Claude Fell’s José Vasconcelos: Los años del águila is a very complete reconstruction of the genesis of José Vasconcelos’s work and thought as president of the National University (UNAM) and as first secretary of education in postrevolutionary Mexico (1920-25). Vasconcelos has been credited with a number of initiatives, including attempting one of the first massive literacy campaigns in Mexico (1920), which benefited 100,000 persons, following the organizational model, but not the explicit political or ideological guidelines, of the Soviet Revolution. In addition, Vasconcelos is considered one of the first intellectuals to offer a global understanding of education and culture in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution.
Vasconcelos tried to address the difficulties of the National University, the creation of a federal system of national education following in the footsteps of Justo Sierra, the creation of rural education and reorganization of teachers’ colleges, and a profound reform of elementary, secondary, and technical education in Mexico. All of this was achieved in less than fifty months of public administration. In short, he attempted to create a modern educational system and a new cultural framework blending national peculiarities with universal culture.
Vasconcelos was also a philosopher who produced one of the first definitions of culture in postrevolutionary Mexico, a definition that supported the cultural movement of Mexican muralism with its socialist overtones. Vasconcelos considered art a social expression and, at the same time, the expression of universal, American, and continental sentiments. However, his approach to the roots of mexicanidad is full of contradictions, well reflected in his theory of the “cosmic race.”
This book, translated from the French, studies the underpinnings and contradictions of Vasconcelos’s work and thought. It reflects the perspective of French social historians, a useful perspective for understanding the world-view dominant among elites in Mexico in the 1920s, so close to French traditions. It helps clarify the motivation of one of Mexico’s most celebrated but criticized intellectuals, and in fact it is one of the first comprehensive works on Vasconcelos as an intellectual/ politician in the early twenties. Fell manages the difficult task of explaining the psychology, philosophy, and tireless work of Vasconcelos, who was a practical man and a passionate, imaginative, and productive writer.
The writing is clear and free of jargon. The work is solidly grounded in documentary evidence from both public and a few private collections, and it is the fruit of more than a decade of systematic research. It is a book worth reading, even by those who consider Vasconcelos’s work an attempt to weaken workers’ radicalism and social identity in postrevolutionary Mexico.
