From: CIEPAC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 12:35:09 -0600
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Ciepac-i] English Chiapas al Dia 259 I
Bulletin �Chiapas Today� No. 259
CIEPAC; CHIAPAS, MEXICO
September 26, 2001
Education and Indigenous Autonomy (Part I)
Many are asking �What is indigenous autonomy for the Zapatistas?� As part
of a series of
bulletins on this subject, we have spoken already on women and health. We
will now touch on the subject of education in the context of the
counter-reform on indigenous rights and culture, approved by the Executive
and Legislative powers.
It is this autonomy that the governmental powers continue to harass in the
indigenous communities and territories, an action that has sharpened in the
context of the terrorism that destroyed the Twin Towers in New York. The
militarization in indigenous territories in Chiapas has increased.
We will begin our analysis of autonomous education in an autonomous
Zapatista community.
�Autonomous education began seeing to the necessities; it is not like
government education.� (Regional Education Commission).
�Education is very important, as everything comes from education.�
(Education promoter)
When the EZLN arose in 1994, one of their principal demands was education.
Nonetheless, part of their autonomy has signified for the indigenous that
they begin to construct their own reality, without waiting for the
government to comply with their demands. For this reason, in many autonomous
Zapatista municipalities, autonomous education is already being implemented;
an educational system that offers an alternative to the governmental
education system.
GOVERNMENT EDUCATION AND AUTONOMOUS EDUCATION
Consciousness is born when problems are recognized, upon understanding ones
reality, and identifying ways in which a people are oppressed. For the
indigenous Zapatista communities, State education has been just one more way
for the government to mistreat them, to deny them their culture and rights.
The Regional Education Commission explains why they decided to form an
autonomous education system, and what it signifies:
�The relationship between education and autonomy can be seen in our own
autonomous education system. We can teach our own people as we wish. We
reflect on how we want to learn and we teach accordingly. It is based on
autonomy and it is different from the governmental education, because in the
governmental education system they teach a single language (Spanish) and we
want to be able to learn in our own language. In their language, we are
obligated to learn their ideas, and we believe that it should not be like
this. We have observed that if we want our own education, it is better to do
it ourselves, to name our own teachers, promoters, and also to include our
own culture. In the official education, our culture could get lost, and
indigenous children will not have the opportunity to know their own culture.
And they would be ashamed to be indigenous. We have seen this in cases
where people that have gone to study in government schools. It is not right
we do not agree with this system. We want an education that supports the
people, not the government. The government has an education system that
benefits them and nothing for the people. This is why we have decided to
look for our own teachers and to teach them how to teach.�
�In the official education, they are hiding what, in reality, is happening
in the country: exploitation, oppression. They do not help to understand the
situation in the country, the suffering of the people, the reality that we
live. The government is hiding the truth through its teachers, because
teachers are the ones who insert the governments ideas into childrens minds
so that they do not wake up, so that they do not learn the countrys history
or their own reality. But what we want to study is the real history, to
discover our own thoughts, not only to read and write. We want to study the
situation in the country, how our ancestors organized. For example, they
never tell us that they had their own autonomy. Waking a child, the
government is afraid that a political organizer will arise, a person who
truly knows reality.�
�What the government wants is that we take on their customs. It wants to
obligate us to use the same customs and ideas as they use. They tell us
stories, but they are stories of the countrys suffering they are stories of
cities, stories of how they are living. The ideas of the government started
with the children, when they were still studying with the government
teachers. They taught us things that made us lose sight of our culture, for
example, that our ancestors did not read and write, that they did not use
arithmetic. But we know that is not true, that our ancestors did use math.
They were very wise.�
�Our fathers started losing the culture of our ancestors. Not because they
wanted to, but because the governments plan was very strong. The government
forced their ideas upon them. What we want to rescue is that which is not
yet lost, what exists still today in the communities.�
Along with the rejection of indigenous culture there are various concrete
complaints of many of the official teachers: that they abuse the children,
that they do not teach in native languages, that they work for a salary and
not for conviction, and that they work few days a week. When the indigenous
communities began to organize, they knew that they would no longer accept
these things.
