Popular Education in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s: Mapping its Political and Pedagogical...

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Rosa Bruno-Jofré Popular Education in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s: Mapping its Political and Pedagogical Meanings

Nicht-staatliche Volksbildung in Lateinamerika in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren: Eine politisch-pädagogische Auslegeordnung (Red.) Nicht-staatliche Initiativen für Volksbildung gehören seit langem zur südamerika- nischen Kultur und blühten im Zeitalter der Diktaturen regelrecht auf. Der nachfolgende Beitrag rekonstruiert diesen Aufschwung im Spannungsfeld von politischem Totalitarismus und pädagogischen Visionen der Volksbefreiung. (Ed.) This article explores the popular education movement in Latin America as an alter- native political educational movement that took shape in the sixties and fully developed in the 1970s and early 1980s. It had its roots in the political culture in Latin America and developed a political pedagogical discourse that looked for alternative ways of doing politics, built meanings in the people’s culture, and aimed, by and large, at developing political con-sciousness from inside the political subject rather than externally revealed by the party.

This paper focuses on the popular education movement nourished in political and social movements that developed in Latin America from the 1960s.1 Here popular education refers to the practices generated by non-governmental organizations of various sorts and grassroots organizations, linked to political and social movements and often to leftist political parties. In the case under study, popular education means education belonging to the people. People is used interchangeably with the category popular sectors, which included the working class, the peasants, the poor, and the lower middle class. It placed

1 For a comprehensive analysis of popular education see Kane 2001. For an early well-documented inter-pretative analysis see Puiggrós 1984. For an overall analysis from the perspective of a popular educator see Nuñez 1992. An important point of reference is Torres 1988. The bibliography related to popular education is extensive.

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the “popular sectors of societies” as subjects at the centre of the discourse and practice and envisioned radical structural changes with a touch of utopia (Kane 2001, 8). In the 1970s, popular education became radicalized and took a contestarian character in relation to “hegemonic developmentalist models” or to dictatorships dominant in that decade. Rather early in the 1980s, there was an increasing preoccupation with culture as a space to search for identities and articulation of meanings while the unique perso- nal and collective experiences of women and the indigenous peoples were integrated, although not extensively. The Nicaraguan Revolution and its literacy campaign in 1981 (not discussed in this paper) and the fate of that revolution set an important landmark for the future of popular education. The 1980s also brought the return to democracy in many countries and the notion of large-scale radical revolutions needed to be revisited, a situation that was accentuated toward the end of the decade with the fall of the Berlin wall, the decline of Marxism, the uptake of postmodern ideas, and of course, the failure of the Sandinista Revolution. In the 1990s there was a clear process of rethinking of the principles of popular education, by and large within the work of the Latin American Council of Adult Education that had been founded in 1982. The preoccupation with the development of a critical pedagogy rooted in the practices of popular education and a fresh look at building bridges with formal education characterized this new approach (Flores Moreno 2003, De Souza, 1996). This paper will not address this phase. Popular education practices had profound roots in Latin American political culture and its quest to construct the political subject. For this reason, this paper provides a long- term historical background – albeit brief – that would help to understand the political pedagogical discourse of popular education as a technology for change.2 The core of the paper concentrates on the political pedagogical meaning of popular education in Latin America and how the concept was used, having as sources the definitions that were arti- culated in the popular education publications of the time, circulated among organizers, popular educators, and participants. There is an attempt to identify the semantic field conformed to the concepts that were considered as pertaining to popular education3. It is relevant to think of what Quentin Skinner refers to as a force-coordinate with the meaning, the force behind the statements and silences that talks to the intentionality and solution of problems (Skinner 1969, 45f.; Tully 1988). In the last instance, there is an underlying question in relation to what was new in the political pedagogical dis- course of popular education in the 1970s and early 1980s. Paulo Freire represents a well- recognized point of reference, and his voice and his concepts will be discussed within the political constellation of ideas conforming the popular education movement.

2 I use the term technologies in line with Daniel Tröhler’s notion of school education as a kind of tech- nology or tool for realizing visions of progress, justice, and the future (Tröhler 2008). In this case, the alternative practices are conceived as technologies to transform society along with notions of change deriving from various sources including Antonio Gramsci. 3 Regarding political languages see Pocock 1971; Richter 1990.

