Rural Education and the State in Mexico: The Legacy of Elena Torres Cuellar

Context and Methods

As Rockwell’s (2022) contribution to this special issue explains, the Mexican rural school movement emerged out of the long and complex revolutionary process that began officially in 1910, ended the Porfirian dictatorship, and entailed years of regional battles and civil unrest. Into the postrevolutionary years, ideological battles continued over social organization and the ideal role of the worker in Mexico’s modern era. The projects of the federal government to expand schooling, such as those in rural regions, were a central part of the state’s effort to pacify and consolidate its citizenry, with particular educational doctrines reflecting the political orientations of their promoters. In this context, the participation and contributions of countless women have been essential in Mexican rural education throughout the years, yet for several decades, historiography as a discipline overlooked the role that they played both in the design of the postrevolutionary state’s education policies, and the practical implementation of the “civilizing” strategies for the rural population. That supposed “absence” in history can be partly explained by the fact that the state that emerged after the armed Revolution, and that managed to become an institution between 1920 and 1940, implicitly reproduced a type of political culture rooted in male chauvinism and patriarchalism whose origin can be traced back to colonial times and 19th-century Mexico—in particular, the Porfiriato (O’Malley, 1986).

Throughout the 20th century, the hegemonic ideology of the postrevolutionary political regime sought to erase the historical agency of women in different public spaces. Torres Cuellar experienced that type of exclusion, which gradually undermined her hope of building a democratic society in which women could access the same opportunities and hold the same rights as men. Despite taking part in the Revolution and being a left-wing militant in her youth, and even though she worked closely on the educational projects of the first administrations after the Revolution, including during the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, Torres Cuellar became disillusioned. Eventually she stopped working for the SEP in the 1940s, when she began to harshly criticize the men of the Revolution. Her early optimism for state projects gave way to a disappointment in their implementation and frustration with the limits of her ability to effect change within an authoritarian, male chauvinist political system.

This article is built on the scholarship of prominent historians who have studied the role of women as teachers in postrevolutionary Mexico. Mary Kay Vaughn was a pioneer in drawing attention to the issue of women and education during the process of cultural change brought on by Mexico’s postrevolutionary governments (Vaughan, 1977). Many other scholars have joined the reflection on women’s agency in history, particularly in public education. A seminal text is the book edited by María Adelina Arredondo, Obedecer, servir y resistir: La educación de las mujeres en la historia de México (Obey, Serve and Resist: Women’s Education in Mexican History) (2003), which includes several important chapters on women teachers and students as social subjects in colonial times and the 19th and 20th centuries. Oresta López has published several papers on women and rural education; in particular, her 2001 work on rural teachers of the 1920s and 1930s in an Indigenous region in the state of Hidalgo touches on key aspects of women’s implementation of the SEP’s education projects, and the role of home economics in the process of cultural change. Milada Bazant’s book (2016) on Mexican poet, feminist, and teacher Laura Méndez de Cuenca and her role in the Porfirian public school system (pre-1910) is another source of inspiration. Also critically important is the 2006 book edited by Mary Kay Vaughan, Gabriela Cano, and Jocelyn Olcott, Sex in Revolution: Gender, Politics, and Power in Modern Mexico for emphasizing how, in the aftermath of the Revolution and a shifting sociopolitical climate, women in Mexico took part in challenging old cultural mores and shaping new ones. In 2005, Olcott also published Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico, another core contribution to the topic of women in history.

