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Intercultural Universities in Mexico: Identity and Inclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2013

DAVID LEHMANN
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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ethos of interculturalidad in Mexico's recently founded universidades interculturales. On the basis of documentation and interviews with faculty in five universities, institutionalisation of intercultural higher education within the state sector can be seen to have created a space in which the politics of recognition meet the radical ideas of educators in the tradition of constructivism and educación popular. Intercultural higher education does not select students on the basis of race, but the location of the campuses and the content of courses are designed to attract indigenous students. The introduction of field research early in the undergraduate course should transform the relationship between students and their communities of origin, and prepare them for leadership roles. The article concludes with a critique of what it calls ‘hard’ multiculturalism.

Spanish abstract

El propósito de este artículo es explorar el ethos de la interculturalidad en las recientemente fundadas Universidades Interculturales (UI) en México. Sobre la base de documentos y entrevistas con profesores en cinco universidades, se puede observar que la institucionalización de la educación superior intercultural al interior del sector estatal ha creado un espacio en el que la política de reconocimiento encuentra a las ideas radicales de educadores en la tradición del constructivismo y la educación popular. La educación superior intercultural no selecciona a los estudiantes sobre la base de raza aunque la ubicación de los campus y el contenido de los cursos están designados para atraer a estudiantes indígenas. La introducción temprana de la investigación de campo en el curso de licenciatura debería transformar la relación entre los estudiantes y sus comunidades de origen, y prepararlos para papeles de liderazgo. El artículo concluye con una crítica de lo que llama multiculturalismo ‘duro’.

Portuguese abstract

Este artigo se propõe a explorar o éthos da interculturalidad nas recém fundadas Univerdades Interculturales (UI) mexicanas. Com base em documentação e entrevistas com professores de cinco universidades, pode-se observar que a institucionalização da educação superior intercultural dentro do setor estatal tem criado um espaço no qual as políticas de auto-reconhecimento se encontram com as ideias radicais de educadores da tradição construtivista e da educación popular. A educação superior intercultural não baseia sua seleção de estudantes em critérios raciais e sim de acordo com a localização dos campi. Ademais, o conteúdo dos cursos é elaborado de forma a atrair estudantes indígenas. A introdução de trabalhos de campo desde o princípio do curso de graduação tem como intuito transformar a relação entre estudantes e suas comunidades de origem e prepará-los para desempenharem papeis de liderança. O artigo conclui com uma crítica a o que o autor chama multiculturalismo ‘duro’.

Keywords

affirmative actioninterculturalidadhigher educationindigenismMexicointerculturalidadeducación superiorindigenismoMéxicoacción afirmativainterculturalidadeducação superiorindigenismoMéxicoações afirmativas
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , November 2013 , pp. 779 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

1 Recondo, David, La política del Gatopardo: multiculturalismo y democracia en Oaxaca (Mexico City: CIESAS – Casa Chata, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See the recent Bolivian Constitution, and Cott, Donna Van, ‘A Political Analysis of Legal Pluralism in Bolivia and Colombia’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 32: 1 (2000), pp. 207–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; on bilingual education, see Gustafson, Bret, New Languages of the State: Indigenous Resurgence and the Politics of Knowledge in Bolivia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; and Barbara Noel, ‘Language, Power and Schooling: Bolivia's Education Reform Program’, MA thesis, College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University, 2006.

2 For reasons which are unclear, no one speaks of interculturalismo – the term which has established itself is interculturalidad.

3 Gustafson, New Languages of the State; Rappaport, Joanne, Intercultural Utopias: Public Intellectuals, Cultural Experimentation, and Ethnic Pluralism in Colombia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; López, Luis Enrique and Sichra, Inge, ‘La educación en áreas indígenas de América Latina: balances y perspectivas’, in Hernaiz, Ignacio (ed.), Educación en la diversidad: experiencias y desafíos en la educación intercultural bilinguë (Buenos Aires: IIPE-UNESCO, 2004)Google Scholar. The CRIC was among the very first organisations to fight for a modern indigenismo and has been in existence in the Colombian highlands since the 1970s. It is a combination of a politicised movement and an NGO providing services to the Nasa people and others in the Cauca region, and it also runs local government under the autonomy brought in by the 1991 Constitution.

