Chapter 13: Place, Culture, and Gender in Intercultural and Bilingual Education Practices in a Chuj Maya Town

For me the education that is being given is not helping strengthen the person because the boy or the girl has his/her own identity, culture, way of being, but in school that is broken . . . it is broken because in the school you are taught another culture . . . There are teachers [that say], “you should learn this because this [Ladino culture] is the good culture, the best culture and this way you will be able to develop.” . . . [T]hey tell you that this is the best, but you realize it that’s not how it is . . . When you go with the other group they realize that [their culture] is not yours, you don’t understand it. So in the end you are left in the middle of the road. You are left almost without identity . . . if I say, “I am not good, I am not indigenous anymore, rather now I am Ladino.” Later they realize, “you are not Ladino, you are indigenous.” And when you come back to your group, “you already went with them.” So that is the process by which the child suffers later from a lack of identity . . . if you don’t have identity you can’t develop. And in the end where will you be? For those of us without identity it’s like being lost in a mountain without knowing where you came from, where you are going or what you are doing.