Popular Education, memory and emancipatory projects. Interview with Mario Garcés during the social outburst in neoliberal Chile in October 2019

Abstract

Relating the field of Popular Education in our continent to his trajectory as a popular educator, historian and university professor, Mario Garcés Durán talks about aspects of this educational field in the Chilean context, elements of the ‘political education’ of the 1960s and 1970s, the effervescence of popular movements in the struggle against the dictatorship in the 1980s, especially his experience at the non-governmental organisation ECO - Educación y Comunicaciones, and the decline of NGOs and the popular movements in the 1990s. He also comments about the tense relationship between the State and Popular Education, the potential and limits of the field of memory nowadays and the role of educational processes in times of great social mobilisation, such as the one experienced in Chile between the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. In the middle of an intense period of assemblies, marches and manifestations, professor Mario Garcés kindly gave us this interview on the campus of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. It took place on 28 October 2019, ten days after the outbreak of the Estallido Social. Author of several works on the history of Chilean popular movements, the professor subsequently published the books Estallido social y una nueva constitución para Chile and La Unidad Popular y la revolución en Chile, both by LOM Ediciones.