Higher Education Course Rescues Indigenous Guarani Culture in Argentina

By Daniel Gutman
IGUAZU, Argentina, Oct 11 2024 – A few years ago, Bernardo Olivera moved to Posadas, the capital of the Argentinean province of Misiones, to study mathematics at the public university. Interested in numbers and keen to progress, he felt, however, that the education system put a barrier in his way because of his indigenous origin.

“I did an entire four-month term and couldn’t pass a single subject. Studying was very difficult for me because of the language; I couldn’t adapt,” Olivera, now 27 and the father of an eight-year-old daughter, told IPS.

Like all young people who grew up in the more than 100 indigenous Guarani communities in this province, in the far northeast of Argentina, he is a native Guarani speaker and only learned Spanish at school.“When young indigenous people enter a university or a conventional higher education institution, it does not take into account their mother tongue nor their different pace. Teachers and authorities end up seeing them as a problem”: Viviana Bacigalupo.

Now Olivera has another opportunity, and it suits him better. He is studying again, thanks to the launching in 2023 of the first higher education course in the province of Misiones aimed especially at young indigenous secondary school graduates and designed from the cultural identity and worldview of the Guarani people.

It is a higher technical course in indigenous community tourism and operates in Iguazu, on the triple border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. It is bilingual – in Guarani and Spanish – and has both indigenous and non-indigenous teachers.

“Today my dream is to create an agency for tourists to visit our communities and learn about our culture. That way I will be able to help my people,” he says.

Classes take place every morning in Provincial Secondary School 117, a bright, single-storey building in the midst of dozens of wooden or mud-brick houses with tin roofs that are scattered throughout the forest and make up the Yriapu indigenous community.

Yriapu is home to some 140 families, who have achieved recognition of the communal ownership of 265 hectares of land that they occupy ancestrally.

With Yriapu’s struggle, the Guarani have managed to rescue a portion of the encroaching tourist development associated with Iguazu Falls, a natural wonder that attracts visitors from all over the world and which this year is on the verge of reaching one million tickets sold, according to data from the National Parks Administration (APN).

The falls, located just 15 minutes by road from Yriapu, are in the so-called Paranaense rainforest, an ecosystem of exuberant vegetation and great biodiversity, which Argentina shares with Brazil and Paraguay.

None of the resources left behind by tourism, however, are felt in Yriapu, where well water is consumed due to the lack of a public water network and people walk the trails carrying large quantities of firewood on their backs, the only fuel available for cooking and heating water.

Argentina as a whole is home to 1,306,730 people who recognised themselves as indigenous in the 2022 census, almost 3% of the total population. Of the 46 million inhabitants of this South American country, 52% live in poverty – according to official statistics made public in late September – and discrimination against indigenous peoples aggravates their situation.

View of one of the dwellings of the Guarani community in Yriapu, on the Argentinean side of the triple border with Brazil and Paraguay. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

Intercultural educational course

“When young indigenous people enter a university or a conventional higher education institution, it does not take into account their mother tongue nor their different pace. Teachers and authorities end up seeing them as a problem,” Viviana Bacigalupo, principal of the Raul Karai Correa Indigenous Higher Institute, which offers the technical course, told IPS.

“What tends to happen is that they start with great enthusiasm and then drop out, which increases their exclusion from the world of labour and their vulnerability. The aim here is to generate an educational offer with the culture, rhythms and worldview of the Guarani people,” she adds.

Bacigalupo, and most of the intercultural team she is part of, come from the so-called Mate Project, created in 2005 to promote the self-management of tourism and cultural resources by the Guarani people of the Iguazu area, which began with short training sessions aimed at improving the labour skills of the communities.

In addition to Argentina, the Guarani people are present in Paraguay, southern Brazil and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. In fact, students from each of these countries are studying remotely in the technical course.

The strength of its language, which is official in Paraguay, is the biggest Guarani cultural legacy. According to the Mercosur Parliament, it is spoken by 85% of the Paraguayan population, and another 15 million people use it in Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia.

Oscar Benitez, professor of culture and worldview of the Guarani people; Claudio Salvador, academic coordinator; and Viviana Bacigalupo, principal of the Raul Karai Correa Indigenous Higher Institute. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

The technical course currently has 26 students, seven of whom are from communities far from Iguazu, who stay in hostels in Yriapu during the week.

The Institute, run by the government of Misiones, was internationally recognised by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) and the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance (Winta) as a unique model of Intercultural Indigenous Education.

“Indigenous tourism is carried out according to the principles of the people and is attached to their spirituality. It is not a main activity for the communities, but complementary to traditional life,” Claudio Salvador, the institute’s academic coordinator, told IPS.

“Today, for example, when tourists who come to Misiones visit the ruins of the Jesuit missions created by the Catholic Church to evangelise the Guarani, they don’t hear the indigenous story. We want it to be present,” he adds.

Abdon Ojeda, from the Yriapu community, shows one of the traditional traps designed by the Guarani to hunt animals in the forest. Credit: Daniel Gutman / IPS

Loss of biodiversity

The Yriapu community has been receiving tourists for years, attracted by signs on the side of the road linking the hotel zone in Iguazu with the entrance to the falls. The visitors are taken on a tour of the jungle trails and told about Guarani culture.

“We see an opportunity in tourism if we reinforce our knowledge,” Abdon Ojeda tells IPS, as he shows a tree called guaporaity (Plinia cauliflora), whose bark, he says, is used by the indigenous people to make a tea that relieves stomach pain.

In addition to medicinal plants, visitors can see traps made of wood for hunting animals. The Guarani people were hunters, but today the traps are made only to show tourists, because much of the jungle biodiversity has been lost in Misiones.

Communication, tourist services, IT, English, theatre and Guarani culture and worldview are some of the subjects that form part of the technical course. The aim is for them to be taught by teaching pairs made up of an indigenous and a non-indigenous teacher, who work side by side with teaching strategies that alternate equally between the two languages.

“What we are doing has never existed in our province and I am very proud of it,” Oscar Benitez, an indigenous teacher of the Guarani people’s worldview culture, told IPS.

“We want to help the younger generations to have a professional qualification and to be able to integrate, by strengthening our own culture, into a world that is now overtaking us with the power of its communication. And we know that only education is the path to equal opportunities,” he concludes.

Salvador, the academic coordinator, an experienced teacher who became involved with the Yriapu community in 2003, when he joined the struggle for recognition of community ownership of the lands they occupy ancestrally, explains that the plan is for the institute to grow by 2025.

“We see that there is a lot of interest for next year and the idea is to open up to other audiences, other groups, objectives and goals.  Aiming at farmers, other provinces and other cultures. If we do well, we will be fully intercultural from next year onwards,” he argues about the future of the Indigenous Higher Institute of Yriapu.