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Education as a means to change the order of things Popular education has often been used to refer to an extension of public education to vast sectors of the population; it has been – and still is – part of the discourse of public instruction. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, against a background characterized by the crisis of the oligarchic liberal state and the multiple ways to articu- late political projects to modernity, alternative understandings and practices of popular education challenged in some way the order of things. Illustrative of practices of popular education beyond the discourse of public instruction were the public libraries, people’s houses, scientific and philosophical conferences, study circles, and popular theater crea- ted by anarchists (who also created rationalist schools), socialists, and communists. Even as some early socialists had universalist conceptions which could hardly be articulated with the people’s culture (the binary “barbarie” vis-à-vis “civilization”) and the creation of the III International and the advent of Stalinism set paralyzing parameters, the people themselves often reconfigured the ideas in unintended ways. In 1909, the Argentinean National Association of Teachers called the first Congress of Popular Education Socie- ties, in which converged the societies organized by district school boards with those created by political groups or the civil society, and included members of the socialist party, free thinkers, anarchists, spiritualists, and progressive educators. By the time of its fourth and last congress in 1931 (with a dictatorship in place), there were 1000 popular education societies in the province of Buenos Aires, and the congress had recommen- ded the introduction of new ideas on pedagogy not only in the work of the societies, but in the schools, in a quest for democratic citizenship. There were other attempts at understanding education of the people and in particular of the emergent middle class, in light of projects to generate an alternative polity such as Protestant schools, many of them nurtured by the social gospel and a spiritualized notion of Christian liberal demo- cracy. The Catholic social projects and their study circles and unionist work, inspired first by Rerum Novarum and later by neo-Thomism (not always well received by the Catholic hierarchy), cannot be neglected. These practices grew at the intersection of internationalism, traveling through socialist, anarchist, and communist ideas, in some cases spiritualist philosophy, and new education and progressive pedagogical ideas and their related international organizations.4 The Mexican Revolution (1910), the Soviet Revolution in 1917 and subsequent educational changes, and in particular the univer- sity reform of 1918, provided a new anti-imperialist nationalist and popular language. Post-revolutionary Mexico became from 1921 an influential laboratory of moderniza- tion, in which education of the people was conceived as a transformational tool in the building of a national school and a new sense of Mexicanidad (Bruno-Jofré/Martínez Valle 2010; Torres Hernández 1997). The university reformist discourse (1918), exten- ded all over Latin America, contained as Puigross pointed out, a multiplicity of ideolo- gical components including anti-oligarchic and anti-imperialist feelings expounded by the children of European immigrants, particularly in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay; anti-imperialist, indigenist and nationalist views like the ones articulated by the Peru- vian Raúl Haya de la Torre; anti-positivist nationalist views; liberal progressive ideas such

4 For an understanding of the networks see Hofstetter/Schneuwly 2004, also Fuchs/Lindmark/Lüth 2007.

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those expounded by José Ingenieros; spiritualist and progressive views like those of Mexican José Vasconcelos; and the towering presence of José Carlos Mariátegui, who aimed at an Indo-American socialism grounded in the people’s own language and re- ality (Gómez/Puiggrós 1984, 127). The reform broke the boundaries of the discourse of public instruction with the creation of the popular universities.5 The work of Soviet educators had a presence in Latin America, along with an array of representatives from new education such as Dewey, Kilpatrick, Decroly, and Kerschensteiner, among others as evident in Chile, where in 1928 The Teacher’s Association played a leading collective role in a short-lived reform centred in the popular subject and social justice (Nuñez Prieto 2004, 162ff., 213). There were instances of articulations of indigenous culture and the principles of the active school as a tool for political consciousness such as Wari- sata, the Ayllú School in the province of Omasuyos in Bolivia between 1931 and 1940, which related socialist education (unified school, polytechnical, linked to production) and ayllú education (Goméz/Puiggrós 1984).6 There were also the experiences of indi- vidual teachers, left wing militants, who tried to articulate in their practice a socialist vision with the reading of Dewey, as was the case of Jesualdo Sosa, in Colonia, Uruguay (1925-1935) (ibid., 149; see Sosa 1937). There were political languages that conjugated in various ways notions of democracy. At different points, Dewey’s pedagogical ideas were taken well into the 1950s, often mutila- ted from his philosophy, but his conception of democracy as an ethical ideal, a ground-up affair, arising out of shared experiences, communicated in and through publics, through ‘associated living’ and ‘conjoint, communicated experiences,’ with the schools as both models and catalysts (Dewey 1916/1997, 87), was not or could not be taken up. Neither could its American and liberal roots grow in an anti-imperialist environment, nor could the particular national contexts and projects set conditions for the full reception of his notion of democracy. The latter points to the difficulties related to the importation of democracy (see Caruso/Dussel 2009; Bruno-Jofré/Martínez Valle 2009). From the mid-1930s and until the mid-1950s, most Latin American countries expe- rienced populist governments that expounded a political nationalist language that was translated into the educational reforms, by and large, state-directed, although some emerged from democratic movements (Cardenism in Mexico, Varguism in Brazil, Aguir- re Cerda in Chile, Peronism in Argentina, the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement in Bolivia, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, see Puiggrós 1984, 26). The crisis of populism gave way to developmentalist approaches and projects which also had, in particular in the 1960s, a mobilizing and international character. The crisis, accelerated by Kennedy’s pro-

5 There were popular universities all over Latin America, noticeably in Argentina, Peru and Chile. It is important to note the activity in Central America: The Popular University in Guatemala was founded in 1923 and closed in 1932; the Popular University of El Salvador was founded in 1924 by the Regional Federation of Workers of El Salvador. There are other expressions of non-formal educational practices with an alternative pedagogical discourse such as Augusto Sandino and the Academy at El Chipote (1926) in Nicaragua (see Gómez/Puiggrós 1984, vol. 1). 6 The main source is Pérez 1962.

