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Educational Alternatives in Latin America pp 63–87Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

“Never Again a Mexico Without Us”: Education and Indigenous Autonomy Struggles in Mexico

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Abstract

Baronnet and Stahler-Sholk examine Zapatista practices of constructing de facto autonomy. They highlight the pedagogical politics of a movement in which the community is a kind of school, with indigenous peasants developing “militant capital” through the experience of decision making by assembly, rotating tasks of education and health promotion, and building anticapitalist solidarity economies. Zapatista prefigurative politics extend beyond their immediate communities with outreach such as the “Other Campaign” and grassroots consultations coordinated with the National Indigenous Congress. They also show how Zapatista autonomous schools embody a political pedagogy around the project of education for autonomy, based on decolonial validation of indigenous knowledge that challenges neoliberal multiculturalism.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Mexico

    Bruno Baronnet

  2. Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA

    Richard Stahler-Sholk

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  1. Bruno Baronnet
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Linköping, Linköping, Sweden

    Robert Aman

  2. Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa, Paraíba, Brazil

    Timothy Ireland

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Baronnet, B., Stahler-Sholk, R. (2019). “Never Again a Mexico Without Us”: Education and Indigenous Autonomy Struggles in Mexico. In: Aman, R., Ireland, T. (eds) Educational Alternatives in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53450-3_4

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