Cuba in Latin American and Caribbean academic integration

Abstract

In the Latin American and Caribbean region, the lack of a common space for knowledge continues to persist, which has a negative impact on university autonomy and tensions in state authority; inequalities and relations with countries in the north; the variety and contrast of education, characterized by gaps in social conditions and large differences between rural areas and cities. The failed attempts at regional integration and the lack of strategic vision, coordination and cooperation in the region depend in part on higher education, because it is responsible for producing and reproducing knowledge, and through research it can find answers to the serious regional problems that mark the greatest economic and social inequalities on the planet. The experiences of integration of Cuban higher education in the Latin American and Caribbean region have their origins in the very emergence of higher education in Cuba. The foundation of the University of Havana had the impact of the foundation of the first universities before the 20th century in the region, later of the University Reform of 1918, and later on the academic mobility for the training of professionals inside and outside the country, after the revolutionary triumph, the participation in the Regional Conferences of Higher Education, the development of the University Congresses, the participation in networks and associations and the collaboration in research and postgraduate programs and projects, supported by joint inter-institutional agreements with results for both Cuba and other countries.