Disputes in the Latin American educational field: between progressivism and the right
Interview with Pablo Gentili [2] by J. Fabian Cabaluz D.[3]
During the “First National Congress on Education, Culture, and Society: Challenges for the National Education System,” organized by the Faculty of Education Sciences at the University of Playa Ancha, we had the opportunity to interview Pablo Gentili, executive coordinator of the School of Latin American and Global Studies (ELAG). He shared his reflections on the debates within the Latin American educational field, focusing particularly on the tensions between progressive movements and neoliberal and neofascist right-wing ideologies. Below, we reproduce the interview, confident that it will contribute to understanding some of the current educational tensions and challenges.
Pablo, the first thing we wanted to ask is that you could give us a sort of overview or general comment on the progress that progressive governments in Latin America have made in the educational and pedagogical field, whether those from the first cycle of progressivism, or those that are being formed today.
Look, one key difference, given that the second progressive cycle is still underway, but which is nonetheless evident, is that the first progressive cycle was very clearly characterized by its affirmation of something that the right wing and neoliberalism had been working to undermine: the recognition of the right to education and the guarantee of greater equality and educational justice within school systems. So, in the face of privatization, the erosion of rights, and the exacerbation of discourses on quality, efficiency, and performance, the progressive governments of the first cycle sought to reclaim traditional and historical principles, and in some cases, implemented very successful initiatives to promote the right to education through significant, intensive, and highly interventionist public action. You had Chávez's missions in Venezuela, which were very important for educational inclusion at both the primary and university levels; the university access policies in Brazil and Argentina; and the educational programs of the Citizen Revolution in Ecuador and Bolivia. There was also a policy to improve working conditions for teachers; and in some cases, policies of openness, greater dialogue, and negotiation with social sectors linked to the field of education. In short, during the first 15 years of progressive governments, we saw education become a central part of policies for affirming and promoting rights; in some cases, there was a clear increase in public investment in education; and it was like a kind of reparation for the disaster left by the neoliberal governments of the 1980s and 90s, which had reinforced the legacies of the dictatorship. Therefore, it was a great achievement, which yielded positive results and left enormous challenges.
This second cycle that is just beginning seems to still be defining its horizon; that is, it is very difficult to pinpoint the defining characteristic of these new progressive movements in terms of educational policy. The first progressive movement was characterized by democratization, expansion, and the creation of conditions for developing an educational policy aimed at promoting greater equality, access, retention, and recognition of teachers' work within the system. Even though, for example, issues that were highly critical for sectors of the left, especially the academic left in the field of education, such as evaluation, were maintained—national and international assessments that remained in almost all our countries, and in some countries, like Brazil, were even intensified—they were not questioned. They remained, but all of this was given continuity because it was said that they would contribute to greater democratization and strengthen educational justice. In this second cycle, then, the question is: where is it headed?
Once there were setbacks in relation to the gains of the first progressive cycle—because the neoliberal governments that followed reversed a good part of those gains—a discourse of reparation was no longer established. In fact, you don't find in the new progressive governments, unlike the first ones, a critique of what was done under the neoliberal governments. The Alberto Fernández administration initially attempted some criticism of the Macri government's education policies, but didn't delve deeper. There are many explanations for why they don't: because the media harasses them, attacking them every time they question the past as if they were narco-Chavistas endangering democracy; and other times out of conviction, because they believe it wasn't so bad. But there is no questioning of the recent past. And perhaps most worryingly, there seems to be no unifying principle for the new education policy, even though we are experiencing the greatest expansion of progressivism in our history, even greater than that seen from 2000-2003 onward in the region, because new countries like Colombia, Mexico, and Chile have joined in. We could say that Mexico is somewhat replicating the educational policy model of the first progressive cycle, with a strong emphasis on democratization, access, the creation of universities, and a positive approach to productivity, greater equality, and greater social justice in education. But what Mexico is doing is quite different from what Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, or Brazil are doing. I seriously doubt that we will see a unifying element like the one we experienced in the past in the coming years, and this is a significant problem, because there are very different visions within progressive governments about what needs to be done in education.
