Education and inequality. a look at indigenous peoples from amartya sen’s capability approach

Abstract

This article provides an approximation to some indispensable conditions to advance towards the long-awaited path of equality, taking as reference Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The indigenous peoples constitute a social group that, for a long time, ignored in its rights and that, even today, they are in a clear situation of inequality and not insured, compared to the non-indigenous population in the country. Starting from the premise of Sen (2000), it can be pointed out that the participation of social groups in vulnerable situations, in this case, the indigenous peoples, is a decisive path in the fight against inequality. Citizen’s participation will be effective if they develop their agency capacity, as said before; they achieve empowerment on the issues that concern them. For the exercise of capacities, fundamental for the democratic experience, education is the most important access door, however, it is not everything, a culture that promotes participation from state institutions is also necessary.