Carlos Martinez Valle

Sonderforschungsbereich 640 (SFB 640) – TP A4 Sitz: Mohrenstr. 40/41 Raum 323 Tel.: +49 30 / 2093-4800 Fax: +49 30 / 2093-4893 Email: carlos.martinez@rz.hu-berlin.de

Mitarbeiter im Teilprojekt A4

Weblinks

http://www.iztacala.unam.mx
http://www.esteticas.unam.mx

C.V. / Lebenslauf

Currently working at A4 Project: Ceremonial Pedagogy in Post-Revolutionary Societies: Public Staging and Social Mobilisation in Meiji Japan, the Former Soviet Union and Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s

Gegenwärtig: Mitarbeiter im Teilprojekt A4: Zeremonielle Pädagogik in post-revolutionären Gesellschaften: Öffentliche Inszenierung und soziale Mobilisierung in Meiji-Japan, in der frühen Sowjetunion und im Mexiko der 1920er-1930er Jahre

Studies / Studium

Studies on Political Science and Sociology. Complutense University. Madrid. Mayors on Political Sociology and Sociology of Labour / Diplomstudiengang Politikwissenschaften und Soziologie an der Politikwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universidad Complutense, Madrid. Studienschwerpunkte: Politische Soziologie und Arbeitssoziologie

Doctoral studies at the Seminar of History of Ideas and Political and Social Movements. / Promotionsstudium an der Abteilung für Ideengeschichte und Soziale und Politische Bewegungen. Universidad Complutense.

Ph.D. History of Ideas and Social and Political Movements. / Doktor der Politikwissenschaften. Title/ Dissertationstitel: „Anatomia de la libertad: el libre arbitrio y el fundamentalismo protestante, el antirrigorismo escolástico y el republicanismo humanista, 1559 –1649”. Universidad Complutense.

Scholarships – Projects / Stipendien - Projekte

Training and Mobility Program of the European Union (TMR). Project: “Construction of internationality: Reference Horizons of the Pedagogical Discourse in Changing Social Systems: Spain, Rusia/Soviet Union and China, 1920-2000”/ Center for Comparative Education. Humboldt University of Berlin./
Training and Mobilität für Wissenschaftler der Europäischen Union (TMR). Projekt: „Konstruktion von Internationalität: Referenzhorizonte pädagogischen Wissens gesellschaftlicher Systeme im Wandel: Spanien, Russland/Sowjetunion, China, 1920-2000“ an der Abteilung für Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Spanish–German Cultural Cooperation Program of the Spanish Education and Culture Ministery./ Programm für deutsch-spanische kulturelle Kooperation des spanischen Erziehungs - und Kulturministerium.

Researcher at the project/ Forscher des Forschungsprojekts: „Nationalerziehung und Universalmethode: Globale Diffusionsdynamik und kulturspezifische Aneignungsformen der Bell-Lancaster-Methode im 19. Jahrhundert”. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Teaching / Seminare

• “Fundamentalism and school”/ „Fundamentalismus und Schule“. Sommersemester 2005. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Phil. Fak. IV.
• “Politics, Economy and Culture in the Formation of the Spanish Educational System / „Politik, Ökonomie und Kultur in der Bildung des Spanischen Erziehungssystems“. Sommersemester 2006. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Phil. Fak. IV.
• „Propaganda, Erziehung und informelle pädagogische Medien in post-revolutionären Gesellschaften und Erziehungsstaaten“. Sommersemester 2007. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Phil. Fak. IV.
  

Publications / Publikationen (in Auswahl)

• World-Level Ideology or Nation-Specific System-Reflection? Reference Horizons in Educational Discourse, co-authored with J. Schriewer. (Lisbon: Educa, 2003).
• "Crispación, polarización y ocupación del espacio público". In Bernecker, Walther L.; Mainhold, Günther. (eds.) España, del consenso a la polarización. (Madrid; Frankfurt: Iberoamericana/Verwuert, 2007). pp. 409-440.
• “Exhibiting the Revolutionary School: Mexico in the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville”. Co-authored with Roldán Vera, Eugenia. In International Exhibitions Bureau. Bulletin 2006. (2007). pp. 131- 156.
• "El discurso Pedagógico, ¿Ideología Internacional o reflexión idiosincrática?: El horizonte de referencia internacional en discursos pedagógicos de España, Rusia (Unión Soviética) y China”. Co-authored with J. Schriewer. In Revista de Educación, 343 (mayo – agosto) 2007. www.revistaeducacion.mec.es/re343_22.html
• Anatomía de la Libertad. El libre arbitrio y el fundamentalismo protestante, el antirrigorismo escolástico y el republicanismo humanista, 1559 –1649. Madrid: Universidad Complutense. Servicio de Publicaciones, 2007.
  

