Argentina: Minority Indigenous Teachers of Bilingual Intercultural Education

Abstract

In the province of Chaco (northeastern Argentina) at the end of the 1980s, bilingual and intercultural school models emerged to help meet the educational needs of indigenous children. BIE schools implemented a system in which two teachers coexist in the same classroom: a non-indigenous teacher and a minority indigenous teacher. The indigenous teacher played a key role as a translator/mediator between the school and monolingual children in their indigenous languages. However, in recent decades, indigenous languages are being displaced by Spanish, which is becoming widespread as a means of daily communication for indigenous families. In this scenario, the role of indigenous teachers is currently focused on linguistic revitalization and the teaching of the indigenous language as a second language. Considering this complex sociolinguistic panorama, this chapter analyzes specific aspects of these new practices among the Toba/Qom teachers whose pedagogical tasks have shifted from teaching the indigenous language to reversing language shift. Additionally, it examines the experiences and knowledge of the native tongue among these minority teachers, who range from fluid bilingual speakers to less competent ones. As a consequence, from an anthropological perspective, the question of Bilingual Intercultural Education is raised because one of its principal objectives (bilingualism) is blurred. The findings are drawn from observations and ethnographic records from fieldwork conducted in 2016/2017 in a school in a Toba/Qom neighborhood in Chaco, and in-depth interviews with thirty-six teachers who identify as Toba/Qom.