Learning to Unlearn

Tlostanova, Madina V., Mignolo, Walter D.

Published by The Ohio State University Press

Tlostanova, Madina V. and Walter D. Mignolo.

Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflections from Eurasia and the Americas.
The Ohio State University Press, 2012.
Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/book/24260.

For additional information about this book

https://muse.jhu.edu/book/24260

[ Access provided at 18 Feb 2022 01:26 GMT with no institutional affiliation ]

APPENDIX

Amawtay Wasi, Universidad

Intercultural de los Pueblos y
Naciones Indigenas del Ecuador1

The Political Trajectory

The political process that eventually created UIAW (Universidad Intercul-

tural Amawtay Wasi) goes back to the 70s when “los pueblos originarios” in
the Américas, and in the world, began a new stage in their long-lasting strug-
gles (500 years in the Américas, 300 years in New Zealand, Australia, Africa,
and Asia) to survive under the increasing pressure of Western imperial Pow-
ers (Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, England, the U.S.). Amawtay
Wasi emerged from specific local histories of the Andean regions that were
conquered first by the Spaniards and that lately are engaged in political, mili-
tary, and economic entanglement with the U.S. Above all, it depended on the
Euro-centered categories of knowledge, institutions of learning, and social
actors that, in Ecuador, provide the local continuity of global designs under
the rhetoric of modernity, progress, and development.

1. The diagrams are here reproduced in black and white. In the original version, the col-
ors are very important. Red invokes planet earth, orange—culture and society; yellow suggests
energy and strength and sustains the moral principles of Andean runa (human being in the
West); white points toward time becoming, the permanent transformation of the world (physi-
cal constitution) and society (politics, ethics, economy). Green appeals to the economy and the
nurturing of life, the territory that includes the soil, the sky, and the air. The color blue calls
for the cosmic space, and violet evokes the political and ideological spheres. Interested readers
should consult the Amawtay Wasi web page.

225
226 • APPENDIX

In this most recent cycle of struggles, land claims acquired priorities in

the 70s, followed by claims of linguistic and cultural rights. However, toward
the end of the 70s, Indigenous intellectuals and political leaders understood
that without claiming epistemic rights, the previous claims were subject to
arguments based on epistemic principles of Western epistemologies. They
understood that it was not possible to go very far thinking with the tools of
the master, so to speak.
Thus Amawatay Wasi was born not from the idea that Indigenous people
also shall have a university following the model of European institutions
adopted and adapted by the Creole elite in Ecuador. On the contrary, it was
born from the idea that they needed to have their own educational institu-
tions, just as their ancestors had. For why would Indigenous societies have
an education based on the education of the ancestors of Creole and Mestizos
of European Origin? Only a Western prejudice that Greek and Roman ances-
tors are the universal model could deny the Indigenous the right to orga-
nize education responding to their needs and not to the needs of Creole and
Mestizos, as it is the case today in the Andes, in all South America, in New
Zealand and Australia, and in the U.S. and Canada. However, the creation
of educational institutions was disrupted by the direct invasion of Spanish
conquerors and, during the republic period, by French, German, British,
and U.S. ideas mediated by the Creole elite that created the republic, the
nation-state, and the university, emulating the Renaissance and the Kantian-
Humboldtian model.
Amawtay Wasi emerged at the confluence and entanglement of political
and cosmological ways of thinking and doing, of being in the world in the
Andes and in Europe. Politically, the Andes (and the ancient Tawantinsuyu,
which is somewhat analogous to ancient Greece), have been constantly dis-
rupted in its social and economic organization by the social and economic
organization of the Spaniards directly, and indirectly, with the emerging
imperial states since the eighteenth century. All of them replaced Incas by
incorporating Spanish institutions, concepts, and socio-economic organiza-
tions. However, what was replaced was indeed displaced, and it never died:
it is alive and well in the Andes. Amawtay Wasi is a consequence of that
long-lasting survival of the displaced, and that means that Amawtay Wasi is
not a return to the past. Such return is impossible, and Indigenous peoples
know that better than non-Indigenous peoples accusing the Indians of want-
ing to live in the past. That is not the point for most of Indigenous visions
of the future, a future of which they will take control rather than waiting for
a future made for them by new colonial programs (like development). In
such case, Indigenous cosmologies must be articulated with Western cos-
 APPENDIX • 227

