Indigenous youth and narratives of schooling experiences at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of interceptions and complexities underlying homogeneizing categories such as “young indigenous students” in higher education, especially with respect to the indigenous presence in the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, Ajusco (UPN, Ajusco), in Mexico City, where the program of indigenous education – a visible mark of the ethnic at the university – has been in place since 1982. I draw on texts written by indigenous youth during a collective exercise to identify heterogeneities in their community affiliations, as well as in their manners of presenting and defining themselves. My analysis convenes some of the debates that permeate this field of study, including the use of the concept of migrant native to rural parts of the country, the way of characterizing the indigenous and the communities in cities and the meanings – under tension, for the youth – given to higher education. This implies placing on the agenda the understanding that these issues represent academic, social and political challenges to the transformation of multiethnic societies such as the ones in Latin America, as well as to the particular higher education institutions that receive an increasing number of indigenous students with diverse sociocultural, ethnic and linguistic affiliations.