Self-styled students, communists, guerrillas… On the origins of the demonization of rural Normalism in Mexico

Abstract

The history of rural Normal schools is one of constant struggle for survival. Although during the second half of the 1930s they received significant support from the government, by the end of Lázaro Cárdenas’s administration they began to suffer neglect, having to transform their mechanisms of communication with the authorities, shifting from epistolary forms to strikes. If in the 1920s and much of the 1930s rural communities saw these institutions as “schools of the devil,” from July 1940 onward, when students first took to the streets to voice their frustration over unfulfilled promises by politicians and authorities, a demonizing discourse began to be constructed around the concerns of rural Normal students. Although we do not intend to produce a treatise that fully accounts for the origins of this discourse of contempt and demonization of rural Normalism, we turn to archival documents, the written press, and traditional and electronic media to show some of the strategies used to build a negative image of students through labels such as self-styled students, vandals, troublemakers, communists, guerrillas… In this study, we assume that as long as the narrative built around the phenomenon of rural normalism has an impact on society, any reaction by authorities to student demands and demonstrations is justified.