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Kenyon College

Publication Date

Fall 2023

Program Name

Chile: Cultural Identity, Social Justice, and Community Development

Abstract

The current education system in Chile has adopted a multicultural neoliberal model, in which education both as an institution and as a practice is conducted with neoliberal ideologies. Mapuche movements in Chile have largely battled against neoliberalism, which operates in conjunction with colonial practices. The identity of Mapuche people thus operates on a contradiction of neoliberal practices. This paper, centralizing critical educational literature and three interviews with Mapuche university students, strives to analyze this tension between Mapuche identity and student experiences under this neoliberal context. More specifically, this paper grapples with the political intention behind multicultural neoliberalism, and how it impacts the development of critical consciousness in youth. It concludes that Mapuche youth identity is entwined and developed alongside critical consciousness, and this development of identity and critical consciousness continues to develop under a neoliberal context, but in a manner that maintains a critique of the system. It calls for centralizing youth and student experiences under the neoliberal context as the best manner to understand exactly how and in what ways neoliberal multiculturalism masks and maintains oppression in educational contexts.

Disciplines

Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education | Higher Education | Indigenous Studies | Latin American Studies | Politics and Social Change | Social Justice

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