INTERCULTURALIDADE E EDUCAÇÃO NA AMÉRICA LATINA: uma construção plural, original e complexa

This article is part of the research entitled "Multiculturalism, Human Rights and Education", developed between 2006 and 2009, with the support of CNPq. It intends to analyze the construction of an intercultural education perspective in Latin America, accentuating the importance of the main contributions which have enriched and improved this approach, both from the theoretic point of view and the implications in the educational and sociopolitical processes in different countries. The starting point is the indigenous school education contribution, considered by the unanimity of the experts as the place where the intercultural preoccupations started. It describes and characterizes the main phases of the indigenous school education development. It also shows the Negro Movements contributions, taking into account the variety of their reality in the continent. The richness of the popular education experiences developed in the continent is also emphasized and, in this context, the contribution of Paulo Freire as an especially important thinker for the improvement of the intercultural education perspective. It also marks the intercultural education incorporation in the curriculum reforms of the 1990s and the tendencies in turning it into a functional element for the current sociopolitical systems. It discusses the interculturallity critical perspective, which considers it as a dynamism directed to a structural transformation of the Latin American societies. From this view, it gives special attention to the reflections of the group "modernity-coloniality", composed by some specialists of various countries that focus their analyses at power relations which are part of the continent historical conformation process. Through all the text, we try to show the plural, complex and original aspect of the construction of an intercultural education perspective in Latin America