Public schools As noted above, the federal government has provided a form of bilingual education for Indigenous students since the creation of the DGEI in 1978. While such programs are now known as “intercultural bilingual” education, they have only been able to provide students with a weak form of intercultural capacity at best and often have the opposite effect of alienating students by oppressing their native language and culture. This reinforcing of the hegemony of the Spanish language and European-descent, urban-centric culture is apparent in the non-participation of the local community, the way that teachers are selected and trained, and the use of language in the classroom. One of the most salient characteristics of the public education system is its highly centralized nature. As was noted above, the Secretaria de Educación Pública (SEP; Ministry of Public Education) is tasked with educational planning, the selection of the national curriculum and textbooks, and training and appointing teachers (“Constitución política…”). This means that education is not adapted to specific contexts or cultures at a local level, but is instead relatively uniform throughout the country. As Baronnet (2013) writes, “the Mexican State is far from being able to offer…culturally pertinent education to the children of Native towns” (p. 189; own translation). The local community is not called on to …show more content…
By creating truly autonomous schools that are controlled by the communities in which they function, encouraging community involvement, employing instructors from the towns and villages where they teach, and giving power and respect to local Indigenous languages, the EZLN’s schools promote the development of radical intercultural awareness in their Indigenous