“Tejiendo comunicación intercultural: participación y organización entre pueblos originarios e institucionalidad en Bogotá, a través de la experiencia de las casas de pensamiento intercultural”.

Abstract

Within the Colombian educational system, tensions and dialogues emerge between hegemonic and alternative perspectives, which find in interculturality a point of both divergence and convergence. In this context, for those who have chosen to engage in the field of communication for development and social change, it becomes essential to understand the processes of organization and participation that have shaped relationships grounded in intercultural communication between service providers belonging to Indigenous peoples and institutional actors, within the framework of comprehensive early childhood care in Bogotá, through the experience of the Casas de Pensamiento Intercultural. Thus, by adopting the role of historical-critical interpreters, this study privileged a reading of realities and the construction of meaning within social contexts over classical and hegemonic notions of research. This approach implies an ethical and political engagement with the processes involved. Consequently, through coordinated participation in decision-making spaces known as mesas puente (bridge roundtables), these settings were approached as spaces for participant observation, grounded in a historical-hermeneutic methodology. This perspective broadened the understanding of interculturality, revealing that, at least in this experience, it is not a romantic narrative of integration but rather a field of forces where meanings are negotiated, interpretations are contested, and power relations are reconfigured. This was key to understanding the importance of de-idealizing the concept and, instead, embracing it as a situated, intentional, and ongoing political practice.