Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico
by Tanalís Padilla
Duke University Press, 2021 Paper: 978-1-4780-1479-9 | Cloth: 978-1-4780-1386-0 | eISBN: 978-1-4780-2208-4 Library of Congress Classification LC5148.M45P236 2021
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK In the 1920s, Mexico established rural normales—boarding schools that trained teachers in a new nation-building project. Drawn from campesino ranks and meant to cultivate state allegiance, their graduates would facilitate land distribution, organize civic festivals, and promote hygiene campaigns. In Unintended Lessons of Revolution, Tanalís Padilla traces the history of the rural normales, showing how they became sites of radical politics. As Padilla demonstrates, the popular longings that drove the Mexican Revolution permeated these schools. By the 1930s, ideas about land reform, education for the poor, community leadership, and socialism shaped their institutional logic. Over the coming decades, the tensions between state consolidation and revolutionary justice produced a telling contradiction: the very schools meant to constitute a loyal citizenry became hubs of radicalization against a government that increasingly abandoned its commitment to social justice. Crafting a story of struggle and state repression, Padilla illuminates education's radical possibilities and the nature of political consciousness for youths whose changing identity—from campesinos, to students, to teachers—speaks to Mexico’s twentieth-century transformations.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Tanalís Padilla is Professor of History at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax-Priísta, 1940–1962, also published by Duke University Press.
REVIEWS
“Unintended Lessons of Revolution demonstrates that Mexico's rural normal schools may be the most durable legacy of the 1910 revolution. Rural schoolteachers in postrevolutionary Mexico served communities not only as instructors but also as community organizers, social workers, and secular confessors and pastors. Tanalís Padilla weaves together oral histories with local and national documentary evidence into an empirically rich study of how the rural normales endured as incubators of political radicalism despite their original purpose as instruments to co-opt resistance into the postrevolutionary regime.”
-- Jocelyn Olcott, Professor of History, Duke University
“This is a tremendously impressive study of the rural normal school, which became a vibrant locale of social mobility, cultural change, and political mobilization of student-teachers at various stages in Mexican political history. This book transcends the constricted scope of a narrow institutional study to throw new light on a series of larger questions concerning Mexico's legacy of revolution, its failed rural policies, and the explosion of unrest among rural teachers and activists. It is a pleasure to read.”
-- Brooke Larson, author of Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910
"Unintended Lessons of Revolution is a wonderful contribution to the rich historiography of agrarian history and student radicalism in Mexico."
-- Kevan Antonio Aguilar Journal of Social History
"Unintended Lessons of Revolution will be of particular interest to scholars of education, and especially its intersection with organized labor, statecraft, institutional dynamics, political consciousness, and revolutionary ideals. This book will also be useful for its narration of twentieth-century Mexican history through the lens of rural education."
-- Finn West Exertions
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xv Introduction: Ayotzinapa and the Legacy of Revolution 1 1. Normales, Education, and National Projects 23 2. A New Kind of School, a New Kind of Teacher 43 3. "And That's When the Main Blow Came" 68 4. Education at a Crossroads 99 5. "The Infinite Injustice Committed against Our Class Brothers 133 6. Learning in the Barricades 165 7. "A Crisis of Authority" 189 8. "That's How We'd Meet . . . Clandestinely with the Lights Off" 212 Epilogue: Education, Neoliberalism and Violence 241 Appendix: Sample Rural Normal Class Schedules 255 Notes 269 Bibliography 323 Index 343
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
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Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth-Century Mexico
by Tanalís Padilla
Duke University Press, 2021 Paper: 978-1-4780-1479-9 Cloth: 978-1-4780-1386-0 eISBN: 978-1-4780-2208-4
In the 1920s, Mexico established rural normales—boarding schools that trained teachers in a new nation-building project. Drawn from campesino ranks and meant to cultivate state allegiance, their graduates would facilitate land distribution, organize civic festivals, and promote hygiene campaigns. In Unintended Lessons of Revolution, Tanalís Padilla traces the history of the rural normales, showing how they became sites of radical politics. As Padilla demonstrates, the popular longings that drove the Mexican Revolution permeated these schools. By the 1930s, ideas about land reform, education for the poor, community leadership, and socialism shaped their institutional logic. Over the coming decades, the tensions between state consolidation and revolutionary justice produced a telling contradiction: the very schools meant to constitute a loyal citizenry became hubs of radicalization against a government that increasingly abandoned its commitment to social justice. Crafting a story of struggle and state repression, Padilla illuminates education's radical possibilities and the nature of political consciousness for youths whose changing identity—from campesinos, to students, to teachers—speaks to Mexico’s twentieth-century transformations.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Tanalís Padilla is Professor of History at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax-Priísta, 1940–1962, also published by Duke University Press.
REVIEWS
“Unintended Lessons of Revolution demonstrates that Mexico's rural normal schools may be the most durable legacy of the 1910 revolution. Rural schoolteachers in postrevolutionary Mexico served communities not only as instructors but also as community organizers, social workers, and secular confessors and pastors. Tanalís Padilla weaves together oral histories with local and national documentary evidence into an empirically rich study of how the rural normales endured as incubators of political radicalism despite their original purpose as instruments to co-opt resistance into the postrevolutionary regime.”
-- Jocelyn Olcott, Professor of History, Duke University
“This is a tremendously impressive study of the rural normal school, which became a vibrant locale of social mobility, cultural change, and political mobilization of student-teachers at various stages in Mexican political history. This book transcends the constricted scope of a narrow institutional study to throw new light on a series of larger questions concerning Mexico's legacy of revolution, its failed rural policies, and the explosion of unrest among rural teachers and activists. It is a pleasure to read.”
-- Brooke Larson, author of Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810–1910
"Unintended Lessons of Revolution is a wonderful contribution to the rich historiography of agrarian history and student radicalism in Mexico."
-- Kevan Antonio Aguilar Journal of Social History
"Unintended Lessons of Revolution will be of particular interest to scholars of education, and especially its intersection with organized labor, statecraft, institutional dynamics, political consciousness, and revolutionary ideals. This book will also be useful for its narration of twentieth-century Mexican history through the lens of rural education."
-- Finn West Exertions
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xv Introduction: Ayotzinapa and the Legacy of Revolution 1 1. Normales, Education, and National Projects 23 2. A New Kind of School, a New Kind of Teacher 43 3. "And That's When the Main Blow Came" 68 4. Education at a Crossroads 99 5. "The Infinite Injustice Committed against Our Class Brothers 133 6. Learning in the Barricades 165 7. "A Crisis of Authority" 189 8. "That's How We'd Meet . . . Clandestinely with the Lights Off" 212 Epilogue: Education, Neoliberalism and Violence 241 Appendix: Sample Rural Normal Class Schedules 255 Notes 269 Bibliography 323 Index 343
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE