Espionage and Education: Reporting on Student Protest in Mexico's Normales Rurales, 1960–1980

Abstract

Mexico's normales rurales, training schools for rural teachers, have long had a reputation for political radicalism. Their students, themselves from campesino households, consistently participated in, and often led, popular protests. This article examines the way in which Gobernación agents reported on the various forms of normalista mobilisation and interrogates the official narrative such documents constructed about these schools. It discusses various methodological uses and shows how, in conjunction with other source-bodies, a researcher may deal with inconsistences, dominant frameworks, and the agents' use of language. Thus analysed, the rural teachers' protest and the government's tactics for combatting it, enhance our understanding of the mechanisms by which the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) ruled Mexico for most of the twentieth century.