�I only finished the third grade of primary education in the government
school. But I learned there, by experience, that one does not really learn
in the government schools. It is not a good course of study, the teachers
are not good, they only come one or two days a week, and they collect their
full salary. We learned next to nothing. We believe that children should not
be beat. For example, in the government schools, if you miss a day, the next
day they are waiting with a ruler to hit you. This is not good one should
not hit children. When they make mistakes they should be corrected so that
they understand their errors. When children are hit, they dont feel like
learning the only thing they learn is fear and dejection.�
The education promoters are the community teachers; they are the ones that
implement the autonomous education, the ones that teach children in their
own communities. Some of these community teachers speak of government
education and autonomous education:
�Our autonomous education is very different from government education
because the government teachers us things that are not useful. They teach us
for their own interest, not because they care for the indigenous. For this
reason, autonomous education systems were formed, so that children can be
taught our culture and rights in our own language. When I went to the
government school, it was very different from our autonomous schools because
they do not teach us in our own language and they beat us mercilessly. If
one did not answer correctly, he or she was beat on the hands with a ruler.
In autonomous education, if a child does not understand Spanish, we can
explain a problem in Tzeltal or whatever language we speak. Also, the
children have the confidence of admitting when they do not know something.�
(Eva, education promotor).
�On the subject of autonomous education, it is very important for us, as
education promoters and also for the community. There, we learn how to teach
children in two languages (Spanish and Tzeltal), and to respect their rights
as children and the ideas they express in school. The government schools are
different because the federal teachers abuse children; they punish them when
they do not do their assignments. On the other hand, we have more affection
for the children and we are working voluntarily we dont earn a penny. Only
with the strength of our community behind us are we advancing, because we
have an interest in learning much more about education.� (Doroteo, education
promoter)
�I am working with the children of my town, with all my heart and with faith
that they will pay good attention because they know me, and I am very
contented because each day they are learning more about reading and writing.
In contrast, the children do not know the government teachers and are afraid
of them at first.� (Nicolas, education promotor)
HISTORY OF AUTONOMOUS EDUCATION
The first step toward the formation of a system of autonomous education was
for the indigenous people to identify what they did not like about the
government education system: the abuse of children, the lack of respect for
the culture and the indigenous languages, and that the official education
was a vehicle for presenting government ideas. Another step was to evaluate
the knowledge that the indigenous people possess, that does not come from
government schools, but that they learned on their own for being organized
through the indigenous struggle. �What we have learned has been through our
own struggle. We were taught to read and to do addition and multiplication,
but very little because we made many mistakes and did not do it well. In the
work we do with the organization (EZLN) we achieve another kind of
knowledge, another kind of experience. For example, the community elects us
for a local responsibility, and within this responsibility we have to
resolve problems, inform about the situation, and through this we learn
more. One has to understand the political situation, the work, the problems
that we live.�
�Autonomous education began seeing to the necessities it is not like
government education. We began to think of educating among ourselves. We
realized that we are forgetting how to count and do sums in our own
language. We began to think about our own authority to educate, in having
our own teachers. This is how we began to dream about all this. And when we
began to organize, we could do it. Even better with the struggle, with the
organization. We saw that if we were going to change things, we were going
to change everything.�
�In 1996 we began to promote autonomous education, through a 60 page study
that explains why it is important and why we need to appoint education
promoters in each community.� (Regional Education Commission). So they began
to promote autonomous education and to advise that communities appoint their
own local promoters. The communities named education promoters, but in the
beginning they did not have the experience nor the economic resources to be
good teachers. They had to look for the ways to learn more, to develop an
alternative methodology and autonomous materials, and to form a regional
structure to support the promoters. It has not been easy nor fast but there
have been advances in the process of establishing an autonomous education.
