Indigenous Education and Language in Latin America: Tensions between the right to cultural integrity and quality education

Access to education is a fundamental right to attain social change towards equitable development and respects of cultural diversity. In the last three decades, Latin America has made great efforts to achieve the educational goals subscribed. However indigenous peoples present an unfavorable situation in education with great inequalities. The question of indigenous language emerges as one of the main demands of these peoples. It’s urgent to have updated information on these issues, as a key for human rights promotion. Most countries in the region have included questions of self-identification in their censuses. In the 2010 census also included questions on indigenous language. We analyze in the last decade changes of accessibility and permanence of young indigenous people in the educational system and the liveliness or loss of the indigenous language. We include a reference to the ducation right minimum standards, including national legislative developments in: Costa Rica, Ecuador and Venezuela. Aftwerards, educational and language indicators are calculated. The analysis considers territorial, ethnic, gender and generational inequalities and the geographical distribution of formal education/ language maintenance relationship. The study presents relevant and unpublished information. It ends with a discussion and policy proposals.