The IVIV Meeting of the Chair of Human Rights of the Asociación de Universidades del Grupo Montevideo (AUGM) took place in Argentina at the National University of Quilmes between October 27 and 29, 2024, with the participation of one of the authors of this article. The Association of Universities of the Montevideo Group was founded in 1991 to bring together public universities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay. There are currently 46 universities participating in the association.
The geographical proximity of the countries and universities, on the one hand, and the common characteristic of all being public universities, on the other, bring an interesting organicity to this network. These are the network’s goals, as described on its own institutional website:
“Strengthening relationships between students, faculty, and technical-administrative staff at member universities, promoting joint projects and enhancing the regional capacities of the higher education system. It also aims to boost scientific and technological research through international collaboration, improve university management, and encourage interaction with society to disseminate advances in knowledge that promote its modernization.”
To achieve these goals, the Association of Universities of the Montevideo Group (AUGM) is organized into different internal structures—committees, commissions, cores, and chairs—each with a specific working style. However, not all member universities participate in all structures.
AUGM offers USP’s academic community the possibility of an exchange program through the Escala Program, which allows students, teachers, and technical administrative staff to move between the association’s universities. This program is one of the foundations of the AUGM network, which offers vacancies in mutual numbers between the universities involved (which involves bilateral negotiation as to the number of vacancies to be offered).
For 2025, the vacancies are distributed among several universities: for teachers, there are vacancies at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and the Universidad de Buenos Aires. For undergraduate students, there are vacancies at the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, the Universidad Nacional del Noroeste de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, and the Universidad Nacional de Asunción, the latter for Exact and Natural Sciences students. For graduate students, there are vacancies available at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. The 2017/2024 call for graduate students was closed on November 13 on the Mundus system, and this is an example of what is being done through this partnership.
Another opportunity made possible by participating in AUGM is the CAPES-AUGM program, which had its first edition in 2024 and intends to reoccur for at least three more calls, which will be opened in 2025, 2026, and 2027. This partnership aims to select joint research projects to promote the training of people linked to the university community and, above all, scientific exchange between AUGM member universities (a proposing Brazilian university must be involved as a requirement). The goals include expanding cooperation between graduate programs, allowing teachers and researchers to move around, and creating research networks for joint publications, which are relevant for internationalization indicators in international rankings.
The support modalities include work missions (with travel, insurance, and per diem benefits) and fellowship grants, such as sandwich doctorate and postdoctoral programs for Brazilians abroad and sandwich master’s and doctoral programs and postdoctoral opportunities for foreigners in Brazil. The projects formulated must have a maximum duration of four years. The applicant must make applications in the Capes online system, following the rules and deadlines of the notice. The next call should come out sometime between June and July 2025, like the 2024 edition.
These two initiatives illustrate how USP’s participation in AUGM expands the opportunities for international academic cooperation in Latin America, providing more accessible international mobility because, in addition to significantly lower costs, the region is culturally and geographically close. This proximity allows for more horizontal academic relations and enriching exchanges, free from the hierarchies often present in collaborations with universities in Europe and the United States.
In addition to AUGM, USP also participates in the Latin American and Caribbean Universities Macro Network. This network brings together 37 public universities from 20 countries, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Since its founding in 2002, the network has advocated for principles such as the promotion of university autonomy, the guarantee of academic freedom, and the self-management of institutions. It also demands that states provide adequate funding for higher education, recognizing it as a social right.
The network brings together the so-called “macro-universities” of the region. They are characterized as “macro” because they stand out for their size, complexity, and academic impact. They are home to a large number of students, some of whom exceed 100,000, which represents a significant proportion of higher education enrollment in the region. In addition to their large scale, these universities offer courses and promote cutting-edge research in a wide range of areas of knowledge, including science, technology, social sciences, humanities, arts, and culture. Like USP, they are benchmarks in their countries and the region.
Finally, in addition to describing the networks of Latin American universities of which USP is a part, it is impossible not to mention the Interunit Postgraduate Program in Integration of Latin America – Prolam-USP, which is themed and, as its name implies, interunit, bringing together professors and graduate students from various USP units to study and produce knowledge about the Latin American reality in the social, economic, political, educational, and cultural fields. The program is distinguished by its comparative approach, focusing on themes common to different Latin American countries and promoting the training of researchers who are specialists in the region and regional integration processes.
Last year, between November 4 and 11, 2024, Prolam-USP organized the IV International Symposium Thinking and Rethinking Latin America and the II International Congress on Thought and Research on Latin America. The Prolam-USP event, now in its fourth edition, has contributed to boosting academic production in Latin America, not only at USP or other Brazilian universities but also among researchers from foreign universities, who come to the symposium to debate the most relevant issues in the region. Thus, the aim has been to promote a periodic meeting for intellectual exchange on Latin America’s challenges and prospects.
The University of São Paulo’s initiatives in its academic networks, such as AUGM and Red Macro, and also with Prolam, reaffirm its commitment to cooperation and advancing knowledge about Latin America. These actions contribute to strengthening scientific and academic production in the region and promote interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue. The expansion of international cooperation, exchange, and academic research with Latin American universities has the potential to significantly increase USP’s internationalization, creating a process of mutual support and strengthening between institutions, which would benefit the advancement of knowledge and the development of solutions to regional challenges, which are more similar than we usually recognize here in Brazil.
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English version: Nexus Traduções
