonial history and slavery days, and socioeconomic inequality. We live in
513 glum times and, at the same time, a conscience of the gravity of the situation is required of
514 us, and one able to find pathways for effective mobilization. For D’Ambrosio (1992, p. 468),
515 such rallying of forces necessarily goes through the “conscience of the problem and it
516 worldwide extreme urgency”, through “an appeal for scientific, cultural, spiritual, economic

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517 and political leaders to transform awareness into effective action” and, finally, through “the
518 examination of causes, of all kinds, that led us to the disaster, and of the new ways to seek
519 survival in limited timeframe.

520 Our purpose with this article is to offer some contribution to each of the stages
521 aforementioned by the D’Ambrosio: to broadcast how Brazilian inequality has deepen the
522 social wounds and traumas caused by the Pandemic, which has been permeated by the
523 continuous genocide of the black population, that has, unfortunately, taken João Pedro as
524 emblem; to study and discuss the causes that, under our colonial perspectives, lead us to the
525 disaster we debated; and, finally, to launch an appeal for awareness to become effective
526 action: children like João Pedro need to survive to be able to study!

527 5. References

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529 http://SERVICIOSKOINONIA.org/agenda/archivo/obra.php?ncodigo=757

530 CHOQUEHUANCA, D. Bolivia: Hacia la reconstrucción del Vivir Bien. 2011 Available on:
531 https://www.servindi.org/actualidad/41823

532 COSTA, H. S. O. Lugar das Contracondutas na Genealogia Foucaultiana do Governo. Revista de

533 Filosofia Moderna e Contemporânea, Brasília, v.7, n.1, abr., p. 61-78. 2019. Available on:
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535 CUÉLLAR-LEMOS, R. N.; Martínez-Montoya, F. (2013). La revitalización del lenguaje de la

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