Main Focus in the Project / Schwerpunkt im Teilprojekt

The (Educational) Mission: Image and Program in Post-revolutionary Mexico

Education was a contradictory element in the Mexican revolutionary discourses and projects of the 1920-30’s, as it was presented as a necessity beyond every revolutionary demand and as its epitome. Education was used for fostering political participation and revolutionary citizenship, but also as a substitute of other revolutionary measures like land distribution. In this contradictory field, the presence of an impressive use of Christian rhetoric and images is evident, even in the discourses of neat “irreligious” actors. It contrasts sharply with the different revolutionary projects guided by the plea of religious neutrality, educating in the “light of science”, or even eradicating superstition. Particularly important in the political and educational discourses, as a kind of agglutinant, was the idea-image of Mission and the Missionary, as the “Misiones culturales”, one of the central educational instruments of the period, show. The section tries: 1) to understand the reasons of the adoption of this image and the rejection of the alternatives; 2) the means used to broadcast this topos and to instill its particular ethos; 3) to discuss the contradictions it introduces facing other revolutionary ideas and rhetoric places, and the way this contradictions were worked out in different revolutionary languages. Particularly 4) it tries to examine in which way the adoption of this topos directed and conformed the educational program of the time, to lasting effects. The leading hypothesis here is that despite the discourses of modernization, homogenization, and nationalization of Obregon’s and Calles’ governments, the educational praxis was directed firstly to demobilize the school teachers, which had a crucial role in the revolution. Secondly, it tended to construct two different societies in one country, one an “agrarian civilization” and the other a civic-civilized society. The urban intellectuals of the middle classes, shocked by the revolutionary populace, saw the necessity to elevate the living standards and civilize the agrarian crowd in order to reduce the differences to the cities, but they did not offer the rural, mostly indigenous communities, the instruments to join the urban life and, ultimately, the political power. The pedagogical philosophy they instrumented based mainly in John Dewey’s active school, which stressed the values of the community vs. the society, were very compatible with the political language of virtue and concrete educational method used by the friars in the conquest. The image and idea of the mission and the missionaries used as example was then not only a practical decision based in the necessity of self-denial of the badly paid new misioneros, nor only a repository of educational knowledge (many of the measures implemented resemble those of the ancient friars). The modern mission and missionaries take up again a similar project to those of their predecessors during the Spanish colonization, the civilization and segregation to the countryside of rural-indigenous crowds.

* This section parallels the construction of the soviet health agents studied by Matthias Braun.

To mobilize and de-mobilize. Fiesta as a Revolutionary Praxis (provisional title)

This section studies the utilization of different kind of festivals by the new revolutionary state to indoctrinate, mobilize, and educate the masses. The revolutionary festival should display the power and ideas of the new state in the public sphere and instill its values in the masses. However, arguably, even more than demonstrating power to the spectators, the festivals were addressed to the organized participants, reinforcing their discipline, reassuring their symbolic central position and giving them the feeling of belonging to the machinery of State. Revolutionary festivals were an instrument to line up individuals in the new associations of the corporative State. However, there were also more prosaic reasons for celebrating festivals, for instance, they sorted out and helped to identify those reluctant to participate in the festival and cooperate with the new government. In addiction, contradictorily, festivals were also the occasions for exhibiting dissent. This section examines whether the revolutionary festivals shared the same idiom and objectives of the bourgeois festivities of the Porfirian era (Knight) or were a new phenomenon (Vaugham), but focuses on the uses of different kind of festivals in different contexts and for different purposes. This section analyses, first, the military and paramilitary parades at different anniversaries (Independence and Revolution), looking at them in the light of different proposals to militarise general education and the projects to control the Army. For sharpening our understanding of this kind of fests, we contrast these festivities to others of a civil character (tree’s day or mother’s day). For deciphering the “grammar” of those festivals, we take into account that the same device, the parade, was designed to both, mobilize young students and women, and control old revolutionary military forces. Secondly, we turn to the fiestas used by educators to contact and attract local populations and funds to the casa del pueblo, a holistic educational institution that tried to marshal the supposedly passive indigenous and rural population. It served as well to introduce this population to the symbols of revolutionary Mexico, contributing to the creation of a new Mexican identity, more modern and inclusive but also more difficult to separate from the official narrative of the “institutionalized revolution”.  

