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Women teachers of post-revolutionary Mexico: feminisation and everyday resistance

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 49; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00309230.2012.746714

1477-674X

Oresta López Pérez,

Education in Rural Contexts

Abstract The reflections presented in this article include the process of incorporating women teachers into schools during the post-revolutionary period in Mexico. From one standpoint, women teachers lived in a state of ambiguity throughout this period because they were seen as symbols of national reconstruction following a war that left more than one million people dead. From another standpoint, they were victims of political and gender violence in a country that had not yet been pacified and was experiencing deep divisions between the armed Catholic groups that fought against the government. The process of the feminisation of Mexican teaching is approached through an analysis of the socio-professional conditions of rural teachers around the period of 1924 to 1945. There are a range of sources that were used for this research, including oral and documental. The collection of records of rural teachers from the Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública are important in terms of a regional study that was done in the Valle del Mezquital as well as in a current national study. After reviewing over three thousand teacher files, I have been able to verify that many of these women were empowered and conscious of their significance in the national identity. They took advantage of the situation to obtain gender work benefits, which included equal wages to men, pregnancy leave regardless of marital status or age and uninterrupted contracts. This mobilisation by women teachers throughout the entire country was unprecedented in the professional history of Mexican women workers. These teachers fought many daily battles, both individually and collectively, to maintain their jobs, by writing letters to the head of the Rural School Department, sharing their stories and the injustices they experienced in their daily lives. Nonetheless, it is notable that for the first time, a collection of female voices can be found in the teacher files; these women did not want to keep quiet, and they reflect a desire to participate in social change for themselves and their communities. Keywords: feminisationwomen teachersgendereveryday resistancerural education Notes 1Oresta López, Alfabeto y enseñanzas domésticas, el arte de ser maestra rural en el Valle del Mezquital, o, Colec. Antropologías (San Luis, México: CIESAS-CECAH, 2001). 2Luz Elena Galván, Oresta López, and Sonsoles San Román, Primer Congreso Internacional sobre los procesos de Feminización del Magisterio, February 21–23, San Luis Potosí, México (El Colegio de San Luis, CIESAS and Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, 2001, compact disc). 3Luz Elena Galván and Oresta López, Entre imaginarios y utopías: Historias de maestras (San Luis, México: CIESAS, El Colegio de San Luis [COLSAN], PUEG-UNAM, 2008). 4For data on scholars who have conducted studies on feminisation or the history of women teachers in Mexico, see Oresta López, "Las maestras en la historia de la educación en México: contribuciones para hacerlas visibles, en Mexico," Sinectica, February–July 2000, no. 28. 6Elsie Rockwell, Hacer escuela hacer estado. La educación posrevolucionaria vista desde Tlaxcala (Michoacán, México: El Colegio de Michoacán, CIESAS, CINVESTAV, 2007), 11. 5James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985); Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent, eds., Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994); Elsie Rockwell, "Schools of the Revolution," in Joseph and Nugent, Everyday Forms of State Formation, 170–208; and Elsie Rockwell, La Escuela cotidiana (, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995). 7Ibid., 18. 8Joan W. Scott, "Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis," The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (accessed December 10, 2004):1053–75, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1864376. This suggests that gender categories contribute to the focus or perspective in historical and social studies, as long as they are used as tools not only to distinguish women, but also to understand different structural, relational, symbolic, linguistic and social aspects associated with the relationships between men and women, not as individual forms, but as a group. 9Joseph and Nugent, Everyday Forms of State Formation. When I speak of the resistance of women teachers who worked for the state, I refer to the multiple ways in which they opposed unequal work benefits, which in this case were visibly asymmetric in terms of gender. I refer to the complex and daily ways that established women teachers as subordinates in the eyes of the state, which wielded hegemonic power with a patriarchic ideology. 10Pestalozzi (1746–1827) wrote an important educational treatise, continuing the naturalist method of Rousseau. In Mexico, two of his most important works were translated and published: Cómo Gertrude enseña a sus hijos (1801) and Libro de las madres (1803). He contributed a method based on the observation of children, where the educator's intuition was very important to help the development of children. He proposed educating the poor and creating rural schools. He also proposed non-authoritative education. 11Foucault, Historia de la sexualidad, I: La Voluntad de Saber, trans. (México: Siglo XXI, 1997). 12Mary Kay Vaughan, "Introduction, Pancho Villa, the Daughters of Mary, and the Modern Woman: Gender in the Long Mexican Revolution," in Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico, ed. Jocelyn Olcott, Mary Kay Vaughan, and Gabriela Cano (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 25. 13Sandra Acker, Gendered Education: Sociological Reflections on Women, Teaching and Feminism. (Buckingham, UK: Open University Press, 1994). Her other studies include: Acker, Teachers, Gender, and Careers (New York: Palmer Press, 1989); and Acker, "Gender and Teacher's Work," Review of Research in Education 21 (1996). 14Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública [AHSEP], DGEPET, box 2992, IV/82. 15Women throughout pregnancy will not perform work that demands a considerable amount of force and places their health at risk in relation to childbirth; they will forcibly enjoy a period of rest for six weeks prior to their approximate due date and six weeks after the same, receiving their full salary and conserving their employment. Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos, 2005, http://www.cndh.org.mx/sites/all/fuentes/documentos/Libreria/constit/ed10.pdf. 16Viviane Brachet-Márquez and Orlandina de Oliveira, "Mujer y Legislación social Mexicana," Estudios Sociológicos 20, no. 60 (September–December 2002): 537–81. 17Esperanza Tuñon, Mujeres que se organizan. El Frente Unico Pro-derechos de la mujer 1935–1938, (, Mexico, Department of Humanities, UNAM- Grupo Ed. Miguel Angel Porrua, 1992). 18I interviewed Dora Flores, Ciria Trejo Lara, Aurelia Pérez, Guadalupe Mejía and Sara Cornejo during 1996. 19Archivo Histórico de la Secretaría de Educación Pública Fondo Dirección General de Educación Primaria en Estados y Territorios (AHSEP/DGEPET); Fondo Departamento de Educación Rural, Fondo, Maestras Rurales, Rosa Guerra Hernández San Luis Potosí, 1933. Box G2/Exp. 16.