Between the school and the coffee plantations: the importance of Conafe community school in the Southern of Oaxaca, Mexico

Abstract

Faced with the concentration policies of rural schools in different countries of the world, including Mexico and other Latin American countries, various voices have analyzed the sociocultural and educational implications that this brings with it. This article adds to these analyses, bringing up the role that the community schools of the National Council for Educational Development (Conafe) play in the sociocultural life of small communities located in the Southern of Oaxaca, Mexico, whose economic activities revolve around around coffee production. This study takes up the results of two broader investigations that have been carried out in the study region for five years, through the use of an educational ethnography, with a historical approach, which encompasses school and non-school environments. The results show that schools are a fundamental piece to maintain a certain social cohesion, give continuity to local economic activities, foster student confidence and participation, contribute to strengthening sociocultural and linguistic diversity. Such results encourage us to dispense with the policies of concentration of rural schools or at least reconsider them, taking into account particular cases such as the one described here