It's interesting, for example, that even during the progressive governments of the first cycle, despite different national specificities, one could find unifying elements or core principles in educational policy that allowed one to say that countries as different as Ecuador, Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, or Uruguay were doing similar things. Consider that a country with far less educational injustice, like Uruguay, developed the Ceibal Plan during the Broad Front government. This pioneering democratization plan, even after the pandemic, became the main benchmark for educational action (necessary given the isolation caused by COVID-19). It was a program distributing computers to families and children, accompanied by a series of initiatives to democratize access to digital resources as an educational and pedagogical tool. This also connected with Brazil's policy of valuing teachers' work, which pursued the same goal, albeit with a different political approach. Now, perhaps because governments are just starting out, at different paces and in a very particular context associated with the pandemic, that unifying element isn't visible because even the discourse surrounding educational inequality isn't very emphatic. Educational inequality isn't becoming the central focus of action. The responses are very loosely linked to a shared perspective or even a shared community of concerns, which, in the first progressive cycle, was indeed created, not only in education but in many other fields. There was integration among our countries in all areas, and that was noticeable. Today, we have almost no level of cooperation and educational exchange among our countries with progressive governments. And this is undoubtedly a problem.
In fact, note that during the pandemic, a time of extreme need, our countries did not cooperate on health policies for a variety of reasons. But no country defined its vaccine purchasing policy in a coordinated manner with other countries, which would have given them much more power, greater negotiating capacity, and would have benefited them. Argentina and Mexico attempted this, but even that didn't solve the vaccine problem. What the pandemic revealed is an issue that previously seemed more present and evident: governments must cooperate in education. And not only our governments, but also our labor unions, the teachers' movement, and students. The dialogue that existed in the pre-pandemic era, during the first progressive cycle, and which the pandemic highlighted, was absolutely necessary for our countries to cooperate not only on health policies but in all areas. Today, this cooperation is much more blurred, and there are very few effective spaces for collaboration in regional education policy. Perhaps science policy is beginning to recover somewhat, and this is impacting universities, but we're not exactly witnessing the emergence of a new era of profound regional integration. Therefore, I believe that, while it's still too early to assess what will happen to education under the new progressive movement, it does seem that education isn't generating a new sense of purpose, of mobilization, of struggle, of action. And the proposals being implemented are either very modest, traditional, or perplexing, because in some cases we don't really know what it is or what it's supposed to be for, or how the educational policy of a progressive government differs from the educational policy of a right-wing government, and that remains a problem.
One of the concerns circulating within critical perspectives on education here in Chile is related to how to promote certain educational processes or policies that allow us to move forward in overcoming the neoliberal subjectivity so deeply rooted in our society after more than four decades of extreme neoliberalism. Therefore, considering this, we wanted to ask if you could elaborate on the educational or cultural policies that were promoted in this area during the first progressive cycle.
That's interesting because at the same time that progressivism became de-internationalized, or rather, stopped aspiring to build a space for dialogue and a shared perspective—something it undoubtedly had in its first cycle—the right wing, on the contrary, has done so. As I already pointed out, some 15 or 20 years ago, you could find many common elements in the struggle for educational equality in countries with very different educational traditions, and despite the differences in their policies, you could recognize them. Today, you can do that with right-wing movements, which, despite the differences between countries, in the field of education, do have very similar responses, one of which is, for example, the criticism of indoctrination. You'll hear that throughout Latin America. So, it should be a concern of our governments today how education contributes to building a new democratic subjectivity, or at least strengthening the values of a democratic, pluralistic, open, and free subjectivity—to put it in the most basic, less repressive, more open, and more supportive version of social liberal democracy. Let us resist the fear generated by the neoliberal and neofascist hatred that we see exacerbated every day in our society. It is a problem in every country; in fact, I am not personally aware of any forum or meeting of ministries that are working on this. Faced with this, when governments try out any idea or when any official says they are going to do something in this area, they are attacked under the accusation of indoctrination. And this isn't only said when it comes to combating the neofascist ideologies that permeate our societies. The hatred of the right wing is unleashed even when we talk about comprehensive sex education, which is claimed as an inalienable right of the family, of privacy, and not of the public sphere.
