Bittersweet fragmented Biographies: Rural Mexican Women Educators and the Ethics of the Necessary Suffering in the Post-Revolutionary Mexico.

• In Event: Autobiographies and life stories of women educators who were the founders of public education in México, and Brazil

Abstract

This paper will analyze the pedagogical experiences of rural women educators who worked in contexts of violence from 1920 to 1940. It will start from oral narratives and life stories as well as various documentary sources. The first narratives were obtained through interviews for my research on rural women educators from Valle del Mezquital, Hidalgo (López 2001), and the second ones were built up from the files of Fondo de Maestras rurales del Archivo Histórico de la SEP, (López, 2014); I also used some narratives from the testimonials compilation “Los maestros y la Cultura Nacional” (Museo de Culturas Populares, 1987). I focus on the narratives of women educators who provide their valuable experience to enrich the projects of the New Education, which in Mexico became State projects for the development of rural and indigenous education, coeducation, education for work, child care training, among others.
It is about life stories marked by gender inequalities in the context of work with regard to men. However, in their biographies, they focus on their self-discovery and learning experiences as women educators; in conducting fun, secular, democratic, social and indigenist practices as part of their daily life.
The New Education was imposed in the regions of Mexico in which there was strong opposition that sometimes took dramatic and violent forms. This paper analyses the arguments that women educators build up as the ethics of being an educator, incorporating the suffering component as an essential aspect of their work.

Author

• Oresta López Pérez, El Colegio de San Luis