Nº 47, 2015. Páginas 71-81 Diálogo Andino

CRITICAL INQUIRY AS A WAY TO BREAK THE GLASS BETWEEN “NORMAL” PRACTICES IN THE CHILEAN PUBLIC ACADEMIA AND THE CASE OF COLOR LATIN AMERICAN MIGRANT STUDENTS IN OUR CLASSROOMS: A CALL TO HUMANIZE, A CALL TO REFLECT UPON LA INVESTIGACIÓN CRÍTICA COMO UNA FORMA DE ROMPER EL CRISTAL ENTRE LAS PRACTICAS ‘COMUNES’ EN LA ACADEMIA PÚBLICA CHILENA Y EL CASO DE LOS ESTUDIANTES MIGRANTES LATINOAMERICANOS DE COLOR EN NUESTRAS SALAS DE CLASES: UN LLAMADO A HUMANIZAR, UN LLAMADO A REFLEXIONAR”

Pamela Zapata Sepúlveda*, María Emilia Tijoux Merino** & Michelle Espinoza Lobos***

This essay concerns the critical voices of 3 women researchers that examine and reflect about the Chilean educational system using the case of color Latin American students, in the context and from a current perspective of their public universities in . Public policies in education, integration and segregation, challenges and current problems present or that could ocurr in our classrooms are included in this piece using experimental writing as a critical approach to tell, break silences, and as a way to evoke and pro- voke audiences. Taking a step towards action against social injustice and conservative nationalism and racism in the academia. Key words: Chilean higher education, integraty, social justice, color foreign students, experimental writing, critical methodologies.

Este ensayo comprende las voces críticas de tres mujeres investigadoras que analizan y reflexionan sobre el actual sistema educa- cional chileno, usando el caso de los estudiantes de color en la academia. Estas reflexiones giran en torno a las políticas públicas en materia de educación, la integración y la segregación, los retos y los problemas actuales o que puedan ocurrir en nuestras salas de clase, los que son abordados utilizando la escritura experimental como una vía de aproximación crítica para decir, romper silencios, evocar y provocar audiencias. Dando un paso hacia la acción en contra de la injusticia social, el nacionalismo conservador y el racismo en el mundo académico. Palabras claves: educación superior chilena, integración, justicia social, estudiantes extranjeros de color, escritura experimental, metodologías críticas.

“The struggle for critical subjectivity is JUST the North-Chilean-TERRITORY of the macro the struggle to occupy a space of hope – a Andean central south region. At the moment of liminal space, an intimation of the antistruc- these words I am writing from the corridor of my ture, of what lives in the in – between zone thoughts, dreams, ideals and my personal conflicts of undecidability – in which one can work against social injustice in my region. Hence, always toward a praxis of redemption”. confronting my current question about WHAT –Peter McLaren, 1997 COULD I DO to use Qualitative Inquiry as a way to support the lives of people suffering in my Chilean Introduction regional context. At the same time, what I could do to create Pamela Zapata writes: I live in a controversial new spaces in the academy to promote a critical place situated for some people as northern Chile, view in the classroom with my colleagues and stu- for others as EXTREME northern Chile, for me dents, and how this could be a way to connect our

* School of Psychology and Philosophy at University of Tarapacá, , Chile. Correo electrónico: [email protected] ** Department of Sociology at , , Chile. Correo electrónico: [email protected] *** Faculty of Human Sciences at University, , Chile. Faculty of Education at Monash University, Australia. Correo electrónico: [email protected]

Recibido: 15 de enero de 2015. Aceptado: 20 de abril de 2015. 72 Pamela Zapata Sepúlveda, María Emilia Tijoux Merino & Michelle Espinoza Lobos

