La Lucha Sigue: Liberatory Education In Indigenous Guatemala

The rural community of Copal AA was formed when the first group of Guatemalans returned from Mexico after the internal armed conflict (CA) ended in 1996. This is a multiethnic, multilingual community composed of indigenous Mayan people. It is important to note that while the CA itself was not a genocide, the UN Historical Clarification Comission found that genocide was committed against the indigenous populations of Guatemala from 1981 to 1983. In Copal AA, the middle school, El Instituto Basico Nuevo Amanecer (IBNA) explores Frerian-based approaches to education in an effort to reach critical consciousness about the social, political, and economic problems facing their community. I visited Copal AA during March 2020 with an Honors seminar at Appalachian State University. Through interviews, fieldnotes, and archived photos and videos, I was able to gain a deeper understanding of the teaching practices at IBNA. I have explored their use of popular education, praxis, and democratic student-teacher relationships in order to encourage their students to question the current state of their country. Through this research, I was able to question the methods of teaching that I have experienced as a middle class, White, United States citizen and how they do not contribute to furthering social justice.