Thank you to a very generous ex-student who is living in Peru, I've been researching how Peruvian high school (which in Peru runs from grades 7-11) textbooks address Peru's early history. It's very interesting. Peru has historically been one of the more conservative nations in Latin America, long dominated by the Spanish and their descendants, but its textbooks now celebrate its pre-Columbian past more than the its Spanish colonists or even creole patriots. Scholars have advanced a couple of explanations for this. First, since the tremendous bloodshed and disruption that plagued Peru in the 1980s and 1990s was rooted in part in racism and other aspects of inequality, the nation is using its education system to emphasize racial and social harmony. Second, international organizations emphasizing neo-liberal development projects are also touting multi-culturalism and tolerance. Both sets of interpreters note that embracing racial reconciliation and Peru's Inca heritage in the abstract do not preclude extreme economic/racial stratification or even denigrating Indians in the present.
No comments:
Post a Comment