So, what to teach indigenous languages for?

Subjectivities from experiences on indigenous teacher education.

Abstract

The article analyzes the training experience lived by six teachers at the basic level of indigenous education in the State of Mexico. Discourses and statements about identity were analyzed, as well as the original language, the value of culture and the meaning they give to different teaching approaches as the intercultural one. The interviews were analyzed by applying a critical discourse analysis method. The purpose was to listen to the subjectivations that teachers build out of their experiences, since, as agents, they have accrued resources from their history, that of their parents and grandparents, their economic situation, and many other different relationships, setting the capitals that locate them in a certain space and time (Bourdieu, 2005). Thus, a reflection on the subjectivations, within the context of the reforms to the Mexican education that attempts to be guided by the proposal of a critical interculturality approach, takes place. It is also appointed that critical interculturality, as a means to reduce structural racism, discrimination, and educational backwardness from the claim of indigenous culture, requires a dialogic process, with subjectivations of indigenous identity as its core, to foster new educational practices in diverse contexts.