Milestones and contributions of Latin American community engagement: Unresolved debates to build a Global South dialogue
Matías G. Flores (Cornell University, US), Romina Colacci (Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina), and Agustín Cano (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)
The discussion of university reform and its participation in liberation processes is not new for Latin American universities. Since the wars of independence in the 19th century, the emerging nations promoted the creation of universities that would break with the legacy of the colonial university and respond to the needs of the new national and modernizing projects. These "state-building" universities (Ordorika, 2013) developed as contradictory institutions in which democratizing movements and Latin American critical thinking coexisted with the hegemonic professionalist condition, functional to the needs of the national elites accommodated in their peripheral position in the capitalist world-system.
In this paper, we share the experience of Latin American community engagement that, in the twentieth century, disputed the structuring logic of elite universities to create "another possible university." We analyzed three crucial episodes in the history of community engagement, its advances, and its limits. We conclude by reflecting on the possibilities of continuing the engagement movement, but under new statements according to new challenges, opening a path for a global dialogue.
We understand community engagement [Footnote 1] as a disputed concept throughout history that can potentially host an ethical-political-pedagogical project that questions traditional university models. The analysis of the Latin American experience, usually absent in English-language university debates, invites us to go beyond particular experiences/programs, expanding our imagination and search for structural changes, accounting for a regional movement that continues to inspire university reform processes connected to societal transformation projects.
Reforma Universitaria, Córdoba, Argentina, 1918.
1. Three key milestones in the transformation of the Latin American university
The university reform movement had its fundamental milestone in Cordoba, Argentina, in 1918, inspiring the transformation of Latin American universities. The movement desacralized and broke with a clerical, elitist university model, where knowledge and education responded only to the demands of particular and sectorial interests; it introduced the concept of a democratic, co-governed university, with academic freedom and autonomy, and committed to the social problems of the population.
The need for an open university, in permanent dialogue with society, problematizing and participating in collective processes of social transformation, established community engagement as a mission in Argentine and Latin American universities. Their Manifiesto Liminar accounts for this break with colonialist models - "we have just broken the last chain..." (Federación Universitaria de Córdoba, 1918) - and a double process of resignification and politicization of the European community engagement movement.
The nascent Latin American student movement linked up with the workers' and peasants' movements to carry out its program of "university reform with social reform." They co-created "Universities of the People," a broad community engagement program aimed at training workers in different areas of the humanities, literature, science, and trades, implemented in several countries, for instance, in Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay (Centro Ariel, 1930).
In 1958, the Union of Latin American Universities (UDUAL) organized the First Latin American Conference on Community Engagement and Cultural Exchange in Chile. This meeting established a definition of community engagement and promoted the exchange of students and professors on the continent and collaboration with international organizations. This conference institutionalized community engagement at the continental level, consolidating the concept as part of the universities' mission. This First Conference stated the following:
"By its NATURE, community engagement is the mission and guiding function of the contemporary University, understood as the exercise of the university vocation. By its CONTENT AND PROCEDURES, community engagement is based on the philosophical, scientific, artistic, and technical studies and activities through which the problems, data, and cultural values in all social groups are auscultated, explored, and collected from the social, national, and universal contexts. By its PURPOSES, community engagement should propose, as fundamental goals, to project, dynamically and in a coordinated manner, culture and to link all people with the University. In addition to these purposes, community engagement should seek to stimulate social development, and raise the spiritual, moral, intellectual, and technical level of the Nation, proposing to the public opinion, impartially and objectively, the fundamental solutions to problems of general interest. Thus understood, the mission of community engagement is to project, in the widest possible way and in all spheres of the Nation, the knowledge, studies, and research of the University, to allow everyone to participate in the university culture, to contribute to social development and to elevate the spiritual, moral, intellectual and technical level of the people." (Universidad de Cuenca, 1958, 305).
The Second Round Table of Seasonal Schools [Escuelas de Temporada] was also held within this conference. These schools were examples of community engagement programs. For instance, to democratize universities, Seasonal Schools at Universidad de Chile offered courses to citizens during the summer without academic prerequisites. Founded by Chilean feminist Amanda Labarca in 1936, these programs were mainly used by women and students and professors participated from all over the Americas (Flores Gonzalez, 2023).
