Scenes of school life in schools of Mapuche communities in the Huiliches Department, Neuquén Province, Argentina

Abstract

This article derives from a participatory action research that was carried out through a qualitative methodology in rural and urban schools with a Mapuche population in the city of Junín de los Andes and nearby areas of the southern mountain range of the Province of Neuquén, Argentina. The scenes presented in this article are the  result of my teaching experience in the field and interviews with teachers in the area. In them you can perceive the tension between the reality of these schools and the official proposal as an intercultural conflict. The school culture and the pedagogical facts in these schools can, in their successes and problems, be considered the result of the contact of two very different worldviews and the history of how this asymmetric relationship occurred as a result of the processes of colonization and domination suffered by the Mapuche people.