Cultural Missions Bringing Light to Mexican Masses

Abstract

Unique in many respects as an educational device, and well adapted to meet the peculiar needs of the Mexican people, the Cultural Missions that have been functioning for the last few years are beginning to achieve measurable progress. What is a Cultural Mission? The Mexican Republic now has thirty-four of them functioning in different parts of the country, but what they are and how they work can best be understood, perhaps, by a glimpse of one that is fairly typical. San Pablo del Monte, St. Paul of the Mountain, is a community out in a rural area near the city of Puebla, eighty-odd miles east of the Mexican capital. Here there is a Cultural Mission which consists of the leader, a nurse, a mason, a carpenter, an agricultural expert, a mechanic who doubles as a motion-picture operator, a teacher, a musician, a person skilled in small crafts and industries, and a social worker. Some of the Missions have as many as fourteen workers; the number is rarely less than ten. The keynote of all the efforts put forth by the Mission, which resides in the town, is to give the inhabitants knowledge and skill which they can use to help themselves. Though the community pays for none of the costs of the Mission itself, when materials are required to carry out any projects directly for specific families each family is expected to put up the money. Thus the advances are taken seriously, as straight charity might not be. At first when the Cultural Mission came to San Pablo, the people were hostile and refused cooperation. But as time went on and they discovered that its sole purpose was to benefit them through their own efforts, opposition melted. The situation today is one of cordial mutuality. The functions of the personnel differ widely, but contribute in a united way to community upbuilding. The nurse has to dispel entrenched superstitions as well as teach hygiene and care of the sick, for the local Indians have numerous beliefs in ancient magic, such as the power to cause illnesses in others by witchcraft. She dispenses medicines at cost, or when the needy are too poor for that, she seeks help from friends or the municipality. The mason's task is one of the most creative, for one of the direst needs is better housing. Not only does the mason teach the people the best methods of making adobe brick and laying it, but families wanting new houses constructed may put two pesos (about forty-one cents in United States money) each week into a building cooperative that has been organized, and as rapidly as possible, with help on the labor, houses are built for members in an order determined by lot. A beautiful school has been built partly by community labor, and financed through a contribution of twenty-five pesos from each family. Thus the teacher has had a chance to apply educational experience in an environment which stimulated local pride and afforded hygienic conditions for the children. Extremely important is the opportunity to implant new small industries which create a basis of self-support that did not previously exist. The expert in San Pablo, for example, has encouraged the development of soap-making, and two brothers have established a worthwhile business. Every effort is made