Paper short abstract:

Focusing on Chile’s Intercultural Bilingual Education Programme, we assess why interculturalism remains precariously positioned between state rhetoric for inclusive practices and indigenous demands for cultural and political recognition.

Paper long abstract:

Reforms to education in Chile, regarding indigenous populations, have followed a similar path to other countries in Latin America owing largely to pressure from international organisations such as the World Bank and OECD, and attention brought by global media to indigenous demands for greater autonomy across the continent. The Intercultural Bilingual Education Programme (PEIB), launched in 2000 by the Chilean Ministry of Education promised to offer alternate pedagogies from previous colonising mechanisms of schooling. Interculturalism therefore became at once both a source of hope for indigenous populations working towards greater recognition within the nation-state, and a crucial signifier in state rhetoric for its multicultural project of removing exclusionary practices. In practice however, interculturalism's position between these two spheres remains uneasy, having failed to deliver either. In this conference paper we draw on fieldwork conducted during 2011-2012 to argue that these tensions are due to the restrictive types of diversity and pluralism which Chile's neo-liberal multiculturalism is able to accommodate. Although Mapuche professionals are employed within the education system, there is limited scope for Mapuche-led notions and understandings of alternate pedagogic practices. Interculturalism therefore remains at the margins of legislative reform - in fields outside education - while in the classroom, IBE continues to construct indigenous pupils and their knowledges as Other to the dominant Chilean norm.