Juan Barron-Pastor (PhD candidate, Development Studies, University of East Anglia)
From demanding to constructing spaces: mapping what is ‘indigenous’ in Mexican Higher Education
Since 1994, indigenous peoples in Mexico highlighted the right to education as a key demand. In 2001, the Mexican State decided to ignore the agreements signed with representative indigenous groups and promoted legal reforms that are the basis for the current education policies targeting indigenous peoples. Unprecedented education policies for indigenous peoples have been introduced since then. Indigenous people are now visible in higher education, and they are transforming their spaces. Yet the core demand for a transformation of polices for indigenous peoples into policies made by indigenous peoples remains undelivered under the legal reforms made without indigenous participation. However, some groups are making their way within institutional programmes and outside them, as indigenous and non-indigenous groups construct their own autonomous education experiments at all levels, including higher education. This transforms their spaces through re-creating territories of discourses about what ‘indigenous’ identity means. This paper explores aspects of these territories of discourses in light of the experience of one autonomous university created in resistance to the official policies, and compares them to discourses reproduced by institutional channels.
