Due to the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, where a military dictatorship was put in place with the support of the United States, Paulo Freire was exiled from his home country, an exile that lasted 16 years.[3][4] After a brief stay in Bolivia, he moved to Chile in November 1964 and stayed until April 1969 when he accepted a temporary position at Harvard University. His four-and-a-half year stay in Chile impacted him intellectually, pedagogically, and ideologically, and contributed significantly to the theory and analysis he presents in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.[4] In Freire's own words:
When I wrote [Pedagogy of the Oppressed] I was already completely convinced of the problem of social classes. In addition, I wrote this book on the basis of my extensive experience with peasants in Chile; being absolutely convinced of the process of ideological hegemony and what that meant. When I would hear the peasants speaking, I experienced the whole problem of the mechanism of domination (which I analyze in the first chapter of the book)...Certainly, in my earliest writings I did not make this explicit, because I did not perceive it yet as such...[Pedagogy of the Oppressed] is also completely situated in a historical reality.[5]
Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed between 1967 and 1968, while living in the United States. Originally written in his native Portuguese, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was first published in Spanish in 1968.[6]: 126 This was followed by an English version, in a translation by Myra Bergman Ramos, in 1970.[7] The Portuguese original was released in Portugal in 1972 and in Brazil in 1974. Though Ramos' translation has received some degree of criticism, Freire approved of it and was involved in consultation during the translating process.[6]: 127
