With our feet in the mud: pedagogies of the land and knowledge of the El Infiernillo stream

Abstract

This paper aims to share a pedagogical experience of articulation between courses and with territorial processes and actors, which are being held in the framework of some curricular units of the Secondary Education Teacher Training in Anthropology and the Secondary Education Teacher Training in History of the Institute of Aboriginal Cultures (ICA). In these spaces, the aim is not only to put into play learning and a conceptual toolbox learned in the classroom, but especially for students to find themselves in an active role in the production of knowledge about social reality.

In October 2023, students and teachers hosted by Jorge Ferrer Acevedo, community member and kasqui curaca of the village of La Toma, we walked along the course of the stream El Infiernillo - locally known by its inhabitants as Arroyo Salado -, we experienced the threat of developmentalism, the discarding of progress and the memories of its original inhabitants in Jorge's voice. With this experience as an input, the students had to give an account of the academic journeys carried out in the curricular units, generating a dialogue, or better, a multi-dialogue between disciplinary theories, territory, local actors/actresses and personal experience.