THE HISTORY TEXTBOOK PROJECT: Mexico

After establishing Stanford's Latin American program and its home, Bolivar House, I founded in 1948 the Hispanic American Report, which came to be regarded as the most serious source of information on developments in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. In its September 1964 edition it published a report on freedom of the press in Latin America. Ironically, at the end of that year I resigned as director of the program because the Stanford administration, under pressure from the CIA, attempted to have my reporting censured because it had reported accurately what had happened in Cuba. The journal disappeared, a loss which provoked worldwide indignation.

Today I happened to look at the article on freedom of the press in Latin America and came across an item of direct significance for out textbook project. In 1964 I attended the Mexico City meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA. Alberto Gainza Paz, the owner of La Prensa of Buenos Aires, had called for freedom of education from state control. This was viewed an attack on the "texto único" project of the Mexican government, which imposed an official history textbook on all schools. The well-known author Martín Luis Guzmán, in the pay of the Mexican government, defended the program on the grounds that its aim was to reduce illiteracy. Actually, it indoctrinated children with the official version of Mexican history. I believe that policy still prevails in Mexican public schools. Can anyone confirm this? Are private (primarily Catholic) schools in Mexico free to adopt their own textbooks? In fact, many of Mexico's anti-clerical laws are in abeyance, so that, as the Spanish sat, "la ley se obedece pero no se cumple" (we obey the law but it is not carried out).

Other Latin American governments were imposing or trying to impose their official history textbook project. Gainza Paz was really referring to the situation in Perón's (and his) Argentina.

Ronald Hilton - 9/13/01