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grams as part of his anti-subversive policy, reached – following Joseph Comblin – a key point between 1967 and 1970 (Comblin 1978, 121). One of the political expressions of developmentalism, often neglected unless there is a direct reference to Paulo Freire’s work in Brazil, is the form of popular developmentalism that took shape with support from the Catholic Church in partnership with the state, in Brazil (1956-1964). It was a time of intense work by peasant leagues, the Basic Education Movement (MEB) sponsored by the bishops, cultural popular activities, radio schools, and cooperatives (ibid.). Freire was part of this picture as the first director of the University of Recife’s Cultural Extension Program, where he further developed the notion of conscientization and education for liberation, idioms of the time. Chile, as well, had a number of programs in collabora- tion with the Catholic Church that acquired particular emphasis under the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei and his agrarian reform. There, Freire further practiced and theorized his literacy work and his pedagogical ideas after the coup in Brazil in 19647. The crisis of populisms, including popular developmentalism (such as Kubitschek-Goulart in Brazil, Christian Democracy in Chile) which also represented the crisis of the articula- tion of all the ‘national classes’ in a common program, led to right-wing criticism on one side and to radicalization on the other (Comblin 1978, 121f.). Between 1970 and 1973 (using the coup in Chile as a marker), there were various tentative forays at social change that opened spaces for educational reform having nationalistic, anti-imperialist themes and sometimes an anti-capitalist slant. These included the national revolution in Peru in 1968 with Juan Velasco Alvarado, the revolution of General Torres in Bolivia (1970), the return of Perón and the government of Cámpora in Argentina (1971) and other examples, the government of the Popular Union in Chile being the most emblematic (ibid.). The 1970s, using 1973 as a symbolic marker with the coup against Allende in Chile (although Brazil experienced a turning coup d’état in 1964), incarnated a period of dictatorships which would influence the direction of popular education and the role of the prophetic church. Popular education did not emerge as a magic formula, but was interwoven with many political and social historical responses and tendencies. The development of the popular education movement in the 1960s and early 1970s ap- pears historically situated at the crossroads of various concurrent processes and events. These are: the Cuban Revolution and the socialist educational reforms of 1961; the new directions emerging from Vatican II and in particular from Medellin; the emergence of li- beration theology that transcended the intellectual sphere, addressed socio-economic and political oppression, and was nourished in the praxis of the popular church; the pedagogi- cal practice of Paulo Freire and others in Brazil, his initial breakthrough in the early 1960s when he developed an alternative educational mode; Freire’s own exile that showed the limits of the system and its ability to deal with potentially transformational projects (see De Souza 1985); the student movement of 1968, particularly in Mexico and Argentina; Freire’s development of a class analysis in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written while in Chile

7 It is not the intention here to go into details of Paulo Freire’s life or his work. One of the early works known in North America has been Collins 1977. A more controversial one has been Paiva 1982; see also Torres 1983 and Gadotti 1996, among many others.

