Fighting exclusion in Latin American education

Through the past forty years, Latin America has been subject to a drastic process of reform of its public life. Guided by the World Bank and the OECD, most countries have applied extreme measures to impose a market oriented perspective in all public policies. The proof that something is clearly not working is that, notwithstanding the raise in public budgets after the severe structural adjustments during the seventies and eighties, the region has become the most unequal of the world. Contrasting experiences in education show that excof lusion has proved to be not only the source of aggravating needs, but also the place where alternatives can be originally experienced. Our paper will try to exemplify this contrast by commenting both what exclusion means and the new models of education being tested after it in Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil. 

We will take into account that both the urban peripheria and the rural populations, particularly in zones where original peoples reside, have not received any benefit from the market-oriented education, but rather, that they have been excluded even from statistics, in order that governments can prove that  objectives asked for in the Millenium Goals can be reached. However, creative and critical work in the poorest communities show a different perspective of what can come out when education relies more in assuring the success of survival strategies, and at the same time, making full use of traditional knowledge, cultural identity, memory and will of the members of these communities.