**2. Precursors of the liberating philosophy**

We frame our study in the decolonial pedagogy field. The wording coloniality/decoloniality has been rendered theoretically systematic by a school of Latin-American thinkers, who have been formulating new knowledge bases for an epistemological theory of philosophy and liberation. From this school's stance, "modernity" was not a "pioneer" invention of Western Europe, and it is not presumed to be an evolutionary pathway for mankind. Such "modernity," currently expressed in its globalized capitalistic form, began to be built since 1492, with the invasion and colonization of the people in *Abya Yala*, historically becoming a Eurocentric modernity, with a universalistic discourse. To the world's eyes, the Eurocentric philosophy emphasizes the Renaissance look of modernity, the grinning face of progress in economy, arts, scientific knowledge, and individual freedom. However, modernity has also a shady and vicious face that has been traditionally concealed by the Eurocentric historical philosophy. It is the imperialistic, colonialist, and racist face. Decolonial pedagogy is committed to unravel the power and the secrets of modernity/colonialism, being the latter understood as the power contrivances rooted in the culture and mentality of

98 New Pedagogical Challenges in the 21st Century - Contributions of Research in Education

Why is there Latin America and *Abya Yala*? "Latin America" is an identity concept for Latin-American (or Hispanic-American) people that came up in the context of imperialistic disputes between France and England, together with the internal disputes triggered by the struggle for independence in Spanish America (nineteenth century), and the political conflicts with the United States. Though the "Latin America" concept developed throughout the twentieth century—a "forward" dimension toward the cause of oppressed people, it fails to consider the claims or rights to exist and live of the indigenous and Afro-American people, in this case, mostly the lifestyle of the quilombola communities. This is why it is necessary to see and think of the world also from the stance of the history and culture of the autochthonous people in the Americas. Therefore, *Abya Yala* is the term that has been used by the indigenous movement in the Americas to refer to the American continent from the native people's stance. Within the scope of critical thought, *Abya Yala* is an ethical attitude acknowledging the various original people's right to live, to exist, and keep their history. It is an instrumentally ethical attitude to build an intercultural dialogical relationship in the liberating outlook by Paulo Freire [1] or a face-to-face relationship according to Enrique Dussel's philosophy [2]. *Abya Yala* is an epistemological beacon of light that was not born in academia, "but from the guts of this land, the womb of the battered communities, by pooling together the Kuna people with another, just as ancient and

We have divided this chapter in four parts. In the first one, we set forth the precursors of decolonial thinking, which was expressed as an epistemological liberation philosophy. Next, we introduce the indigenous education in its way of living and resisting internal and external colonialism. In the third part, we introduce the pedagogical thought of two educators in the liberating popular education, and we close this chapter explaining the theories of two Chilean educators, who set the cornerstone for the pedagogical project for

colonized people.

rugged, the Aymaras [3]."

biocentric education.

Colonization in both America and Africa shares an ontological common feature: the modernity discourse disguised as Ulysses' siren song. In Latin America and the Caribbean, few intellectuals resisted the charm of this West European modernity, and fewer were unharmed by it. Nevertheless, we find a unique variety of poets and philosophers willing to unravel the mysteries of colonization and colonialism, formulating ideas and insights to create "enlightened subjects" for a "different" America. Among others worthy of being studied and known, we chose the Brazilian anthropologist-historian Manoel Bomfim (1868–1932), the Mexican philosopher Leopoldo Zea (1925–1961), the Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), the Caribbean psychiatrist-philosopher Frantz Fanon (1925–1961), the Peruvian sociologist Animal Quijano, and the Argentinean philosopher Enrique Dussel.

