The Indigenous Educational Bloc in Bolivia: contributions to intracultural, intercultural education and decolonization (2004-2010)

Abstract

In Bolivia, indigenous movements waged a long, symbolic political struggle in defense of their territories, for the recognition of their identities, and for their forms of political, productive, territorial organization and community education. In this context, this article aims, first, to describe the historical context in which the Indigenous and Original Educational Bloc was formed; and second, to explain its proposals for the educational field, which are based on the Indigenous and Original peasant sociocultural matrix. To this end, a bibliographic review of secondary sources and an analysis of educational proposals, bibliographies, and personal communications have been used. The main results focus on highlighting the contributions of the Indigenous and Original Educational Bloc to the discussion and debate on Bolivian education during the transitional governments (2004-2005) and during Evo Morales' first term in office (2006-2009). Their impact on the development of Law 070 and the plurinational core curriculum; as well as the political positioning of intraculturality, interculturality, and the plurinational; the ideological, referring to decolonization; and the philosophical, related to indigenous peasant cosmopraxis and ontology, which were reflected in their educational proposals.