So, look how interesting this is. The women's movement has transformed into an international movement: there's cooperation, there's dynamism, but the strategies for cooperation regarding feminist policies in the field of education don't replicate that internationalism. Each ministry does what it can, what it wants. One detail: the ministers practically never travel, unless there's some international meeting, something with UNESCO; they don't meet, there are no spaces for dialogue. But it's curious because within feminist movements there are spaces for dialogue, but there are very few spaces for feminists working in education to come together to share on such an important issue as comprehensive sex education, which is a problem in Chile, Argentina, Mexico, and so on. And we in Latin America have an advantage, which is that it's very easy to cooperate among ourselves: we can create working materials for schools and share them without major problems.
But the right wing managed to find organizers, and politics operates based on references, organizers, core meanings, banners, and horizons—call them what you will—but in politics there must always be an end that people recognize, and that end is what allows you to determine the boundaries between good and evil. It's very dichotomous, but that's how politics works. If I don't know who my enemies are, if I don't know who my adversaries are, if I don't know who is fighting me, I can't bring people together to fight for an ideal. We, I think, for example, in the previous decade, regarding educational quality, lost that battle, because educational progressivism had shown that this format of quality assessment was terrible, because it generated inequality, competition, fragmented the school system; it created a system of negative rewards and punishments. And our governments didn't want to engage in that battle, which was a problem, because the right wing continued to advance, and our governments went to all the international forums and got themselves into dead ends or deep pitfalls. So we couldn't mount that political challenge in the field of quality, because we couldn't counter neoliberal quality with a credible, alternative quality model. Perhaps the governments thought that with our model of substantive, democratic, social quality, or whatever it was called, we wouldn't convince anyone, because we hadn't even convinced them. So this is also a failure of academic progressivism in education.
But other banners were raised. The policy of promoting access to university marked a turning point in Brazil. You were either for it or against it. You were for the children of workers, working-class families, for the poor to have access to medical school, because that isn't achieved through meritocracy, it's achieved through politics. I have to engage in politics so that the daughter of a domestic worker can study medicine, engineering, or social work. I have to engage in politics; the State has to intervene, and that kind of politics is expensive. In Brazil, the right wing protested vehemently, claiming it was unconstitutional, and the Workers' Party (PT) fought back and won, establishing a milestone in Brazilian history. In fact, even today, despite the coup, no one has abolished the quota system; no one has dared to touch it. In Argentina, in another field—human rights and the fight for human rights in education—this was established by the Alfonsín government, and it took root and remains untouched today. The big question today is: what is the banner of progressivism? What is our boundary? What is our ideal?
I don't like comparisons between politics and war, because I think that in a world like this, bleeding itself dry in different kinds of wars, using war as a metaphor isn't right. But it's still true that when you go into politics, you go out to achieve something, and that goal has to become something desirable, a collective aspiration, or, as they say in Argentina, a kind of mystique. It's something that allows you to give up everything. In Chile, I was just told a story that sums up a lot of that. A colleague who works in the government but was also very involved in the "Approve" campaign told me that one day he went out to hand out leaflets for the plebiscite, and he met an elderly man who hugged him and said: "Look, I'm convinced that with this new constitution they're going to steal my pension, but I'm still going to approve it because we have to bury Pinochet's constitution." That's mysticism, even if he's mistaken, because the guy believed in a goal, in a greater cause. The question is, what are we doing to build that? Because, as I was saying, the right wing is doing it; they're building an epic struggle against left-wing authoritarianism, the lack of freedom, the lack of people being able to choose more freely, the lack of quality that, according to them, arises when there's more competition and when we pay more to those who work better and less to those who work worse, the lack of laziness, the lack of merit, the lack of incentives. And if you listen to a minister of education from a right-wing government in Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, or France, they'll tell you the same thing. But if you listen to a minister of education from a progressive government, from one country or another, they don't say the same thing. But the question is, what is the horizon of struggle, the mystical horizon, the horizon that calls us together? One thing we have in Latin America, unlike any other region in the world, is a youth willing to mobilize. In Chile you have a student movement that's mobilizing; in Argentina you have a youthful political activism that's truly remarkable; in Brazil you have communities, networks. So, what are we inviting them to do? To manage education?
