Zapatistas Indigenous Epistemologies: Alternatives to Understand Power in Education?

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  In Roundtable Session: Critical Pedagogy Facing the Contradictions of Class Society (Table 19)

Abstract

This study explores the contribution of Zapatista metaphorical epistemologies to decolonial education. Zapatistas showed that the promised progress of Western epistemic reason had never reached Indigenous communities. Through the use of metaphor, the Zapatistas shed light on a reality and knowledge that had been ignored by society-the social and epistemic reality of "the long night of 500 years" (EZLN, 1996, para. 26). This work is based on original primary archival sources provided by Zapatista communities in Mexico. Through the analysis of these sources, this work examines the metaphors used by the Zapatistas to illustrate how they develop alternative forms of knowledge to understand and dismantle power, a critical factor in the anti-colonial education.

Author

• Raul Olmo Fregoso Bailón, University of Nevada - Reno