mologies (the mixture of ideas coming from Greece and Rome, through
the Renaissance and the Enlightenment), and Western cosmologies had to
be subsumed within Indigenous ones. And that is precisely what Amawtay
Wasi intends to do: to appropriate and subsume whatever can be appropri-
ated and subsumed into their needs, vision, philosophy, and way of life, from
the Western archive and contribution to human civilization. Subsuming does
not mean replacing, and therefore inverting, what the Spaniards directly did
and then what the French, British, and U.S. indirectly did. It means that the
present articulation of Indigenous cosmologies in the future will coexist with
the Euro–U.S. cosmology in their diversity. It means that now there are two
types of options, whereas for 500 years only one was presented as diverse—
the diversity of sameness. The mirage of diversity in the struggles remains
the same: the struggles of secular against sacred forces, and the struggles
between the left and the right within secular political parties. But all such
belief was within Western cosmology adopted and adapted by Creoles and
Mestizo elites.
Epistemically and philosophically, the process was similar and parallel
to political processes. Amawtay Wasi is neither an adaptation of Western
university structure nor a return to the education of the Incanate. It simply
requires common sense to understand that for better or worse we are living
in a world built and dominated by Western institutions, actors, and catego-
ries of thought. However, domination (and even hegemony) is not equivalent
to the totalization of the totality. That is, domination and hegemony give
only the impression that there is no way out. Amawtay Wasi is showing us
that there are ways out by delinking from the entanglement and building
an-other option. By building an-other option, we learn that the dominant or
hegemonic is only an option that convinced us that it was not an option but
the one and only truth. The academic structure of Amawtay Wasi was mod-
eled on the idea of “centers or nodes of knowledge/wisdom” that comes from
the ancestry of Andean civilizations: the center or node of political knowl-
edge/wisdom, Atiy.
In the presentation of Amawtay Wasi, in the publication Boletin ICCI-
Rimai (Publicacion del Instituto Cientifico de Culturas Indigenas), it is spec-
ified that:

The university was established to be a space of both reflection and action,

and grew out of a project of the nationalities and peoples of Ecuador and
of all Abya Yala (the Americas). Our university works towards the decolo-
nization of knowledge and is committed to reconstructing the concept and
meaning of intercultural knowledge. The UIAW is an intercultural project
228 • APPENDIX

whose purpose is to serve as a foundation stone in construction of a pluri-

national state and an intercultural society. (http://www.amawtaywasi.edu.
ec/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=23&Itemid=
34&lang=en).

What was and is the Americas in the frame of Western knowledge was and is
Abya Yala in the frame of Indigenous knowledge. They coexist. The need to
decolonize knowledge, mentioned above, and the need to create intercultural
knowledge, arise from the awareness that the mirage of epistemic universal-
ity since the European Renaissance was indeed imperial knowledge, a type of
knowledge and subjectivity (way of being) that is becoming unsustainable by
the minute as we have been witnessing in the years 2007–2011.
Amawtay Wasi was born in the frame of the history of Indigenous strug-
gles for liberation since the sixteenth century. Currently, Amawtay Wasi is
anchored in and supported by (jointly and separately) the Confederation of
Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), the Scientific Institute of
Indigenous Cultures (ICCI), and Amawta Runakunapak Yachay (ARY). The
decision to create a House of Wisdom, higher education based on Indige-
nous cosmology instead of Western cosmology, emerged from the awareness
that unless they controlled their own knowledge, Indigenous peoples would
fail in claiming Indigenous rights. It became clear that the axis upon which
Indigenous peoples work to liberate themselves from the chain of the Creole
and Mestizo State is their own education, not a claim that they have the right
to be educated by the State that oppresses them. The recovery of land and
territories, the reconstitution of Indigenous nationalities and memories, are
unthinkable without a structure of knowledge based on Indigenous episte-
mology that supports the advocacy to obtain Western knowledge. Anchored
in the colonial State and University, Western knowledge prevents Indigenous
peoples from reconstituting a fractured civilization, but the knowledge at
the service of imperial/colonial expansion is reproduced through internal
colonialism. Amawtay Wasi is showing us that it is necessary and possible to
delink, epistemically, politically, and subjectively. And it is showing us how
this can be done, not as a universal model, but as one of the roads to pluriv-
ersal futures.
The antecedents in the struggle to consolidate autonomous structure of
education can be traced back to the 30s and 40s in Ecuador and Bolivia, but,
more specifically, 12 November 1996 remains a key moment. That very day,
the first meeting toward the organization of Amawtay Wasi took place at the
office of Dr. Luis Macas, at that point holding the office of National Deputy of
the Government of Ecuador. The process began. Committees were formed,
 APPENDIX • 229

