Mexico, Intercultural Universities in

Intercultural universities are higher education institutions that have been created in several indigenous regions of Mexico since 2003. Although nongovernmental actors have been participating from the very beginning, most of these new universities have been cosponsored by state governments in close relation to a federal program promoted by the Department of Education's General Coordination for Intercultural and Bilingual Education (CGEIB, in its Spanish acronym). Its policy of diversifying ethnocultural profiles and curricular contents of the intercultural universities is not isolated but coincides with a broader tendency to urge institutions of higher education to become more “efficient,” locally “adapted,” and “outcome oriented.” Despite certain criticisms, indigenous leaders frequently claim and celebrate the appearance of these new higher education opportunities as part of a strategy of empowering ...