Abstract

CHAKRAVARTI, Atish Christopher. To Continue Being Indigenous “Now and Later”: The Original Education Proposal of the Totonaca CESIK High School in the Sierra Norte of Puebla, Mexico. Rev. latinoam. estud. educ. [online]. 2023, vol.53, n.3, pp.461-499.  Epub Oct 06, 2023. ISSN 2448-878X.  https://doi.org/10.48102/rlee.2023.53.3.588.

This article focuses on the original education experience of the Kgoyom Indigenous Higher Studies Center (CESIK), a community high school that emerged from the Totonac struggle for self-determination in Huehuetla, Puebla. It is based on a broader investigation that, based on my long-standing collaboration in the educational project, uses a methodology of my own design with strategies of autoethnography and systematization of the experience to account for the personal and collective experiences within it. From this, I share a dialogue in three moments with the perspectives of its main protagonists: founders, collaborators, and students/ graduates, with the aim of identifying the theoretical and practical contributions of the original education of CESIK for the (re) evaluation, (re) construction, and survival of Totonac epistemology and identity. The proposal contributes in significant ways, generates identity awareness against the processes of colonial domination, promotes the study and systematization of Totonac’s own knowledge, links students with community processes of cultural transmission, and encourages the experiential appropriation of indigenous identity. However, these pedagogical and epistemic efforts cannot be separated from the needs and challenges of the social and political struggle for Totonac autonomy.

Keywords : critical pedagogy; indigenous education; native peoples; Totonacs; decoloniality.

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