4 I use the term ‘fix’ because bilingual teaching can be a way of responding to exclusion in a narrowly technical manner, especially since the exclusion suffered is only partly to do with language use.

5 Hernández, Rosalva Aida, Paz, Sarela and Sierra, María Teresa (eds.), El Estado y los indígenas en tiempos del PAN: neoindigenismo, legalidad e identidad (Mexico City: CIESAS and Porrúa, 2004)Google Scholar.

6 This distinction is developed in Lehmann, David, ‘Identity, Social Justice and Corporatism: The Resilience of Republican Citizenship’, in Sznajder, Mario, Roniger, Luis and Forment, Carlos (eds.), Shifting Frontiers of Citizenship in Latin America (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 101–32Google Scholar.

7 Bilingual education has been institutionalised within the state in Bolivia and Ecuador, and it has also had substantial external financial support from UNICEF in the Bolivian case and the German Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (International Development Agency, GIZ) in Ecuador: see Walsh, Catherine, ‘Políticas y significados conflictivos’, Nueva Sociedad, 165 (2000), pp. 121–33Google Scholar; and Gustafson, New Languages of the State. In Peru state provision of bilingual teacher training is half-hearted at most and the GIZ has provided technical support to bilingual teacher training, while in 2008–10 bilingual teacher training in the Amazon was almost brought to a halt by changes in the qualifications required for student admission. In Brazil bilingual teaching for indigenous peoples is supported by the state.

8 All sorts of complications arise, some of which form part of the present research but cannot be discussed here for lack of space. See Becker, Marc, ‘Social Movements and the Government of Rafael Correa: Confrontation or Co-optation?’, in Prevost, Gary, Campos, Carlos Oliva and Vanden, Harry E. (eds.), Social Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America: Confrontation or Co-optation? (London: Zed Books, 2012), p. 126Google Scholar. For Peru, see Aikman, Sheila, La educación indígena en Sudamerica: interculturalidad y bilingüismo en Madre de Dios (Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2003)Google Scholar; and ‘Interrogating Discourses of Intercultural Education: From Indigenous Amazon Community to Global Policy Forum’, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 42: 2 (2012), pp. 235–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the highlands, see Zavala, Virginia, Desencuentros con la escritura: escuela y comunidad en los Andes peruanos (Lima: Red para el Desarrollo de las Ciencias Sociales en el Perú, 2002)Google Scholar; and ‘Una mirada a la formación docente en educación bilingüe intercultural en la zona andina del Perú’, in Cuenca, Ricardo, Nucinkis, Nicole and Zavala, Virginia (eds.), Nuevos maestros para América Latina (Madrid: Ediciones Morata 2007), pp. 162–90Google Scholar.

9 For Mexico, see Baronnet, Bruno, ‘La question de l'interculturalité dans les expériences d'éducation en terres zapatistes’, in Gros, Christian and Kervran, David Dumoulin (eds.), Le multiculturalisme au concret: un modèle latinoaméricain? (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2011)Google Scholar; for Bolivia, see Gustafson, New Languages of the State.

10 I visited the San Marcos sede in the Comunidad Arizona outside Satipo in 2009. The teaching staff are more academic (that is, they have postgraduate qualifications) than in an instituto superior pedagógico (state teacher training college), the students all identify as indigenous, and indigenous languages mix with Spanish in class.

11 Gustafson, New Languages of the State, p. 14.

12 Rappaport, Intercultural Utopias, p. 5.

13 Ibid.

14 There have been innumerable legal and bureaucratic ventures, such as constitutional amendments, the creation of commissions and departments of indigenous affairs, and provisions for intercultural and bilingual education, but this claim refers to substantial capital projects with funding for established institutions and positions beyond the legal or administrative spheres.

15 The UI buildings in San Cristobal de las Casas exhibit a pastiche colonial mode, while those in Tabasco and the State of Mexico are of modern conception: the former consists of two buildings opposite one another to form the Mayan zero, while the latter combines a snail-like shape reminiscent of the Guggenheim Museum in New York with decorative motifs also evoking Mayan design. Not all architectural critics are impressed.

