Liderazgo comunitario en educación. La experiencia para crear la Universidad Interétnico Cultural Wixárika

René Cristóbal Crocker Sagastume

Abstract

This article analyzes the educational problems faced by indigenous peoples in universities, particularly the Wixárika ethnic group of western Mexico, with the purpose of contributing to the academic debate to generate an interethnic cultural educational policy in indigenous communities. A methodological design of participatory action research is applied based on the epistemology of the South, which allows giving voice to the knowledge and educational demands for transformation of excluded peoples. The educational practice carried out in one of the educational centers of a public university in western Mexico is addressed through participant observation and documentary analysis, and is contrasted with the educational worldview of the Wixárika ethnic group, based on in-depth interviews, intercultural dialogue workshops with focus groups and ethnographic observation of the community assemblies of three of the five towns that make up this ethnic group. The results of the research show that, despite the curricular discourse of intercultural education of the university institution, the educational practices of cultural assimilation predominate, which is contradictory with the worldview proposed by the leaders of the community, who demand curricular proposals that recognize the knowledge and needs of the Wixárika people. These contradictions generate the challenge of formulating an interethnic cultural university educational model, with a flexible symmetrical curriculum where technical and professional careers are built in accordance with the worldview and development model of this people, with modules and orientations that recognize the needs, local potentialities and demands that contribute to the self-determination of the Wixárika ethnic group and its national and international insertion with respect to its culture. It is concluded that the interethnic cultural educational model that promotes community leadership based on respectful dialogue of knowledge constitutes an educational strategy to build symmetrical university curricular proposals. This curricular perspective is a vein to generate educational proposals for the development of the native peoples of the mesoamerican region with respect to their history and ethnic-cultural identity.

Community Leadership in Education. The Experience to Create the Wixárika Interethnic Cultural University

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