lives and our problems with the academia and the could listen to them talking to each other globe. This as a way to encourage our voices and in a very lively and fun way. Most of them the voices of our students to do critical qualitative are taking pictures to capture this important research, to create our local knowledge relieving moment in their lives. Everyone would do our current social problems, to teach from decol- the same. Do you not believe it? All of this onized frameworks and promoting the connection takes place in different locations in the between our current problems and our lives in an historical and beautiful green areas of the era of neoliberal fundamentalism (e.g. Denzin & Quad Cam at UIUC. This area is the heart Giardina, 2015). In this, as Tami Spry (2011:39) of the students’ life in the university. It is says ¨in the conformative of meaning with others¨ a big green main quadrangle surrounded is where I find myself as a performative autoeth- by historic and beautiful buildings with nographic researcher. different colleges. In the front, just south of Now, at the moment I am writing these lines, the area, an auditorium protruding imposed I am in a safe multicultural academic space at on others, it is Foellinger Auditorium. the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Everybody is very happy now in the Quad [UIUC]– USA, physically distant but worried about Cam, I can feel the distress on their faces, my role in the academia. Thinking about how our and the pride in them and their parents for work could be a way to generate democratic and having completed their studies. Someone’s safe academic spaces to think, to create decolonized daughters and sons laugh happily because and democratic knowledge that could be applied to this is “THE DAY”. It’s time to celebrate. support the social problems of our communities, to It’s time to share with the friends and class- break silences as injustice and violence, improving mates from their times as undergraduate the well being of the people, and promoting criti- students at UIUC. cal social agents [our students] that could do real I am just walking around the Quad Cam social transformation in our Chilean society in the looking and enjoying that picture, as a XXI century. narrative collage (e.g. Denzin, 2001). Beautiful summer dresses, fashionable Writing as a Method of Inquiry high heels, beautiful haircuts and hairstyles, uncommon in a city where students usually In the place where I am (my corridor), I live wear comfortable and casual wear with the the act of writing as a method of inquiry, as a way big word “ILLINOIS” in their shirts and of finding out, understanding language as a consti- wearing the colors of the university (orange tutive force that permits to create a particular view and blue) as if it were a school uniform, of reality and of the Self (Richardson & Adams, since that means not wasting time on what 2005). And at the same time, I am writing as a way to wear each day. of life (Richardson, 2014). I observed how a group of 15 white women with high heels and beautiful dresses with Pamela’s Story different shiny colors were taking pictures in groups. They are organizing themselves In the side of the corridor where I am, I over the railing that is in the front of the am thinking about the walk I took this Quad Cam at UIUC. They are the main morning on campus at UIUC, where I am characters of the white color women painting a postdoctoral visiting scholar and a post at “UIUC Graduation in 2015”. doc in training in the International Institute At the same time but in a place further back of Qualitative Inquiry. In this sunny day of in this scene, in the upstairs area of the the end of semester on campus (may 14th same garden where the stands that target of 2015), I am immersed in an atmosphere the main entrance of the building begin, I of joy and celebration. I could see how the see how another group of around 20 black undergraduate students are celebrating their women enter the scene. They are wearing graduation with their families and friends, the same red dress -as if this color had and I see how their faces look so happy. I the meaning of empowerment for color Critical inquiry as a way to break the glass between “normal” practices in the chilean public academia and the case… 73

women, as a color of their identity, as a a process of encouraging my voice and color that calls for visibility, as a color doing performance autoethnography since of resistance…- they are taking pictures 2011 (e.g. Zapata-Sepúlveda, 2012), if I of them also. This group of women looks were 15 years younger, and this was the different in relation to the first group. This, day of my graduation I would be wearing like a picture of the contemporary history of the red dress… this is not because of a race relation in America (e.g. Denzin, 2002), monolithic race notion behind the black is as a scene of a Hollywood’s movie of a color women, but I feel as a hybrid color ghetto action film cycle (Watkins quoted woman different to the whiteness culture in Denzin 2002). This group of women is in the U.S. using the stairs as their stage for photogra- phy. The space behind the group of white After this walk on campus at UIUC I asked women (the main center place for taking myself if the open policies in higher education pictures). They are smiling and talking are effective or not as I could perceive in the loudly making their presence felt. But they practice in UIUC while thinking about this as the look like graduate students from a different real effort to integrate scholars and students from university, or country, or continent... they different countries to this university. In this case are at the bottom of the scene. the question is: Could it generate in them the sense In the same picture frame a little further of integration we would expect in the academia back, I could see a small group of other of this century? students, maybe from India, who were taking If we think about the realities of our Chilean pictures of themselves, and even further in universities and their current growth in a world this “intercultural” university scenary, I see where migration issues are also increasing in Chile, a group of Asian people taking pictures we could think that what happens in worldclass with their parents. How about integration, universities could happen in our universities as well multiculticulturalism, social order and equal in a few more years. Would the picture I started opportunities for minority cultural groups this piece with be a futuristic image of what we of students, black people, or with ethnicity can anticipate? Is this picture an example which and other different aspects distant to the reflects the multiculturalism in higher education stereotypes related to the white American in XXI century Chile? students as the “predominant culture in In the website of UIUC, the Proclamation US”?, just like the white young women University says “more than 500 active institutional who posed happily on the railing in front partnerships representing more than 50 countries. of the auditorium? Last year, we had more than 10,000 international While I walk slowly around the quad, I students attend Illinois, hailing from more than begin to see myself in the eyes of students, 110 countries. And, more than 2,000 students study and remember the day of my graduation. abroad annually”. (University of Illinois, Boards My feet are filled with color, not black, and Trusted, 2015). I am sure that this information not Asian, not Indian, and begin to wonder is the consequence of a real effort done by UIUC in about my hybridization, about my Latin the sense of inclusive academic policies. American origins, immigrants from some If universities such as UIUC had inclusive distant place in arabia, natives of northern policies as I can see when I go to the wonderful Chile... what color dress I would have worn ARC-GYM with my international Les Mills fitness if I had graduated from UIUC? Before my trainers Amir or Jingjing, or in the faces of inter- post doc time at UIUC, I did not know. national students and professors in the streets, etc., I saw myself as a white Latin American are universities also a reflection of what happens woman, in my regional context in northern outside the classroom?, and in our Chilean case, Chile. I never asked myself that before are universities the production of differences and when I was a high school student or an inequalities as a way of reproduction of social undergraduate student. Our education was order based on color of the skin, ethnicity, origin, from and by white people. Today after for example?. 74 Pamela Zapata Sepúlveda, María Emilia Tijoux Merino & Michelle Espinoza Lobos

