Amidst exclusion, promise, and violence: rural normal school students in Mexico and the disappearance of 43

ABSTRACT

On 26 and 27 September 2014, 43 students from the “Profesor Isidro Burgos” Rural Normal School in Ayotzinapa, Guerrero, Mexico, disappeared, and six people died. In this article, I analyse the event as the result of long-term historical processes, from the perspective of the social mobilisation that caused the students’ disappearance on the one hand, and from the history of rural normal schools on the other. The starting point is to relocate political history within the history of education in order to understand the agency of political actors in the definition of educational processes, and the questioning of the reciprocal relations of school and state. The study is based on widely diverse sources: official documents from schools, statistics, news items from newspapers and social networks, and observations of the mobilisations of 2014. The disappearance of the 43 rural normal students is the result of a long process of abandonment in the countryside, of discrimination against young people of rural origin and Indians, all in the framework of a process of state dismantling which places teachers and normal students in positions of severe vulnerability.

KEYWORDS:

• Rural normal schools
• disappearance of rural normal school students
• social movements in Mexico
• student movements in Mexico

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Francie R. Chassen-López, “War, Nation and Gender: women from Oaxaca in the Three Year War,” in Mexico during the Reform War. Contexts and cultural, imaginary and representational practices, vol. 2, ed. Celia del Palacio Montiel (Xalapa: Veracruz University, 2011), 97–137; Francie R. Chassen-López, “The daughters of Oaxaca: liberal women in the War of Reform and the French Intervention, 1857–1867,” in Oaxaca City. Past, present and future, vol. 1, ed. Carlos Sánchez Silva (Oaxaca: Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca, 206), 265–95.

² Information on the events in Iguala and the investigations continue to be provided in the media. The main newspapers have been La Jornadaand El Universal, and on the Internet, Regeneración, Revolución Tres punto Cero, and Sin embargo. The Proceso magazine has followed up in a timely manner, especially in the issue dated June 14, 2015..f June 14,tatal, y la apertura Educativas, Cinvestav, Sede Sur.

³ The number of missing citizens from 2006 to 2013 varies from 20,000 to 25,000 (Human Rights Watch, “Mexico’s Disappeared: The Enduring Cost of a Crisis Ignored” (2013)) and up to 300,000 (San Juana Martínez, “300 thousand and counting,” Sin embargo (2013), http://www.sinembargo.mx/opinion/25-02-2013/12797 (accessed July 10, 2018).The number of murder victims from 2007 to 2014 ranges between 100,000 and 164,000. See Jason M. Breslow, “The Staggering Death Toll of Mexico’s Drug War” (2015), https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-staggering-death-toll-of-mexicos-drug-war/ (accessed July 10, 2018).

⁴ I appreciate the support of Verónica Arellano, research assistant at DIE-Cinvestav, in compiling the information for this article.

⁵ James Scott, The Dominated and the art of Resistance (Mexico: Era, 2000).

⁶ In this study, I have emphasised the participation of agents in the daily construction of school culture, while viewing school as a political arena in which individuals have and construct various capacities of agency. It is thus a political analysis of education and schools. During recent decades, the history of education has been strongly influenced by social history, which has generated great wealth in the field. However, some processes were relegated, such as student and teachers’ movements, and the direct use of the state’s force in the definition of work at school. It is important to reintroduce this political sphere in the history of education, without returning to classical political history, but by viewing the relations between school and state from a perspective of social and cultural history and broad conceptions of politics. This permits, on one hand, a comprehension of the school’s location within the changes in the conformation of the nation-state in a global and digital era. On the other hand, it is a reminder of the active role of agents in the construction of historical processes. (For a more complete elaboration of this proposal, Alicia Civera, “Books on rural education in Mexico published in the new century: an overall review”, in Mexican Council for Education Research, States of Knowledge, History and Historiography of Education in Mexico. Towards a balance, 2002-2012, vol. 9, (Mexico, ANUIES, 2016) 249-72; and Alicia Civera, “Between today and yesterday: history of education and internationalisation processes in the global era. Some thoughts.” in José Gondra, Maria Cristina Gomes Machado and Regina Helena Silva Simões (Eds.). História Da Educacao Matrizes Interpretativas e internacionalizacao. Sociedad Brasileira de História da Educacao Universidades Federal Do Espirito Santo, vol. 13, (2017) 119-43.

