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Title: Cultural Politics in Revolution: Teachers, Peasants, and Schools in Mexico, 1930-1940 by Mary Kay Vaughan ISBN: 0-8165-1676-6 Publisher: University of Arizona Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Summary: Nation building through cultural politics
Comment: Mary Kay Vaughan examines post revolutionary Mexico and its goals of nation building and modernization in Cultural Politics in Revolution. As the title implicates, culture was (and still) is integral to nation building in Mexico. Vaughan examines the central role of the school in four rural areas, two in Puebla and two in Sonora. Using these four areas as examples, Vaughan is able to demonstrate that post revolutionary Mexico was able to nation build through hegemony between the state and the rural society, therein lies her thesis. The cultural achievements of the Mexican Revolution lie within its negotiated settlement between the government and the people. Each case study provides a different look on how negotiations between the state and peasants affected policies within each region and within Mexico. Using a post-revisionist look at the Mexican Revolution, Vaughan shows how cultural politics affected specific regions and how this was able to nationalize some of the Mexican people, but not all of them It is important to preface this review by stating that Mexico was a shattered state during and after the Revolution. Internal conflicts had marred the hope of building a strong centralized Mexico. In 1921, the Secretaria de Educacion Publica (referred to as the SEP) was created. The SEP established rural schools as venues for harnessing the spirit of rebellious peasants in the 1930s and '40s, therefore turning these schools into locations where the state could enact social change within each rural area (4). The SEP trained and sent out teachers to teach these rural villages lessons that were within the constraints of what the SEP wanted the Mexican people to know, including reading, writing, and basic skills. Each educator was responsible for learning about the village that he (and very rarely, she) taught in, so that he or she could report to the SEP on the state of the area. Traditional subjects were not the only part of the curriculum, the SEP intended to build nationalism through education, using teachers as their own personal agents. In many areas, these teachers became loyal to their villages, taking upon their shoulders the burdens of the community, in an attempt to express how the government could better suit the rural village. A relationship of negotiations developed between the government and the rural villages and teachers played a critical role in the hegemony created between peasant and government. It is important to realize that there were three stages involved in each negotiation: peasants to teacher, teacher to governor, and governor to central government. The teacher became the go-between for the people and the governor, while still educating the children of the village. The first rural area considered by Vaughan is Tecamachalco, Puebla. Tecamachalco's peasants had all been mestisized by the centuries of Spanish interaction (77). The people were dependant upon agriculture, so land reform had been a key issue to the peasants during the Revolution. Heated negotiations between the Tecamachalquenos and the government resulted in differing opinions on the role of school and culture. Literacy rates continued to drop from already low numbers. Education was in need, but what differed between these two butting heads was the amount of state interaction and intervention in the education given to the community. A school was eventually created, built through negotiations made between the community and the state. This school would not only become a place where the three R's were taught, but would be a place for the people to voice their concerns about agrarian reform. The SEP teachers were state agents and the people felt that if they were able to speak to the teachers, then perhaps their voices would be heard in the government. Their voices were heard. The negotiations of the 1930s for land reform and agricultural modernization found success in the 1940s (101). Improvements within the school in terms of material demands and within the community (in terms of industrialization of fruit trees) were now possibilities, not just hopeless demands. In this respect, Vaughan gives insight into the role that teachers played in this linkage. Teachers found themselves becoming more aligned with the needs of the community and less with the demands of the government, considering themselves the heart of the people. The rural villages were able to construct a school which reinforced a peasant disposition and community decision making, while integrating a national, civil society into the state building project of post revolutionary Mexico (101, 105). Zacapoaxtla, the second rural area examined by Vaughan, was much different from Tecamachalco. Zacapoaxtlans were a large indigenous population, more pious, and less concerned with agrarian reform than the Tecamachalquenos (107). But like Tecamachalco, negotiations between the state and the people surrounded and integrated the school. The Zacapoaxtlans wanted less state domination and the state wanted community initiated change within the area (107). Vaughan divided this area into three tiers, based upon their location (south, central and north). Each tier had its own demands from the state. Whereas the southern tier wanted tax exemption because their land was unproductive, the central, middle tier who was conservative, wanted protection from anti-clerical legislation, privatization of communal land, and Liberal troop levies (109). The northern tier, like the central tier, retained many more elites than the southern tier, so the goals of the community were built around what the elites demanded. Throughout the 1920s and '30s, the state was unable to gain much ground within Zacapoaxtla. Tensions between elites and villagers and elites and middle class families affected the negotiations between the state and the people. Socialist education had been adopted by the SEP, which entailed the teaching of subjects like reading through concepts of class struggle, exploitation, and surplus value (119). With such problems between classes, the teachers found themselves trying to stabilize a class warfare, negotiating between their goals and the goals of each class. Unfortunately, the elites used socialist education against the teachers, casting the SEP project as evil, which flared up Catholic resistence to the educators. What resulted was the death (by hacking) of three teachers and the destruction of a local school. Parents took their children out of classes and teachers no longer had students to teach. Vaughan suggests that in some of the villages in this area, the only way SEP teachers were allowed to continue was if they adjusted their teaching to fit more into what the community wanted and not what the government wanted, neglecting the give and take relationship that the government had attempted to build. The second state examined by Vaughan, Sonora, also had a difficult situation on its hands. Socialist educators feared that if they challenged the role of religion, the result would be a large scale rebellion (137). The Yaqui Indians of Sonora had been fierce in defending their valley from the state and capitalist developers (137). In the mid 1930s, negotiations began between the state and the Yaquis, worked toward giving the tribe more authority and more land while building schools and infrastructure which would transform their lives (138). Although it appears as if the government was handing autonomy to the tribe, this could not be further from the truth, if the government could get hold of the region through development and establishment of schools, negotiations between the Yaquis and the state would eventually result in national control of the region, eliminating their ability to revolt.
Highly literate (in fact the most literate of the four areas examined), the Yaquis had quite a few options on the reconstruction of their society upon negotiations between the tribe and the state. The Restorationists, a division within the tribe that became prevalent due to its support by the President, were empowered by Cardenas. However, the government saw the problem with the Yaquis as something that could be controlled through material goods, such as schools, land and economic resources, leading the state to believe that once the material goods were taken care of, the Yaquis would be fully integrated into Mexican society (151). Unlike the three other areas examined in Vaughan, the state had a much more difficult time trying to force patriotism and nationalism on these people. The SEP schools failed to draw in the Yaqui student. The teachers neglected the needs of the Yaqui student by not learning their language and not attempting to build relationships between the school and the community. What resulted was an agreement between the Yaquis and the central government that allowed the Yaqui Indians to maintain a separate identity in Mexico, as long as their identity did not interfere with the modernization of Mexico (157). In decades after the '30s and '40, the Yaquis have maintained a relationship based on recognizing the central government and many of
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