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and published in 1970, that set a new direction for educational workers that went beyond the immediate instrumental character of most developmentalist projects; and finally, the process of radicalization of the Left, including political military groups that were discon- nected from the grassroots and signaled the need for a new political approach to change. Although expressed with different rhythms and intensities, popular education became by the late 1970s a Latin America-wide movement, and the groups working in popular education were numerous in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s, the expansion of the free market economy was accompanied by repressive regimes in most Latin American countries and popular education networks opened spaces for coordinated action and con- testation of authoritarian regimes. National and regional encounters in various countries, as well as workshops on popular education methodologies, were followed in 1980 by the First Latin American Encounter on Popular Education which took place in Quito, Ecuador, where there were representatives from thirteen Latin American countries (see Cronica 1981, 44ff.). Popular education in the 1970s and early 1980s: Mapping political pedagogical meanings Leaders claimed that popular education proposed a political project from the perspective of the popular sectors of society (García Huidobro 1983). The use of popular sectors as a comprehensive category tries to capture the protagonists of the social movements/popu- lar movements emerging in the barrios, among the families of the disappeared, indigenous communities, and those with whom popular educators were working. It went beyond the traditional Marxist understanding of class, albeit without theoretical elaboration, and tried to keep the class character in the new context. Into the 1980s, popular culture started to be seen as an important site to build meanings, re-propose power relations, deal with identity, and construct popular knowledge (see for example Crónica 1981, 6ff.; Huamán 1985, 16ff.; Checa 1984, 17ff.). However, as Liam Kane points out, popular education in its early days focused on issues of class oppression and was oblivious to matters of gender, and although Indigenous peoples were active in a variety of organizations and groups, a large number of Indigenous organizations appeared in the 1980s, some committed to “Indianismo” (Kane 2001, 116, 125). The understanding of popular education and its application contained the idea that it represented a conception of doing politics that emphasized collective decisions and that it broke, at least theoretically, with avant-garde positions and in particular with foquism. It also questioned the notion that the parties had the monopoly of doing politics that had become separated from the daily life of the people (pueblo) (Frias/Romero 1985, 15). It was construed as a new way of doing politics, although not all popular education practices necessarily led to this new way. In a broader sense, Juan Eduardo García Huidobro and Sergio Martinic, pedagogues working at the time at the Catholic Centre of Research and Development of Education in Chile, theorized that popular education practices found their political meaning in the particular relationship between the production of knowl- edge (analysis of specific problems of various sorts) and the creation of an alternative power in society; between the processes of developing a critical interpretation of reality

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and the consolidation of organizations that become vehicles to express social demands and proposals for change. However, the authors made clear that there was no mechanical relationship between the local and the national, and that the educational practices made political sense in the processes and mediations through which the social order is either re- produced or challenged in the movement toward a new order. The mediations, which also included the family, craft workshops, peasant leagues, or the church, would serve as sites where the various identities and sense of belonging developed (García Huidobro/Martinic 1985, 64f.). This sophisticated understanding did not seem generalized, to judge by the publications and reports of the time. There was a large proliferation of groups and centers with different sources of funding developing popular education projects and literacy programs during the 1970s and ear- ly 1980s. They included doctrinarian groups that defined their strategies following the political parties, Christian groups linked to liberation theology and a renewed ministry, groups working within a reformist government (such was the case of experiences under Velasco Alvarado in Peru in the 1970s) who pushed for a radicalization of the initiatives, groups that emerged from the Indigenous communities, and groups that came together as part of specific popular movements such as those involved in land claims, and human rights.8 The materials show that some of the centers gave voice to nuanced analysis, and into the 1980s reflected some postmodern influence. The centers provided services, but also became political and intellectual spaces that built relations between popular organi- zations and popular educators and intellectuals committed to social justice; they also co- ordinated meetings at national and international levels (Mamertini Sobrino 1981, 72). Some of these centres supporting popular organizations produced or translated for the ‘public’ (popular sectors of society) knowledge that emerged from the experiences of popular education, divulged political interpretations expounded by popular leaders and educators, and disseminated literature on popular culture, often in the form of illustrated booklets. However, it is difficult to trace what was understood by popular knowledge and how it was produced by the popular sectors. It is not always clear, to judge by the reports and workshops, how the popular subject was involved in the production of knowledge.9 Sergio Martinic limits the notion of popular knowledge (understood as wis- dom) to knowledge that has a degree of systematization, whose principles and rules relied on methodical systems of inquiry, and consequently are theoretical attitudes present in the daily life of the people.10 This is somewhat related to the notion of popular culture. Brazilian popular educator Carlos Rodríguez Brandao advocated a different logic beyond class ideology, what he called the building of a popular science based on participatory research as new knowledge about the world, which had its starting point in a new way of

8 For example, Center of Research and Popular Education (CINEP) in Colombia; Centre of Research and Development of Education (CIDE), Chile; Latin American Protestant Commission on Christian Education (CELADEC) involved in popular education since 1974 with offices in Lima, Peru; Center of Study and Social Action in Panama (CEASPA), Dominican Centre for the Study of Education (CEDEE), ALFORJA, Programa Centroamericano de Educación Popular with base in Costa Rica, IMDEC, Institu- to Mexicano para el Desarrollo Comunitario, Rede Mulher de Educaçao (Women’s Network) in Brazil, among many others. 9 I noticed the emphasis on methodological issues as techniques, in the report of workshops. See, for ex- ample, Taller Interno de Metodología de Educación Popular (with institutions belonging to ALFORJA), Costa Rica, April 16-25, 1982. For a close look at a systematic analysis of popular education experiences and educational relations see Garcìa Huidobro 1982 and Delpiano/Sánchez 1984; García Huidobro/ Martinic/Ortiz 1989. 10 Martinic 1985, 148f., found in Torres 1988. The original source was consulted.

