Indigenous Youth Graduating from Intercultural Universities: Capability Building Through Intercultural Higher Education in Veracruz, Mexico

Abstract

ABSTRACTIntercultural higher education in Mexico aims at creating new, culturally and linguistically appropriate, professional career opportunities that empower indigenous youth and their communities. In this paper, empirical results are presented from a research project which ethnographically accompanies graduates from an intercultural university, the Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural (UVI), located in four indigenous regions of the South Eastern Mexican Gulf coast. After briefly describing the way this university operates by opening up alternative kinds of knowledge, the features of the new indigenous professionals who graduated from this institution are analysed. In the second half of the article, the graduates’ professional and community development related capacities to link diverse sources of academic and non-academic knowledge are empirically studied; finally their emergent political broker capabilities and community roles are explored.