One of the obstacles in the construction of autonomous education is the
difficulty of naming community teachers, if they themselves have learned
little within the official education system. �We had to look for support to
teach ourselves and to teach our promoters about education, because we
learned so little in the government schools, and we saw that we needed to
learn a little bit more. For this reason, we had to look to civil society to
support us with training courses to learn more.� (Regional Education
Commission). More than two years ago, the education promoters named began to
receive training courses from an educational cooperative in Mexico City. �It
is possible that our education is very simple, we have very simple materials
for example, the manual that we made to be used in autonomous education. But
it is the only way that we have to keep from abandoning the children. It had
been a long time that they had been abandoned, because since 1994 they had
not had classes. We have a primary school here, but it was abandoned as of
January 1, 1994. Without a teacher, without anything.�
Some communities continue to face difficulties in naming education
promoters. �It is not so easy to find education promoters, people that are
in the resistance movement that want to do this work.� (Regional Education
Commission) An education promoter explains: �I began this work 2 years and 3
months ago, when the training course began. There were 36 promoters, but
many left, in the communities where there is no support. Now there are more
or less 30 of us. There are nine that have been working for more than two
years. The rest have been teaching for only 4 or 5 months. They dont come
from the same communities as before, where others were left behind.� (Edgar,
education promoter)
�At any rate, the work of educating is increasing. Seeing to the necessities
is how we began to have an action plan, and it is now a plan for the entire
region.� (Regional Education Commission)
An important moment in the history of autonomous education was the decision
to reject the presence of the official teachers in the communities and to
establish autonomous education as the principal education system in the
autonomous regions. �The official teachers were dismissed starting in
December of 1999 and January of 2000. The decision to dismiss them was made
as a regional agreement; if we are going to have our own teachers, we dont
need the government teachers there. We dont want competition or problems. We
began to inform them in a nice way, to explain why. Some of the teachers
understood, and were more or less in agreement with our autonomous education
system. They left understanding that we were going to educate ourselves. The
governments answer when it found out that we dismissed the official teachers
was to send more especially in communities where there was division. The
government wants us to fight amongst ourselves. In the divided communities,
the �PRI� members did not want the official teachers to leave because they
do not agree with autonomous education. In these communities, there is
competition between the official teacher and the education promoter. We
continue to explain to our brothers: we do not want problems. Although they
may be from another organization, we are all campesinos. We should always
look for a solution. It is very difficult when there are fewer �companeros�
and more PRI members. Sometimes we tell the promoters �Get out of there so
that you dont have problems.� We have to look for the way, little by
little.� (Regional Education Commission).
Approximately half of the communities in the autonomous municipalities have
a community teacher. In some communities where there is division between
EZLN support bases and PRI members, they continue to use official teachers.
And there are other communities where the children continue without schools.
EDUCATION AND AUTONOMY
So that education will really support autonomy, the autonomous municipality
has decided that autonomous education has to be based in the indigenous
culture. This includes teaching in the mother tongue and the focusing on the
importance that the earth has within the indigenous culture. It also
includes teaching respect as a fundamental value in the indigenous culture:
�Within autonomous education respect for the culture and traditions holds an
important place that is what autonomy refers to, it is what the people are
living. We are demanding rights and indigenous culture but how are we going
to achieve this, if we dont do it ourselves?� (Edgar, education promoter)
�In the autonomous education system, the inclusion of culture is important.
There are many things lost already, customs that our father and grandfathers
had, many customs that the �kaxlanes� (non-indigenous people) have taken,
and we recognize that. But what we dont want to lose is what still exists.
We want to defend the culture and traditions that we still have.�
�We want the traditions to apply in education: to learn to read and write,
but also to tell stories from our ancestors. In governmental education they
do not tell stories about how the people used to organize, nor any stories
about the country. What the government wants to do is to erase that from
history. Thats why we study, to know history and the problems that the
people have been lived through. To keep the culture intact, we believe that
it is important to teach in our own tongue. We also teach in Spanish; the
promoter speaks what little he knows with the children. But if we learn only
one language we are going to forget our culture. That is why it is important
to teach in our own language.�
� We also teach about the land, about agriculture within our education
system, because it is part of our culture as well. We teach the children to
read and write and do addition and multiplication, but we also teach them to
sow corn and beans, because if we do not they will not know. We saw that
this idea is a good one because if a child no longer wants to study, or even
if he or she does want to study but also wants vegetables or a plot of land
to sow corn, he or she will already know. The children are learning to sow
vegetables in a collective garden in the school.� (Regional Education
Commission)
Autonomous education understands that education forms part of the community
life, and has to fortify the same as an integral part of indigenous culture.
In the official education system �they teach children the idea that it is
alright if you want to humiliate somebody, another child. They do not teach
respect. We were not learning respect in the schools. The children learn
these bad ideas because they learn from the example of the teachers. The
child is not going to respect even his or her own family.�
�We also think that education begins in the family. We see that if the
children are here and respect their teacher but do not show respect at home,
it is not a good education. Also if they show respect at home but do not
respect their brothers in the community, it is also not a good education.
That is why we say that education springs from the family. If we are not
demonstrating a good example at home, we are not giving good education.�
�The thing we want most is to respect and be respected within our own
community. The ancestors respected each other very much.� (Regional
Education Commission)
Hilary Klein
CIEPAC, A.C.
Translated by Maria Elena Sanger for CIEPAC, A.C.
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C I E P A C
Centro de Investigaciones Econ�micas y Pol�ticas de Acci�n Comunitaria, A.C.
Eje Vial Uno No. 11
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