Purpose:

To analyze the “footprints” Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy has left in intercultural higher education. As empirical referents, two multilingual indigenous regions in Latin America were chosen, the Cauca region in Colombia and the state of Veracruz in Mexico. The cases of Universidad Autónoma Indígena Intercultural (UAIIN) in Colombia and Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural (UVI) in Mexico are analyzed and compared.

Methodological design:

Based on empirical data built through collaborative ethnographies and expanded through the analysis of founding documents of both institutions, the political-pedagogical concepts, and methods that the imprint which the Freirean proposal has left on the founders and protagonists of the institutions of higher education studied here, are analized and contrasted.

Results:

The emergence of an innovation triangle is identified and which is composed of (1) a community-rooted indigenous education (defined by their own actors as educación propia (self-education)), (2) the Freirean legacy, educación popular (popular education) and (3) bilingual and intercultural education promoted by academic and governmental actors.

Research limitations:

Our research is limited to two case studies.

Findings:

This triangulation of diverse, but entangled threats of alternative education illustrates how such bottom-up universities succeed in providing so-called “quality education” -in the sense of inclusive and equitable education, critical literacy and community empowerment opportunities, all of them considered part of the Sustainable Development Goal 4.