⁷ OCDE, Panorama of Education 2013. OCDE Indicators (Spanish Government and Santillana, 2013), http://aristeguinoticias.com/2506/mexico/suman-mas-de-7-millones-de-ninis-en-mexico-ocde/  (accessed March 5, 2018).

⁸ Carlos Illades, Conflict, domination and violence (Mexico: Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, 2015).

⁹ Nini: the term in Spanish used to refer to the sector of young people who neither work nor attend school. See Eva Arceo and Raymundo Campos, “Who are the ninis in Mexico?,” CIDE Work Documents 524 (2011), http://repositorio-digital.cide.edu/handle/11651/930  (accessed July 10, 2018).

¹⁰ OCDE, Panorama of society 2016. A close-up of young people. The situation in Mexico (2016), https://www.oecd.org/mexico/sag2016-mexico.pdf (accessed July 10, 2018)x.

¹¹ Even more than in the student movement of 1968, since access to a university education amongst the lower classes has increased greatly in recent years. The movement’s capacity of communication and organisation was visible in the earthquake of 19 September 2017, as these former students were the first to attend to affected citizens and buildings by means of donation centres and brigades organised by civil society. See Roberto González, The #I am 132 movement, chronicles of the masses (Mexico: Terracota, 2013).

¹² Coneval, Considerations for the budgetary process (México: Coneval, 2015).

¹³ International Migration Organisation (IMO), World migration report 2015. Migrants and cities. New partnerships to manage mobility (Switzerland: OIM, 2015).

¹⁴ See Mathieu Tourliere, “The number of Mexican migrants to the U.S. increases to more than 12 million,” Proceso, August 13, 2015, https://www.proceso.com.mx/412874/crece-a-mas-de-12-millones-la-cifra-de-migrantes-mexicanos-en-eu (accessed July 10, 2018); and Mathieu Tourliere, “The opium children,” El Universal, July 13, 2015. http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/articulo/estados/2015/07/13/los-ninos-del-opio-en-guerrero#imagen-1 (accessed July 10, 2018).

¹⁵ For information on community police, see Jesús Ramírez, “Community police, self-defense and paramilitary groups,” Regeneracion, January 15, 2014,https://regeneracion.mx/policias-comunitarios-grupos-de-autodefensa-y-paramilitares/  (accessed July 10, 2018).

¹⁶ Coneval, Considerations for the budgetary process. (México: Coneval, 2015).

¹⁷ Adolfo Sánchez, “Opinion: Guerrero, the never ending tragedy,” La Jornada, January 22, 2015.

¹⁸ Paul Gillingham, “Ambiguous Missionaries: Rural Teachers and State Facades in Guerrero, 1930–1950,” Mexican Studies 22, no. 2 (2006): 331–60; Carlos Illades, Conflict, domination and violence (Mexico: Metropolitan Autonomous University, 2015); Alicia Civera, (2010b), “Citizen practices in Mexican schools during the Second World War: a case study” Educação em Foco. Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, (March- August,  Brazil): 33-58. From http://www.ufjf.br/revistaedufoco/edicoes-anteriores/ano-2010/nacao-e-cidadania-abordagens-em-historia-da-educacao-na-america-latina/ (accessed July 10, 2018).

¹⁹ Alberto Arnaut, History of a profession: primary school teachers in Mexico (Mexico: SEP, 1998).

²⁰ Carlos Ornelas, “The SNTE, Elba Esther Gordillo and the Calderon government,” Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa 13, no. 37 (2008): 445–69.

²¹ A good source for follow-up on the educational reform is the journal Educación Futura, http://www.educacionfutura.org/.

²² Oficial Federal Gazette (DOF), Teaching School Service Act (Mexico, 2013); DOF, General Education Act (Mexico, 2013).

²³ Although we refer to teacher dissidence in general, it is necessary to point out that various groups exist, with different objectives, forms of organisation, and tactics of struggle. We mark our distance from government expressions that catalogue the teachers’ movement as “radical”, an adjective almost always associated with corruption, violence, and intransigence.

²⁴ César Navarro, ed., The hijacking of education. The six year education term of Elba Esther Gordillo and Felipe Calderón (Mexico: La Jornada ediciones, 2011).

²⁵ A few days after the disappearance of the 43 students, a news report revealed the value of a mansion belonging to President Peña Nieto’s wife. Her public explanation generated widespread rejection in social networks and in street protests, due to her lack of sensitivity toward poverty.

²⁶ Scott, The Dominated.