Following these examples, an important purpose of this article is to reflect on the contributions of Elena Torres Cuellar and her TC education to the history of rural education in the building of a postrevolutionary State in Mexico, emphasizing her tenets on cultural change. Chief among my sources for this article are the documents in her archive, Fondo Elena Torres, located in the Biblioteca Francisco Xavier Clavigero at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. I have so far been able to identify just three pieces of work about Elena Torres Cuellar. The first is her autobiography, Fragmentos (Fragments), published in 1964 by the publishing house Libros de México, which I use as a primary source for this article. There appears to be a first part of her autobiography, given that the book just cited begins by noting that it is a second part; however, after searching for four years in archives and elsewhere, I have not been able to find a book or manuscript that corresponds to the first part. In 1993, Noemí Cortes Ramírez defended an undergraduate thesis in history at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) titled “Elena Torres Cuellar: Revolucionaria feminista y educadora (1983–1970)” (Elena Torres Cuellar: Feminist revolutionary and Mexican educator [1983–1970]), a well-written, descriptive text based on primary sources; however, she did not mention the first part of Torres Cuellar’s autobiography in her thesis. The third is a text published in 2020, written by Erin Finzer from the University of Arkansas, under the title “La conservación campesina de Elena Torres Cuellar: las mujeres, la maestra rural y el medio ambiente en México (1923-1939)” (Elena Torres Cuellar’s rural maintenance: Women, rural teaching, and Mexico’s environment [1923–1939]), a work based on secondary sources. This text was published in A Contracorriente, una revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos. It is possible to retrieve other pieces of work that refer to Torres Cuellar—such as Verónica Oikión’s (2018) book about Cuca García, a prominent revolutionary from Michoacán, a teacher, and a feminist—yet few works to date have been written with Torres Cuellar’s life and work as a central focus. This article also uses writings and unpublished manuscripts in Torres Cuellar’s archive to reflect on her accomplishments and role in Mexican education.

Overview of Torres Cuellar’s Life Before Teachers College

Torres Cuellar was born in El Mineral de Mellado, in the state of Guanajuato, on June 23, 1893. At a young age, she became interested in the study of various topics, taking lessons in Spanish, playwriting, and Mexican and Spanish literature; she was also interested in pedagogy and hygiene issues (Torres Cuellar, ca. 1935–1941, Torres’ Curriculum Vitae, ca. 1935). Regarding her school career, she pointed out, “I undertook schooling as a poor girl who needed to work”; at age 14, she became a cashier at a U.S. mining company, and at night, she took classes organized by the Government of Guanajuato (Torres Cuellar, ca. 1935–1941, Letter from Torres to José María Bonilla, December 14, 1941). In 1912, when she was 19 years of age, she took an examination that certified her as a teacher. During the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (which lasted from the 1870s until 1911), she wrote texts about the disadvantages of being a woman. In 1913, she took part in the Revolution; she contacted Francisco J. Múgica, who was a prominent revolutionary and later a politician in the government of President Lázaro Cárdenas. She worked as a stenographer at the general headquarters of the Ejército Constitucionalista (Constitutionalist Army) in Mexico City, and in 1915, she became a professor at the Center for Education of the House of the World Worker. Governor Salvador Alvarado, an education reformer, invited her to Yucatán, where she stayed for two years (1917–1918). There, she promoted the creation of “groups and schools for women workers” while also directing an experimental Montessori preschool (Torres Cuellar, 1917). Afterward, she returned to Mexico City. In 1919, she worked in the biology laboratory of Alfonso Luis Herrera. There, she continued developing her interest in nutrition, which she would come to believe was important for the “character” of the rural population (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Un Libro de Técnica a Través de un Curso de Seis Semanas. Trabajo Colectivo de los Maestros Rurales del Estado de México [A book on technique through a six-week course: A collective work of the Rural Teachers of the State of Mexico], 1937, p. 8). According to his autobiography, he wrote Mexico’s first biology textbook, entitled Nociones de Biología (Notions of Biology), based on the evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin. In 1920, Torres Cuellar worked for the Escuela de Enseñanza Doméstica (School of Domestic Teaching), an institution affiliated with the National University (which would become part of UNAM in 1929). During that same period, she continued promoting the organization of women workers; in addition, she pushed for the creation of the Consejo Feminista Mexicano (Mexican Feminist Council) and put together a journal called La Mujer (The Woman), which published on the topics of women’s working conditions and the salary differences between men and women in Mexico (Porter, 2018). In 1922, she was appointed chief of Mission of the Council to participate in the Pan-American Conference of Women in Baltimore. The conference, associated with the National League of Women Voters, was an important event in the transnational fight for women’s rights, including the right to vote. After Torres Cuellar returned to Mexico, she created the Mexican Section of the Pan-American League for the Enhancement of Women, organizing the First Women’s Congress in Mexico in 1923 (Torres Cuellar, ca. 1935–1941, Torres’ Curriculum Vitae, ca. 1935).

