Liberation Philosophy and Biocultural Education. A Latin American Journey

Abstract

Liberation philosophy emerged from the underside of power in Latin America to critique structures of injustice that oppress poor and subaltern social groups and turn nature into a mere commodity. It is driven by an action-reflection model in which theory follows practice to produce a new synthesis or praxis. For me, this has been more than just an intellectual pursuit. I moved from the USA to Latin America and for nearly 50 years, I was involved in both formal and non-formal education. But I was as much a learner as a teacher, especially given my original social location. My experiences of repressive military governments in Bolivia and with campesinos of the Andean Altiplano, and later in Costa Rica and Guatemala, as well as my involvement in human rights work, brought me into intimate contact with the “coloniality of power” (Quijano). “Conscientization” or “awareness” of the coloniality of power is basic to liberation educational philosophy. In this chapter, I review educational experiences, both formal and non-formal, in which I was involved in South and Central America, primarily with grassroots Indigenous communities, but also with visiting Europeans and US Americans who had little understanding of biocultural injustice and the role of their own countries in fostering it. I also review liberation philosophy and decolonial theory as they urge the “pedagogy of the oppressed” (Freire) for valuing and recovering local places, Indigenous people, and their knowledge. With this background, I assess the methodological approach of field environmental philosophy to address pressing obstacles in education, and more broadly in socio-environmental problems. Finally, I suggest that the “literacy worker” and “extension agent” as proposed by Freire provide pedagogical models for liberative biocultural education. The coloniality of power that shapes social structures as well as mindsets and limits lifeways is pervasive and is the major obstacle to liberation.