Latin America and the Caribbean, home to a multiplicity of diverse cultures, languages, traditions, knowledge and ways of life, face the challenge of overcoming the coloniality of power and knowledge that has meant the exclusion, marginalization and discrimination of the people who represent this same diversity. In this effort, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), in connection with communities and social groups, as well as with other levels of the educational system, must not only recognize and value cultural diversity, but also promote the construction of interculturality as an epistemological and political principle. 

Advances in this path since the CRES 2018 are recognized, such as the expansion of legal frameworks and public policies dedicated to the promotion of interculturality; as well as the growth in number and scope of Intercultural Universities. Associated with these advances, there remains, on the one hand, the challenge of translating the principles and regulations into concrete practices, such as the curricularization of the intercultural and not only its integration in specific actions; the overcoming of folklorizing visions of cultural diversity that do not promote its valorization but its decontextualization; the training of bilingual intercultural teachers; the connection between HEIs and communities to avoid practices of epistemological extractivism. On the other hand, there is also the challenge of advancing the understanding of interculturality as a commitment of the entire higher education system and not only of intercultural HEIs. Conventional universities are called upon to invest in measures of relevance and pertinence to the cultural diversity of the society they serve.

Another priority challenge is the fight against all forms of racism in higher education systems, which implies going beyond measures of access to historically minority groups within HEIs, also considering policies of permanence and accompaniment, to ensure the educational and cultural rights of indigenous and Afro-descendant students and other socio-cultural groups in situations of discrimination in each country under conditions of equity.

Axis 2 has the special mission of addressing the multiple experiences and proposals based on cultural diversity and interculturality and, at the same time, to generate a regional, integrated and panoramic vision of the progress and pending challenges in this area. Leading the work of this axis are: Daniel Mato; director of the UNESCO Chair “Higher Education and Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples in Latin America” at the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), Argentina; Jacob Omar Jerónimo, professor at Kaqchikel University and co-founder of the Central de Organizaciones Indígenas y Campesinas Maya Ch’orti’, Guatemala; Sandra de Deus, professor of the Department of Communication at the Universidad Federal de Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil and Santiago J. Ruiz Alvarez, Director of Scientific Research at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH).

AXIS 2 DOCUMENTS