**Precursors of Decolonial Pedagogical Thinking in Latin America and** *Abya Yala* **Latin America and** *Abya Yala*

**Precursors of Decolonial Pedagogical Thinking in** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.72343

Carlos Renato Carola Carlos Renato Carola Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72343

#### **Abstract**

This chapter introduces the pedagogical thinking of an array of Latin-American and indigenous educators who dreamt of Latin America featuring more freedom and democracy. The works selected were from scholars who were born and had their intellectual upbringing, in the first half of the twentieth century. This is a "bibliographical essay" intended to highlight the predecessors of decolonial pedagogy, thinkers, and educators who formulated ideas and theories within a delinking philosophy. We place these thinkers in the context of building a Latin-American "awareness" and within the scope of active resistance from the people in *Abya Yala*.

**Keywords:** decolonial pedagogy, indigenous education, liberating education, biocentric education, Latin America, *Abya Yala*

#### **1. Introduction**

As implied by the title above, the key objective in this "bibliographic essay" is to make explicit the evidences of the crisis in the contemporary school system, and some of the response formulated by the Latin-American pedagogical thinking. We prioritized a generation of educators who achieved their degrees in the first half of the twentieth century and who had shared with society their intellectual production by 1990, a time preceded by a decade of social conflict and democratic liberalization.<sup>1</sup>

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

<sup>1</sup> Falklands/Malvinas War (Argentina vs. England, 1982), Civil War in El Salvador (1980-1992), Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement in Peru (1980-1990), and the end of military dictatorships in Bolivia (1982), Argentina (1983), Uruguay (1984), Brazil (1985), Haiti (1986), Chile (1988), Paraguay (1989).

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 colonized people.

**2. Precursors of the liberating philosophy**

tion of his *Latin America* [5] was published.

cause of the lagging economy and social inequity.

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

Precursors of Decolonial Pedagogical Thinking in Latin America and *Abya Yala*

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.72343

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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 edi-

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

In Mexico, philosopher Leopoldo Zea (1925–1961) proposed a philosophical itinerary to build an authentic American philosophy, free from the psychological contrivances from the

sociologist Animal Quijano, and the Argentinean philosopher Enrique Dussel.

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 rugged, the Aymaras [3]."

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 biocentric education.
