Huellas del racismo antiindígena en textos escolares venezolanos de finales de los a？os ochenta

the aim of this investigation is to analyze evidence of discrimination against native peoples in some venezuelan textbooks, based on the critical discourse analysis (cda) approach developed by van dijk (2003, 2004), who proposes that it is possible to identify ideological structures of discourse within texts that favor certain interpretations over others. the research corpus is made up of 22 lessons about the natives in four primary education textbooks. the textual marks that refer to the natives were identified according to their category of ideological analysis : generalization, role of the actors, lexicalization, argumentation, presupposition/implicature and comparison/ contrast, among others. the results show a tendency to generalize the description of native peoples, while detailing the negative aspects associated to them, such as poverty, passivity and technological backwardness. however, the ideological structures of discourse are present in specific segments of the texts, indicating that not all the lessons contents contribute to this negative image. this fact is a common characteristic of texts produced in the context of a racist society.