Frontiers of Education: The Making of the “Literate Indian” in the Mission Schools of Chile and Bolivia, 1880-1950

Abstract

This dissertation explains the making of the “Literate Indian” in the mission schools of Chile and Bolivia between 1880-1950. It is a history of the construction of new social actors who emerged on the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth centuries. They were exposed to diverse layers of dominant discourses at schools and counterhegemonic discourses in their political organizations becoming key political leaders who shaped the destiny of their communities until today. This dissertation also makes the case for comparing indigenous societies within mission history into the mainstream narratives of the Americas that usually focus in one region stressing the economic, social and political aspects relegating education as a secondary unit of analysis. I will offer a comparative study of how Franciscan missionaries in Bolivia attempted to create literate Guaraní with the Capuchins in Chile who tried to do the same with the Mapuche. In this comparative analysis I also examine Anglican missions among the Mapuche in Chile. These missions played a significant role in the formation of the first generation of literate Mapuche that differed in their educational methods from the Catholic missions of the Capuchins. The argument that schooling served as an instrument of empowerment for indigenous peoples -as well as a tool of the governments to colonize, "civilize" and "modernize" indigenous peoples in the Americas- has been made by numerous scholars. My research expands the debate, adding in a new angle comparing mission schools in Chile and Bolivia and the kind of political leaders that these produced. Through this analytical comparison I show the different political agendas of the indigenous leaders and the diverse educational pathways they took. This process continues up to the present showing that my research is a feasible model of historical analysis of education and indigenous political activism in the twentieth and twenty first centuries.