Michelle’s Voice sharing with people who lived their lives on the run, the infamous chaperos who played I am a woman, a mother, a wife, a daughter, pepito paga doble for ages on the streets of a sister, a teacher, a friend, a researcher, the area around the Mercado Centenario. I a PhD student. My different ‘identities’ attended the primary school located on the have been formed based on the experiences historical grounds of Escuela Santa Maria that I have lived. I was born in Machali, de Iquique, charged with the memories of south-central Chile, but six years after painful past times. the military coup my parents decided I went to the local to get to migrate to Iquique, northern Chile. I my degree. However, life has taught me became a foreigner in my country. People so much more than university did. As I in Iquique have always stressed the fact grow older I have became more critical and that the people who came to live in that through self-reflection I have decided that virtuous city but were not born there are I want to be an agent of change. Working some sort of ‘fake’ Iquiqueños. at my Alma Matter, having the oppor- Iquique is located in the north of Chile at tunity to share experiences with people about 1.800 kilometres from the capital, from different social, cultural, political Santiago. It is a port and has one of the backgrounds, has helped me build my largest duty-free commercial port centers own identity. As a Chilean person living of South America, traditionally called Zofri. in the north part of the country, my skin Copper mining is also an important industry color may not have been that different in the city. It is a very multicultural city from my neighbors or friends. However, attracting people from different parts of I have always felt a sense of responsi- the country as well as various parts of the bility to others in under-represented and world mainly due to its low unemployment marginalized groups. This is one of the rates, the good climate, and the commercial primary reasons I became a teacher. As and mining opportunities. In fact, it has a student, I rarely had the opportunity to been regarded as the most cosmopolitan interact with teachers or administrators city in the country as about 10 per cent of who could serve as role models for me. its population is foreign (Rodrigo & Lobo, Sadly, I believe the story has not changed 2009). A significant number of immigrants much during the last thirty years. come from neighboring countries such as In the context of my own experiences as Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia and a student-teacher, a school teacher, and Brazil, but there are also immigrants from finally as a teacher educator, I need to gain other parts of the world such as Croatia, a better understanding about education in Italia, Spain, China, Taiwan, Pakistan, Chile, and critically viewing education, India, the US and even Australia. Another educational policy, culture, and identity in important component of the population of order to make sense of the reality we face. It the city is the indigenous people who come is urgent to include the new scenario posed to the city from the inlands moved mainly by immigrants and to cater for their needs by socioeconomic reasons. as universities such as Tarapacá University I arrived in that city when I was only 2 and Arturo Prat University are at the gates and half years old. All my memories are of the border to the rest of Latin American. set in that scenario. Being the daughter of I want to produce understandings and working-class parents, who even today insights, which I could share with my work at Feria Romero from Monday to students and colleagues, with the hope Sunday has contributed to the person I am of contributing to the improvement of now. I lived my childhood surrounded by education in my region, as well as in other merchants. By people selling fruit in fruit localities. It is my passion for education stalls; by people selling clothes, cigarettes, and for what I believe education should the latest creation of the Chinese market; be like that underpins my motivation to Critical inquiry as a way to break the glass between “normal” practices in the chilean public academia and the case… 75