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acting over the world and transforming it. This would lead to the building of instruments aimed at controlling the means of production and the transformation of organizational and development strategies. Brandao related the knowledge of the popular classes to the power of transformation (Brandao 1986, 10). The starting point in popular education practices has been that education is not neutral, a position further articulated by Paulo Freire who, in his early work, conceived education either for liberation or domestication (Freire 1972, 173ff.). This binary understanding became part of the rhetoric of the time and can be related to other binary dichotomies that permeated the language of popular education, such as vertical pedagogical/horizon- tal relations, popular wisdom/scientific knowledge, and state/civil society, among many others that represented ways of construing reality rooted in a dualism. Dualistic thinking was related to a theology (Freire was a practicing Catholic) that had begun to be serious- ly questioned from the 1970s by feminist theologians and theologians concerned with prevalent anthropocentrism (see Wolski Conn 1986; Fiand 1990; O’Murchu 1999). Fe- minist theologians saw the relationship between this kind of spirituality (very Western) and the hierarchical, as well as the patriarchal, view of the sacred. Freire, who also, unlike John Dewey, largely excludes the life process that human beings share with non-human animals keeping an anthropocentric duality (Harris 2009), uses in my view, the concept and practice of dialogue (a concept very relevant particularly in his early work) and re- flection as a bridge, as mediation, to deal with dualism, toward reconciliation. Dialogue, however, is not developed along with a conception of systematic inquiry, as in Dewey.11 In his early work it was linked to conscientization (a term attributed to Dom Helder Camara, pioneer of liberation theology, later archbishop of Recife), while from the 1970s on the emphasis was moved to participatory pedagogy, dialectical methodology (a con- cept defining his pedagogy), action and reflection (“action and reflection, reflection and action, happen simultaneously,” as quoted by Torres 1988, 36f.) – in other words, a pra- xis aiming at transformation. Conscientization continued to be used in the field in the original sense of critical consciousness, mostly construed as class consciousness, linked to political work, and ultimately to a historical project of liberation, the latter poorly defined.12 Popular education, following the publications of the time, was not only committed to the “people,” the oppressed, it was closely related to radical community organizations and to the building of an alternative project(s) of society. The latter, although not clearly explained, implied revolutionary changes. The context was provided by the initial tri- umph of the Sandinista Revolution, the struggle in El Salvador, military dictatorships and resistance, workers and peasants struggles particularly powerful in Peru (strike of 1977), and the expansion of Reaganomics. Popular education was seen in 1981 by popular educator Oscar Jara, who worked with ALFORJA (Central American Popu-

11 There has been a great deal of confusion and contradiction regarding the role of the educator which appears in a large number of popular education texts. Freire himself tried to make clear that there was no such thing as non-directive education (see Torres 1988, 38). 12 One of the most popular books on concientization has been Barreiro 1974/1984. The 1984 edition is the one I consulted.

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lar Education Program based in Costa Rica), as the educational dimension of political action, since popular education has as a starting point and as sustaining the actions of the masses. He actually equates popular education and political education (Jara 1981, 6ff.). He wrote that definition at the height of the Sandinista Revolution and the literacy campaign. Eduardo Ballón, a Peruvian anthropologist working with DESCO, an orga- nization devoted to the understanding of Peruvian reality as well as popular education, in 1981, said “popular education is basically political, since popular is not only synony- mous of poor, exploited, oppressed, but represents a historical alternative to capitalism” (Ballón 1981, 76). The final objective is liberation (ibid.). Rosa María Torres, an Ecuadorian, who was the coordinator of the Regional Popular and Communication Project for Central America and the Caribbean between 1983 and 1986, uses the expression ‘popular education paradigm’ to refer to “the ensemble of practices accepted by their agents as pertaining to popular education – including theore- tical conceptions, applications, and instrumentalizations – which are configuring actual models of action and set legitimizing parameters to what can or cannot be considered popular education” (Torres 1986/1988, 13). Although not a definition, Torres points to some kind of consensus on what it is referred to as popular education. One can imagine a particular universe, whose elements such as dialectization, conscientization, popular knowledge, participatory methods, popular mobilization, and liberation acquire mean- ing through its political, spatial, and temporal contextualization. Thus, Paulo Freire when asked by Torres as late as 1985 what he understood by popular education, placed the question in a temporal line, Freire from yesterday and Freire today. “Yesterday,” he said, “Paulo Freire understood popular education as an effort made by the popular clas- ses, an effort toward mobilization, an effort within the process of popular mobilization and organization with a view to transform society. But, Paulo Freire from yesterday – the 1950s and 1960s – did not see with clarity what Freire sees today. This is the ‘politicidad de la educación’ (the political character of education), the nature of the educational practice is political in itself. For that reason, it is not even possible to talk of the political dimension of education, because education is political.” He went on to say, “popular education is understood as an effort toward the mobilization and organization of the popular classes with a view to create a popular power” (ibid., 70). Popular religiosity was part of people’s life and was often expressed in political events, such as the case of the fu- neral of Haya de la Torre in Lima in 1979. However, the influence of liberation theology and developments in the progressive segments of the Catholic and Protestant Church appear in the projects led by Christian educators,13 and it is conveyed in the following comments made by Freire at an ecumenical meeting after the Sandinista Revolution:

„And I always say, that I went to my country’s peasants, I went to the urban workers of my city, to work with them, to learn with them, to teach them because of Christ. However, when I went there, I discovered that I had to go first because of them, and that it was beautiful that because of

13 For example, Cultura Popular, Revista Latinoamericana de Educación Popular, published by Celadec, in- cluded analyses from a Christian perspective, materials on liberation theology, and documents related to the political ministry, ecumenical encounters, letters to the Christian of the first worlds, or documents related to those detained or disappeared.

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them, I would encounter Christ. These were the first discoveries. Secondly, they or their dramatic reality sent me to Marx. I went to Marx. After I went to Marx, I never found a reason to stop my encounters with Christ in the streets’ corners“.

And talking to Paquita, Argentinian nun (monjita), he said „But when you said that when, without putting down the rifle, you were fully devoted to the Gospel, its understanding, which cannot happen separated from the radical transformation of an unjust society into a just one“ (Cristianos Nicaraguenses 1979, 9).

Juan Eduardo García Huidobro wrote in 1983 while under Pinochet’s dictatorship, that popular education led to the extension of the political to daily life, to alternative values and social relations in the midst of a civil society that aims at democratization, and wishes to make clear in the process the problems of various sectors of society as a necessary condition for change (García Huidobro 1983, 3). Huidobro and Martinic made substantial observations in 1985 in relation to Chile, in the sense that educa- tional relations provide ways to discover and articulate meanings which are immanent to diverse social practices (García Huidobro/Martinic 1985, 15).14 In their view, from a political angle, popular education becomes an instance of consciousness formation, reflection on practice, group autonomy, of democratization of the leadership, a new conception of human relations, and a kind of process of organization linked to people’s daily life.15 In summary, they said, the conception of the political is widened and popu- lar education occupies a place in this new dimension. The authors placed emphasis on the articulation and disarticulation of meanings coming from social practices. They also took note of what they characterized as a recent emphasis on popular culture as a dis- tinctive universe, as a contextual reference to meanings and collective identities, instead of “conscientizize (concientizar) and organize” (García Huidobro/Martinic 1985, 15f.). In fact, magazines such as Cultura Popular and Tarea, Revista de Cultura paid attention to the recovery of people’s culture and history as counter-hegemonic to the dominant culture.16 Within this context, popular sectors of society would build their own autono- my. Interestingly, García Huidobro and Martinic point out that the practice of stressing the micro, of what is concrete and singular, and rejecting external assessors, opens the danger of falling in populisms and “basismo.” These approaches carried negative views of science and theoretical matters and did not allow for the placement of the issues in a national and international perspective (García Huidobro/Martinic 1985, 15f.).17 Popular educators wrestled with role and definition of the political leadership and the understanding of the organic intellectual, a concept taken from Antonio Gramsci. It was an issue in the early 1980s. Manuel Iniguez, TAREA’s editor at the time, based in Lima, Peru, wrote that having as context the political marginality of popular organizations, it would be important to build a political leadership providing direction and acting as

14 The authors relied on Lechner 1981. 15 Manuel Iguiñez reached similar views when analyzing popular education in Peru, the same year (see Iguiñez 1985). 16 There were a number of magazines devoted to popular culture that were published at the time by centres, among them Cultura Popular, Revista Latinoamericana de Educación Popular, published by CELADEC; TA- REA, Revista de Cultura published in Lima, Peru by the Asociación de Publicaciones Educativas, TAREA 17 These issues appeared in various comments and informal evaluation in other experiences, for example, in Peru (see also Grupo Juvenil).