A third key episode was the Second Latin American Conference on Cultural Diffusion and Community Engagement, organized in Mexico in 1972 by UDUAL. Intellectuals and academics debated the distinction between community engagement and cultural diffusion and how these concepts related to the continent's social, political, and economic transformation in the context of the Cold War and liberation struggles in the Third World. The conference proposed the following definition:
"Community engagement is the interaction between the university and other components of the social body, through which it assumes and fulfills its commitment to participate in the process of creation of culture and liberation and radical transformation of the national community. The fundamental objectives of engagement are: 1- To contribute to creating a critical conscience in all social sectors to favor a true liberating change in society. 2- To contribute to all sectors to reach an integral and dynamic vision of man and the world, in the context of the historical-cultural reality and the social process of emancipation of Latin America. 3-To promote the critical review of the foundations of the university and the awareness of all its strata as an integrator of teaching and research, to carry out a unique and permanent process of cultural creation and social transformation. 4- To contribute to the dissemination and creation of modern scientific and technical concepts essential to achieve effective social transformation, while creating awareness of the dangers of scientific, cultural, and technological transfer when it is contrary to national interests and human values. Orientations: Community engagement shall: 1- Remain in solidarity linked to every process in society tending to abolish internal and external domination and the marginalization and exploitation of the popular sectors of societies. 2- To be stripped of all paternalistic and patronizing character, and at no time be a transmitter of the cultural patterns of the dominant groups. 3- To be planned, dynamic, systematic, interdisciplinary, permanent, mandatory, and coordinated with other social sectors that coincide with its objectives, and not only national but to promote integration in the Latin American sphere" (UDUAL, 1972, 478-483).
Influenced by Paulo Freire's thinking and Dependency Theory, the conference synthesized the main components of the critical tradition of Latin American community engagement: the commitment to marginalized sectors and the conception of the engagement as a pedagogical process, formulated from a broader movement that reinterpreted its history to project an anti-colonial and Latin Americanist horizon. In this context, the conference criticized the technology transfer model, the North American modernizer trend, and the limits of the institutionalized diffusion of culture.
In response, community engagement experiences emerged, organized as popular education processes in urban and rural areas, as well as programs that sought to link community engagement to the regular academic teaching of students. Examples of these experiences were the self-government movement of the School of Architecture of the UNAM in Mexico and the experience of Barrio Sur in Montevideo, Uruguay, among many others.
2. The limits and setbacks of the Latin American community engagement ethos
These three episodes contributed to the constitution of a Latin American community engagement ethos oriented towards knowledge democratization and social justice. However, this journey, fruitful in values, convictions, and achievements, faced reactions, restorations, and setbacks.
Along with its democratizing achievements, the community engagement movement had its own limits. The lack of dialogue with Indigenous Peoples, the marginalization of some engagement practices, and the difficulties in transforming the university structure limited the reformist movement of 1918. The invisibility of the actions and participation of women, who were already present as students and first graduates, stands out. The concept of community engagement of the 1958 Conference reproduced the idea that the university is the center of knowledge and the people of ignorance, where the university collects society's problems, projects culture, and offers solutions. Other more complex dissident voices, such as Amanda Labarca's idea of engagement as pedagogical work, were silenced at that event.
The orientations of the 1972 Conference, more aware of some of these limits, were, in general, neutralized by the cycle of military dictatorships and conservative restoration processes suffered by almost all Latin American countries in the 1970s (sometimes, even earlier). In some cases, the repressive phase was followed by conservative modernization imposed in an authoritarian manner. In the following decades, the hegemony of neoliberal policies promoted a "university counter-reform" (López Segrera, 2008), characterized by the marketization, privatization, and commercialization of higher education.
These processes, influenced by the Global North, changed the Latin American university tradition towards teaching individualistic professionals detached from social issues, research decontextualized from community problems or directly linked to corporations' interests, and the installation of a "World-Class" university model oriented by international rankings. Then, the Latin American community engagement ethos built throughout the 20th century was limited to a function of dissemination and knowledge transfer, reproducing civilizational and enlightened conceptions of the academy over peoples whose knowledge was ignored and whose subjugation was redoubled.
Still, in response to these trends, experiences of critical community engagement were developed.
