University Environment and Socialization: The Case of Mexican Politicans

Abstract

MOST STUDIES of political leaders have shown that certain socializing agents, in the view of those leaders, have been primarily responsible for developing their political ideas and personal values. Generally, the most important socializing agents of political leaders have included family, friends, events, books, teachers and the general university environment. Mexican political leaders are no exception to this general pattern. The purpose of this essay is to examine one of these socializing agents, the university's social environment, and its effect on those generations of leaders who guided Mexico's development from 1946 to 1970. Because the overwhelming majority of Mexico's political leaders during that period studied at the university from 1920 to 1940, this analysis will focus on that time period. This twenty year period in Mexico was one of many ideological crosscurrents and intellectual rejuvenation. Mexico underwent a major social revolution from 1911 to 1920, and although there continued to be uprisings against the government, especially in 1923, 1927 and 1929, the violence of the previous decade tapered off by 1920. Following ten years of violence, the 1920s became a decade of rebirth for Mexican ideas and cultural activities. The intellectual and political leaders of Mexico focused their attention on such activities as the implementation of land distribution programs for the peasants, the creation of a modern state, the recreation of a new financial structure, the application of constitutional provisions restricting the Catholic Church, the expansion of public education and rural education, the growth of self-identity as a nation and a people, and the involvement of indigenous culture and peoples in the formation of modern Mexico. These and other themes provided for a period of cultural unrest which saw the growth of literary activities, the rise of the revolutionary novel, the unique development of a world famous artistic expression in the form of murals, and the expansion of an educational system which was implemented with almost missionary zeal.