Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth Century Mexico.

AuthorZentella, Yoly

Padilla, Tanalis. Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth Century Mexico. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021.

Unintended Lessons of Revolution: Student Teachers and Political Radicalism in Twentieth Century Mexico is based on a study of the rural normales, Mexican teacher training schools with a long tradition of radicalism and struggle for social justice, with origins in the Revolucion of 1910. In eight chapters and an epilogue, Padilla succinctly and chronologically unwraps for the reader the role of the maestro, the teacher, as a radical archetype in the history of Mexican education, describing the interrelationship between the local populations, students, and government policies. The study, conducted by Padilla from which the book evolved, is of national scope and based on sources including declassified Mexican government documents from 2002, US Department of State records, local school archives, published memoirs, and more than fifty interviews conducted by the author in rural normales throughout Mexico. The author's intention was to fill a void in the Secretaria de Educacion Publica's (Office of Public Education [SEP]) national archives, beyond the 1940s, by telling the story of rural normales from the perspective of student and graduate activists. Unintended Lessons of Revolution is an absorbing read for academics, students, activist scholars, and others interested in Mexican history, the education component, and student radicalism and its relationship with the Mexican state.

Padilla is a historian of Latin America and history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her focus is political and agrarian movements of modern Mexico. Among her publications is Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax Priista, 1940-1962 (2008) centering on the history of an agrarian movement turned armed struggle. In 2013, she coedited and contributed to a special issue of the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research (JILAR), in which the implications for post-revolutionary historiography of Mexico's recently declassified intelligence documents are analyzed. Padilla frequently publishes in Mexican periodicals. Unintended Lessons of Revolution narrates the relationship between student political struggle and the Mexican state. It also describes the progressive possibilities inherent in education and the development of student political...

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