Guaraní Schools Fight for Survival as Federal Funding Stalls

Rosa María Martínez arrived at the Escuela Bilingüe Guaraní-Español de San Vicente an hour before sunrise on a Tuesday in early November, as she has done for the past twelve years. The schoolhouse—a low brick building with a tin roof and a courtyard of packed earth—was quiet except for the sound of her key in the lock and the distant call of a howler monkey in the trees beyond the fence. She switched on the lights in the main classroom, where thirty desks waited for children who would arrive in an hour. On the blackboard, in both Spanish and Guaraní, was yesterday's lesson: the names of plants in the forest, written in the syllabary that most of these children's grandparents spoke fluently but that most of their parents had half-forgotten.

Martínez is one of four teachers at the school. For the past three months, she has been paid on a provisional basis—a monthly transfer from the Tierra Verde regional assembly that arrived irregularly and at 85 percent of the contracted amount. The federal office in Meridian that is supposed to co-fund bilingual education programs has not released its quarterly allocation since August. No one in San Vicente can say why. The regional assembly's education committee has filed two inquiries with the Federal Office for Civic Affairs. The replies have been procedural acknowledgments, nothing more.

The shortage has forced choices that feel impossible to the people making them. The school's budget for learning materials—books, writing supplies, maps of the Guaraní-speaking regions—is frozen. The repairs to the classroom roof, scheduled for September, have been postponed. And the planned hiring of a second Guaraní-language specialist, approved by the regional assembly in June, is on indefinite hold.