This article reflects on intercultural bilingual education in indigenous as part of a wider debate on multi-and intercultural policies implemented in Latin America in the last two decades of the twentieth century. On having conceived the multiculturalism as significant, it is argued that bilingual intercultural education assumes contents and specific forms according to the perspective (official or critique) from which it is constructed, assisted on the one hand, a process of formalization and rhetoricalization of the interculturalidad functionally to the neoliberal hegemonic system, and, on the other, the emergence of educational alternatives proposed by indigenous organizations, that, since it is the case of the Teachers' Union of the New Education for Mexico (UNEM) and independent educators in Chiapas, emphasize valuing of social and cultural characteristics as a starting point for intercultural articulation and contrast with others.

Interculturalism, intercultural bilingual education.