16 She later tried to be elected as governor of the state of San Luis Potosí, but was defeated through what she claimed was electoral manipulation.

17 The only comparable case to the UIs is the Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense (University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, URACCAN), widely regarded as the pioneer for higher education for indigenous people and intercultural higher education, although it relies on international NGO support. See Blandford, Alta Hooker, ‘Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa del Caribe Nicaragüense (URACCAN)’, in Muñoz, Lourdes Casillas and Villar, Laura Santini (eds.), Educación superior para los pueblos indígenas de América Latina: memorias del Segundo Encuentro Regional (Mexico City: CGEIB, 2004)Google Scholar.

18 The UAIM in Sinaloa has ‘autonomous’ in its title, but its rector is appointed by the governor.

19 Data kindly provided by Lourdes Casillas of the CGEIB, May 2009.

20 García, María Elena, Making Indigenous Citizens: Identities, Education and Multicultural Development in Peru (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Schmelkes, Sylvia, ‘Intercultural Universities in Mexico: Progress and Difficulties’, Intercultural Education, 201 (2009), pp. 5–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Dietz, Gunther, ‘Diversity Regimes Beyond Multiculturalism? A Reflexive Ethnography of Intercultural Higher Education in Veracruz, Mexico’, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 7: 2 (2012), pp. 173–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 de Lourdes, MaríaMuñoz, Casillas and Villar, Laura Santini, Universidad intercultural: modelo educativo (Mexico City: Secretaría de Educación Pública and CGEIB, 2006)Google Scholar, available at www.uimqroo.edu.mx.

24 Modelo educativo, p. 207.

25 Ibid.

26 In the words of the director of the UVI's communications programme, it seemed ‘superficial para empezar’ – that is, superficial as a subject for first-year students.

27 Laura Mateos claims an influence from contemporary Spanish ideas about interculturalidad, but I heard none of this in my interviews – even at the UVI, on which her findings are based – though Téllez did mention a research collaboration with the University of Granada and the Madrid-based Universidad a Distancia, funded by the EU. Mateos, Laura, ‘The Transfer of European Intercultural Discourse Towards Latin American Educational Actors: A Mexican Case Study’, Anthropology Matters, 13: 1 (2011), pp. 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Bruner, Jerome, The Culture of Education (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. 22. See also Moll, Luis, Vygotsky and Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Rappaport is currently engaged in a research project to study ‘the dynamics of collaborative research teams in Latin America’ which involves using Fals Borda's work and his archive: see http://pdba.georgetown.edu/CLAS.

31 Modelo educativo, pp. 158–9.

32 See Dietz, ‘Diversity Regimes Beyond Multiculturalism?’; and Walsh, ‘Políticas y significados conflictivos’, quoted above.

33 This excludes quotations from other documents and usage other than to mean cultural diversity.

34 The lunar cycles, it should be said, are hardly controversial, and constitute the basis for the Jewish and Muslim calendars.

35 This account is taken from two articles in the UAIM's own journal, Ra Ximhai: Ochoa Zazueta, Jesús Ángel, ‘Aneregogia y skopeóutica: retorno a la educación por aprendizaje’, Ra Ximhai – Revista de Sociedad, Cultura y Desarrollo Sustentable, 1: 1 (2005), pp. 1–14Google Scholar, available at www.redalyc.org/pdf/461/46110101.pdf; and García, Ernesto Guerra, ‘La aneregogia de la voluntad: propuesta educativa sociointercultural de la Universidad Autónoma Indígena de México’, Ra Ximhai – Revista de Sociedad, Cultura y Desarrollo Sustentable, 1: 2 (2005), pp. 15–38Google Scholar, available at www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=46110102.

36 The Tzotzil and Tzeltal are from Chiapas, mostly, while the Yoreme are in Sinaloa.

37 Freire uses the term ‘dialogical learning’ repeatedly: see Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy and Civic Courage (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998)Google Scholar.

38 Téllez spoke at length of a successful participation by a group of students in a video festival, the ‘Festival de la Identidad’ at Papantla, and another member of staff spoke of students producing fiction and documentary videos entirely independently.