In Brazil, Manoel Bomfim [4] struggled against the hegemonic power of scientismic and racist thought that prevailed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was one of the Latin-American thinkers who did not succumb to the simplistic and racist arguments from Eurocentric modernity. He earnestly rebutted the theories attempting to justify the cultural and economical lag in Latin America with the conceptual instruments of scientific racism. Darcy Ribeiro became familiar with Bomfim's work while in exile (Brazilian dictatorship of 1964), in Montevideo, the time when he wrote his "Studies on the Anthropology of Civilization." It was during his exile that he broke with the "Brazilian imposed provincialism" and became aware that "we are part of a whole: Latin America." It was in exile that Darcy Ribeiro realized that "the overwhelming majority of Latin-American writers striving to understand our historical lag" was made up of "parrots repeating other people's wisdom or mountebanks." Some of them covered pages parroting what metropolitan thinkers had said about us with the intent of justifying European colonialism—as he pointed out—and others opposed it, referring to "innocents, with terrestrial forces, bronze races, and even Latin cosseting to lecture, feeling insulted, about superiority assumptions that our history fails to endorse." However, amidst the bibliographical flock of parrots, Darcy Ribeiro found a bright, albeit fickle, and spark of lucidity. He incidentally found "this extraordinary book titled *Latin America—Evils of Origin*, by Manoel Bomfim." From reading it, he discovered the singularity of an "original, fully mature Latin-American thinker in 1905," when the first edition of his *Latin America* [5] was published.

While hegemonic theories justified the lag in Latin America as an outcome of the presumed genetic legacy from the indigenous people and African negroes, the tropical climate and the Catholic religion, Bomfim identified the "European colonizer's parasitism" as "evils of origin." The European development model, Bomfim accuses, was built on the oppression and enslavement of the indigenous and African people; the colonizers' parasitism is the foremost cause of the lagging economy and social inequity.

In Mexico, philosopher Leopoldo Zea (1925–1961) proposed a philosophical itinerary to build an authentic American philosophy, free from the psychological contrivances from the colonized frame of mind, empowered in terms of cultural reliance, and committed to solve the major inequity and injustice issues in America. In *America as Consciousness*, Leopoldo Zea (1953/1972) takes for an issue the cultural and philosophical dependency of American thinkers; America's "feeling inferior" to Europe issue. Zea develops his philosophical-historical thought projecting an evolutionary empowerment scenario, still following the epistemological coordinates from West European knowledge. He presents a critical diagnosis of the situation of thinking and reality that prevailed in Latin America during the first half of the twentieth century; he discusses the ranking America held within the "European awareness." Zea challenges the *History of Philosophy* by Hegel, a Eurocentric philosopher who failed to acknowledge the history of the original people, but took America merely for its future potential.

response from the Colombian elite, including death threats [8]. This work drew attention from public opinion in Colombia, since it made explicit the structural nature of violence and sug-

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In 1970, Fals Borda launched the book where he set forth the Eurocentric issue in a sociological manner. In his *Own Science and Intellectual Colonialism* [9], the Colombian sociologist expresses the conceptual coordinates of the "sociology of liberation", proposing the independence and valuation of Latin-American thinking. Fals Borda takes as issues the epistemological domains of Eurocentric, cultural, and economic dependency, highlighting the need to overcome our "inferiority complex"; he challenges the theoretical transposition of Euro-American scientific categories into the Latin-American reality. He proposes a liberating and creative intellectual independence, however devoid of ethnocentric xenophobia and scholarly hubris. At the same time, he emphasized the need to transcend the Eurocentric boundaries. Fals Borda also pointed out the importance of maintaining an intercultural dialog with the different schools of thought, including the European one. His proposed sociology would be committed to fairness to those oppressed and a *Participatory Action-Research* (PAR) for social transformation. Intellectual recalcitrance and subversion were liberating attitudes in Fals Borda's *thinking & feeling* sociology [10]. From the Caribbean islands and in the resistance to French imperialism, two Martinica-born Caribbeans left a legacy for the utopia of a world free from colonization and colonialism. Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) was a poet, essayist, playwright, and philosopher. In his *Discourse on Negritude [Blackness]* (1950) and *Discourse on Colonialism* (1955), Aimé Césaire draws insights holding potential to transcend the epistemological boundaries of Eurocentrism. Using the concept of "blackness", developed in the oppressive cultural environment created by the French colonial system, Aimé attacks racist thinking, rebuffs the cultural assimilation policy, and proposes epistemological tools for the self-esteem in "being black" and valuing the African culture. However, his liberating poetry is not limited to the unfair situation of the black population. Aimé places himself in the cause of the "oppressed races" upon expressing his humanistic conviction, "*Je suis de la race de ceux qu'on oprime". [I belong to the oppressed race.]*. Upon analyzing the obscure dimensions of Eurocentric colonialism, Aimé makes a connection with the emergence of Nazism, suggesting that Hitler was not an unpredictable accident but