²⁷ Alicia Civera, Juan Alfonseca, and Carlos Escalante, (Eds.) Peasants and school children. Building schools in the Latin American countryside (nineteenth and twentieth century), (Mexico, State of Mexico College, 2011); and Lucía Lionetti, Alicia Civera and Flavia Werle, (Eds.) Subjects, rural communities and school cultures in Latin America. (Argentina: Pro-historia-State of Michoacan College-State of Mexico College, 2013).

²⁸ Alicia Civera, “Co-education in the formation of rural teachers in Mexico, 1934-1944”, in Revista Mexicana de Investigación Educativa, vol. XI, núm. 28; (2006a): 269-91; Alicia Civera, “Boarding school as family: the Normal rural schools in the 1920’s”, Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Educativos, vol. XXXVI, núms. 3 and 4, (2006b):53-73; and Alicia Civera, School as a life option: the formation of normalist rural teachers in Mexico, 1921-1945, (Mexico: El Colegio Mexiquense, 2008). Available in: http://www.cmq.edu.mx/images/stories/libro-e/escuelacomoopcion/escuelacomoopcion.pdf

²⁹ The Banco Nacional de Crédito Ejidal was the principal bank to offer credit to the ejdatarios, those peasants who benefited from the agrarian reform.

³⁰ Alicia Civera. “School...”, (2008). Alicia Civera, “The integral reform of Mexican rural land through the Rural Post-Revolutionary school: the relevance of agricultural teachings and the cooperative movement, 1921-1945”, in Civera A., J. Alfonseca y C. Escalante (Eds.), 2011a):303-348; Secretary of Public Education (SEP), Regional Peasant Schools (Mexico: SEP, 1940); Marcelo Hernández, “The central agricultural school. Founding moment of the Luis Villarreal Rural Normal School,” in Report of the VI Ibero-American Congress of History of Latin American Education, ed. Panel Cultura Magisterial (Mexico: San Luis College, 2003); Engracia Loyo, “Schools or businesses. The agricultural centres and the peasant regionals (1926–1934),” Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos 20, no. 1 (2004): 69–98; Sonia Reynaga, “Approach to a school institution: the Roque Higher Institute of Farming Technological Education, Celaya, Guanajuato” (PhD thesis, Educational Research Department, Cinvestav, 1991); Manuela Sepúlveda, “Education policy and rural schools in the 1930’s. The case of Regional Peasant Schools in 1936” (PhD thesis, National Institute of Anthropology and History, México, 1976). Similar institutions were opened in Argentina and Brazil, but without the strong link that Mexico’s schools had with agrarian reform and the process of conforming to a revolutionary state. For the case of Argentina and Brazil, see María Rosa Brumat, “The formation of rural teachers in Córdoba: a historic view” (PhD thesis, National University of Córdoba, 2012); Lucía Lionetti, Alicia Civera and Flavia Werle (Eds.), (2013); and Alicia Civera, Juan Alfonseca, and Carlos Escalante, (Eds.), (2011) 303-48. 

³¹ Until the 1990s, communal land or ejidos were different under legal statute from those of land ownership. Ejidos could not be bought or sold, but could be inherited by family members (if the ejido was individual, since collective ejidos also exist). When passed from generation to generation, the plots became smaller in size.

³² Alicia Civera. La coeducación…, (2006a) 269-91.

³³ Susana Quintanilla and Mary Kay Vaughan, eds., Escuela y sociedad en el periodo cardenista (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997). The documents in SEP’s historical archives (AHSEP) have been the basic source of information from the 1920s to 1960s. The primary research can be seen in Alicia Civera, “School…”, (2008).

³⁴ Alicia Civera, School ... (2008); S.M. Rodríguez and R. García, “El Estado mexicano y las reformas educativas en las Normales Rurales en el periodo avilacamachista” (Thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1982).

³⁵ See Alicia Civera, “Women, school and life options: the female rural normalista students in Mexico in the 1950’s”, Revista electrónica de la Asociación Española de Americanistas (4), (2010a): Taken from:  http://revistas.um.es/navegamerica/article/view/99841 (accessed july 4, 2018); Gregorio de Jesús Hernández, Rural normal culture in Chiapas. Origin, development and crisis (Mexico: Comercializadora de Impresos, 2004); Sergio Ortiz, Between nostalgia and uncertainty. Student movement in Mexican normal rural culture (Mexico: Autonomous University of Zacatecas, 2012); and Evangelina Terán, “From boarding school to marching. Routines and political participation of female students from the Normal Rural Justo Sierra Méndez in Cañada Honda, Aguascalientes, 1939–2009” (PhD thesis, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, 2009).

