Peruvian Trainee Teachers as Mestizas. Pedagogies of Tolerance and Respect Towards Gay and Lesbian People

Abstract: Given the polarized political context in Peru that was provoked by the inclusion of LGTBIQ+ identities in the official school curriculum, this study analyzes the meanings that students of pedagogy in Lima ascribe to tolerance and respect towards gay and lesbian people, and how these meanings inform their pedagogical practices. Based on two focus groups and eight individual interviews grounded in standpoint theory, this study engages in a dialogue with the work of Wendy Brown regarding tolerance. This scholar argues that tolerance is a discourse of power and depolitization that primarily aims to regulate aversion towards the Other. On the one hand, within some participants’ accounts tolerance and respect discourses frame gay and lesbian identities as marginal/undesired within the school, especially when cisgender borders are crossed. On the other hand, within other participants’ accounts these meanings of tolerance and respect are contested. In these later cases, participants commit to an engaged pedagogy, as bell hooks describes this concept. They confront homophobia within the classroom and open the door to the transcendence of binary gender discourses. Since these two contradictory perspectives can be present within one individual, this thesis argues that future teachers can be seen as Mestizas, the concept coined by Gloria Anzaldúa. Therefore, they can embrace ambiguity and operate in a pluralistic mode, turning porous the socially constructed border between straight and queer people.