conduct research and ultimately which dreams, and commitments in the students that shape guides my different identies. Although obligations in the society looking to the future. In Chile is a country in which quality and this sense, Giroux raises the idea that education equity in education are the declared forces needs to provide the intellectual, moral, and political driving the educational system, the policies referents in order to imagine and construct a better in regard to the teaching and learning have way of our future (e.g. Giroux, 2013). been inspired by a dominant economic The autor said that as an important critical proj- narrative which aims to develop human ect, education is not about test scores, or draconian capital for the knowledge economy by means zero tolerance regimes. It is concerned with how of investing in the development of skills the capacities of young people could be expanded and education (Facer, 2011), embracing to be creative, question authority, and think with this idea as an opportunity to increase the care about a world where justice and freedom are nation’s economic competitiveness (Ball, as the common good reaffirmed. Hence, when the 2007). With so much emphasis placed on students leave the university, their choices and ac- economic outcomes, educational policies tions will have a broader sense of ethical and social seem to have lost the focus on what edu- responsibilities and by developing in the university cation should be. the sense of who they are and their relationship with the larger world will be linked to what kind Questions and Answer Confronting of world they will be making for themselves and the Global Tendency in Higher Education their descendants. In addition to the above, Henry Giroux said: In this sense, Peter McLaren said: “in the The education administration is frequently defined pluralizing move to become a society of diverse by a business culture and corporate strategies that voices, neoliberal democracy has often succumbed reduces it to a private act of consumption. This to a recolonization of multiculturalism by failing situation goes against the creation of the thinking, to challenge ideological assumptions surrounding speaking, acting human, being competent in matters difference that are installed in its current anti-af- of truth, goodness and beauty to perform the private firmative-action and welfare “reform” initiatives”. and public life. “In opposition to the instrumental In this context, people of color are still placed reduction of education to an adjunct of corporate under the threshold of candidacy for inclusion and neoliberal interests which offer no language for into the universal right to self-determination and relating the self to public life, social responsibility, interpolated as exiles from U.S. citinzenship” or the demands of citizenship. Your generation (McLaren, 1997: 8). must take on the challenge of developing critical Meanwhile Henry Giroux states: “Public and approaches to education that illuminate how knowl- Higher education have always been fraught with edge, values, desire, and social relations are always notable inequities and anti-democratic tendencies, implicated in power and related to the obligations but it also once functioned as a crucial reminder of of engaged citizenship” (Giroux, 2015). the pivotal role it might play in enabling students to Pamela Zapata asks again: But, are we worried take heed of, understand, and address social problems about freedom, shaping identities, values, dreams? in the interests of pursuing a vibrant democracy to Is this a romantic and high speech discourse of the come. Understandably, this sounds anachronistic left view of white anglo public intelectual schol- in an age when education is being privatized and ars? Could this type of discourse be applied to our instrumentalized” (Giroux, 2015). regional context in northern Chile? We could do Henry Giroux argues that the democracy has that. But first we need to see us, identify us, and become ever more fraught, more at risk and the then create the way to promote a critical view in universities needs to take the role of border crossers, our students and us. embrace civic courage, be socially responsible, and Maria Emilia Tijoux according to Giroux’s display compassion for others. Where democracy, ideas said about our Chilean realities, that the higher justice, and freedom need to begin with the edu- education system is seen as a widespread market cation, this, as a system that plays a central role in for various godos, where knowledge becomes the development of the identities, values, desires, “Little” goods you need a differentiating process 76 Pamela Zapata Sepúlveda, María Emilia Tijoux Merino & Michelle Espinoza Lobos

