Church And State Education In Revolutionary Mexico City

Revolution in Mexico sought to subordinate church to state and push the church out of public life. Nevertheless, state and church shared a concern for the nation's social problems. Until the breakdown of church-state cooperation in 1926, they ignored the political chasm separating them to address those problems through education in order to instill in citizens a new sense of patriotism, a strong work ethic, and adherence to traditional gender roles. This book examines primary, vocational, private, and parochial education in Mexico City from 1917 to 1926 and shows how it was affected by the relations between the revolutionary state and the Roman Catholic Church. One of the first books to look at revolutionary programs in the capital immediately after the Revolution, it shows how government social reform and Catholic social action overlapped and identifies clear points of convergence while also offering vivid descriptions of everyday life in revolutionary Mexico City. Comparing curricula and practice in Catholic and public schools, Patience Schell describes scandals and successes in classrooms throughout Mexico City. Her re-creation of day-to-day schooling shows how teachers, inspectors, volunteers, and priests, even while facing material shortages, struggled to educate Mexico City's residents out of a conviction that they were transforming society. She also reviews broader federal and Catholic social action programs such as films, unionization projects, and libraries that sought to instill a new morality in the working class. Finally, she situates education among larger issues that eventually divided church and state and examines the impact of the restrictions placed on Catholic education in 1926. Schell sheds new light on the common cause between revolutionary state education and Catholic tradition and provides new insight into the wider issue of the relationship between the revolutionary state and civil society. As the presidency of Vicente Fox revives questions of church involvement in Mexican public life, her study provides a solid foundation for understanding the tenor and tenure of that age-old relationship.

Revolution in Mexico sought to subordinate church to state and push the church out of public life. Nevertheless, state and church shared a concern for the nation's social problems. Until the breakdown of church-state cooperation in 1926, they ignored the political chasm separating them to address those problems through education in order to instill in citizens a new sense of patriotism, a strong work ethic, and adherence to traditional gender roles. This book examines primary, vocational, private, and parochial education in Mexico City from 1917 to 1926 and shows how it was affected by the relations between the revolutionary state and the Roman Catholic Church. One of the first books to look at revolutionary programs in the capital immediately after the Revolution, it shows how government social reform and Catholic social action overlapped and identifies clear points of convergence while also offering vivid descriptions of everyday life in revolutionary Mexico City. Comparing curricula and practice in Catholic and public schools, Patience Schell describes scandals and successes in classrooms throughout Mexico City. Her re-creation of day-to-day schooling shows how teachers, inspectors, volunteers, and priests, even while facing material shortages, struggled to educate Mexico City's residents out of a conviction that they were transforming society. She also reviews broader federal and Catholic social action programs such as films, unionization projects, and libraries that sought to instill a new morality in the working class. Finally, she situates education among larger issues that eventually divided church and state and examines the impact of the restrictions placed on Catholic education in 1926. Schell sheds new light on the common cause between revolutionary state education and Catholic tradition and provides new insight into the wider issue of the relationship between the revolutionary state and civil society. As the presidency of Vicente Fox revives questions of church involvement in Mexican public life, her study provides a solid foundation for understanding the tenor and tenure of that age-old relationship.

