Estado, Educación y Pueblos Indígenas en los Andes Ecuatorianos

The article recovers part of the results of the research developed by the author in the framework of his doctoral thesis. The article analyzes the impact that the process of institutionalization of intercultural bilingual education in Ecuador had on community-based indigenous education initiatives. The research work was based on the contributions of Critical Pedagogy and Latin American Anthropology: from the former she took the concept of education as a cultural and political practice, while from the latter she recovered the analytical perspective of the theory of cultural control. In methodological terms, the research chose to carry out a case study of an emblematic indigenous education experience in the country: the Indigenous School System of Cotopaxi (SEIC), and for the collection of information we worked on the basis of oral history and documentary analysis. The hypothesis that we seek to argue in the following text is that the process of institutionalization of indigenous education ended up undermining the community character of SEIC and standardizing its educational proposal.