that produces elites. It has been one of the ugliest behind the education system, to get to know the aspects of globalization (Standing, 2011:68). principle that explains these same attitudes, views In an economic expansion, the university and and aspirations. education in general are looking to maximize their A sociological study of the pedagogical rela- reserves or their talents. We see therefore a close tionship should treat this relationship, objectified relationship between equity with the school selected in the “pedagogical action” other than as a simple and effectiveness of its economic profitability. Clearly rapport that measures a performance explicable from they are a vector of emancipation and progress, and the same educational production would be. Do not a mechanism for promotion and social change. In forget that it is in the act of “inculcating knowledge” this functionalist perspective, the fundamentals of that this pedagogical act leads to inequality largely socialization and selection are not questioned, nor academic success of students and at the same time the conditions of production of the differences that it allows the success of the elite groups in a way qualify students, placing them in assigned places. that already have secured their future. Only undergo reforms. Educational systems are ideal places for re- It is interesting to recall the work of the book production of social inequalities. This is because The reproduction of Bourdieu and Passeron to make to exercise teaching is objectively symbolic vio- more explicit the rational pedagogy as tacitly works lence, because from a totally arbitrary power, it in our classrooms. Perhaps, like them, in an effort imposes an arbitrary culture (Bourdieu, 1976). to investigate the hidden webs of our educational This difficulty increases when education is still practices we could discover the cultural privileges perceived as a liberating possibility to poverty, and legitimized from school to university, to show how the school as the only legitimate place where this fake the success of the privileged classes is when liberating process takes place. If in every society they say that it is natural and personal talents. This the dominant group tries to impose those meanings charismatic ideology assumes that there are no that the school selects and imposes disguised as a social classes. In a device type “school” well armed delegation of power by the dominant class. How that contributes to the reproduction of domination. to account for what cloaking? Following these ideas, from the preliminary At the same time, María Emilia said: Domination results of the research project Regular Fondecyt presupposes correspondence between social structures Nº 1130203 under development by Tijoux (2013- and cognitive structures, divisions and objective 2015), called “Black inmigrants in Chile: daily classification schemes. We can see how this corre- practices of racialization / sexualization”. Based on spondence operates in the implicit endorsement of interviews and other qualitative strategies, Tijoux found children, youth and their families in order established stories that have been considered discrimination and by the education system. It is there that the work inconsiderate against “black” people living in Chile. of cognitive subversion would have to operate to Reflecting on Giroux’s words, María Emilia produce political subversion that could break the argues that in the Chilean context the school is not rules and representations that the order engenders at all “autonomous” and despite being constantly molded according to the needs and intentions of evaluated, it has a force rooted in the time it gets to the power structure agents. assume that society itself as “truth” to the education Domination is achieved in that manager agents considered legitimate because it comes from scien- apply categories of perception to the objective tific discourse and teaching that enables seamless structures of the social world that extract such education to fulfill its function of social reproduction. structures, when they perceive and feel the world But social relations can not be reduced to the moor- as a world that is clear, which is given in this way ing between animated by intentions or motivations and not other and is therefore the world. Symbolic subjectivities, they are also built in conditions and violence and everything tacit banking on effect social positions that make them sometimes more seems to have dominated the field itself, but it is real than the same subjects that articulate. Therefore, an invisible structure that organizes the perception rather than describing -directly- attitudes, opinions of agents. Domination coming from multiple clan- and aspirations of individual students and teachers, destine persuasions given by the order of things present and visible in the educational process, from (see the fate or resignation) which are registered sociology should seek the objective logic that is in the habitus. Critical inquiry as a way to break the glass between “normal” practices in the chilean public academia and the case… 77