MEXICO- A Revolution by Education by George I. Sanchez. Originally published in 1936. FOREWORD BY RAFAEL: The Julius Rosenwald Fund has on different occasions shown an interest in the educational and racial problems not only of its own country but also of the world as a whole. In 1935, it had the happy thought of studying the new school movement in Mexico in situ and of investigating the manner in which this countrys revolutionary governments have been removing obstacles in an attempt to secure some measure of social and economic progress for that immense majority of its population that has been living in extreme misery and ignorance. Mexico has long been a source of preoccupation to the American people. Our cultural backwardness has bothered them and, possibly because of that, they have in the past thought of us as barbarous. Our revolutions have disturbed them and they have, therefore, thought of my country as dis orderly and turbulent. Our campaigns against religious fa naticism have irritated them and, for this reason, it has been said that we are heretics. Our efforts to bring about a more equitable distribution of wealth have aroused indignation and the opinion has been expressed that Mexico is headed towards communism. Many other misconceptions concerning my coun try are widespread in the American Union. Because of that, when a responsible institution decides to make a conscientious investigation as to the true situation in Mexico, we can only congratulate ourselves and look with sympathy and interest upon the development of its study. The Julius Rosenwald Fund could not have done better vi Foreword than to choose Dr. George I. Sanchez to make the investiga tion. A distinguished educator, of wide general culture and of a solid professional preparation, Dr. Sanchez is also a man of penetrating social vision and of an enormous capacity for work. With a good command of the Spanish language, an understanding of our race, and a comprehension of our social phenomena, Dr. Sanchez was able to penetrate to the very soul of our people. In my long professional life I have met and known other American educators who have come with the purpose of studying the social and educational development of my coun try. They travel through the nation during two or three weeks too often in the manner of tourists, always over paved highways. They visit schools and villages along the edge of the road and talk chiefly with people of their own nationality or attempt to learn of Mexican life and institutions through the thick veil of interpreters. Returning to their country they feel satisfied with their studies and prepare now a book, now a bulletin, or at least two or three magazine articles describ ing what they call the social and educational reality of my country. I do not deny that they say many amiable things that are full of sympathy. I do doubt that through a visit made on the trot they have been able to acquire a full and clear vision of Mexican life. Mexico A Revolution by Education, the book in which Dr. Sanchez gathers his observations and formulates his judgments about Mexico, has been developed in another man ner. In the first place, his study covered more than half a year and followed a number of earlier visits to Mexico by him and other officers of the Rosenwald Fund. In the second place, he did not travel only over paved roads nor did he visit only two or three schools, but he travelled in all directions through the valleys, in the mountains, in the forests, and, in Foreword vii general, through all of those corners where there was some thing new to see or something typical to study. He rode on mules rather than in automobiles, and he lived for weeks at a time in the homes of the paisanos in the little villages...

Why did the Zapatista rebellion occur in Chiapas and not in some other state in southern Mexico where impoverished, marginalized indigenous peasants also suffer a legacy of exploitation and repression? Stephen Lewis believes the answers can be found in the 1920s and 1930s. During those critical years, Mexico's most important state- and nation-building agent, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), struggled to introduce the reforms and institutions of the Mexican revolution in Chiapas. In 1934 the administration of president Lázaro Cárdenas endorsed "socialist" education, turning federal teachers into federal labor inspectors and promoters of agrarian reform. Teachers also attempted to "incorporate" indigenous populations and forge a more sober, "defanaticized" nationalist citizenry. SEP activism won over most mestizo communities after 1935, but enraged local ranchers, planters, and politicians unwilling to abide by the federal blueprint. In the Maya highlands, federal education was a more categorical failure and Cardenista Indian policy had unintended, even sinister consequences. By 1940 Cardenismo and SEP populism were in full retreat, even as mestizo communities came to embrace the culture of schooling and identify with the Mexican nation. Fifty years later, the delayed, incomplete, and corrupted nature of state- and nation-building in Chiapas prevented resolution of the state's most pressing problems. As Lewis concludes, the Zapatistas appropriated the federal government's discarded revolutionary nationalist discourse in 1994 and launched a rebellion that challenged the Mexican state to contemplate a plural, multi-ethnic nation.

While Mexico's spiritual history after the 1910 Revolution is often essentialized as a church-state power struggle, this book reveals the complexity of interactions between revolution and religion. Looking at anticlericalism, indigenous cults and Catholic pilgrimage, these authors reveal that the Revolution was a period of genuine religious change, as well as social upheaval.

"Innovative study of the cultural legacy of the Mexican Revolution, using the story of rural schools. Focuses on Puebla and Sonora and the attempt by the central government to implement socialist education and to advance its nationalist agenda. Stresses the importance of negotiation among national and local leaders, teachers and peasants"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Integrates gender and sexuality into the main currents of historical interpretation concerning Latin America.