and a working project was structured during the subsequent months. Three
workshops were held with the participation of Indigenous organizations,
Indigenous and non-Indigenous ONGs, intellectuals, professionals, and offi-
cers of the State. By 1998, the first projects of Amawtay Wasi were laid out
in six volumes, and it was agreed that the managers of such projects will be
the CONAIE and the ICCI. The project was then presented to the National
Parliament that very year. And the official process began.

Ethics of Education, Epistemic Structure, and

Political Orientation

We will make several disclaimers before entering the epistemic foundation

and the system of ideas that animates and structures Amawtay Wasi.
It is called “University.” As such, it is connected to the tradition of Euro-
pean universities at the same time delinking from them. Its foundation is
neither Christianity (medieval and renaissance university), nor the Kantian-
Humboldtian university inaugurated during the Enlightenment; even less
the corporate university that, in the West, subsumes the Christian and the
Kantian-Humboldtian legacies, a story we summarized in Chapter 7. Amaw-
tay Wasi is a case of border thinking par excellence: revamping Indigenous
cosmologies and ways of life by subsuming European contributions into
their own models. Border thinking means that precisely—that the restitution
of disavowed and broken knowledge had to be articulated in the idiom of the
invaders (Spanish, French, Portuguese, English, Italian, German, as the case
may be in the past 500 years), but no longer in their language, their episte-
mology, and their institution, even if the name is appropriated. Decoloniality
needs border thinking. Both are necessary conditions for delinking from the
mirage of imperial thinking and being. Amawatay Wasi is indeed a radi-
cal delinking from the history of the Renaissance/Kantian-Humboldtian/
Corporate University of the Western world. That delinking is expressed in
one of the processes through which students had to go: learning to unlearn
in order to relearn.
What is the genealogy of Amawtay Wasi, if it is not Greco-Roman or
coming from the Renaissance and the Enlightenment? This genealogy stems
from the Southern Cross. As we explained in the introduction and chapter
7, there is a correlation between the Southern Cross, Tawantinsuyu, and the
conceptual structure of Amawtay Wasi. Like Tawantinsuyu, Amawtay Wasi
added a center to the four parts composing the structure. In Tawantinsuyu it
was Cuzco, the belly of the world. For Amawtay Wasi it is Kawsay (wisdom,
230 • APPENDIX

life, plenitude, estar siendo). The very foundation of the Amawtay Wasi con-
ceptual structure is a combination of the Chacana and the four elements
of life: water, fire, air, land. At the center is life. But life is not an entity: it
comes out of the relations between the four elements which, in their turn,
find their distinctiveness not by their essence but by their mutual interrela-
tions. For this reason, Indigenous ontology is relational, but it radically dif-
fers from the Western claim for relational ontology. Relational ontology is a
Western response to Western essential ontology, the ontology of Being (Hei-
degger) that encountered its critique in Levinas (the ontology of relations,
the face to face, the dialogue). Indigenous relational ontology comes from
their own ancestral epistemology parallel but unrelated until the arrival of
Spanish missionaries, who brought with them the ancestral Greek epistemol-
ogy based on the essence of objects, ideas, and denotation; not of relation but
of denotation.
The Amawtay Wasi conceptual structure consists in layers of the same
basic structure shown in figure 1. What changes in each case are the four
components and the characteristics that the center acquires in relation to
those specific components. Thus one can imagine that “on top” of the “four
elements of life” the basic categorial structure of Amatay Wasi consists in the
four nodes of learning.
The overall structure thus consists in these four nodes of institutes (see
figure 2):

Yachay: wisdom, knowledge, epistemic training

Munay: love, passion, intuition
Ruray: doing, experiencing, and building
Ushuay: potency, energy, power