The linguistic competence of higher education Peruvians, Haitians, Dominicans, and Chilean linked to the effort (ratings) is re-translated into people studing postgraduate programs in the Host the school logic that measures the potential of a University, or members of ONGs working with particular social situation. Pedagogy reveals the migrant people in the capital of Chile. role played by the notion of linguistic capital in The international students attending the sem- communicative effectiveness. inar have the recognition of their studies in Chile. Pamela asks: after that, the question is how do This is the next step for our regional universities we see the dark-skinned foreigners who have come in northern Chile where opportunities like this to our country from neighboring countries or from are so difficult to reproduce. Most of the graduate the rest of Latin America? students were linked to the ONG called Fasic in my The educational system is the main beam, the town, dealing with the case of Colombian people privileged place that ensures the reproduction of living in Arica, and do not have the opportunity to domination1, it is in there that social inequalities obtain the recognition of their graduate studies as are generally reproduced between ruling classes a simple, fast and cheap process. They are asking and dominated classes, through the exercise of an for a refugee status, they are asking for life (Zapata- objectively violent teaching -simbolic- because from Sepúlveda, 2015). an arbitrary power, (the teacher) imposes cultural In Arica, there are not Colombian women arbitrariness2. as students in our programs, althought there are Maria Emilia adds: The logic diagram of the Colombian women with degrees and postgraduate system acts on the entire school career, and re- studies living in Arica. Unfortunately, most of them structuring according to the different weight of the are working caring for elderly people in their houses, factors considered in the same cursus. University or cleaning private houses. education is fragmented, subdivided, depending Fortunately, the border and the national policies on the jurisdiction and functions of competition in in education opened their borders to Peruvian and the process of social ascent: high school, college Bolivian undergraduate students a few years ago. At (undergraduate) and graduate (master’s, doctoral). To the same time, I see with concern how the interna- this accumulation of titles that operate as intellectual tional Peruvian and Bolivian undergraduate students nobility titles, adding to their cumulative symbolic study together and form new groups between them, force of diplomas own strength is added. It is clear as an automatic form of international segregated that in every society, the dominant group tries to organization, and frequently I ask myself if this is impose meanings “concealing the power relations” because they know each other from before, or is this that are the basis of its own strength. because they only have this option to form student The selection made by the school imposes networks in our Chilean University. meanings while cloaking its action in a delegation But coming back to the seminar about racism of power that has been given by the ruling class. in Chile, while I was seating in the room with the audience from different nationalities, I was asking The Case of International Color Students in myself who I am – in the capital context. How I Two Different Moments and Contexts in Chile feel with international Latin American and color students, and how I could feel the multicultural Pamela writes: Last April in Santiago de Chile, academic spaces in the capital. I feel again as in María Emilia Tijoux invited me to participate in a a futuristic picture of multiculturalism in higher seminar founded by her research Regular Project education. Fondecyt Nº 1130203. The seminar called Racism in Chile: the skin as a mark of immigration was a Pamela Comes Back to the First Picture really good opportunity to break the glass between the academia and the public policies, the academia While I was looking at the young women to –in- the society. This seminar was really exciting, taking pictures in “sectioned” (white people) and inspirational and a learning experience for me, and segregated (black people) spaces at the Quad Cam I could be and feel in a real multicultural environ- of the same university, it came to me that this ment in a public university in my country. I had scene could imply that the university separated the opportunity to share and talk with Colombian, students by race, gender and income. I believe 78 Pamela Zapata Sepúlveda, María Emilia Tijoux Merino & Michelle Espinoza Lobos

we need to think and reflect on our universities of the past so that the politics of today is vibrantly as a reflection of what really happens out there, democratic”. Education has always been part of a because things occur that we prefer not to talk broader political, social, and cultural struggle over about or talk about them in very academic ways knowledge, subjectivities, values, and the future. with our rules characterized by colonialism, the Today, public and higher education are under a heritage of dictatorship as our academic rules, massive assault, because they represent some of the and the consequences of that in the role, uses and few places left that are capable of teaching young abuses of the politics and historical powers and people to be critical, thoughtful, and engaged citizens the dinamycs of daily life relationships between who can take risks, stretch their imaginations, and, scholars, students and both. This commonly based hold power accountable. on gender, class, etnicity and political interest. In this sense, fear (understood as the conse- As Mc Laren states: “Students with the priv- quences of the repression lived from 1973 in the ilege as well as issues of oppression” (Kincheloe case of Chile), now defines social relations and and Steinberg, 1997). In this sense, the use of leads the legitimization of dominant forms. These performative writing as Storytelling, helps the conditions lead to a number of challenges for the “teller and listener; performer and audience, share new generation of students. The questions for the goal of participating in an experience which Giroux now are: How could we promote students reveals their shared same-ness” (Porter quoted in with critical capacities to be agents of change? How Denzin, 2001:25). would you break the mechanisms that want to turn At the same time, positivism and imperialism all black men [or indigenous, or poor, or children as a way of knowledge is understood as the predom- of migrant people] into criminals? How could we inant knowledge around the world and a regional address the widespread anti-intellectualism that university would not have to be the exception. In enables a culture of thoughtlessness and violence to this sense, all kind of ways that started understand- continue? What limits could we put to the growing ing the knowledge as neutral and ideas supported atomization and isolation of everyday life and the by another author who has previously published ludicrous assumption that shopping is the highest similar ideas in scientific journals. This, although expression of citizenship?. we use the quote of that author, preferably white Pamela questions and answers: Are our uni- and American or Spanish people that probably versities making the difference of the worldwide have not written their ideas focused on our Latin tendency of the politics of disposability? I [we] American contexts. think not! (e.g. Zapata-Sepúlveda et al., 2013). Are our Chilean lecturers and professors What Can we do? worried for the social value in our students? And are we doing anything about that considering this Using the example behind the picture about an important thing to work in higher education? I the particular intercultural moment of the end of think not. semester at UIUC, and some ideas and realities At the same time, Michelle asks: Are Chilean in our Chilean context of higher education, we universities prepared to face the challenge that wish to respond in this piece to how and what is has been imposed on them? Has the context in the educational challenge in the era of a global which the educational policies are to be enacted world in the case of a public university in northern been taken into account? Are academics prepared Chile. We could promote citizens (our students) in to educate students, including the international a global world to identify and relieve their voices students, according to the imperatives imposed in a critical view to produce social transformation by global forces and taken in by the Chilean gov- against injustice starting in front of our noses: the ernment? Are schools ready for the immigrants? classroom! My hunch is that dealing with this situation is not Following Henry Giroux who said: Critical going to be easy. education matters because it questions everything Joe L. Kincheloe and Shirley Steinberg said: and complicates one’s relationship to oneself, others, how do we move beyond critical pedagogy’s and the larger world. It also functions to “keep traditional concern with critique to a new form historical memory alive, to give witness to the truth of critical transformation? Where do we begin Critical inquiry as a way to break the glass between “normal” practices in the chilean public academia and the case… 79

