Quechua and Aymara Textbooks in an Autonomous Education Project in the Kallawaya Region of Bolivia

Abstract

ABSTRACT An educational initiative called Aynikusun in northwest Bolivia, run by rural Indigenous communities with the assistance of a Belgian agronomist, significantly transformed social relations between Spanish‐speaking townspeople and their campesino neighbors in the 1980s and 1990s. This article—co‐authored by an anthropologist and one of the school's directors—highlights the “revolutionary” education Aynikusun provided by enabling students to complete their high school education using texts written in Quechua and Aymara that reflected local realities, rather than the Spanish‐language textbooks of state schools, which were oriented toward a metropolitan national culture. Literate campesinos no longer needed to rely on the townspeople, for example, to navigate state bureaucracy. Aynikusun also provided its adult students with a dedicated space in which to discuss their problems free from interference. This became particularly important prior to municipal elections in 1995, the first time a mayor was elected from one of the Indigenous communities rather than the town, Charazani. Prior to the election, campesinos deliberated shared challenges and reimagined their relationship with the town. Ultimately, literacy and empowerment fostered by Aynikusun made it possible for campesinos to govern the municipality and to reshape social relations.