Where was Aimé leading to? His point is that a State promoting and practicing colonialism is the same that creates the conditions for the development of a Hitler. When European imperialism deemed it permissible to invade foreign lands and colonize non-European peoples, "it was Hitlher who spoke", says Aimé. In other words: "nobody colonizes innocently", and neither colonizes unpunished, since "a civilization that condones colonization (…) is already a sick civilization, morally blemished, which unavoidably moves from one consequence to another,

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) follows the same reasoning thread as Aimé Césaire. In *The Wretched of the Earth*, Fanon unveils the physical and psychological dimensions of colonialist violence. Using insights and psychoanalytical study of patients fraught with mental derangement conditions resulting from colonial violence, Fanon [12] demonstrates that, in the colonialist society, violence dehumanizes both colonizers and their subjects. Colonial society is divided into

gested actions for social pacification, including ideas for an educational policy.

the outcome and "punishment" to a colonialist Europe.

from one denial to the next, invoking its Hitler, i.e., its punishment [11]".

The Mexican philosopher makes explicit his interpretation of the political independence and the controversies between the "Two Americas," viz. Anglo-Saxon America and Latin America. Upon considering America's intellectual emancipation, he confers a strategic role upon *education as a cultural empowerment instrument*. Education steps up to a fundamental role, particularly after the events suggesting the failure to conquer political independence, when the social groups in the new independent nations faced each other with unrestrained violence: wars, conspiracies, and coups. Overall, Creole elites defeated metropolitan despotism and developed multiple American despotisms; they replaced the king with various regional dictators (warlords). First, people fought for the king; then they fought for the clergy, the militias, or the warlords: a dynastic and colonialist dictatorship by any kind of dictators: "conservative, constitutional, liberal, or personalistic." A dictatorship was implemented even under the guise of establishing freedom [6]. Zea confers an empowering role upon education from the awareness that in a colonized society, people are educated for servitude. In his dialog with the thoughts of Simón Bolívar, particularly regarding the *Jamaica Letter*, Zea observes that in the colonial regime from Spain and Portugal, the population was taught to serve the best interests of the metropoles; "such education stemmed from the presumed ethnic and cultural inferiority of the people colonized." Zea further points out that the notion of inferiority was extensive to all those born in America, "regardless of their ethnical and cultural origin." Therefore "anyone born in this territory, including indigenous, Creole, and mixed, was deemed inferior to their conquerors and colonizers." The colonized population was deprived of its human condition, being educated and disciplined to obey, to serve, and become a thing, an object, or a nonhuman animal. This is why Simón Bolívar insisted in pointing out the effects of colonial domination for human servitude, "educate to obey, to never be able to command" and much less to lead a nation, a new state [7].

In Colombia, Orlando Fals Borda (1925–2008) produced several works toward a "liberating society," committed to free the oppressed population, mostly peasants and Indians. Fals Borda's very intellectual upbringing is a path of intellectual liberation. He took his undergraduate and graduate studies in the United States (1947, 1953, and 1957), topping them with his doctoral thesis, *The Man and the Land in Boyacá,* at the *University of Florida* in 1957. He held governmental jobs and worked in study, research, and educational institutions, both stateside and internationally. In 1961, he published, in a partnership with Monseñor Guzmán Campos and Eduardo Umaña, *La transformación de América Latina y sus implicaciones sociales y económicas [The Transformation of Latin America and its Social and Economic Implications]*, and in 1962 *La violencia en Colombia [Violence in Colombia]*, which caused intense debate and some furious response from the Colombian elite, including death threats [8]. This work drew attention from public opinion in Colombia, since it made explicit the structural nature of violence and suggested actions for social pacification, including ideas for an educational policy.

