The Centro Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC) was founded by Ivan Illich in 1965 as a higher education campus for development workers and missionaries. It was located in Cuernavaca (Mexico), at the Rancho Tetela.

In Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution, Illich writes that the intention of the school was to counteract a Papal command of 1960 which enjoined US and Canadian religious superiors to send 10% of their priests and nuns to South America. Illich was convinced that this project would do more harm than good. He intended the Centro to serve as a training station for such clergy and development workers, aiming to educate them about the negative effects of their development and education agenda. He called it "a center for de-Yankeefication" ^[1] The school also offered Spanish language courses. Illich credits Feodora Stancioff and Brother Gerry Morris as co-founders.

The center pursued a significant publication program in various formats: Dossiers, Sondeos, Documenta, etc. It also issued catalogues of its publications. The Centrum für Internationale Entwicklung in Vienna now holds the a comprehensive collection of publications from the center. This collection which was previously held by the Österreichisches Lateinamerika-Institut.

Paulo Freire was a regular guest at the Centro. Other visitors, students and staff include Valentina Borremans, Everett Gendler, Robert S. Leiken, Jean Robert [fr], Paul Goodman, John Mason Hart, Susan Sontag, Erich Fromm, Peter L. Berger, John Holt, Joel Spring, Carl Mitcham, Leo Gabriel [de], Augusto Salazar Bondy [es], André Gorz, Lini De Vries, Robert K. Logan, Sylvia Marcos, etc.