Traducción: Ivette Utrera Domínguez.
Revisión: Irlanda Villegas Salas.
The intercultural project of the UV
In recent years the need to consider cultural diversity as a prior topic in all areas of human activities has emerged in Mexico and elsewhere. In a scenario marked by factors such as new technologies and social claiming movements, some innovative responses consistent with the fast changes demand our attention.
Thus, the institutions that lead actions to achieve the welfare of societies face the urgent need to be transformed in order to respond effectively to the current state of affairs. In this regard, higher education and research are key points in the vision of an outlook that is obliged to transcend its own limits.
The disciplines that guide knowledge cannot remain static, they need movement and mutual exchanges to enable to open spaces to previously ignored knowledges.
In response to this dynamic, the Universidad Veracruzana (UV), through the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural (UVI) – since 2005 as a Programme and from 2007 on as an Administrative Unit(DUVI, according to its initials in Spanish) – undertakes the task of broadening their horizons by putting emphasis on the educational processes of horizontal nature, being close to those sectors that have been away from the conventional educational opportunities and recovering institutional strengths such as flexibility and integrality in education (MEIF, according to its initials in Spanish) as well as the axis of social distribution of knowledge.
Some of the most important elements that have allowed the emergence of the DUVI are, on the one hand, the implementation of an educational policy that is open to recognition of the cultural diversity in our country, which has been expressed at a federal level with the creation of the Coordinación General de Educación Intercultural y Bilingüe (CGEIB). This organization has created various programmes to promote the development of educational actions in different educational levels, especially the promotion to enable the formation of Intercultural Universities in several states of the country.
On the other hand, the work done by the Instituto de Investigaciones en Educación (IIE) of the UV has to be noticed. There the Seminario de Educación Multicultural en Veracruz (SEMV) was created in 1996; it was a programme from which the Intercultural Education Research Line was designed, developing actions that have impacted on the training and upgrading of human resources, research products and postgraduate programs, among which outstands the Doctorate in Multicultural Societies and Intercultural Studies, in collaboration with the University of Granada, Spain.
Thus, considering the international and national policies pro-recognition of the cultural diversity of the society, and also considering our University strengths , UVI was created in order to respond to the demand of accessing to higher education in Intercultural Regions, to identify and fortify the potentialities of those Regions and to propitiate the growth and development of Veracruz.
Through its Regional Campuses (distributed in strategic areas of the entity: Huasteca, Totonacapan, Grandes Montañas and Selvas), DUVI works on the promotion of appropriate conditions that enable the accomplishment of the substantive functions of the University, building a two-way relationship withother programmes of the UV.
Currently the Bachelor’s Degree in Intercultural Management for Development is offered in each campus, and it is constituted of five Orientations: Languages, Communication, Sustainability, Health and Rights.