39 Taylor, Charles, ‘The Politics of Recognition’, in Gutmann, Amy (ed.), Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 69–70Google Scholar.

40 Young, Iris Marion, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

41 Dietz, ‘Diversity Regimes Beyond Multiculturalism?’.

42 The quoted individual, a coordinador at the UVI, used the metaphor of a student ‘running after his dying grandfather’.

43 In the words of a UVI programme head, ‘muchas veces tienen rasgos esencialistas o fundamentalistas … en el lenguaje de ciertos intelectuales indígenas o de líderes indígenas se hablaba de universidades indígenas, para los indígenas, y eso es como un discurso que sirve para mantener ciertas relaciones de poder al interior de las comunidades indígenas … cuando no forzosamente es la reivindicación de los grupos más a nivel local reivindicar nuestra identidad indígena’.

44 That is, a new version of the acculturation which lay at the heart of indigenism from Gamio through Aguirre Beltrán, but one which puts the market in the protagonic role that the state had previously occupied. See de la Peña, Guillermo, ‘La ciudadanía étnica y la construcción de los indios en el México contemporáneo’, Revista Internacional de Filosofía Política, 6 (1995), pp. 116–40Google Scholar; and ‘A New Mexican Nationalism? Indigenous Rights, Constitutional Reform and the Conflicting Meanings of Multiculturalism,’ Nations and Nationalism, 12: 2 (2006), pp. 279–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Díaz-Polanco, Héctor, ‘Reconocimiento y redistribución’, and Rosalva Aida Hernández, ‘La diferencia en debate: la política de identidades en tiempos del PAN’, in Paz, Hernández and Sierra, (eds.), El Estado y los indígenas en tiempos del PAN, p. 302Google Scholar.

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47 Dietz, ‘Diversity Regimes Beyond Multiculturalism?’.

48 Canclini, Nestor García, ‘Sociedades del conocimiento: la construcción intercultural del saber’, in Canclini, (ed.), Diferentes, desiguales y desconectados: mapas de la interculturalidad (Barcelona: Gedisa, 2004), p. 194Google Scholar.

49 Dietz, ‘Diversity Regimes Beyond Multiculturalism?’, p. 192.

50 Laurence Hirschfeld, review of Berlin, Brent, Ethnobiological Classification: Principles of Plant and Animal Classification in Traditional Societies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, American Ethnologist, 21: 2 (1994), pp. 430–1.

51 This field is outside my expertise, but a survey can be found in Lucy, John, ‘Language, Culture and Mind in Comparative Perspective,’ in Achard, Michel and Kemer, Suzanne (eds.), Language, Culture and Mind (Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 2004)Google Scholar. I am indebted to Dan Sperber for clarification on this issue.

52 ‘[L]a imposición del maestro … la creencia absoluta en lo que da el maestro … Nos dimos cuenta hablando con estudiantes que decían que no entendían cómo un profesor podía enseñar como sembrar en el pizarrón cuando ellos lo saben perfectamente … o sus padres les han enseñado otro tipo de cosas.’

53 ‘Activitis’ was the term used; it means feverish activity without much reflection.

54 To my mind, if anyone, it was the activists who were the postmodernists, since they contested practical teaching in the name of identity politics.

55 Dietz, ‘Diversity Regimes Beyond Multiculturalism?’, p. 189.

56 ‘Si quieres mezclar conmigo tienes que dejar de ser tú.’

57 See note 38 above.

58 Hale, Charles R., ‘Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance, Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 34: 3 (2002), pp. 485–524CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59 López, Luis Enrique and Sichra, Inge, ‘La educación en áreas indígenas de América Latina: balances y perspectivas’, in Hernaiz, (ed.), Educación en la diversidad, p. 143Google Scholar.

60 Saldívar, Emiko, ‘Everyday Practices of Indigenismo: An Ethnography of Anthropology and the State in Mexico’, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 16: 1 (2011), pp. 67–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Lourdes Arizpe, a Mexican anthropologist who has occupied important positions in Mexico and the UN, told me that the term ‘intercultural’ has gradually replaced ‘multicultural’ in Latin America because of a desire to distinguish the Latin American concept from the ghettoisation and cultural relativism associated with the European and North American versions.