Six years ago, Eugenio Sánchez traded his farming implements for chalk, notepads, books and teaching materials, and set out on a mission.
He left the tranquility of Krausirpe, in Honduras’ Department of Gracias a Dios, to head for the capital city of Tegucigalpa. There he enrolled in the Universidad Autónoma de Honduras to attend a program of bilingual and intercultural education that Sánchez helped to create. The curriculum covers traditional subjects such as mathematics, Spanish, natural science, social studies and education. But it also includes studies in the Tawahka language After he graduates this coming October, Sánchez will return to his village to teach.
In the past, teachers sent to villages such as Krausirpe don’t know the local language, customs or culture. “The teachers discriminated against us, and that was why we created this program,” Sánchez explains. “Our villages are remote, there is no light, water, telephone, discotheques, nothing like that, so don’t want to go there.”
During the 1990s, Sánchez worked as a volunteer teacher at the school in Krausirpe. Today he is one of the founders and chief promoters of the bilingual and intercultural education program. He is also president of the Administrative Board for Tawahka Students and participates in educational activities in the Federación Indígena Tawahka of Honduras.
The program’s primary goal is to give students the knowledge and skills they need to teach bilingual and intercultural education. The program includes teacher training, formulation of teaching programs and materials, research in linguistics and ethnography, and the construction and equipping of schools.
According to program coordinator Marcela Carias, the program has taken its place at the vanguard of bilingual and intercultural education in the country, serving as a model for other indigenous populations in Honduras.
Launched in 1995, the program was created by the Indigenous Tawahka Federation, the Ministry of Public Education, the Autonomous University of Honduras, the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, the Ministry of Culture and the Arts, and the Honduran Social Investment Fund.
“Things are not going to change if we don’t start working to change them,” he says. “We have been forgotten, and we may continue to be forgotten, but we want to move forward, to prepare ourselves and help improve our communities.” Sánchez, at age 37, wants his six children to have opportunities that were not available to him.
The five Tawahka communities of Krausirpe, Krautara, Yapuwás, Parawás and Kamakasna are located in the departments of Olancho and Gracias a Dios, divided by the Patuca River, in the heart of the Moskitia region of Honduras. Covering an area of approximately 233,000 square kilometers of virgin forest with a high degree of biodiversity, these communities are part of the Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve.
The Tawahka is one of Central America’s smallest indigenous groups, numbering some 805 people. They live in a tropical rainforest environment of tremendous biodiversity. Thanks to the efforts of people like Sánchez, they still preserve their language and culture.