The four nodes organize ancestral knowledge of Indian, not Western,

cosmology. Greeks and Romans have nothing to add here, or, in any case, not
as a model or influence but as inconvenience: Amawtay Wasi has no choice
but to define itself, and redefine indigenous ancestral knowledge, in relation
to the Western ancestral knowledge. The reverse is not true: Europe does not
have to respond to Indigenous knowledge to re-invent itself. Or, if it does, it
is to dismiss any epistemology that is alien to Western epistemology. Thus,
modeled on the Southern Cross, we have the node of political knowledge,
or Ushay; the node of spiritual knowledge, or Munay; the node of practical
knowledge, or Ruray; and the node of technical/technological knowledge, or
Yachay. At the center of the four nodes, or the Center of the centers, is Kaw-
say—wisdom, life, humanity, and culture.
FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2
232 • APPENDIX

Now, crucial to academic and scholarly organization is the principle of

vincularidad. This principle is vital for understanding the Indigenous rela-
tional epistemology. How to translate this term? Sometimes it appears as
“relational,” but that translation is confusing, for “relational ontology” is
already a concept that moves away from both ontology and dialogism and
focuses on relational ontology as the foundation of complex structures. But
that definition is still within Western debates. “Vincularidad” shall then be
translated as co-relationality—connections between the four nodes and,
above all, connections with the center upon which each and all of the nodes
depend. The expression “vincularidad como ser,” which appears in figure 3,
is indeed a difficult expression to translate. It means that being is constituted
by and in vincularidad. The concept of “being” is maintained and is at the
same time radically transformed when transplanted from Western to Indig-
enous ways of thinking and of “being.” Thus, as the figure makes clear, “vin-
cularidad como ser” (at the center) emerges from the correlations between
“complementarity,” “reciprocity,” “correspondence,” and “proportionality.” A
phenomenology of Being, as found in Continental philosophy, is unthink-
able in any Indigenous languages and structures of thought. Seen in this
light, the diagram is still abstract. But when we project “vincularidad” on
the four nodes and the respective center, it acquires all its epistemic poten-
tial. Thus each node is interrelated with the agro-ecological, and vitally and
organizationally with the four elements of Pachamama—air, fire, land, and
water—and, furthermore, with the four basic symbolic colors of Tawantin-
suyu—red, yellow, green, and blue. The four basic colors correspond to the
four “suyus” of Tawantinsuyu. Qollasusyu, on the West and the Pacific, is
blue (water); Antisuyu, in the Northeast, the jungle, is green; Chinchaysuyo,
in the North, the desert region with strong sunlight, is yellow; and Collasuyu,
in the Southeast, the region of argillaceous earth or land, is red.
When it comes to the four nodes of knowledge, the interconnections cre-
ate pairing on each side of the nodes. And so we have in the node of Yachay/
Widsom/Knowledge the challenge of Interculturality that interconnects
Yachay with Ushay. On the other hand, we have the challenge of the Cosmo-
vision that interrelates Yachay with Munnay. At its turn, Munay interrelated
with Ruray take us to the ecological challenge: to make the habitat livable.
In correspondence, Ruray and Ushay present the challenge of technoscience.
Now, Ushay (and any of the four nodes) is interrelated with the nodes next
to it; for example, Ushay interrelated with Yushay presents the challenge of
interculturality, whereas when interrelated with Ruray, it takes us to the chal-
lenge of technoscience. Thus we enter a house of knowledge where neither
the sense of being in one single domain nor the sense of Western holism
 APPENDIX • 233

FIGURE 3

obtains. In this house, the wholes and the parts belong to one specific episte-
mology. We enter a house of wisdom whose components come from a non-
Western cosmovision, knowledge, wisdom, and way of life, but always in
forced relation with it (which is another dimension of Indigenous relational
epistemology that was not in place or needed before the Spanish invasion
and, in other part of the world, before the French, British or U.S. invasion
and intervention. That both systems have been entangled for 500 years, and
that one dominates over the other, does not mean that Indigenous cosmolo-
gies should continue to surrender to something that is not their own. Why
would Indigenous or any other non-Western peoples have to live as others
want them to live? To understand the ethical dimension of this observation,
it is suffice to remember many situations in which a Western person would
say “I do not want to live as the communists want me to live!” Well, the
reverse is also true. There is no reason to pretend that it is the true and the
preferable. Furthermore, the curricular structures and the five-year program
234 • APPENDIX