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educator, thus encouraging popular self-organization by projecting into politics their own leadership (Iguiñez 1985, 30).18 García Huidobro talked of the immanent meanings and outcomes emerging from social practices that surprised even the facilitators. Thus, for example, some productive com- munity projects did not generate income as expected, but were turned by the partici- pants (pobladores: people in poor neighborhoods) into places for personal development, analysis of women’s situations, and training. New projects started. In García Huidobro’s reading at the time (1983), the macro-structural analysis done by the political parties was unable to capture the social dynamics taking place in the social space. The tradi- tional Left kept a uni-dimensional way of doing politics that in his view, needed to be questioned (García Huidobro 1983, 11). There is no discursive formation coherent in its own terms. New configurations or constellations emerge along with idioms and ways of conceptualizing new realities, which clearly overlap and coexist with old ways or are intertwined. Thus, the doctrinaire approach rooted in rather decontextualized Marxist and Leninist theories and often Maoist readings coexisted with approaches emerging from the popular practices that challenged old politics. To further complicate the scenario, many popular education groups and projects (Catholics and Protestants) were influenced by liberation theology and the growth of what Freire, himself a Catholic, referred to as the prophetic church. Liberation theology denounced the situation of oppression and advocated active parti- cipation toward liberation (transformation of the system). The affirmative language of the 1968 Conference of Latin American Bishops in Medellín contributed to the growth of the ecclesial base communities. However, the 1979 meeting of the Latin American Catholic Bishops in Puebla, who made “the option for the poor” an articulated form of the religious vows (Reiser 1995, 594ff.), identified the Marxist tradition with the poli- tical systems of the Eastern bloc, thus showing a poor understanding of Latin America. Meanwhile, the 1978 meeting of the Assembly of Latin American Protestant Churches (CLAI) that reunited various denominations of traditional Protestantism in Oaxtepec, Mexico, strongly advocated the role of the church as supporter of the oppressed. In its early formulations in the 1970s, popular education aimed by and large at creating a new revolutionary state and developed alongside the emergence of nonpartisan groups and organizations dealing with human rights, land rights, and other rights within the framework of authoritarian regimes. The initial emphasis was on the change of socio- economic structures, although the work took place at the micro level in poor neighbor- hoods and peasant communities. Meanwhile, the 1970s and early 1980s witnessed a Left that was not only fragmented but also nourished by a Marxism(s) that was outside people’s experience, exogenous to the reality of Latin American people, clearly expressed in the trajectory of the communist parties in Latin America. Popular education brought a new political language from the beginning, stressing popular culture, embracing popu- lar movements, linking education to liberation in a transformational sense, introducing a new sense of the subject in the revolutionary process – the popular sectors (certainly

18 “El salto supone construir la dirigencia política como dirección y como educadora de la auto-organiza- ción popular.”

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beyond the traditional proletarian, obrero/campesino approach) – strong anti-impe- rialist sentiments, and a new look at pedagogy with a emphasis on participation and the word as a symbol of power.19 The rhetoric of learning methods based on partici- patory techniques and the dialectical approach that related action to reflection, theory to practice was powerful, while the participatory levels in various political educational activities and the actual process of producing knowledge of those involved have been difficult to assess. In some cases, when analyzing booklets used in the meetings or re- ports from workshops, one wonders to what extent the starting point came from the people and their perception of reality, and not from an analysis of the so-called objective reality, in particular when the focus was at the macro level and there was no attention to learning processes. In 1980, revolutionary Nicaragua became a large school where popular educators from all Latin America converged, including Paulo Freire. However, during the period explored in this essay, popular education remained very much separated from attempts at reform of the state-controlled educational system, in part due to the influence of the French philosopher Louis Althusser’s ideas which led to a distrust of the possibility of changing the system. The struggle had to take place outside the system. The notion of oppression was attached strongly to class by most popular educators, while the state and its agencies needed to be replaced by a revolutionary one. The dictatorships and pseudo-democracies provided a background for that understanding. This model of popular education in- creased community involvement, moved politics to a different scenario, brought new voices, and generated new avenues for change and problem posing, often within constraining political parameters. There were difficulties in elaborating categories that could represent the living reality and create a projection to the future. The locus of popular education and the plurality of experiences generated unresolved challenges. As García Huidobro pointed out in relation to Chile, the unresolved challenge resided in the difficulty of moving the experiences at the micro level to a macro level in the pro- cess of reconstructing democracy with a new moral and intellectual direction, after the dictatorship. Conclusion The popular education movement of the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s is part of a “long durée” history of alternative understanding of popular education as a technology for change, in spite of discontinuities and a plurality of political languages. Its ideologies, theories and practices represented a rupture with technocratic developmentalist discourses and adult education which had gained preeminence in the 1950s and particularly in the 1960s. These discourses and practices were influenced by financial international organi- zations’ agendas and American political interest. The interesting point is that the popular culture and education movements for liberation (as it was called early) had been originally related to popular nationalist development projects as the case of those in Brazil.