And it's true that some things are very difficult for us in an international context. In fact, going out and saying we're going to double the education budget seems unrealistic. So we can't promise that education funding will double, all good. We can't promise that teachers' salaries will improve, all good. We can't promise that we're going to change the evaluation system, all good. We can't promise that we're going to expand the curriculum to make it more democratic, more progressive, more pluralistic, more open, more cross-curricular, all good. We can't promise that we're going to make our schools more participatory, because that undermines the authority of the teaching hierarchy and administrators. We can't promise this, we can't promise that, and there comes a point when we end up resembling those who governed us, but with the idea that someday we'll do something different that never happens. And this is a problem. I believe we still have time to avoid it, and for that I think we need to be more ambitious, not more radical, more exacerbated, or more violent in our discourse, but more ambitious, more creative.
And for that, something needs to be done—something that was done in the first progressive cycle, but which is being done very little now—and that is for the ministries of education to build educational policy with allies: with students, school communities, unions, networks of academics, intellectuals, and professional associations. Currently, one sees a certain amount of fear, apprehension, because it's true that when the left emerges, the right also emerges, challenges us, and attacks us. But that space for alliance, with that active community, is central. The problem is that when the left doesn't do that from the outset, it becomes very difficult to do it later, because no one can call the educational community to debate the future of education six months before the elections. No one believes you if you haven't called on the organizations in three and a half years; you can't convene them at the end to discuss the government program. That works when you're in the opposition, but if you're in government, it generates a loss of credibility, a loss of political purpose, of mystique, of vision. But we still have time to prevent this from being a melancholic time in education.
Pablo, continuing with one of your main points of discussion, some student and teacher organizations are concerned about the educational agenda of far-right groups. In Chile, we are quite familiar with neoliberal perspectives, privatization policies, and management models, but we would like to ask if you could share some thoughts on what has motivated the hard right in terms of discourse and politics, especially based on the Brazilian experience.
Two things are quite evident from the experience of neo-fascist governments in the region, which combine neoliberalism and neo-fascism in a rather particular way, as is the case with Bolsonaro in Brazil or Lasso in Ecuador. These governments maintain all the elements of neoliberal education policy: a tendency toward the education market, competition, privatization, and the criminalization of the teaching profession. To this, they add a very strong moral component, which in Brazil was formulated as the School Without Parties, or gender ideology, or the questioning of indoctrination. But they also add an element that neoliberalism already possessed, but which is now expressed in a much more sophisticated way in its aspirations: turning education into a big business. Neoliberalism did this through consulting firms, service providers, NGOs, foundations, and banks. They were very critical of the government for wasting money on education policies for the poor, but then they would sign a multi-million dollar contract with some company to redesign a municipality's curriculum without batting an eye. They engaged in unscrupulous business dealings, funneling public funds to private organizations that raked in profits.
Under neo-fascist governments, this develops in a much more shameless way, establishing different alliances, for example, with evangelical churches. Bolsonaro had five education ministers, and almost all of them were linked to various types of corruption, but fundamentally related to the transfer of public, budgetary resources to evangelical churches. So, these are governments with enormous corruption problems. Because, even though we say that education isn't a business, education is a lucrative business for some. What these governments are doing most is privatizing services provided to the education system. In Brazil, evangelicals participate in social assistance programs. When they sell consulting services to ministries to improve the quality of math teaching, it requires less work and is much more discreet; therefore, the profit is extraordinary. This has led to an increase in educational corruption in Latin America under right-wing governments. They no longer hand over educational management, because in some countries, privatization levels have reached their limit. You can charge people who can pay, not those who don't have money. Now, those who don't have money have resumes, they have teachers who are trained.
To the above, we must add—and Bolsonaro's case was tragically exemplary—that in Curitiba he designed a program of schools managed by military organizations, handing them over to the security forces for administration. His argument was that schools are complete chaos, where boys and girls do whatever they want, there's no discipline, parents don't know how to raise their children, and who can do this? The Army. Luckily, they haven't thought of that here yet, because Chile would be ideal for it. Many people surely think that if the Carabineros (Chilean police) ran public schools, the schools would function better, be more disciplined, more orderly, because nobody messes with the Carabineros, with the police. So what this right wing represents is a much more exacerbated, violent, and radical version of educational reform. In fact, this business of transforming public schools into military schools, into cadet schools, is brutal, but it has elements that allow us to see how politics works when it works on references that people believe in, even if tragically.