Torres Cuellar’s Early Years at the Secretariat of Public Education

In 1921, José Vasconcelos took the first steps to create the SEP to extend schooling to rural and Indigenous groups as it was offered to others, refusing to treat Indigenous people as “special” or different from the rest of the population. In his view, since early colonial times, the Spanish sought to educate the whole population uniformly, given that “baptism” had converted all Mexicans into “people of reason” (Vasconcelos, 2012, p. 20). However, shortly after, in 1922, the SEP established a Departamento de Educación y Cultura Indígena (Department of Indigenous Education and Culture), with the purpose of “regenerating” Indians; above all, it was about teaching them to adopt a “modern” lifestyle (Calderón, 2018). The creation of a specialized department for Indigenous education reflected the fact that several of Vasconcelos’s collaborators at the SEP thought that the “national problem” of popular education should be addressed by adapting it to the specialized needs of the rural population. Indeed, Manuel Gamio, an anthropologist and student of Franz Boas at Columbia University was at this same time conducting studies of Indigenous students in the Teotihuacan valley, contending that their schooling should be differentiated according to their contexts. Torres Cuellar would go on to dedicate much of her writing to her ideas on the education of rural women, convinced that rural and, in particular, Indigenous education should be specifically responsive to their needs and distinct from that of urban populations.

While serving as rector of the National University, José Vasconcelos named Torres Cuellar inspectora de comedores escolares (inspector of school cafeterias). At an early age, Elena Torres Cuellar had developed an interest in food and the nutrition sciences, which she used in this position. At this time, studies in biology and chemistry, such as those by chemist Roberto Medellín, were drawing attention of educators to the effects of nutrition on school performance of children. Once Vasconcelos created the SEP, in 1921, Torres Cuellar founded the Servicio de Desayunos Escolares (School Breakfast Service), along with chemist Roberto Medellín and Engineer Luis V. Massieu, putting her heart and soul into that task for a couple of years (Cortes Ramírez, 1993). It was during her time as director of the School Breakfast Service, where she would often visit different schools in Mexico City to supervise operations, that Torres Cuellar conceived the idea of carrying out a Misión Cultural Experimental (Experimental Cultural Mission) to promote social change in rural communities. A promoter of rationalist and scientific education like many reformers of her time, she believed that radical changes in ways of eating, dressing, thinking, producing, and taking care of oneself and the household would help inform, modernize, and elevate the well-being of the rural population. She chose San José, Morelos, as a base for her “social experiment” because the state of Morelos was the cradle of agrarianism and land distribution (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Las Misiones Culturales y la educación rural federal [The Cultural Missions and federal rural education], 1939, p. 30). She was convinced that land redistribution was an essential element for building a modern society. In principle, the “experiment” would be financed by the SEP, and two teachers would take part in it, teaching reading, writing, and numeracy, while also training some students to continue the work initiated by the Experimental Cultural Mission. The team included a farmer, who was in charge of creating gardens to grow root vegetables and orchards for fruit trees, as well as a henhouse to breed fowl; two builders and one carpenter, who were responsible for building a school, a dispensary, a workshop, and a couple of “humble-style” houses; a nurse-midwife who was “responsible for private hygiene work” (p. 30) could not be left out; and, finally, the group would be led by a chief.

Even though Torres Cuellar and Vasconcelos shared several political and educational ideals, she mentioned in her autobiography, without going into detail, that important disagreements eventually arose between them. Another influence that strained their relationship was the fact that the implementation of the federal government’s “civilizing” project was evidently much harder than was expected by those intellectuals and politicians who promoted social and cultural change. As Torres Cuellar explained in her unpublished 1939 manuscript, Las Misiones Culturales y la Educación Rural Federal (Cultural Missions and Federal Rural Education), initially her proposal for the Cultural Missions had been presented to the SEP authorities. However, “enmities and envy” prevented the project from being implemented from within the SEP. Years later, in her autobiography, Fragmentos (Fragments), published in 1964, she highlighted other important aspects of the same story. At first, in 1923, José Vasconcelos had supported her initiative; nonetheless, he soon changed his mind, terminating Torres as a SEP employee (Torres, 1964). In that context, she left to join the Secretaría de Agricultura y Fomento (Secretariat of Agriculture and Development), where she managed to carry out her Experimental Cultural Mission from October 1923 to August 1924. Her tense relationship with Vasconcelos could be part of the reason why Elena Torres Cuellar’s contribution to the original Cultural Missions has not received sufficient credit in the official history. According to the SEP, the first mission was carried out in Zacualtipán, in the state of Hidalgo, and was overseen by Rafael Ramírez. Nevertheless, that mission only lasted three days, whereas the project Torres Cuellar was able to carry out in Morelos lasted 10 months.

