JULY 9: REIBA CELEBRATES SIX YEARS OF JOURNEYING WITH THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLES OF THE AMAZON.

Six years alongside the peoples, defending cultures, languages, and ancestral knowledge. 

This July 9, the Amazonian Bilingual Intercultural Education Network (REIBA) gratefully celebrates its sixth anniversary, renewing its commitment to continue accompanying the indigenous peoples of the Amazon through a bilingual, integral, pastoral, and inculturated intercultural education. 

REIBA was born on July 9, 2020, from the Intercultural Education Nucleus of the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network (REPAM), in response to the calls of the Synod for the Amazon (2019) and Pope Francis’s apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia (2020). This exhortation invites the building of an Amazonian-faced Church, close to the peoples, respectful of their cultures, and committed to caring for our Common Home. 

Currently, REIBA is linked to the Amazonian Ecclesial Conference (CEAMA), an organization that promotes a synodal, missionary, intercultural Church committed to defending life in the Amazon. On this journey, REIBAcarries out its educational mission in close collaboration with its main allies: CEAMA, REPAM, and the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious Men and Women (CLAR), strengthening articulated ecclesial action at the service of the Amazonian peoples. 

An education born from the territory

From its inception, REIBA has understood that bilingual intercultural education is not limited to the classroom, but is lived in every space of community life. Therefore, it promotes territorial education, where learning takes place in pastoral work, in communities, in educational institutions, in dialogue with knowledge holders, in families, and in daily relationships with nature.

This approach seeks to strengthen native languages, ancestral knowledge, worldviews, and each people’s unique ways of learning and teaching, recognizing that education is a community process profoundly linked to identity, spirituality, and life. In this process, REIBA works alongside bishops, vicariates, dioceses, parishes, religious congregations, indigenous organizations, pastoral agents, and volunteers. Today, the network is present in various vicariates and dioceses in seven of the nine Amazonian countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, and Venezuela.

Six years accompanying indigenous peoples

Throughout these six years, REIBA has accompanied educational processes alongside diverse indigenous peoples of the Amazon, including:

Monkox Chiquitano (Bolivia)
Tsimane (Bolivia)
Piaroa (Colombia)
Wapichan (Guyana)
Tucano (Brazil)
Achuar (Peru)
Matsigenka (Peru)
Kichwa (Ecuador)
Waorani (Ecuador).

Each process has been designed based on the needs, priorities, and rhythms of each people, respecting their ancestral knowledge, languages, calendars, spirituality, and worldviews. To achieve this, REIBA has had the valuable contribution of international experts in Bilingual Intercultural Education, who developed personalized training processes:

Grimaldo Rengifo Vásquez (Ecological Calendar module)
Karina Sullón Acosta (Linguistic Revitalization)
Sandra Robilliard Ferreyra (CLIL Methodology and Spanish as a Second Language)
Sr. Inés Ochoa Núñez, M.M.L. (Design of Materials).

Strengthening communion to serve better

In recent years, REIBA has also strengthened its ties with various ecclesial and social networks and institutions. This path of articulation responds to the synodal spirit promoted by CEAMA: walking together, sharing experiences, listening to the voices of the territory, and building common responses to the challenges faced by Amazonian peoples.

A dream that continues to grow

One of REIBA’s greatest desires is to consolidate, together with its allies, an increasingly articulated work plan that allows for the pooling of human, pastoral, technical, and economic efforts. The constant listening to the communities remains the starting point of all action.