make sure that students also understand the relations between Ruray and
Yashay (complementarity between knowing and doing), Ushay and Munay
(correspondence between power and love), Proportionality between Inter-
culturality, and Reciprocity between Cosmovision and Technology.
Let us come back to Amawtay Wasi. Each node in itself has its own
goal, beyond the interrelation that each node has with the other nodes (e.g.,
Yushay–Ushay and Yushay–Munay). Thus the main goal of Yushay–Munay
(Wisdom, Knowledge, Cosmovision), in complementarity, is to strengthen
the identity (linguistic, cultural, spiritual, memory) of Nacionalidades
y Pueblos Indigenas. Training is offered in Cultural Knowledge, History,
Psycho-pedagogy, Health, and Intercultural Medicine. The training person-
nel of this center is composed of Uwishining, Yachaks, Shamans, Midwives,
and Cultural Trainers.
Ruray–Munay (to do, to experience, and to build) is the economic node.
The goal of this node is the organization of the economic structure of indig-
enous communities and the formation of micro-organizations run by the
families and the communities. Students are trained in agro-ecology, sustain-
able tourism, economic principles, and economic administration. This node
is governed by a Council of Amawtas and formed by personnel from the
communities in charge of the administration and organization of communal
economy.
Ushay–Yushay (Energy, Potency, Power, Interculturality) is in charge of
education dedicated to the political strengthening of Nacionalidad y Pueblos
Indígenas in their respective and relevant organizations. The goals are the
advancement of plurinational societies; the conformation of cultural autono-
mies; the consolidation of territorialities; counseling to local governments;
and the conceptualization and unfolding of Indigenous Law and Indigenous
Legal Administration.
Ruray–Ushay (experiencing, doing, potency, energy) is oriented toward
the expansion of technological learning in the communities. It is related to
the organization of the territories and the construction and building of infra-
structures, with training in architecture and engineering. It is governed by
a Council of Amawtas formed by Indigenous builders, textile makers, gold-
smiths, and communication–technology experts.

IN SUMMARY, Amawtay Wasi focuses on the following basic needs for decol-
onization of knowledge and generation of decolonial knowledge. The center
of the entire project is life and “learning to be,” a term that refers to the long
experience in which Indigenous peoples have been treated as inferior and
 APPENDIX • 235

of inferior knowledge. Amawtay Wasi has begun a long process to redress

what was unjustly disregarded and how the people were mistreated. Thus
decolonization of knowledge and of being goes through wisdom/knowledge
(science); knowing to do (technology); knowing to be/ser (individual and
the community); knowing to be/estar (service, society, community); and har-
mony and balance (with nature) to live in plenitude (buen vivir). All four
trajectories centered on Kawsay (plenitude, life, wisdom). Decolonization of
knowledge and of being, to which Amawtay Wasi is contributing, consists
in delinking from Western epistemology (essential ontology and relational
ontology) and rebuilding an Indigenous, relational ontology that puts life
above institutions and above the myth that development and growth lead to
freedom and happiness.
Figure 4 summarizes the Strategies and the four formative levels. The
Strategies consist of Challenges (Desafios), Competences (Capacidades), and
Approaches (Enfoques). The three of them constitute the General Proposal
of Amawtay Wasi. The four formative levels are:

• Learning to think by communal doing

• Learning to learn
• Learning to unlearn in order to relearn
• Learning to undertake

Amaway Wasi is today (January of 2012) well and running. It has become
an important point of reference contributing to numerous new beginnings:
higher education is in the hands of the people who have had until now to sub-
mit to the higher education managed by actors and institutions that denied
them the right to think on their own. Memories are local and cannot be con-
trolled by global designs. When global designs attempt to control memories
that are not the memories of the actors and institutions upon which global
designs are imagined and enacted, they become imperial modes of domina-
tion; designs to induce or force people to live according to the desires and
designs based on the memories that are not theirs. Learning to unlearn in
order to relearn is precisely this kind of project: the project of the people who
become epistemically and politically disobedient, who realize that knowl-
edge cannot be framed and packaged in the bags of Greece, Rome, France,
Germany, England, and the U.S. This is of course a very important genealogy
of thought and memories for Euro-American citizens. But not for 80% of the
world now close to 7 billion people. Learning to unlearn is of the essence to
build democratic, non-imperial, non-violent, non-legally delinquent futures.
Amawtay Wasi is a small star in the universe of new beginnings.
 

FIGURE 4