Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how intercultural education programmes sponsored by the Venezuelan government function as spaces of contestation for the construction of a new ‘permitted Indian’ (Hale, 2006). Delineating thus, an image of indigeneity that fits the national narrative of the Bolivarian revolution.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how intercultural education programmes sponsored by the Venezuelan government function as spaces of contestation for the construction of a new 'permitted Indian' (Hale, 2006). Delineating thus, an image of indigeneity that fits the national narrative of the Bolivarian revolution.

The active incorporation of previously neglected indigenous populations into the Venezuelan nation has represented one of the discursive pillars of the Bolivarian Revolution. The 1999 CBRV (Constitution of the Bolivarian republic of Venezuela) was the first to include a host of rights for indigenous people. It also prompted the expansion of a bilingual intercultural education programme in indigenous communities all around the country (EIB). I will argue that this incorporation of indigenous people into the Venezuelan nation is mediated by a specific image of indigeneity, which is largely constructed in the intercultural schools (in the actual space of the schools, as well as in conferences and other official acts).

Intercultural education programmes (EIB) are supposed to represent a compromise between 'indigenous' and state education. Therefore, they represent a stage in which both identities, that of indigenous people and the state, are played out and negotiated. This process of negotiation determines which forms of indigeneity are legitimised and formalised through the education apparatus. Intercultural education programmes, thus, serve as spaces for determining which forms of indigeneity are to be incorporated into the nation and which are to be silenced or excluded.