Indigenous Education in Mexico: Indigenous Students' Voices

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate whether, despite a shift in political and educational discourses over the last decades that suggests that Indigenous cultures and languages are recognized, any real change has occurred in terms of Indigenous education in Mexico. It is possible that official bilingual intercultural education is still just a goal. Data presented include four Indigenous students' accounts of their educational experiences in monolingual and bilingual schools. The findings suggest that Indigenous education still has assimilationist tendencies, as far as the mestizo identity and the use of Spanish are concerned, and these tendencies are based on a (neo)liberal vision of multiculturalism that promotes ethnophagy. There is room for more changes to occur.