3. Towards new possibilities for the future
There is no universal and uniform recipe to expand imagination and promote new structural changes in universities; it is necessary to be sensitive to each context and culture. The Latin American critical community engagement movement leads us to new questions at a time of uncertainty: What are the existing meanings, practices, and experiences in Latin American universities that can nurture alternative university projects?
From these historical roots, we now find meaning in the dispute over these possibilities for the future, which recreates the social commitment of our universities by expanding their spaces for transformative dialogue with society. In this direction, in recent years, a "critical community engagement" movement has sought to strengthen the link between universities and social movements, feminisms, and marginalized communities in urban and rural areas, to recreate their pedagogical importance for teaching students, and to direct research agendas, theories, methodologies, communication, and evaluation towards the problems of the marginalized sectors (ULEU, 2022; Filippi and Colacci, 2022; Medina and Tommasino, 2018).
This movement invites us to recover the statements of the ethos of the twentieth century, re-enacted today from new ethical-political inscriptions. In this position, we understand community engagement as an ethical/political university decision of participatory involvement, a tool for social transformation and educational action. We support social commitment based on the democratic and democratizing construction of knowledges in a dialogic way, with a priority commitment towards the subalternized sectors due to social, gender, racial, economic, cultural, and environmental inequalities.
To open disputed paths towards other possible epistemologies, erode systems, and filter the foundations of models presented as unique, eternal, and unbreakable, we must share and rethink the histories and critical traditions of community engagement in the Global South. This history and its current expression in the critical movement must be part of a new dialogue to democratize knowledge, seek global cognitive justice, and decolonize universities.
References
Centro Ariel (1930), Revista Ariel, N°40, pp. 1-2. Centro de Estudiantes Ariel, Montevideo. December 1930.
Dougnac, P. (2016). Una revisión del concepto anglosajón public engagement y su equivalencia funcional a los de extensión y vinculación con el medio. Pensamiento Educativo: Revista de Investigación Educacional Latinoamericana. https://doi.org/10.7764/PEL.53.2.2016.11
Federación Universitaria de Córdoba. (1918). Manifiesto Liminar https://www.unc.edu.ar/sobre-la-unc/manifiesto-liminar
Filippi Villar, J., & Colacci, R. (2022). Pliegues y despliegues de la extensión crítica: Aportes desde el acontecer feminista. Saberes Y prácticas. Revista De Filosofía Y Educación, 7(1), 1–11.
Flores Gonzalez, M. G. (2023). “We wanted to democratize the university” The history of Amanda Labarca’s university extension project [Master Thesis]. Cornell University.
López Segrera, Francisco (2008), «Tendencias de la educación superior en el mundo y en AméricaLatina y el Caribe», Avaliação, V. 13.
Medina, J. y Tommasino, H (2018) Extensión crítica: Construcción de una universidad en contexto: sistematización de experiencias de gestión y territorio de la Universidad Nacional de Rosario. Rosario: UNR Editora.
Ordorika, I. (2013), La universidad constructora de Estado, en: El siglo de la UNAM. Vertientes ideológicas ypolíticas del cambio institicional, México, UNAM.
UDUAL (1972) Memorias de la II Conferencia Latinoamericana de Difusión Cultural y Extensión de Universitaria de la UDUAL (February 20-26 1972, UNAM, México)
ULEU (2021) Declaratoria del XVI Congreso de La Unión Latinoamericana de Extensión Universitaria, Costa Rica, October 29, 2021.
Universidad de Cuenca. (1958). Resoluciones y ponencias aprobadas por la Primera Conferencia Latinoamericana de Extensión Universitaria e Intercambio Cultural. Revista Anales de La Universidad de Cuenca, 19(2–3), 303–314.
Footnote
[1] Community engagement is used here as a functionally equivalent concept of “extensión universitaria,” in Spanish (Dougnac, 2016).
**********************************************************************
Matias G. Flores was born in 1991 in Santiago, Chile. He studied Sociology at Universidad de Chile and is currently a Ph.D. student in Development Sociology at Cornell University. His academic trajectory is linked to social movements that have challenged the neoliberal policies in higher education and multiple inequalities in Chile. As an undergraduate student, he participated in the university student social movement and promoted community engagement projects based on participatory action research. After working in the Office of Community Engagement at Universidad de Chile, he started his MS/Ph.D. at Cornell University. There, he is developing an academic project which posits community engagement as a field of study. He works on three lines of research: the history of community engagement in Chile and Latin America, the sociology of community engagement, and the possibilities for a global dialogue on community engagement.