colonized frame of mind, empowered in terms of cultural reliance, and committed to solve the major inequity and injustice issues in America. In *America as Consciousness*, Leopoldo Zea (1953/1972) takes for an issue the cultural and philosophical dependency of American thinkers; America's "feeling inferior" to Europe issue. Zea develops his philosophical-historical thought projecting an evolutionary empowerment scenario, still following the epistemological coordinates from West European knowledge. He presents a critical diagnosis of the situation of thinking and reality that prevailed in Latin America during the first half of the twentieth century; he discusses the ranking America held within the "European awareness." Zea challenges the *History of Philosophy* by Hegel, a Eurocentric philosopher who failed to acknowledge the

The Mexican philosopher makes explicit his interpretation of the political independence and the controversies between the "Two Americas," viz. Anglo-Saxon America and Latin America. Upon considering America's intellectual emancipation, he confers a strategic role upon *education as a cultural empowerment instrument*. Education steps up to a fundamental role, particularly after the events suggesting the failure to conquer political independence, when the social groups in the new independent nations faced each other with unrestrained violence: wars, conspiracies, and coups. Overall, Creole elites defeated metropolitan despotism and developed multiple American despotisms; they replaced the king with various regional dictators (warlords). First, people fought for the king; then they fought for the clergy, the militias, or the warlords: a dynastic and colonialist dictatorship by any kind of dictators: "conservative, constitutional, liberal, or personalistic." A dictatorship was implemented even under the guise of establishing freedom [6]. Zea confers an empowering role upon education from the awareness that in a colonized society, people are educated for servitude. In his dialog with the thoughts of Simón Bolívar, particularly regarding the *Jamaica Letter*, Zea observes that in the colonial regime from Spain and Portugal, the population was taught to serve the best interests of the metropoles; "such education stemmed from the presumed ethnic and cultural inferiority of the people colonized." Zea further points out that the notion of inferiority was extensive to all those born in America, "regardless of their ethnical and cultural origin." Therefore "anyone born in this territory, including indigenous, Creole, and mixed, was deemed inferior to their conquerors and colonizers." The colonized population was deprived of its human condition, being educated and disciplined to obey, to serve, and become a thing, an object, or a nonhuman animal. This is why Simón Bolívar insisted in pointing out the effects of colonial domination for human servitude, "educate to obey, to never be able to command" and much less to lead a nation, a new state [7]. In Colombia, Orlando Fals Borda (1925–2008) produced several works toward a "liberating society," committed to free the oppressed population, mostly peasants and Indians. Fals Borda's very intellectual upbringing is a path of intellectual liberation. He took his undergraduate and graduate studies in the United States (1947, 1953, and 1957), topping them with his doctoral thesis, *The Man and the Land in Boyacá,* at the *University of Florida* in 1957. He held governmental jobs and worked in study, research, and educational institutions, both stateside and internationally. In 1961, he published, in a partnership with Monseñor Guzmán Campos and Eduardo Umaña, *La transformación de América Latina y sus implicaciones sociales y económicas [The Transformation of Latin America and its Social and Economic Implications]*, and in 1962 *La violencia en Colombia [Violence in Colombia]*, which caused intense debate and some furious

history of the original people, but took America merely for its future potential.

100 New Pedagogical Challenges in the 21st Century - Contributions of Research in Education

In 1970, Fals Borda launched the book where he set forth the Eurocentric issue in a sociological manner. In his *Own Science and Intellectual Colonialism* [9], the Colombian sociologist expresses the conceptual coordinates of the "sociology of liberation", proposing the independence and valuation of Latin-American thinking. Fals Borda takes as issues the epistemological domains of Eurocentric, cultural, and economic dependency, highlighting the need to overcome our "inferiority complex"; he challenges the theoretical transposition of Euro-American scientific categories into the Latin-American reality. He proposes a liberating and creative intellectual independence, however devoid of ethnocentric xenophobia and scholarly hubris. At the same time, he emphasized the need to transcend the Eurocentric boundaries. Fals Borda also pointed out the importance of maintaining an intercultural dialog with the different schools of thought, including the European one. His proposed sociology would be committed to fairness to those oppressed and a *Participatory Action-Research* (PAR) for social transformation. Intellectual recalcitrance and subversion were liberating attitudes in Fals Borda's *thinking & feeling* sociology [10].

