Social Resistance to Militaristic Educational Reform in the Peruvian Amazon (1968–1980)

Resistencia social a la reforma educativa militarista en la Amazonía peruana (1968-1980)

Abstract

This article examines social resistance to Peru’s militaristic educational reform (1968-1980) in the Amazon, showing how a centrally designed project of national integration was reinterpreted, contested and, in practice, weakened at the local level. Drawing on legislation, ministerial and regional administrative records, press materials and educators’ and community actors’ accounts, the study offers a historical-qualitative analysis of the reform’s reception in schools. Two main rationalities of resistance emerge. Teachers challenged the militarisation of pedagogical work and the erosion of professional autonomy, linking everyday school routines to wider disputes over legitimacy and governance. Families, by contrast, evaluated the reform through a pragmatic lens, prioritising schooling that promised social mobility and viewing imposed cultural-linguistic measures as misaligned with their aspirations. Together, these dynamics help explain why the reform generated weak local legitimacy and limited educational traction. The article argues that historically informed policy design is indispensable for reforms in culturally diverse and structurally disadvantaged territories, where the meaning of schooling is negotiated in relation to state power, identity and future-making