* This section parallels the work of Malte Rolf’s about the soviet festival.

Bringing the Revolution to Every Corner of the Republic: the Travels of Lázaro Cárdenas throughout Mexico and their Representation in the Media 

(together with Eugenia Roldan)

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Mexican governments “put the revolution in motion”. Yet, although the revolutionary movement itself had broken up in different parts of the country and mobilised masses all over Mexico, the implementation of those reforms was set up in such a way as to indicate that the Revolution itself was being mobilised from the capital outwards, especially from the centre to the rural areas. Thus, the 1920s and 1930s were the most active years of a wide program of cultural transformation that included the “cultural missions” (see above),  the “medical brigades” (expeditions aimed at vaccinating and teaching basic notions of hygiene), the “itinerant libraries”, and the “railway schoolrooms” (schools set up in railway wagons, for the families of the railway workers), among other enterprises. It is thus not surprising that the 1930s produced the most itinerant president that Mexico has seen in peaceful times – Lázaro Cárdenas. This study is concerned with the travels of Lázaro Cárdenas as president of Mexico, between 1934 and 1940. Cárdenas was by far the most popular Mexican president of the twentieth century. However, for all the scholarly literature that has been produced about this charismatic leader, little attention has been paid at the nature of his travels and at the ways in which the presidential power was constructed throughout them. This paper considers some of those issues: how did the press represent Cárdenas’ travels and his encounter with the people? What did the travels meant for the people he encountered? What kinds of bonds were created between Cárdenas and “the masses”? Which were the functions of those travels in the articulation of the revolutionary reforms?  What kind of nation-state was built through them?

* This section parallels Nadine Hee’s study on the travels of the Meiji emperor throughout Japan.

Exhibiting the Revolutionary School: Mexico in the 1929 Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville

(together with Eugenia Roldán)

The purpose of this study is to discuss the interrelation between the 1929 Iberoamerican Exhibition in Seville and the Mexican post-revolutionary educational project. By displaying certain view of the post-revolutionary school in an international forum only a few years after the end of the armed struggle, the Mexican government was at the first time "stabilising" its own mixed program of educational reforms, selling it as a viable alternative for other countries in a similar stage of development, and gaining international validation for it. But, standing from the premise that international exhibitions constitute a moment of self-reflection for the participating countries, we will explore the tension through which the very production of a representation of itself (or "propaganda" as was called at the time), was, at the same time, an instrument in the construction of the educational system. Accordingly, rather than merely describing the representation of the Mexican post-revolutionary school at the Seville exhibition, the essay will analyse the process through which this representation was constructed, and how this construction affected the refashioning of the Ministry of Education and its policies. Our contention is that the representation of education in this exhibition had a preeminent role in turning the violent image of the Mexican revolution into a quest for modernity. Portrayed as a steady process of social improvement, education was one of the most adequate tools in justifying the achievements and continuity of the revolution; it is in this sense that the exhibition contributed to reformulating the role and place of education, putting it, instead of other reforms, at the core of the whole revolutionary program. Yet this representation was based upon a tension between two different rationalities involved in the setting up of the exhibition: the standard requirements of an international fair aimed at staging progress and modernity on the one hand, and the scarcely spectacular achievements of many educational programs, in particular those conducted in the rural areas. Relying on a variety of sources, we will analyse the transactions between those different rationalities, suggesting that they lied at the core of the Mexican post-revolutionary educational policies, at least until 1932 (when education stops being a tool for social stabilisation and becomes a tool for social and class struggle). Paradoxically, the perception gained during the staging of the exhibition, that the educational policies had until then yielded meagre results, eventually led to the radicalisation of those policies from 1932 onwards – when the government’s idea of education stopped being that of a tool for social stabilisation and a symbol of modernity and became that of a tool for social mobilisation and class struggle.

* This section parallels the work of Daniel Hedinger on exhibitions as a form of ceremonial pedagogy.