A esthetics of Resistance: Sentipensante art and education in the political praxis of Latin American peasant and indigenous peoples’ movements

arte sentipensante e educação na práxis política indígena e camponesa latino-americana

Abstract

This article thinks through the interconnection between art, education, and human development within the framework of the Latin American peasant and indigenous movements’ political praxis. To do this, it is argued that the art conception woven by these political subjects emerges from an apprehension of the heart as the epistemic and ontological nucleus of their feelings, their thinking, and their political action – a sentimental-thoughtful art – which demarcates another paradigm of thought and knowledge building. Thus, I introduce some expressions of the aesthetics of resistance in the sentimental-thoughtful art of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST) and the Zapatista Movement, with an emphasis on the principles that underlie the educational and political dimension of art in the struggle for land, territory, and an emancipatory project. In Latin American and Caribbean history, the sentimental-thoughtful art nurtured the dreams of freedom, emancipation, and justice – and, in times of recrudescence of the class struggle, people cried out for never losing tenderness, in Che Guevara’s words.