³⁶ María de Ibarrola, “The formation of basic education teachers in the twentieth century,” in A century of education in Mexico, vol. 2, ed. Pablo Latapí (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999), 230–75.

³⁷ Alicia Civera, “Women, …”, (2010a); Alicia Civera, “Between the state cooperative movement and the redemption of the poor: the rural normalistas in Mexico, 1921-1969”, Prismas, vol. 17, núm. 2, (2013):199-205. Available in: http://www.redalyc.org:9081/articulo.oa?id=387036832009(accessed July 10, 2018); Samuel Salinas and Carlos Imaz, “III. Ideological, academic and political formation,” in Teachers and the State, vol. 1 (Mexico: Autonomous University of Guerrero and Autonomous University of Zacatecas, 1984): 83–105; Tanalís Padilla, “The normal rural schools in Mexico” (paper presented at the V International Mexican Women and Gender History Colloquium, Mexico, March 18–20, 2010); Chassen-López, “The daughters of Oaxaca”.

³⁸ For this second stage, information has been obtained from AHSEP, interviews, and secondary sources: Alicia Civera, School…, (2008); Alicia Civera,“Women,… (2010a); Alicia Civera, “Between the state cooperative….”, (2013); Ortiz, Between nostalgia; Aleida García, “Normalists and teachers in the peasant and guerrilla movement in Chihuahua, 1960–1968” (Masters thesis, Education Research Departament -Cinvestav, 2012); Hernández, The Normalist culture; Marcelo Hernández, Times of Reform: students, teachers and authorities faced with the education reforms in the San Marcos ENR, 1926–1984 (Mexico: Autonomous University of Zacatecas/National Pedagogical University, 2014).

³⁹ The geographical location of the rural normal schools was of interest for the corporatist construction of the state. The schools functioned as institutions for forming political groups related to the agrarian movement, electoral processes, the educational bureaucracy, and the teachers’ union. This important aspect has been the object of little study. See, for example, García, “Normalistas”; and Chassen-López, “Las hijas de Oaxaca”.

⁴⁰ Here I turn primarily to La Jornada, Contralínea, and videos the rural normal school students have uploaded to social networks.

⁴¹ In 1993, compulsory education was expanded to include one year of preschool, six years of elementary school, and three years of junior high school. The law of 2013 established the following three years of high school as compulsory.

⁴² Felipe Martínez Rizo, “Las políticas educativas mexicanas antes y después de 2001,” Revista Iberoamericana de Educación 27, (Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos, 2001): 35–56.

⁴³ Giorgio Agamben, “State of exception,” Editorial Pre-Textos (2003); Will G. Pansters, Violence, Coercion, and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Other Half of the Centaur (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); and Alicia Civera, “Books…”, (2016).

⁴⁴ I attempt only to explain the strategy, not justify it.

⁴⁵ Agamben, “State of Exception”.

⁴⁶ National Institute of Education Evaluation, Teachers in Mexico. Report 2015 (México: INEE, 2015); DOF, (DOF), Teaching School Service Act (Mexico, 2013); DOF, General Education Act (Mexico, 2013).

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Alicia Civera Cerecedo

Alicia Civera Cerecedo is a researcher at the Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas (DIE, Cinvestav, México). Her research focuses on history of rural education, teachers’ practice and training, education politics, and education and gender in México and Latin America. Her numerous publications include: School as a Life Option: Rural Teacher Training in Mexico 1921–1945 (México: El Colegio Mexiquense, 2008); Between Furrows and Letters: Education for Peasants in the 1930s (2003); a volume coedited with J. Alfonseca and C. Escalante, Peasants and Pupils: The Construction of the School in the Latin American Countryside, XIX and XX Centuries (México: El Colegio Mexiquense, 2011); as well as a volume coedited with Lucía Lionetti and Flavia Werle, Subjects, Rural Communities and School Cultures in Latin America (Argentina: Pro-historia-El Colegio de Michoacán-El Colegio Mexiquense, 2013). She has been Vocal, Vicepresident, and Academic Secretary of the Mexican Society of History of Education, and has been founder and Editor in Chief of the Revista Mexicana de Historia de la Educación.