Latin America today faces enormous challenges and major crossroads. The current context is characterized by the advance of neoliberalism and neoconservatism on our continent, which consequently entails a setback in the process of acquiring rights achieved by previous progressive governments, as well as jeopardizing our democracies. Thus, the role of popular education and critical pedagogies—the theme that brings this working group together—is situated within a broader landscape of political, ideological, and cultural disputes where critical thinking must play a crucial role.

Some of the defining characteristics of this context can be summarized as the loss of trust in democratic processes, the bewilderment at the oxymoronic semantics that pervade politics, the exponential increase in economic, emotional, and social precarity that undermines principles and values ​​essential to the well-being of the majority, the rise in poverty, unemployment, and labor market deregulation, and the growing power of religious fundamentalisms. These emerging issues, among many others, account for this process we can call necropolitics—that is, relationships in which it would seem that some subjects have value while others do not. Here, old and modern systems of domination converge: neocolonialism, capitalism in its modern neoliberal form, patriarchy that fosters and establishes gender violence, and finally, the prevailing scientific and technological model. 

In the specific field of education, we are witnessing a renewed attack on public education driven by neoliberal logic (commodification, privatization, subordination to the demands of accumulation), as well as the reduction of the meaning of education to the acquisition of skills and competencies functional to the logic of capitalism. In Latin America—and by the dictates of transnational organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the OECD—we are observing a wave of educational (counter)reforms aimed at homogenizing curricula based on international standardized tests measuring skills in mathematics, language, and natural sciences, which accompany processes of discrediting public education. Consequently, other dimensions and areas of education, such as the humanities, social studies, physical education, and the arts, are relegated to a secondary role, if not eliminated altogether from curricula, deemed “useless.” New and subtle forms of privatization and commodification of education are developing, involving standardized tests, corporate interference in curriculum development, and other forms of internationalization. These same forms of commodification blur the role of teaching and instruction, replacing it with machines and facilitators, thus eliminating any hint of resistance or possibility of critical thinking that teachers might promote. This approach draws on pedagogical perspectives offered by "neuroscience," which equates students with brains that learn without context, bodies, or cultures, and on "emotional education," that is, new ways of adapting to any conditions in a "positive" manner.

As researchers committed to our historical moment, we ask ourselves: how do we position ourselves today in the face of this Latin American reality? How can we rethink popular education and critical pedagogies within the micro-spaces of containment and possibility? Today—more than ever—spaces for the formation of subjectivities, both within and outside of public education, are essential for organizing initiatives that foster gathering, encounter, and the construction of social projects oriented in a direction distinct from the described trend of the advance of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

Education has once again become a battleground between the hegemonic societal project imposed by globalized capitalism and other visions of the future and alternative societal projects. This is happening in these current circumstances, in ways that are more subtle than in other historical periods. At the same time, education plays, or can play, a role in challenging the production of consent to the neoliberal and neoconservative shift that is articulated through the media, certain sectors of the churches, and government policies. In various geographical and social contexts across the continent, resistance is emerging around the creation and development of educational institutions. On the one hand, we find alternative educational proposals, such as Indigenous education, pedagogies of the land, and decolonial pedagogies, generally linked to vigorous social movements. Likewise, within the already established currents of popular education and critical pedagogies, transformations are occurring in their scenarios, fields, and forms of pedagogical action and reflection. Finally, feminist pedagogies are in a moment of consolidation in parallel with the prominence of women's movements throughout the continent.

In these areas, a concern common to the field of popular education reappears with force: political education. As CEAAL has recently pointed out, political education involves the articulation of three interrelated processes: i) the development of critical awareness and the deconstruction of currently hegemonic discourses and meanings regarding the complex historical, political, economic, and cultural processes that Latin America is undergoing in this period; ii) the mobilization of different sectors and the popular classes to confront processes of exclusion and subordination based on class, gender, ethnicity, and other factors, as well as to defend hard-won rights and expand or generalize them; and iii) the creation of spaces for encounter and collaboration among different sectors of the popular classes and organizations and institutions committed to them, to foster collective struggle against the perverse mechanisms of social exclusion and for the construction of participatory democracy and social justice.

Therefore, education in public schools, as well as in the aforementioned educational proposals of popular movements, emerges as a strategic task that entails a long-term process to construct an alternative cultural hegemony. It implies an approach that enables the understanding of new and complex realities with different frameworks and interpretive approaches, avoiding oversimplification or Manichaeism, and instead adopting a comprehensive perspective that transcends biased views and articulates all dimensions. This stems from the understanding that pedagogy constitutes a field of struggle for the symbolic, thus shaping it as a political practice; consequently, its function acquires substantial relevance in times of sociocultural adversity. And, if we articulate this conception of pedagogy with a critical perspective, the demand to promote awareness of discontent and injustice calls for an interpretation of present-day reality that not only highlights emergencies and absences articulated by the dominant order but also proposes viable, unprecedented alternatives. Herein lies the essential role of the popular educator in all possible spaces, both school and non-school, governmental and non-governmental.