the process of creating democratic educational Then, what can we do in the academia to im- spheres? What role might teachers play in this prove the life of our suffering community? We could process? (Kincheloe & Steinberg, 1997). The consider we are not the exception of the common response includes race, ethnicity, and class as tendency argued by Trueba (1989) to be teachers they intersect with pedagogy in our contemporary ethnocentrist and insensitive toward minorities in neoliberalist time. our teaching work and our practice to do that with Pamela Zapata has some other questions: will our students. we continue teaching as we are a homogeneous In this way, we must ask ourselves about our bad copy of only one race as fake as the white identity, understand this as “more than the ideolog- people? Or could we open our eyes to see our ical trafficking between nationality and ethnicity; international students or student from the hibridity it is the overlapping and mutual intereffectivity of of their selves? Are we working with our new pat- discourse that is configured by the social relations terns of immigration of poor and Latin American of production”, or understand that “nationalism, people living in the border where our University ethnicity, and capitalism circuits of production can of Tarapaca or/and Arturo Prat University are be seen as moving into a shared orbit” (McLaren, located? Considering that, what is the meaning 1997:8). As Mc Laren said: we need to create of multicultural education for the case of Chile “spaces of hope [that] offer encouragement to the as northern Chile? forces of justice… spaces – often private – must be made public. We must be expanded from spaces Final Thoughts into spheres - from personal, individual spaces and private epistemologies into public spheres of hope In an era marked by the long term effect of and struggle and collective identities” (McLaren political violence in Chile (between 1973 and 1990), 1997:2). present through fear, the use and abuse of power, In a region where our history of sovereignty the knowledge that we transmit and that does not and loyalties could be the cause for our difficul- speak, we have a huge amount of work to do. ties to recognize our black and Andean heritage Henry Giroux said: Education -in higher edu- (e.g. Díaz & Ruz, 2009; Galdames et al., 2013). cation- needs to prepare people to enter a society As McLaren argues, it is necesarry to stress the that needs to be reimagined. We need to promote importance of our diversity and inclusion, as do to become agents of social change, teach the skills, most multiculturalists, focus on the social and knowledge and values that allows us to use them to political construction of white supremacy as the organize political movements, capable of stopping the dispensation of white hegemony. In this sense, destruction of the environment, end the inequalities and following Mc Laren ideas, the “whiteness” as to improve a more democratic and justice society, distortion field needs to be identified as a cultural and build a world focused on love and generosity disposition and ideology that is linked to partic- and living lives of decency and dignity rather than ular political, social, and historical arrangements on selfishness and materialism. (McLaren, 1997:8). Pamela responses: Critical qualitative research In our case, linked to the notion of soverignity, is a way to do that. To think, to dream, to live in and the identity of Chilean society, the daily life with behind our lens of humanity, dignity and looking the use of different kinds of powers determined and asking ourselves, who are us, “citizens who can by marketplace and as the consequences of the fashionably choose whatever ethnic combinations we effects of the dictatorship period, the neoliberal desire in order to reassemble our identity”? (McLaren democracy (McLaren, 1997:8) that confirms the 1997:7), asking ourselves about how “class, race, racist stereotypes at the time that prescribed the and gender stratification and objective constraints Euro-American nationalist myths of supremacy. and historical determinations restrict the choices of Stereotypes that McLaren calls fine crimmegrants some groups” (McLaren, 1997:8), as the case for (McLaren, 1997:9), for the case of Bolivian migrants example, of marginal students in our classroom as or Colombian people living in northern Chile (e.g. Latin American, dark-skinned, of humble origin, Butrón, Cavieres, Moscoso y Pérez, 2014), that have andean migrant or children of internal or external become the object of xenophobia as cathegories of migrant people from Andean people. ilegal aliens as criminal people, not as a category 80 Pamela Zapata Sepúlveda, María Emilia Tijoux Merino & Michelle Espinoza Lobos

