Wilson 2007

Wilson, Fiona. (2007). "Transcending race? schoolteachers and political militancy in andean peru, 1970-2000." Journal of Latin American Studies, 39(4), 719-746

• In Latin America the school has been important to nation formation since teh 19th century, it is the space for social reproduction, but also the production of the state (719-720)
• education was the way to achieve citizenship (720)
• great lit review on the importance of the state to social formation (719-722)
• "My research in teh Peruvian central sierra in teh 1990s suggested that teachers felt teaching had been reduced to a profession of last resort ad this, in turn, reflected back on their racial identity in that they risked being defined as mestizos of last resort too." (722)
• most teachers in Peru held the mestizo identity partially because they were agents of the staet (725)
• they were expected to be more than teachers, and to perform a host of functions apart from teaching
• they were a civilizing force
• but as members of this civilizing avant garde, teachers have at times organized against the state, and have often been repressed (726)
• SUTEP was founde din 1972, led by Marxist university teachers, held that there was no racism in their ranks (728)
• teachers were very important memebrs of Sendero Luminoso (728-729)
• at times teachers would side with the peasants, especially int eh areas of agrarian reform in the 1970s, because they felt it was an important step in civilizing the indgenous populationj (731-33)
• but then this resulted in teachers being cast out from the white society from which the originally came (733)
• SUTEP became more popular among teachers as teachers began losing status through the massification f their profession (734)
• but this also had the danger of making teachers seem eve less cultured and sophisticated
• 1978 strikes won a few demands, but when the state started to back away from these in 1979, new strike which was repressed and meant teachers working conditions and salaries were reduced (735)
• the union became a haven of mestizaje for the teachers, though outside society branded the union as the opposite, cholos and firebrands
• now teachers became potential subsersives, coudl no longer be trusted to represent the state (736)
• many teachers may have suported Sendero Luminoso, but after the real fighting began many tried to abandon the group and take up a middle space between the state and the Maoists, which was difficult to do given the polarization of society (744)
• teaches who didn't toe the state line were cholos, which disheartened many techers who had become teachers specifically to avoid/overcome this low racial status (745)