The nation in light of the region of the University of Nariño: intellectual production and representations in a generation of teachers

Abstract

Its regions, from the official historiography, are invisible; thus, the history of Colombia is viewed as, researched, and taught from a place assumed to be its academic, cultural, historic, and political center. Set against this fact, along with the political and historic-academic conditions of the 1970’s and 80’s, the teachers of Social Sciences at the University of Nariño, enabled the rise of an academic space that ruptured the national view, giving way to Regional discourse and enabling a regional voice to emerge. This voice rose from the University, a place of power –of science– and thereby socially recognizable as ‘the truth’. This powerful voice made the previously non-visible regions existent –not only to the central Government, but also to other regions and to the citizens of Nariño (Nariñenses), themselves, who became visible, viable, real and existent– a qualified ‘region’.