IGUAZU, Argentina, Oct 11 (IPS) – A few years ago, Bernardo Olivera moved to Posadas, the capital of Argentina’s Misiones province, to study mathematics at a public university. He was interested in numbers and wanted to make progress. However, he felt that the education system placed a barrier on him because of his indigenous heritage.
“I did a whole semester of four months and didn’t pass a single subject. Studying was very difficult for me because of the language; I couldn’t adapt,” Olivera, now 27 and the father of an eight-year-old daughter, told the IPS.
Like all young people who grew up in the more than a hundred indigenous Guarani communities in this province, in the far northeast of Argentina, he speaks Guarani as a native language and only learned Spanish at school.
Now Olivera has another chance, and it suits him better. He is studying again, thanks to the launch in 2023 of the first higher education course in the province of Misiones, specifically aimed at young indigenous high school graduates and designed from the cultural identity and worldview of the Guarani people.
It is a higher technical course in indigenous community tourism and is conducted in Iguazu, on the triple border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It is bilingual – in Guarani and Spanish – and has both indigenous and non-indigenous teachers.
“Today my dream is to create an agency where tourists can visit our communities and learn about our culture. That way I can help my people,” he says.
Classes take place every morning at Provincial Secondary School 117, a bright, one-story building amid dozens of tin-roofed wooden or mud houses scattered throughout the forest, part of the Yriapu indigenous community.
Yriapu is home to some 140 families, who have gained recognition of the communal ownership of 265 hectares of land they have traditionally occupied.
With the battle of Yriapu, the Guarani have managed to save some of the advancing tourist development associated with the Iguazu Falls, a natural wonder that attracts visitors from all over the world and is about to reach a million tickets sold this year reach, according to data from the National Parks Administration (APN).
Located just a 15-minute drive from Yriapu, the waterfalls are located in the so-called Parana rainforest, an ecosystem of exuberant vegetation and great biodiversity that Argentina shares with Brazil and Paraguay.
However, none of the resources left behind by tourism are felt in Yriapu, where spring water is consumed due to the lack of a public water network and people walk the paths carrying large amounts of firewood on their backs, the only fuel available for cooking. and heating water.
Argentina as a whole is home to 1,306,730 people who recognized themselves as indigenous in the 2022 census, almost 3% of the total population. Of the 46 million inhabitants of this South American country, 52% live in poverty – according to official statistics made public at the end of September – and discrimination against indigenous people worsens their situation.
Intercultural educational course
“When young indigenous people attend university or a conventional higher education institution, their native language is not taken into account, nor their different pace. Teachers and authorities ultimately see them as a problem,” Viviana Bacigalupo, director of the Raul Karai Correa Indigenous Higher Institute, which offers the technical course, tells IPS.
“What often happens is that they start with great enthusiasm and then drop out, which increases their exclusion from the working world and their vulnerability. The aim here is to generate an educational offer with the culture, rhythm and worldview of the Guarani people. ”, she adds.
Bacigalupo, and most of the cross-cultural team she is part of, come from the so-called Mate projectestablished in 2005 to promote the self-management of tourism and cultural resources by the Guarani people in the Iguazu area, which started with short training sessions aimed at improving the communities’ labor skills.
In addition to Argentina, the Guarani people are present in Paraguay, southern Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. In fact, students from each of these countries study remotely in the engineering course.
The power of the language, which is official in Paraguay, is the Guarani’s greatest cultural legacy. According to the Mercosur parliament, it is spoken by 85% of the Paraguayan population, with another 15 million people using it in Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia.
The technical course currently has 26 students, seven of whom come from communities far from Iguazu, who stay in hostels in Yriapu during the week.
The institute, led by the Government of Misiones, was internationally recognized by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance (Winta) as a unique model of intercultural indigenous education.
“Indigenous tourism is carried out according to the principles of the people and is connected to their spirituality. It is not a main activity for the communities, but a complement to traditional life,” says Claudio Salvador, academic coordinator of the institute.
“For example, today when tourists come to Misiones to visit the ruins of the Jesuit missions founded by the Catholic Church to evangelize the Guarani, they do not hear the indigenous story. We want it to be there,” he adds.
Loss of biodiversity
The Yriapu community has been receiving tourists for years, attracted by signs on the side of the road connecting the hotel zone in Iguazu to the entrance to the falls. Visitors are taken on a tour of the jungle trails and told about the Guarani culture.
“We see opportunities in tourism if we strengthen our knowledge,” says Abdon Ojeda, showing a tree called warranty (Plinia cauliflora), the bark of which, he says, is used by indigenous people to make a tea that relieves stomach pain.
In addition to medicinal plants, visitors can see traps made of wood for hunting animals. The Guarani people were hunters, but today the traps are only made for tourists to see, as much of the jungle biodiversity in Misiones has been lost.
Communication, tourist services, IT, English, theater and Guarani culture and worldview are some of the topics included in the technical course. The goal is for them to be taught by teaching pairs consisting of an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous teacher, working side by side with teaching strategies that alternate evenly between the two languages.
“What we do has never existed in our province and I am very proud of it,” said Oscar Benitez, an indigenous teacher of the worldview culture of the Guarani people.
“We want to help the younger generations to have a professional qualification and, by strengthening our own culture, to be able to integrate into a world that is now overtaking us with the power of its communication. And we know that only education is the way to equal opportunities,” he concludes.
Salvador, the academic coordinator, an experienced teacher who became involved with the Yriapu community in 2003 when he joined the struggle for recognition of community ownership of the lands they traditionally occupy, explains that the aim is for the institute will grow by 2025.
“We see that there is a lot of interest for next year and the idea is to open up to other target groups, other groups, goals and objectives. Aimed at farmers, other provinces and other cultures. If all goes well, we will be fully intercultural from next year,” he argues about the future of the Indigenous Higher Institute of Yriapu.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
