Children’s agency and cultural appropriation through the lens of South American anthropology: Mapuche and Toba/Qom children facing Catholic education

ABSTRACT

As experienced researchers from Argentina, we set out to draw attention to the diversity and inequalities within the childhoods of the so-called ‘Global South’ that the ‘Global North’ uniformly addresses as ‘other childhood.’ Based on our long-standing ethnographic research with indigenous children in Argentina, we will present a conceptual discussion on children’s agency and cultural appropriation, through a comparative study of Catholic education and appropriation processes that Toba/Qom and Mapuche children have experienced in different regions of the country. After a brief historical reconstruction, we analyse comparatively contemporary projects of different Catholic congregations towards Mapuche and Toba/Qom children, exploring simultaneously how children themselves receive such proposals. Considering these processes are not homogenous nor linear, we will argue for an approach that contextualises children’s agency and cultural appropriation in sociohistorical and cultural terms, within different power relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Childhood
• agency
• appropriation
• indigenous peoples
• Catholic education
• South American anthropology

Acknowledgements

For offering encouragement and comments that enriched this work, special thanks go to the colleagues of our research team, “Niñez Plural” (Plural Childhood), to the guest editors of this issue and to the anonymous reviewers. Finally, we would like to thank all the Mapuche and Qom children and adults who shared their experiences and perspectives with us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There are around 127,000 Toba/Qom living in Argentina (Census INDEC 2010). Approximately 75% live in the Northeast of the country (in the provinces of Chaco, Formosa and Santa Fe) and the rest in Buenos Aires, representing 13.3% of the total indigenous population. The neighbourhood in the Province of Buenos Aires across from the Catholic school that we refer to was constructed in 1995 for 32 families originally from Chaco and Formosa who had migrated mainly for socioeconomic reasons.

2. The Mapuche live mainly in the provinces of La Pampa, Buenos Aires, Neuquén, Río Negro, Chubut and Santa Cruz in Argentina, and in southern Chile. They are settled between rural areas and in urban areas where more than 70% live. In Argentina, the Mapuche population has been estimated to be between 113,000 and 300,000 people, depending on the source, with Neuquén as one of the provinces with the greatest proportion of the indigenous population. In Neuquén, there are more than 60 Mapuche communities, many of whom have not been officially acknowledged yet.

3. Ceferino Namuncurá (1886–1905) was the grandson of Kalfukura, the legendary leader, and the son of Manuel Namuncurá who, after surrendering to the Argentine army, put his son in the care of the Salesians. Ceferino was presented to the Pope as tangible evidence of Salesian work in Patagonia and beatified in 2007.

4. First Communion represents the celebration of the first time a person receives the Catholic sacrament of the Eucharist. It requires preparation that takes place during catechesis. Of the seven sacraments that a person could receive in the course of their life three of them take place in childhood and youth: baptism (in ‘early childhood’), eucharist (during childhood; in the school setting: at primary level), confirmation (during youth; in the school setting: at middle school level). This again demonstrates the importance of childhood within the Catholic Church.

5. ‘Inculturation’ is the ‘native’ notion used by the Catholic church to name this sort of planified cultural translation of Christian contents to indigenous languages and cosmologies.

6. In one of these schools, for example, Mapuche children were allowed in 2018 to pledge allegiance to the Mapuche flag instead of the Argentinean national flag.

7. An annual Mapuche community ceremony led by a certain lineage.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Council of Scientific and Technical Investigations of Argentina (CONICET), the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), the National Agency of Scientific and Technological Promotion (ANPCyT), and the 'Humanities and Social Sciences Tackling Global Challenges' Programme of the British Academy, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund. We would like to thank these institutions for their research support.

Notes on contributors

Mariana García Palacios

Mariana García Palacios is Senior Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Argentina. She co-leads the ‘Niñez Plural (Plural Childhoods)’ research team, as well as the ‘Interculturality and Education in indigenous communities in Argentina’ research team, both within the Institute of Anthropological Sciences, Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). She is also a Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, and Scientific Editor of Cuadernos de Antropología Social at the same University. In addition, she is co-director of the Project ‘Diverse Childhoods and Educational Inequalities in Post-Pandemic Argentina’ (British Academy – University of Sheffield – CONICET), and co-coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group ‘Education and Interculturality’. She graduated in Sociocultural Anthropology and obtained her PhD in Anthropology (UBA) doing research with Toba/Qom people in Buenos Aires and Chaco. She received scholarships for study stays abroad (El Colegio Mexiquense and CAPES – Brazil) and for postdoctoral research (FMSH – France, DAAD – Germany and UNESCO). Since her undergraduate studies, she has been researching children’s constitution of social and religious knowledge from an ethnographic perspective that incorporates contributions from psychology. She has been invited as a postgraduate professor and lecturer in Argentina and abroad, trained undergraduate and postgraduate students, and published articles in national and international journals.

Andrea Szulc

Andrea Szulc is Senior Researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina (CONICET). She obtained her undergraduate degree and her PHD in Anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires, conducting ethnographic research with children, adolescents and adults from Mapuche communities and organisations since 2000. She leads the ‘Plural Childhood’ team, dedicated to social research on childhood and otherness within the Institute of Anthropological Sciences (FFyL, UBA). In addition, she is co-director of the Project ‘Diverse Childhoods and Educational Inequalities in Post-Pandemic Argentina’ (British Academy – University of Sheffield – CONICET). She is the author of the book La niñez mapuche. Sentidos de pertenencia en tensión (Biblos, 2015), and numerous articles and chapters of academic books, published both in Argentina and abroad. She has trained many undergraduate and graduate students dedicated to research on children, and has prepared anthropological reports for the Supreme Court of the Nation, as well as technical reports for UNICEF on indigenous children in Argentina. In addition, Andrea Szulc is Associate Professor of the Department of Anthropological Sciences (FFyL, UBA) and has been invited as a visiting professor and lecturer by prestigious academic institutions in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, and Spain.