People in Brazil do believe in police authority, they believe in military authority, and they believe that the exercise of that authority can buffer against the problems they face in daily life: violence, crime, insecurity. The neoliberals of the 1990s told these people that their children should go to schools where they would learn English, math, and computer skills so they could find good jobs and even become millionaires. People still hope their children will have good jobs and even become millionaires, but now people are afraid—afraid their child will be killed, will fall into drugs, will be surrounded by bad company. Faced with these fears, this vulnerability, the neo-fascists come along and say: you know I'm not going to put a police officer at the school gate, I'm going to put a police officer as principal, and a sector of society is delirious with joy. And it's very difficult for the left to question this, because it remains on the side of criminality, on the side of crime. And what do you expect? That schools are in chaos? That there's no authority? Because when you suggest to someone that a school principal can have authority and compare that to the authority of a police officer, it's like comparing Messi to a neighborhood soccer player. So, the right wing here has shown an ability to advance in territories that were very difficult for them, because we, at the same time, aren't innovating to counter, for example, military schools—this idea of militarizing schools—with an ideal of liberalization. And this is nothing short of a trap; the left wing often falls into that trap.
Sometimes, in the face of tragedy, the only solution is order. Now, when the left transforms into the party of order, it begins to weaken its capacity to present itself as a viable alternative for the future. When the left transforms into the party of pedagogical order, and also loses allies within the educational field, because it's true that tactically or strategically, it's sometimes better to defend the old than to create something new that is much worse. But how do you convince all those comrades who have been fighting for decades to change the school system? That what we have to defend is what we had before. What this generates is political disaffection. Because they don't want to compromise with the discourse of trafficking, violence, and hatred, but neither do they want to resurrect what they fought against their entire lives. And I think that's the challenge. I am convinced—and we've been saying this for many years, ever since Perry Anderson gave that lecture, which we organized at the University of Rio, on the meanings of neoliberalism—that we have to learn from the right. One may not share the values, not share the strategies, but one cannot fail to learn that the right knows that politics is a war of meanings, and that whoever wins the battle of words wins part of the battle. And the right is redefining the meaning of school, and for us, the refuge is often to defend the school of the past.
And that didn't happen 15 years ago. In some areas, the old ways were defended, and in others, innovation, creation, and new ideas emerged. And those changes had a direct impact on the lives of many people. In Argentina, there was the Conectar Igualdad Plan, which distributed six million computers in just over three years, during Cristina Kirchner's administration. If you estimate that there are two to four people per family, that's 24 million people in Argentina who saw those computers. The kids used them, some more than others, but something new, linked to a right, arrived in their homes. They were given it, not given away. The State provided it on loan so they could learn. And during the pandemic, we haven't even reached one million computers in Argentina, in the same amount of time that Cristina distributed six million. And of course, there's an economic crisis, there are management problems, there are a lot of things that explain why. So, what are we going to ask of people? That they defend us? Who saw the educational change? On the contrary, the right wing does things that have an impact, that people notice.
Additionally, the authoritarian response of neo-fascist governments has progressed to prosecuting the parents of young people, children, and teenagers who are occupying some schools for very specific reasons. The right wing is giving an authoritarian, anti-democratic response, but it's a pedagogical one, showing where they're headed. Here, we wield the authority; there's no right to political protest. Anyone who causes trouble will pay with a criminal trial because they're invading private property, a space belonging to the State. Students occupying schools has always been a right, a right to demonstrate in a public space, which is now being transformed into a private space, and the parents are becoming the criminal subjects of their children's actions. And what is our response to this? Because the worst response in politics is no response at all. So what do we say to these parents? Do we provide them with a lawyer to defend them against the trial? Do we explain that this is an authoritarian measure? Do we go out and support the students in the schools? What is the response? When we remain silent, when we remain negligent, what we do is cede territory, and that is what is happening.
And to close this interview, we wanted to ask you for a few words addressed to the teachers, educators, and education workers who, on September 04th, with the defeat of the "approve" option in the plebiscite on the proposed constitution, felt a severe blow regarding the possibility of generating structural transformations to the education system. What reflections would you like to share with our colleagues in Chile?