From the Caribbean islands and in the resistance to French imperialism, two Martinica-born Caribbeans left a legacy for the utopia of a world free from colonization and colonialism. Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) was a poet, essayist, playwright, and philosopher. In his *Discourse on Negritude [Blackness]* (1950) and *Discourse on Colonialism* (1955), Aimé Césaire draws insights holding potential to transcend the epistemological boundaries of Eurocentrism. Using the concept of "blackness", developed in the oppressive cultural environment created by the French colonial system, Aimé attacks racist thinking, rebuffs the cultural assimilation policy, and proposes epistemological tools for the self-esteem in "being black" and valuing the African culture. However, his liberating poetry is not limited to the unfair situation of the black population. Aimé places himself in the cause of the "oppressed races" upon expressing his humanistic conviction, "*Je suis de la race de ceux qu'on oprime". [I belong to the oppressed race.]*. Upon analyzing the obscure dimensions of Eurocentric colonialism, Aimé makes a connection with the emergence of Nazism, suggesting that Hitler was not an unpredictable accident but the outcome and "punishment" to a colonialist Europe.

Where was Aimé leading to? His point is that a State promoting and practicing colonialism is the same that creates the conditions for the development of a Hitler. When European imperialism deemed it permissible to invade foreign lands and colonize non-European peoples, "it was Hitlher who spoke", says Aimé. In other words: "nobody colonizes innocently", and neither colonizes unpunished, since "a civilization that condones colonization (…) is already a sick civilization, morally blemished, which unavoidably moves from one consequence to another, from one denial to the next, invoking its Hitler, i.e., its punishment [11]".

Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) follows the same reasoning thread as Aimé Césaire. In *The Wretched of the Earth*, Fanon unveils the physical and psychological dimensions of colonialist violence. Using insights and psychoanalytical study of patients fraught with mental derangement conditions resulting from colonial violence, Fanon [12] demonstrates that, in the colonialist society, violence dehumanizes both colonizers and their subjects. Colonial society is divided into explicitly racial and cultural fields, featuring the geography of Master and Slave, as termed by Aristotle. Post-colonial society melts the visible and legal boundaries of oppression and slavery; however, the colonialist culture is deeply rooted in the deepest "being" of colonized men, i.e., the oppressor's shadow remains culturally and psychologically hosted within the oppressed ones, as Paulo Freire would put it.

history purporting to be universal; and it further radicalizes its philosophical analysis upon uncovering the fetish of modernity, an ideology that creates a natural a locus of universal centrality for Europe, validating and hiding its imperialistic background as a presumed civilizing

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What was the life style and, particularly, education in the major civilizations in *Abya Yala* like? What was education like for the people in the forests? The entire epistemological reality of the original people was "covered" by the West European epistemological modernity. Our first pedagogical mission is to dig and "uncover" this immense world that was buried. When Spanish conquerors invaded the *Anáhuac* territory (currently Mexico and Guatemala) in 1519, for instance, the Aztec civilization was organized into 38 provinces. On top of a complex urban structure that impacted the Spaniards' first impressions, there was a public education system and an erudite culture that valued the art of knowledge to be preserved and shared by means of books. The books, as Jacques Soustelle points out, "were regarded as very important by ancient Mexicans"; in the temples and more affluent homes, there were rich libraries, and the profession of painter-scribe (*tlacuiloani*) was particularly valued. Spaniards still had a chance to witness the existence of two public education systems: "the neighborhood schools, where male instructors taught boys and female instructors taught girls, to get them prepared for real life," and the monastery-school (*calmecac*), "where teaching was performed by priests" [15]. The Inca civilization, differently from the Aztec, did not need written language to develop its complex urban architecture or its knowledge in astronomy and mathematics; they developed a recording and accounting method using a technique involving knots on ropes. When Spaniards invaded the *Tawantinsuyu* territory, they not only destroyed the "admirable" city of Cusco, *Tumipampa, Cajamarca, Huánuco, Jauja, Huaytará*, and *Vilcashuaman*, but also destroyed and covered the information and knowledge artifacts from this complex cultural diversity of the Inca civilization. In the State territory, for instance, there were two educational modes, one

