From Indigenous People to Native People. Political Speeches, Change and Persistence in Mexican Education throughout the Twentieth Century: a View from Oaxaca (1920-2000)

Abstract

This paper examines eight decades of education policy in the light of cultural diversity in southern Mexico, taking into account some criteria and mechanisms that influenced some aspects such as institutional action, the government vision of indigenous population, the efforts to understand cultural and linguistic diversity in Oaxaca, and some local experiences within the educational process. This work involved the analysis of official documents (archives, reports, censuses), personal interviews and the conception of an education system as a nation-wide unifying project from the government. Both a reconstruction of the institutional sides of Mexican education as well as an evaluation of some local results in indigenous communities were needed. The paper highlights a transition from a homogenizing (exclusive) discourse to a plural (inclusive) one, which cannot be fully applied in reality.