Disputed Territories. Higher Education in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca

Abstract

The “Licenciatura en Comunalidad can revitalize the community”, said Mariana, a young woman from Comitancillo, referring to way in which the project is helping communities to face the detonation and revitalization of territorial conflicts in the region of the Isthmus in which the neoliberal geopolitics faces the indigenous historical demands for autonomy. These conflicts are generated by the installation of wind farms, mining concessions, the decree of the Special Economic Zones, and the still in definition Program of Integral Development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. In this sense, this article analyses how Higher Education as an ethnopolitical project —the “Licenciatura en Comunalidad” as a particular case— inserts itself in the territorial geopolitics, triggering new processes of reflection and networking that can represent a reinvention of communities, strengthening the defense of territories, the right to self-determination and the re-existence of the Indigenous communities in their projects and dreams of future. This article is framed in the research project: “Intercultural Policies in Higher Education in Oaxaca: Ethnopolitical Educational Projects” carried out from the “Cátedras Conacyt” project in CIESAS South Pacific.