# data[].attributes.headline
Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru

# data[].attributes.subject
Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru

# data[].attributes.body
Ethnography Review

# data[].attributes.body
In conclusion, the Peruvian State, non-governmental organizations, international development agencies, social scientists, the media, Latin American indigenous leaders and intellectuals, rural indigenous communities in Peru, and indigenous rights advocates each have their own idea of what makes an individual indigenous and what should determine their voice in education. The book explores indigenous citizenship and the fight for fair representation. Garcia (2005) emphasizes the complex nature of the cultural processes that define highland indigenous citizenship, involvement in politics, and intercultural development. She identifies the issues in NGOs as they change their alliance, definitions, agendas, and structure. Well-intended NGOs had the state and international organizations as allies, yet were adversaries with the very people they were fighting to help. To these Highland parents, having their children being taught in their native tongue meant remaining trapped in their poverty. They believed Spanish to be their only freedom from the social, economic, and political oppression that characterized their lives. The NGO activists, who were bilingual in Quechua and Spanish, saw themselves as the educated representatives of the oppressed and a voice for those who could not decide what was best for their own community. The problem of the NGOs is that they mirrored the colonial pattern of enforcing an educational program without active consultation of indigenous communities. The assumption of the NGOs that they were in already agreement with the indigenous exposed the top-down planning, even though activists had closer ties to the indigenous than larger international organizations. NGOs working in bilingual education in Peru were often surprised and disappointed when they realized they were essentially working against the indigenous groups they felt so connected to. This begs the question of what qualifies as indigenous identity among the Western-educated and non-educated Quechua speakers and to whom the NGOs allegiance should be. Another question is, how should decision-making power of educational policies be divided among traditional indigenous, bilingual activists, NGOs, the state, international organizations, and other actors? Pure grassroots indigenous movements should be bottom-up, not beginning with the middle-man NGOs who are also following a global agenda for education. NGOs should work equally with the highland communities, explaining the long-term sustainable benefits of bilingual multicultural education and raising their consciousness, but ultimately letting them have the final say on what and how their children should learn.

# data[].attributes.body
Maria Garcia states that her goal was to rescue the language and culture that had been lost and links it to her personal history. Her passion to promote bilingual education stemmed from her grandfather leaving the highlands to pursue a better life and ultimately her parents immigrating with her as a young girl to the United States so that her education would not be corrupted by the new bilingual schools in Peru. She shares the optimistic view of the activists, that a bilingual multicultural program will benefit the community long-term in shaping their identity, representation, and citizenship. The legitimacy of the activists is that most of them are Quechua speakers, but are still seen as outsiders by those living the traditional indigenous lifestyle. Garcia spends most of her fieldwork interviewing the activists and less time with indigenous parents and students, showing the disconnectedness of her personal history and research experiences with hearing the concerns of the indigenous. Her focus in her research is on the struggle of the NGO activists, not the struggle of the indigenous communities anyways, which explains the time spent with activists versus highlanders. Because Garcia’s work was qualitative and focused on the middle man, NGO activism, the angle of research was multi-sided. It was able to capture the connection between the local and the global and featured the interconnections of international organizations, NGOs, the state, activists, and Highland parents to build and cooperate, or disturb and oppose social change through education.

# data[].attributes.body
1.  Who is speaking for indigenous people?

2.  Why are local communities mobilizing against NGO and state initiatives ostensibly meant to help indigenous highlanders?
3.  What should pro-indigenous NGOs' roles be in education?

4.  How have multicultural education and the politics of culture and language become a terrain of dispute in Latin America?
5.  What should indigenous movements look like?

# data[].attributes.body
·        (UNEBI) National Unit for Intercultural Bilingual Education: expanding bilingual education in Peru

·        (YACHANA): education in Ausangate region; picture included

·        (TADEP): development in Cuzco region

·        (CONAPA) National Commission of Andean, Amazonian, and Afro-Peruvian Peoples

·        Fundacion Pachamama: works with indigenous groups in Andean Region and Amazon

·        Various other unnamed NGOs

# data[].attributes.headline
Peruvian Students in Bilingual Classroom

# data[].attributes.subject
Peruvian Students in Bilingual Classroom

# data[].attributes.body
Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru, by Maria Elena Garcia, is an ethnography documenting the struggle of NGO activists to endorse multicultural bilingual schooling in the Andean region of Peru interweaved with alternative pressures from students, teachers, parents, and the government. She explores the complexities of indigenous politics and education through the social activism in multiple rural villages, which includes activists from intercultural NGOs, indigenous students, and state educators. The Spanish-Quechua bilingual schools were seen as a crucial step of the social movement toward a multicultural Peru, but much to the surprise of NGO workers, indigenous families opposed this proposal. This work reveals the inner workings of NGOs that are often stuck between indigenous communities in opposition to government and global agendas. In many cases of divided NGO loyalty, NGOs cannot survive without the funding from large international organizations and in turn neglect the desires of those being aided. These projects in Peru, funded by the World Bank, forced NGOs to devote themselves to the idea of “ethno-development.” However, the NGOs' top-down approach to planning placed them in conflict with the communities they intended to serve. García (2005) explains, “This is not simply a case of rural communities and their advocates against the neoliberal state, but rather a more complicated story of changing agendas and alliances in which Quechua parents can mobilize against pro-indigenous NGOs, and NGO goals can converge with those of both the state and international development community.” She identifies the issues in NGOs as they change their alliance, definitions, agendas, and structure. In this particular case, the long history of how education has negatively or positively shaped indigenous rights lead Andean Highland parents to oppose bilingual education in place of Spanish-only classrooms. The NGOs were then forced to re-evaluate their agendas due to the unexpected twist of program resistance.

# data[].attributes.body
García, María Elena. (2005). Making Indigenous Citizens: Identity, Development, and Multicultural Activism in Peru. Stanford: Stanford University Press.