Romina Elizabeth Colacci was born in 1971 in Mar del Plata, Argentina. She studied Psychology at the School of Psychology at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. Since her youth, she has actively participated in Human Rights movements and the defense of Public Education in her country and Latin America. She has promoted programs that articulate undergraduate education with community engagement, research, and gender perspective. Her conviction that Higher Education is a social good and a Human Right led her to hold public positions and to promote actions that show the social commitment of universities to the historical, urgent, and pressing problems of subalternized sectors. Her academic activity is focused on teaching as Full Professor in undergraduate courses, Social and Community Practices, categorized researcher, and community engagement organizer. She participates in National and Latin American Critical Community Engagement Networks such as the Unión Latinoamericana de Extensión Universitaria (ULEU).
Agustín Cano Menoni was born in 1980, in Salto, Uruguay. Since his student days, he has combined academic work with social activism, seeking to understand the cultural and educational dimensions of social transformation processes and to strengthen the collective imagination and the construction of alternatives. He studied psychology, popular education, and pedagogy at universities in Uruguay, Italy, and Mexico. Since his student days, he joined community engagement groups, and since then, he has worked on developing experiences that connect the university with social problems and collective subjects in encounters that produce dialogue of knowledges and multiple learning. At Universidad de la República de Uruguay, he has researched, published, and coordinated courses on theoretical and methodological aspects of community engagement, participating in Latin American networks of critical community engagement such as the Unión Latinoamericana de Extensión Universitaria (ULEU).
Institutional Contexts: Matias G. Flores studies at Cornell University since 2020. Cornell University is a Land Grant University and a member of the Ivy League. Its main campus is located in the lands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ’ (Cayuga Nation). As a Land-Grant, Cornell was one of the institutions that benefitted the most from the Morrill Act, which signals the land dispossession from Indigenous Peoples. Cornell also has an active Community Engagement Center and has led important programs on citizen science and participatory action research.
Romina Colacci graduated in Psychology and is a Ph.D. Candidate in Social Sciences. She is a professor, researcher, and community engagement organizer. She is a Full Professor of the courses Instruments of Psychological Exploration II and an Adjunct Professor of Psychodiagnosis at the School of Psychology at Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata.(UNMDP). UNMDP is located in Mar del Plata, Argentina. It is a public university with free tuition, autonomous, co-governed, and open access to anyone who applies.
Agustín Cano Menoni works at Universidad de la República (Udelar). The University of the Republic is the largest public university in Uruguay. It has more than 135,000 undergraduate students. It was founded on July 18, 1849 in Montevideo, and currently has a presence in 14 departments of the country. The Universidad de la República is an autonomous entity (consecrated as such in the Constitution of the Republic), of a co-governed nature, which means the participation of all university students (the orders of students, graduates and teachers) in government decisions that affect the institution, in accordance with the Organic Law of the University, approved in 1958.
Snapshot Institutional Profile* (for comparative purposes as part of the broader project described below):
*Editors’ Note: The IPEDs database we have used for other profiles in this project is unfortunately limited to US institutions. The authors have kindly provided us with some comparative data on the Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata and Universidad de la República. Available comparative data is summarized here:
**********************************************************************
This entry is part of a Public Writing Project, Higher Education for the World We Need, co-edited by Eric Hartman, Shorna Allred, Jackline Oluoch-Aridi, Marisol Morales, and Ariana Huberman. Initial reflections in that writing project will be posted here, on the blog of the Community-based Global Learning Collaborative (The Collaborative). The Collaborative is a multi-institutional community of practice, network, and movement hosted in the Haverford College Center for Peace and Global Citizenship. The Collaborative advances ethical, critical, aspirationally decolonial community-based learning and research for more just, inclusive, sustainable communities.
Join us for, Stepping into the Work: Expanding understanding of global positionality, responsibility, and opportunity, a Collaborative gathering in partnership with the Global Engagement in the Liberal Arts Consortium at Haverford College, immediately outside of Philadelphia, November 10 and 11, 2023. Registration is open.