By: Johana Estrada Soza

As part of the 25th year of the University of the Autonomous Regions of the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast (URACCAN), from the Las Minas university campus, the afternoon of Monday, July 22, the UNESCO Chair "Wisdom and Knowledge of the Peoples" was launched.

During the chair Dr. Francisco Tamarit of Argentina addressed the theme "The importance of CRES 2018 for intercultural education" through a master lecture, during the chair participated URACCAN authorities, PhD students in Intercultural Studies of Ecuador, Colombia and Nicaragua, teaching, administrative and student staff of the campus, as well as officials from the different institutions of the municipality.

The closing words were in charge of Professor Libio Palechor, PhD student in intercultural studies, who stated that "Indigenous peoples have suffered a persecution unleashed since the European invasion and at that event is that indigenous peoples lost many of the wisdoms, much of the knowledge, knowledge, techniques and ancestral technologies, fortunately not all of them lost, the capacity of our peoples allowed much of that knowledge that we claimed today to be kept from peoples, from our organizations from our universities," he emphasized.

Peoples' challenges

Similarly, he noted that the solution to many challenges that we as indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples face, is not since the Regional Conference on Higher Education (CRES-2018), but "the solution is in us as indigenous peoples, because we are the ones who have ancestral knowledge and that is where it is to be sought, because that is where ancestral knowledge is truly created and recreated" Said.

URACCAN University, in this collective walk that has been going on for 25 years, has joined forces to achieve the recognition of intercultural education and has pleasantly been recognized from UNESCO, as the student Palechor has stated in his speech, "and we are not mistaken when we chose URACCAN to be our mentor in that process that we have as indigenous and Afro peoples because today at 25 years of the life of URACCAN the relaunch of the this chair," he added.

Professor Libio's final message is that everyone from our spaces has the challenge of helping to ensure that the knowledge of our territories, of our indigenous peoples, are recognized as valuable for the education of this and future generations, struggling to understand our processes of recreation and knowledge building and wisdom

Thus, he concluded by saying that "We have the challenge of providing the world, humanity in self-destruction, that our models of life, our Good Living, Living Well, living with dignity are an option to prevent the disappearance of humanity, the disappearance of nature," he concluded.