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Postrevolutionary Intellectuals, Rural Readings and the Shaping of the ‘Peasant Problem’ in Mexico: El Maestro Rural, 1932–34

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 1998

GUILLERMO PALACIOS
Affiliation:
Centro de Investigació y Docencia Económica, A.C. Present address: El Colegio de México, A.C.

Abstract

This paper studies the participation of an important group of Mexican postrevolutionary intellectuals, leaders of the cultural-educational project during the early 1930s, in the construction of two closely related concepts: the ‘peasant problem’ and its nucleus, the ‘revolutionary peasant’, both central to the political and ideological consolidation of the new regime. It discusses the approaches that lead them to propose a new ‘peasantness’, suitable for the political and economic interests that dominated the process of formation of the postrevolutionary State. It also considers the struggle that developed within the group between the ‘productivists’, linked to Marxism-Leninism, and the ‘cultural-populists’, more concerned with the cultural survival of the Indo-campesino groups, for the right to define these concepts. The analysis is based on El Maestro Rural, edited by the Secretaría de Educación Pública since 1932.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This text benefited from the valuable suggestions and critism of Jean Mayer and Alan Knight, in addition to the comments from the anonymous readers of JLAS I also wish to thank both the CIDE and El Colegio de Mexico for financial support in the translation of this article and Mrs. Barbara Toledo for her excellent translation.