of ethnic group (Gomez-Pena quoted in McLaren, of the sovereignty imposed by Pinochet’s regime 1997:9). against every feature and sign that might mean to be Stereotypes that our Chilean democratical-po- a “non-chilean person” associated with disloyalty litical system has not touched yet. This, in a country and shame. where what is not said, does not exist. As Mc Only by recognizing ourselves we can start the Laren said (1997) critical pedagogy as a pedagogía social transformation from our classroom to our fronteriza could service as a form of critical post- society. Only by doing that, we could teach and colonial hybridity distant to the hybridity concept learn with our new generation of students about how as a monolithic and authentic form of identity. (e.g. from the knowledge we could generate, we could McLaren, 1995). “It speaks to the voiceless and the move to a real social transformation that in our case, peripheralized, the marginalized and the excluded” must include integrity as our reality, academic and … “it can be created only if we take the struggle social freedom to think, to tell, to create, to dream over the social division of labor as seriously as we of a better world, our world where we work with do with the struggle over meaning and representa- liminality, with disimility, with being betwixt and tion” (McLaren, 1997:13). between, with crossing thresholds, with living in the Only focusing our work on and behind our margins (McLaren, 1997). To do that, interpretive realities as a border zone in northern Chile, we autoethnography as a method, using narrative, could find our voices, not white, not black, but meaning, voice, experience, reflexivity, presence, different color voices relieving our heritage from and representation, that challenge terms as voice our families, our story, and our time, looking and and presence, indigenous persons in colonized assessing our particular place and how in this place classroom spaces that could turn to oral history, (not only Arica, Arica and Tacna, Iquique, the myth, and performance narratives to connect with macro region central-south Andean) our daily life their [our] lives, and their [our] collective histories experiences take place. (Denzin, 2014). As George and Louise Spindler suggest This, with a realistic and human view of the (Spindler quoted in Trueba et al., 1990), we could rich cultural aspects behind our macro region cen- use Reflective-Cultural Analysis or create a new tral south Andean, our capital city being the last methodology to look at us and help us as teacher destination of our dreamer migrant people that see to evaluate and identify our interactions and con- the Chilean society as a better place in the world. flicts in our classroom spaces. This could allow us to reveal our unconscious biases and cultural Acknowledgments ethnocentrism in dealing especially with minority students in our classroom (Trueba et al., 1990). The authors would like to thank the Performance This in our case from the view of a dimension of Agreement Project at UTA-MINEDUC, and Regular cultural transmission of the consequences of our fondecyt Nº 1130203 “Black inmigrants in Chile: battles with neighboor countries, the consequences daily practices of racialization / sexualization”.

References Cited

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Notes

1 From his early work with Jean-Claude Passeron in 1962: legitimacy of the outcome of the balance of power within Les Heritiers (heirs), Passeron & Bourdieu (1964) chooses the social body. an object of study that was marked by the crisis of students 2 This system has great explanatory power because it is an in the western world. On playback, the authors state that analytical model that serves as a guideline for analyzing the school perfectly fulfills its social function while in social logics. From the beginning all societies that man operation and playback methods, says independence with has built rests on competition and domination mechanisms the hierarchies of the social body. The more independent that play through generations. There is no society without appears against the values of the global society, more so hierarchies, without power, without domination between their own values. Pedagogical action then, is an instance of the sexes, ages and classes.