19 For an understanding of the notion of the power of the word, see Rodríguez Brandao 1986.

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But what differentiated popular education in the 1970s and early 1980s? Popular edu- cation cannot be understood without considering the coordinate force behind it, the quest for a radical transformation of Latin American societies and a new approach to the political subject. On one side, the popular education experience broadened the traditio- nal notion of class by adopting the category of popular sectors of society. On the other, it brought a new educational political element that the Left, in the midst of a crisis of ideological legitimation and bureaucratized unions, had left aside. This is the develop- ment of political consciousness from inside the political subject, rather than externally revealed by the party. In this sense, conscientization, a concept adopted by Freire in his methodology, signifies a political shift that opened a new political pedagogical horizon for literacy that would take its own modalities through practice. He further embraced class consciousness within his own philosophical framework, which in its eclecticism had roots in the people’s reality and vision of that reality. Freire tried to distance himself from conscientization to avoid the misunderstanding that awareness could be equated with change, thus separating reflection from action, partly in response to left wing cri- tiques of his early writing. The popular education movement remained outside the educational system. On the positive side, it opened political and cultural spaces at a point when the Left failed or was unable to become the political channel for a growing popular movement. In coun- tries like Chile, where we find elaborated pedagogies, popular education groups made serious attempts at resisting political oppression and defended basic human rights with the support of the Catholic Church. Politics moved beyond the parties, although there was a dispersion of efforts and the movement overall found its own political and even pedagogical limits. Popular educators by and large developed a political language, revolutionary and anti- imperialist, linked to education (education for liberation, popular knowledge, dialecti- cal pedagogy, action and reflection, the power of the word) and worked through the po- litical pressure deriving from intense actions. Regrettably popular educators, who were inspired by Paulo Freire’s educational paradigm and adopted his literacy method, in most cases neglected pedagogy. Popular educators, with some exceptions (such as CIDE in Chile, among others), paid little attention to subjectivities, individual construction of knowledge, theories of learning, theories of adult education, psychological theories, or identity formation. Freire himself did not explore the differentiation between child- ren and adult learners (see Harris 2009), and his political discourse at the time did not transcend dualisms that trumped the movement. Pedagogy, it was said, became mostly politics (Kane 2001, 222; see also Osorio Vargas 1996). Lawrence Cremin argued in relation to the influence of John Dewey during the first half of the twentieth century, that “Dewey’s most seminal contribution was to develop a body of pedagogical theory which could encompass the terrific diversity of the progres- sive education movement” (Cremin 1966, 13). Paulo Freire, whose pedagogical propo- sals and analysis of adult education had come from his own praxis with peasants and the poor in Brazil and Chile, had tremendous influence on the development of popular edu- cation. As I said before, he provided a new paradigm. It is often argued that the move- ment started with his work in Brazil and later on in Chile. Freire, in the interview with

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Rosa María Torres (and in informal conversations with the author of this article), made clear that he had nothing to do with the new education movement. He seemed to in- clude John Dewey and the progressive education movement under new education. Rosa Maria Torres quotes him saying that new education brought an important contribution at the methodological level. He went on to say that new education rightly critiqued the relationship between educator and educatee from the point of view of method, as well as the atomistic approach of the traditional school. However, in his view, new education did not go beyond critique. He went on to say, “I critique everything that new education critiqued (questioned), but I also question the capitalist mode of production.” He also said that the capitalist mode of production has an inherent authoritarian mode that we need to avoid reproducing when superseding capitalism in search for a radical democra- cy (he mentioned the struggle to avoid this in Nicaragua at the time) (Torres 1983, 41). This particular differentiation between him (Freire) and the new education done also on political grounds, in the sense that he states that he takes the pedagogy a step further. In the same interview published in 1986, Freire is quoted saying: “As a man who dreams with a socialist society I do not make any contra-position between democracy and so- cialist revolution. Any (Ninguna)” (ibid., 72). Freire’s political language and positioning makes sense in the context of popular education as developed in the 1970s, the critique of his initial culturalist approach in Brazil, the critique by Vanilda Paiva who called him a scolavonista (a contemporary version of new education of the 1920s), and the ferment of the revolution in Nicaragua (although the situation had changed by 1986). He tried to assert his political understanding of education as a technology for change and define the kind of change. The issue here is that while his pedagogical proposal originally nour- ished the popular movement, it did not lead to challenging epistemological develop- ments in the midst of the crisis of modernism, or to tools to deal with the articulation of education and revolutionary theory. He provided practical pedagogical means and a language that embodied the times and the needs of educators committed to social justice. Pedagogically, popular educators in the 1970s and 1980s did not meet the challenge to develop the paradigm further. Freire did not have a consistent or articulated philosophical frame of reference as Dewey did, but he fully addressed in his pedagogy oppressing conditions, named them, and put into practice a literacy method and political pedagogical discourse as way to deal with them. Taken in isolation, the pedagogical components such as participatory methods, connection with reality, and experiential knowledge were not actually new. They were reconstituted through practice in a renewed ideological framework and an eclectical intellectual background (including theological components) that conveyed the Latin American setting of the time. In closing, the popular education movement did not end in a radical transformation of the societies involved. It opened political and cultural spaces to resist political oppres- sion, defended basic human rights (often, not always, with the support of the Catholic Church), signaled a different way of doing politics along with alternative ways to see education as a technology of change, and brought a constellation of concepts and ideas that conformed discourses with some radically new visions. Still, it kept a transitional character becoming somewhat trapped in a political praxis that started to lose sight of

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