Pedagogical coloniality in the brazilian amazon: education for the Modern/Colonial World/System

Abstract

The aim of this text, which is based on a survey mapping historical, sociological, economic, and political aspects of the Brazilian Amazon, is to discuss how coloniality has acquired a pedagogical dimension that has been structured within educational systems. This dimension seeks to obscure the complex cultures developed by various Amazonian peoples and populations, along with their systemic alternatives to neoliberal societies. This is a bibliographic study with a qualitative approach, focused on the power relations that impose and sustain themselves in the Amazon, even after the end of formal colonial regimes, particularly in the modes of knowledge production and in the antidialogical relationships that underpin homogenizing public
policies, which we designate as Pedagogical Coloniality. The data produced indicate that there are still institutions in this region that reinforce and are guided by Western civilizational standards, reflecting the colonial logic that persists in the devaluation, stigmatization, and subordination of local knowledge within the school environment. When these social references are depicted, they appear sporadically and through folklorization. The configuration of the environment and the organization of spaces, as they are based on hierarchical knowledge, present themselves as decontextualized, disconnected from the experiences, socialization methods, and identities of the different Amazonian peoples. However, we identify processes of resistance and struggle led by local populations.