Disentangling (de)colonial teacher education in the Andes: Dilemmas and possibilities

Based on recent discussions on language and decoloniality and employing an ethnographic approach, this article examines a teacher education program in “primary intercultural education” at a public university in the Southern Peruvian Andes, in a context with a majority Quechua-speaking population and youth with diverse bilingual trajectories. The goal of this article is to complexify the categories of coloniality and decoloniality of language by studying a reflection-based action conducted by grassroots Quechua activists and teacher educators, which involves developing an academic Quechua register with the aim of empowering students as authors of their texts in the Indigenous language. These activists assume their intervention as a decolonial and critical strategy to neutralize hierarchies with respect to the oppression of the Spanish language, deracialize mother tongue education, and incorporate a social justice approach to counteract a depoliticized view of interculturalism. However, simultaneously, these activists promote a neat, autonomous, and disembodied Quechua; disfavor translanguaging practices; and erase the signifier of bilingualism, reproducing the coloniality of language and disempowering many of the students. These results confirm the need for further cycles of critical reflection when developing reflection-based actions.