The *Tawantinsuyu* empire developed between the 12th and 15th Centuries, gathering within its domain millennial traditions from other people. The Empire's social basis was strongly supported on an *Ayllu* network, a family and community organization created by kinship within a territory collectively shared by a number of families. At its climax, the Inca empire had its domains spanning from the present territory of Colombia to Argentina, covering about 1.5 million square miles, with an estimated population of 30 million inhabitants [17]. Education-wise, the Empire organized a system of educational agents in different tiers and roles, a system that privileged the male members and the higher classes, however including all communities that were part of the Empire. Teaching philosophy, practical moral, and literature were assigned to the *Amautas,* wise men who represented the higher knowledge of the Inca culture. Knowledge on poetry, nature, and good life was conveyed by the *Harávecs*, recognized for their knowledge and memorization skills. Priests also had their educational role, and one

**3. Education in the indigenous peoples living and resisting**

institutional, and another informal, "natural education" [16].

advance for the entire mankind [14].

In his conclusive—and to some extent desperate—narrative, Fanon leaves some warning to those "wretched of the earth" who conquer their independence, advising them to stay clear from the mistake of "mimicking" Europe, implicitly emphasizing the vigor of the Eurocentric colonialism domain in the epistemological and cultural scope: "Mankind expects from us something betterthan this generally demeaning mockery"; and "if we hope to transform Africa into a new Europe,America into a new Europe, than we'd better entrust the Europeans with the fate of our country," as "they'll know better how to do it than the best amongst us" (p.275) [12]. Hence, for Fanon, the conquest of political independence, ousting colonizers from the territory, is just the first stage of the decolonization process and maybe this is the most visible phase of the "liberating war," since the enemy to be defeated is in plain sight beyond the trenches. The toughest and most complex challenge is to fight the shadow of the oppressor that is ingrained in the soul of the colonized population and in the minds of the "colonized intellectuals."

One of the most efficient imperative rationales of European modernity is achieved through colonialism in knowledge, "driven" by Eurocentrism. Eurocentrism is both a vision of the world and a new form of power; it is an epistemological knowledge matrix that justifies and validates this new world standard for the power of modernity/colonialism. Eurocentrism, states Anibal Quijano, is the perspective of knowledge whose systematic compilation began in Western Europe during the first half of the seventeenth century, though its origins date from earlier times. Its ideology was built together with the "specific bourgeoise secularization of European thinking, as well as the world's experience and needs of the capitalist, modern/ colonial, Eurocentric power, established from America" [13].

The philosophy of liberation proposed by Enrique Dussel is that one which stems from the ontological criticism to the normative moral of the prevailing social system, which also implies "unraveling" and decolonizing the Eurocentric epistemological knowledge geography, mostly the epistemological decolonization of human and social sciences. The "liberating" term evokes historical experiences and mythical reports referring to the liberating processes in oppressed people that deposed the domineering moral order and transcended their oppression and enslavement by means of a new and more equitable social order. In the past, there was the enslaving moral of ancient societies, the European feudal period servitude, the castes system in Eastern and Asiatic societies, and the modern and contemporary colonial order in America, Africa, and Asia; in the present, there was the neoliberal-grounded capitalist moral.

The liberating philosophy, therefore, is a philosophy born in and developed from the life conditions of the oppressed/excluded ones, a "pedagogy of the oppressed" as meant by Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, and Paulo Freire, aspiring to justice, equity, and life quality. More than a Western-style philosophy, Dussel expresses some radical criticism to the positivistic and illuministic vision of history, as reported from the Eurocentric stance. It demystifies the key arguments of the West European history of philosophy, evidencing a philosophy of history purporting to be universal; and it further radicalizes its philosophical analysis upon uncovering the fetish of modernity, an ideology that creates a natural a locus of universal centrality for Europe, validating and hiding its imperialistic background as a presumed civilizing advance for the entire mankind [14].