In the Latin American and Caribbean context described, two problematic issues arise that will act as axes of reflection to be addressed in the GT and which we propose below.

1. Rethinking the contributions of Popular Education in the struggle processes to defend or radicalize Public Education in Latin America and contributing to the effective guarantee of the right to education. 

As we noted in the previous point, the neoliberal advance in Latin America entails a massive attack on public education, its institutions, its actors, and its underlying principles. The reaffirmation of the Popular Public School, informed by the contributions of Popular Education, thus appears to be a necessary and crucial point of contention that guides our reflections, practices, and knowledge production.

The inherent complexity of the social sphere compels us to avoid dichotomous positions. We believe that the opposition between popular education—linked to educational processes outside of formal schooling—and public school—linked to state control—invalidates the efforts of educators, critical teachers, and researchers whose conceptual and empirical contributions have fostered the possibility of articulating both terms. This invisibility, in turn, is highly functional for the powers that be, who seek to block access to those realities reconstructed and resignified within the public sphere, targeting them with smear campaigns aimed at their dismantling.

Far from reinforcing an accusatory view of public schools—which conceives of them as mere arenas of social discipline—our perspective seeks to highlight the porous nature of school walls. Without denying the evident effects of exclusion, homogenization, and violence that public education has exerted on individuals from marginalized groups, it focuses on the potential of this public space to articulate collective projects that nurture and strengthen subjectivities. In this way, we find numerous examples of state-run public schools, teacher collectives, and teacher training programs that serve as anchors for popular education, blurring the lines between popular education and public schooling. Thus, the scope, themes, problems, and target audiences of Popular Education multiply.

In this sense, the neoliberal and neoconservative shift that Latin America is experiencing places the debates and controversies regarding the link between Public School and Popular Education within a larger scenario of political, ideological, and cultural disputes, where public education remains a central stronghold in the struggle for democracy, justice, and dignity.

2. To investigate the contributions of Popular Education and Critical Pedagogies to political formation, considering the processes of constructing critical subjectivities that unfold there. 

The new neoliberal offensive in Latin America reinforces concerns about the formation of critical subjectivities in this new context, considering the efforts to produce consent to the neoliberal and conservative shift in which the media, certain sectors of the churches, and specific government programs participate. We therefore consider that neoliberalism operates as a structural but also subjective rationality that encompasses even the popular sectors that suffer the most from the consequences of its government policies.

From the Working Group, we seek to analyze the contributions of Popular Education and Critical Pedagogies to the production of critical subjectivities through the development of political education processes. We also aim to contribute to strengthening these contributions. By political education, we understand the learning of dispositions, perceptions, interpretive frameworks, and content that shape the political universes of individuals, guiding their practices and meanings regarding political activity and the distribution and exercise of power.

Throughout Latin America, there is a growing concern for political education and its expression in a variety of pedagogical approaches designed for this purpose. These approaches often draw on the contributions of Popular Education and Critical Pedagogies to inform their methodologies, content, and formats. Therefore, political education takes place in a broad range of spaces that include, and simultaneously extend beyond, public education—encompassing a diverse spectrum of individuals—through processes with varying degrees of systematicity, manifesting an explicit and deliberate pedagogical intention. Far from being passive and linear, we understand political education as a conflictive process that challenges the logics of action that structure individuals' social experiences and the confluence of past and present influences.

The realm of subjectivities acquires a prominent centrality, and the task of political education is thus presented as an imperative for those popular organizations, movements, unions, parties, and researchers that intend to combat not only the objective but also the subjective foundations of neoliberalism.

Given this scenario, this Working Group proposes to create—based on these two problematic issues—spaces for conversation, exchange, and knowledge production, both to stimulate an understanding of Latin American reality and to learn about actions and contributions being promoted by Latin American communities. We are particularly interested in analyzing and understanding the multiple paths taken by Popular Education in Latin America within these complex contexts, advancing through traditional spaces of Popular Education, public education, and also in emerging areas such as sports. We are also interested, having explored its relationship with critical pedagogies (Working Group 2016-2019), in analyzing its connections in concrete experiences. To this end, we will seek to promote collaboration among different sectors, such as universities, popular educators, public policy makers, and civil society organizations and collectives.