ABSTRACT
A series of events have popularized in the last three decades the idea of multiculturalism. There are many approaches and theoretical elaborations about the intercultural dialogue. However, we are still exposed to permanent cultural confrontation and a new wave of racism is emerging everywhere. We need to acknowledge that we all have been educated in the conviction that we all are “humans” and thus have been formatted in the universalism inherent in the assumption of a unilinear path of people and societies. For my generation, it was not easy to acknowledge the radical otherness of the other…and to learn how to deal with it. In this chapter I am bringing together an old campesino, the most prestigious agronomist and botanist in Mexico and Norman Borlaug, the scientific leader of the Green Revolution. It shows worlds that cannot hold a dialogue, given the radically different knowledge systems in which they are immersed. It is based on public debates and essays in the 1980s.