There are always reasons for disappointment and frustration among Democrats, because history shows that the road to victory is paved with defeats, and defeats are learning opportunities. So, you undertook a truly extraordinary process. Now we are in mourning, so it is very difficult for Chilean teachers, who have fought so hard for public education, who have mobilized so much, to stop their struggles. Because it is truly very difficult to be a progressive teacher in Chile, because this country adopted the neoliberal education reform as a model; it was a model for the world, not just for Latin America. So, here it was very difficult to resist, and you resisted, you persevered, and you came to have a progressive government, in a country where no one ever imagined there would be a government led by young heirs of the student movement. Therefore, there are reasons to be depressed, but also reasons to recognize and celebrate victories. The proposed Constitution was a victory. Perhaps now, with the benefit of hindsight, one can see the mistakes, but the most important thing, of course, was approving the constitution, but also the process of drafting it. I was saying this yesterday, regarding the articles on education: these are the ones that must be included in a constitution, anywhere in the world; they have to be there. Something more
Yes, but what's there is certainly possible. If we can add something better tomorrow, that's fine, but what they've already done can be cut and pasted into the constitution of a French, Canadian, or Spanish country, and we're talking about countries with a democratic tradition in education.
So, that was achieved, and be careful, because the right wing plays a lot on our depression. And since we on the left are generally much more extroverted than the right wing in expressing our feelings, that's being exploited today by the discourse of exception. They'll always try to trip you up. And despite having stumbled many times, we've gotten back up many times. And it's true that we haven't done so badly, although it's also true that there's still a lot to be done. In fact, we have the opportunity we're having now because we've done many things well, but also because those who came before us did. We owe a debt to the struggles of the past. That memory of those struggles has to help us understand that if Chile had this Constitution, even if it's flawed, it's because there were teachers who disappeared; because there were teachers who fought against the dictatorship, who also fought against the democratic governments that followed, who created and built spaces for mobilization; that there were students who worked and built spaces for mobilization and struggle. And as Pepe Mujica says, history moves forward in twists and turns; there are no ultimate defeats because there are no definitive victories either. I believe that what it's about is picking up the flags, seeing what happened, recovering the gains we've made, and, on that foundation, moving forward. Because the problem with political disaffection is that it throws everything that's been accomplished into the trash, whereas here we have a solid foundation that has already been established.
And since education wasn't a topic that came up, I'd say, this is off-limits. That's their foundation, they can't let it be stolen, because what the right wing wants to do is change that too. What the exit plebiscite shows is that the problems were associated with justice, nationality, the economy, and other issues. I, at least, didn't see much criticism of education, and that's interesting because this is the country with the most privatized education, with the most pro-privatization rhetoric, the most credentialism, and in many cases, the most authoritarian approach to education. However, I think that this struggle for education here is similar to the struggle for human rights in Argentina. Nobody wants to get involved, because they know they'll be fighting fire with fire, because you have power, because you take to the streets, because they're afraid of you. And of course, it's good that the right wing is afraid, because they don't dare touch it. It's not that the right wing supports human rights in Argentina; they're afraid of the Grandmothers, those 98-year-old women. They're terrified. Because when they open their mouths, they destroy them. So, they say they defend human rights, but they're sharpening their knives for the day they have the opportunity to violate them again. So, start rebuilding from there, because that's your victory. It's not something that was left behind because the right wing forgot. They didn't forget. And if you don't defend it, they're going to change it, because they're nostalgic for that painful past, that model of educational privatization that Pinochet left as a legacy for Chile and the world.
So what would I tell them? Keep going, keep going, because victory is forged in continuity, not in a single moment. The election was a moment, but it continues. And if they had won the plebiscite, they would have had to keep going then too, so we must keep going. And we must hope that the mistakes we made this time, which prevented us from winning, are not repeated in the future, leading to another defeat. And even if we did repeat them, the response would still be the same: onward, onward, always…
[1] Interview originally published in: https://www.lemondediplomatique.cl/disputas-del-campo-educativo-
[2] Pablo Gentili holds a PhD in Education. He is a professor and researcher at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). He has served as Executive Secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), Coordinator of the Latin American Observatory of Educational Policies (OLPED), Director of the Brazilian branch of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO), and Executive Secretary of the International Council of the World Education Forum. He currently serves as Executive Coordinator of the School of Latin American and Global Studies – ELAG.
[3] Professor and researcher at the University of Playa Ancha. “Latin American Pedagogies Group: education, politics and citizenship”. Valparaíso, Chile. Co-coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group on Popular Education and Critical Pedagogies.
