Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T02:10:54.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Universidad Popular Mexicana

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

John S. Innes*
Affiliation:
Eastern Washington State College, Cheney, Washington

Extract

During the early, most chaotic years of the Mexican Revolution, there flourished in the capital city a briefly successful communication between the young intellectual elite and the workers. In the Universidad Popular Mexicana from 1913 through 1922, intellectual leaders of the Generation of 1910 sought eagerly to instill in the popular classes not only immediately practical knowledge but also the signal intellectual awakening they themselves had recently experienced. Their revolution against positivism was not precisely identical with the political revolution beginning in 1910, but insofar as the official positivist doctrine was discredited, so was the old regime itself fatally undermined.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1973

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 “El sentido humanista de la Revolucion Mexicana,” in Caso, Antonio, et al., Conferencias del Ateneo de la Juventud, ed. Luna, Juan Hernández (México: Univer-sidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1962), p. 172.Google Scholar

2 Millón, Robert P., Mexican Marxist: Vicente Lombardo Toledano (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 1966). p. 33.Google Scholar

3 Reyes, Alfonso, Fundación de la Universidad Popular Mexicana e historia de sus obras hasta el día 31 de enero de 1913 (Mexico: privately printed [1913], p.1l Google Scholar; bound in Varia [a single volume in which a variety of works which had been printed separately were bound together, in the archives of Alfonso Reyes, Capilla Alfonsina, Mexico City]). Reyes wrote that similar movements in Europe and especially in Spain, for example the Universidad de Oviedo, had sparked their interest ( Reyes, Alfonso, La Universidad Popular Mexicana y sus primeras labores [México: Imprenta I. Escalante, 1913], p. 8 Google Scholar; bound in Varia). Angel Zárraga confirmed this statement in an article in the press (“a Universidad Popular de México,” Boletín de la Universidad Popular Mexicana, II [June, 1916], 2, pp. 88–89).

4 Reyes, . Fundación, p. 11 Google Scholar; bound in Varia (in the Reyes archives).

5 Reyes, , La Universidadq, pp. 13 Google Scholar; bound in Varia (in the Reyes archives).

6 Luna, Juan Hernández, –Instituciones filosóficas del México actual,” Filosofía y Letras, XVII-XVIII (October-December. 1949), 36, pp. 286287.Google Scholar

7 Reyes, , La Universidad, p. 2 Google Scholar; bound in Varia (in the Reyes archives).

8 Loc. cit., pp. 1–2.

9 Loc. cit., p. 7.

10 Loc. cit.

11 Pruneda, Alfonso, “La Universidad Popular Mexicana en el cuarto año de sus labores (1915–1916),” Boletín, 2 (December, 1916), 4, p. 149.Google Scholar

12 “Estatutos de la Universidad Popular Mexicana,” Boletín, I (May, 1915), 1, pp. 11–12.

13 Reyes, , Fundación, p. 12 Google Scholar; bound in Varia (in the Reyes archives).

14 Personal interview with Juan Hernández Luna, March 16, 1968, Mexico City.

15 Million, , Marxist, p. 12.Google Scholar Lombardo Toledano represented the University at the labor congress, held in Saltillo, Coahuila, in May, 1918, which organized the Confederación Regional Obrera Mexicana (CROM). At the time he played a minor role in the congress, though he did propose the organization of culture centers for the workers. Later, when he founded his own Universidad Obrera, it was for more nearly doctrinaire and didactic political purposes.

16 Zárraga, , Boletín, 2 (June, 1916), 2, pp. 8892.Google Scholar

17 All these events were reported in Reyes, , Fundación, p. 12 Google Scholar; bound in Varia (in Reyes archives). Here also are listed the corporate donations for 1912–1913. Donations from both individuals and corporations are listed in each issue of the Boletín, in the articles entitled “Crónica de la Universidad.”

18 Luna, Juan Hernández, Filosofía y Letras, XVII-XVIII, 36, p. 10.Google Scholar

19 Salmeron, Fernando, “Mexican Philosophers of the Twentieth Century,” in Major Trends in Mexican Philosophy, translated by Caponigri, A. Robert (Noter Dame, Indiana:University of Notre Dame Press, 1966) p. 275.Google Scholar

20 Caso, Antonio, “La psicología del Cristianismo,” Boletín 2 (June, 1916), 2, pp. 4951.Google Scholar

21 “Crónica de la Universidad,” Boletín II (December, 1916), 4, pp. 93–94.

22 Reyes, , Fundación, pp. 1316 Google Scholar; bound in Varia (in the Reyes archives).

23 Pruneda, , Boletín, 2, 4, p. 14.Google Scholar

24 “Crónica de la Universidad,” Boletín, I (May, 1915), 1, p. 13. See also “Crónica de la Universidad,” Boletín, I (June, 1915), 2, p. 32.

25 Boletín, II (March, 1916), 1, pp. 2–16.

26 Luna, Juan Hernández, Filosofía y Letras, XVII-XVIII, 36, pp. 312313.Google Scholar See also the list of publications in the Boletín, II (September, 1916), p. 2.

27 Boletín, I (May, 1915), 1, p. 48; it was located in the first floor above street level at Aztecas 5, an address frequently publicized in the Boletín.

28 Prunda, . Boletín, 2, 4, pp. 151152.Google Scholar

29 Loc. cit.

30 Loc. cit., p. 148.

31 Loc. cit.; and also Luna, Juan Hernández, Filosofía y Letras, XVII-XVIII, 36, pp. 288289.Google Scholar

32 A lecture by Pedro Henríquez Ureña on “Wagner and His Role in the History of Opera” drew 140 persons, and a lecture by Srta. Alba Herrera y Ogazón on “Music and Its Conditions in Mexico” brought 100; while a talk by Martín L. Guzmán on Gutiérrez Nájera was attended by 600 (Reyes, Fundación, p. 13; bound in Varia [in the Reyes archives]).

33 Pruneda, , Boletín, 2, 4, p. 153.Google Scholar

34 Hernández Luna lamented the lack of funds for the Universidad Popular (Interview with Hernández Luna, March 16, 1968).

35 Pruneda, , Boletín, 2, 4, pp. 155157.Google Scholar

36 Loc. cit., p. 153.

37 “Historia del Ateneo de México,” an incomplete account written anonymously about 1914 (in the archives of the Ateneo de México, now held by the Academia Mexicana de la Lengua Correspondiente de la Española, Mexico City).

38 Reyes listed several courses taught in the Escuela de Altos Estudios by ateneístas: esthetics by Caso, the science of education by Ezéquiel Chávez, French literature by González Martínez, English literature by Henríquez Ureña, Spanish language and literature by himself, and architecture by Mariscal ( Reyes, Alfonso, Pasado immediato, y otros ensayos [México: El Colegio de México, 1941], p. 61).Google Scholar

39 Stabb, Martin S.. In Quest of Identity : Patterns in the Spanish American Essay of Ideas, 1890–1960 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, Press, 1967), p. 46.Google Scholar