The clamor for schools rural education and the development of state-community contact in highland Bolivia, 1930-1952

Abstract

This article argues that in the development of a system of indigenous education in Bolivia, the indigenous communities or ayllus were mainly responsible for the rapid spread of indigenous schools throughout the Bolivian rural areas in the first decades of the twentieth century, and that these communities remained the driving force behind the expansion of indigenous education until the educational reforms of the 1930s and 1940s, during which time the state reestablished its control over the almost entirely independently functioning indigenous schools. Likewise, this paper also argues that contrary to its popular image as the «house of the exploited» and breeding ground of indigenous radicalism and politicization, in the end it was the famous «escuela-ayllu» of Warisata that after its foundation in 1931 would become the means through which the state managed to regain control over the rural and indigenous educational system during the aforementioned reforms.