Educational transformations, territorial transformations: on the expansion of formative school experiences in the intercultural rural space of Misiones (Argentina)

Abstract

In this article, we reconstruct the process of expansion of formative experiences among the Mbya Guarani people in the province of Misiones (Argentina). From a historical-ethnographic approach that favors a historical and contextual reading of the relationship between schools and the intercultural rural social space, we address the historical ups and downs of “the school” of Jakutinga through a complex historical plot in which the catholic church, the state educational policies and the indigenous men and women become visible as actors of a process in which the territorial issue and the educational demands are intertwined. Thus, we account for the transformation of this institution that was originally a school to teach literacy to Mbya-Guarani indigenous adults, which in 2009 became a secondary school with an artistic orientation exclusively for Mbya youth, which by retaking the pedagogy of alternation became known as the “EFA of Jakutinga” and since 2015 enabled the incorporation of non-indigenous students, and finally, as of 2020, changed its orientation from Art to Agro-Environment.