Khartohmain Primary School, Michoacán: the construction of the Cardenist schools of the 1930s.
Let us know, through the history of this school, how it was the process of materializing the so-called "socialist education" that President Lázaro Cardenas promoted and which served as a project of integration between state and school, between the nation and its formation Cultural.
In December 1934, the Union Congress approved the proposal of the Revolutionary National Party to amend constitutional article 3. This started what until then would be the most controversial educational reform in the modern history of our country. The reformed article established the socialist character of education taught by the State and stated that it should combat fanaticism by spreading a rational and accurate concept of the universe and social life. In this context of change on the notions of teaching and learning, it was logical that both teachers and schools should play a fundamental role in Mexican life during this decade.
As we know, teachers became a kind of missionary who had to enter the most rugged, remote, difficult areas of the political and physical geography of Mexico to propagate a new message of national unity through a culture while helping to disarticulate deep-rooted local networks in communities, which were regarded by the government as nefarious to their interests. In this way, schools became "agency and symbol of libertarian struggles against the dominant sectors, regional chiefs and landowners" and the populations, after a process of difficult negotiations, managed to appropriate them and the became a space that affirmed their identity and autonomy.
Thus, the so-called "socialist education" served as a project of integration of the state and the school had a significant importance in the construction of the nation and in the cultural formation of it, in addition to helping President Cardenas give the ruling party a popular civil base and facilitated the formation of national workers', peasantandandy and teachers. However, achieving it was a pretty arduous task. To exemplify this process a little, we find the case of the construction of the Primary School of Jarácuaro, Michoacán, one of the islands of Lake Pátzcuaro and which was in the homeland of the president of the Republic.
The island of Jarácuaro seemed an ideal place to raise one of the new schools due to its location in an area that still had an important population base of Tarasco origin. According to news of the time, their livelihoods were still very precarious and their system of life was eighty percent "the same as before the conquest". About 900 people lived on the island and the school population was about two hundred children. Thus, the construction of the school was commissioned in 1937 to the architect Alberto Le Duc, author also of the theater known as Emperor Caltzonzin de Pátzcuaro in 1936 and which was built on what had been an old Augustinian convent of the seventeenth century.
The architect already knew the area and it is likely that he would not find it difficult to develop the project in which he contemplated a two-story building in which, in addition to including the appropriate classrooms for teaching, workshops and the practice of certain cultural activities, it was due add the necessary services to accommodate six teachers with their respective families, and a medical service room throughout the island. The problem was actually that neither the lot allocated for the school nor the whole island had drinking water, drainage or electricity. In this way, the construction of the school became the pretext to bring all this infrastructure to the place.
The building was made of accessible materials in the region, the foundation and walls were made of stone and also had "soleras de liga de concreto armed on the skirting board and at the height of the enclosures on both floors. The mezzanines and ceilings are two-layered brick vaulton on wooden beams." To bring all the other materials also had to build a temporary dock and occupy the arms of many people to propel the specially built lanchones to transport the quantities of material that were required across the lake. Apparently this building was so unique that Cardenas visited the work on several occasions.
The work lasted about seven months and had a total cost, according to the architect himself, of ninety-five thousand pesos including in the sum all the urbanization works that were made, the docks and the water and light service on the island. Although the building is simple, modest and adapts to the other buildings of the area its value lies both in the circumstances in which it was built, and in being one of the last events under the program of "socialist education". In 1938 Cardenas was no longer able to withstand pressure from other groups that were also conflicted by oil expropriation, and the ceelyl uprising led him to compromise with governors who were unwilling to continue ceding power in educational issue.
The Primary School of Jarácuaro is still standing despite its more than 80 years of existence.
by Paulina Martínez Figueroa