Pedagogy of the oppressed: a document on Chile’s agrarian reform

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate that the Pedagogy of the Oppressed is a historical document of the praxis of Paulo Freire within the agrarian reform in Chile, arising from peasant literacy policies during his exile in the country (1964-1969). Not only did Freire visited agrarian reform asentamientos, dialogued with rural workers, and trained thousands of Chilean literacy teachers, but he also produced his own political comprehension on the peasant’s movement. Examining the changes in landownership structure, Freire analyzed how hierarchies of power and production in the countryside were broken, as well as the power of literacy in destabilizing old chains of command. Thus, the author confirmed in the Chilean context some hypotheses formulated before the 1964 military coup in Brazil, such as “adherence to the oppressor,” the “culture of silence” and the tension between dialogue and anti-dialogue.