Teacher Unionization and the Corporate State in Mexico, 1931-1945

Ambiguous Missionaries: Rural Teachers and State Facades in Guerrero, 1930-1950

“…91 On a national level, the SNTE (after a difficult birth) began to fulfill its purpose of increasing central government's control over provincial teachers, a control clearly demonstrated by the lack of maestro opposition to the 1945 reform of Article Three. 92 In Guerrero, Baltazar Leyva Mancilla, an ambitious and administratively competent governor, had come to power. The Acapulco-centred economic boom combined with a new efficiency in tax collection to radically expand the traditionally paltry state finances.…”

“…In 1934, a SEP census found half the teachers in the Distrito Federal divided between seven competing unions; as late as 1946 Orizaba's teachers had likewise seven bitterly-opposed unions, and the federal inspector was unable to leave the city "because the permanent agitación política prevented him from doing so." 98 Teachers from across the ideological spectrum deplored the faction-fighting: Gaudencio Peraza, a PCM member, told a teaching conference in the Distrito Federal that "their enthusiasm for union organisation led them to commit the blunder of considering it more important than the actual teaching work." 99 Low and unreliable salaries were in part to blame for both this professional balkanisation and its related phenomenon, the quest to find better incomes in either politics or business.…”