Bilingual Intercultural Education in La Araucania (Chile): Between the Inclusion and the Minority Nationalism

Abstract

This essay reflects on the stances that emerge around the bilingual intercultural education in La Araucania, making clear the shades that are implicit in these ones. In the nineties, in a context in which the indigenous rights are beginning to be recognized at a national and international level, the Mapuche movement recovers public visibility. The partial response to its demands from the State in the ambits of education, language and land restitution generates differences in the discourses and strategies adopted by the distinct factions of the movement. Two fundamental stances thus emerge: one that focuses its attention in the vindication of the right of living according to the own culture, which brings it closer to communitarianism; and another one in which the notions of people and nation are central, revealing the intention of establishing an own project of national construction that opposes to that of the Chilean State. In this mark, education –and intercultural education, particularly– is turned into one of the many sceneries of the intercultural conflict, which becomes essential in the dispute for the right of reproducing the traditional culture and/or built the political autonomy.