Explicitly multicultural and/or intercultural education is a very recent and still marginal educational phenomenon in Mexico. However, the long-standing Latin American and particularly Mexican tradition of indigenismo constitutes a kind of “multiculturalism avant la lettre” that still shapes the educational institutions specifically designed for the country's 68 indigenous peoples who make up approximately 10% of the Mexican population. Indigenismo may be defined as a governmental policy of integrating indigenous peoples into the Mexican society and economy through parallel institutions dedicated to cultural, educational, and economic development for indigenous communities.

In a series of phases, which are similar to the different and consecutive European and North American approaches, throughout the decades after the Mexican Revolution of 1917, indigenist policies have changed from openly assimilationist to integrationist and ...