Youth and the repoliticization of Quechua

Abstract

In this article, I argue that Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE) in Peru has turned into a depoliticized endeavor, fed by a modernist national frame and a positivist/ modernist linguistics (García et al., 2017). Situating my discussion amid the context of discourses of IBE, I will focus on Quechua-speaking urban youth activists and the way they challenge three key issues that have been historically entrenched in the discourse of IBE and language diversity in general: the restriction of Quechua speakers to “mother tongue” speakers, the dichotomy between local and global identities, and the defensive stance towards neoliberalism and the market economy. In a context of tensions and challenges for multilingualism and of new circumstances for minoritized languages and their speakers (Pietikainen et al., 2016), these young people are questioning the depoliticized, limiting, and fictitious views of Quechua and Quechuaness from the IBE discourse. Put it differently: they are disinventing Quechua as IBE conceives it and reinventing it within a much more inclusive and politicized project, in a way that should interest educators.