The “experiment” in Morelos particularly emphasized the “problems” and “needs” of the local population, in addition to “teaching exclusively what people themselves asked.” Products such as “rice, sugar cane, bananas,” as well as “other tropical products,” were sown in the Cultural Mission’s zone of influence. Within two months, several “neighbors” learned the essentials of the metric system, doing the necessary math to sell rice; they learned to use stakes to divide areas for cultivation into three or four parts. As for the school, some locals contributed money as well as several hours of work to construct the property. Another important element that Torres Cuellar mentioned in her writings was the collective effort made to improve the homes of San José’s inhabitants (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La educación de la mujer [Women’s education], paper presented at the Second Interamerican Conference of Education in Chile, September 9–16, 1934, pp. 9–10).

Rural Education at Columbia University’s Teachers College

Owing to her experience at the SEP and in Morelos, Elena Torres Cuellar managed to obtain a scholarship from the World Peace Foundation to pursue a master’s degree in rural education at Columbia University’s Teachers College, in New York, where she stayed for a couple of years starting in 1925 (Calderón, 2017). Mabel Carney, professor and head of the Rural Education Department, was her mentor during graduate school. Having been a teacher in the Midwestern United States, Carney was an advocate of specialized preparation for rural teachers and missionaries, and she saw the rural school as a place to encourage modern farming practices and increased productivity (Rockwell, 2020). Even though there is confirmation of her enrollment and graduation, only parts of her student record could be found in the archives of the registrar at TC or in her personal archive. Thus, we must turn to the important clues she herself provided related to her time at that prestigious institution—where Moisés Sáenz, later Mexico's undersecretary of education, who invited Torres Cuellar to return to the SEP, also studied. ²

There is no doubt that her studies in New York impacted Torres Cuellar’s life in various ways. It was not easy at first; she indicated that her level of English was not good, however, she managed to finish her studies successfully. In her archive is one of Torres Cuellar’s school papers, entitled “Essay Putting Forth Practical Suggestions for the Organization of Rural Education”; it is dated May 1925, approximately halfway through her studies at TC. The manuscript shows how her ideas about education in her homeland were evolving through her studies at TC. Her suggestions, Torres Cuellar explained, were grounded in several elements, such as her knowledge of different social, political, and economic facts of the country, as well as the direct observation of rural life (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, “Essay Putting Forth Practical Suggestions for the Organization of Rural Education,” May 1925, p. 1).

In her opinion, most Mexicans had a biological heritage that was the result of a mixture of two races, that is, the original, native, or Indigenous population, and the Spanish population. Campesinos of the countryside, identified as “Indians” or “indigenous people,” did not possess special traits in relation to the rest of the population. In other words, she saw them as essentially equal. The racial mixture was more than obvious among those called Mestizos. It is true that “pure” native families existed in certain regions, she pointed out; however, they were a minority. Besides, they did not represent an independent or separate “problem.” There was no doubt for Torres Cuellar: The “rural problem,” both in economic terms and concerning educational issues, was the same for all or most countryside inhabitants. White, Mestizo, and Indigenous people were tied to each other for different reasons, such as their kinship. That fusion and intertwinement were the result of a long, silent, gradual historical process across many generations (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, “Essay Putting Forth,” p. 2).

“I know the peasants of my motherland,” Torres Cuellar confidently affirmed. Owing to her diverse set of experiences from Guanajuato, Yucatán, Mexico City, and Morelos, she truly believed that she could “judge the feelings” of the rural population. First, love for the family was an obvious constant. In addition, rural people could hate, love, cry, or laugh, contrary to the arguments of many intellectuals or researchers at the time who conceived of Indigenous people as passive, apathetic beings incapable of enjoying life or being productive. Besides, Torres Cuellar wrote, they were always honest. For her, there was no doubt of the existence of similarities or equality between Indigenous people’s “mindset” and that of White and “Mestizo” people (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, “Essay Putting Forth,” p. 2).

For Torres Cuellar, it was “the selfishness and self-sufficiency of those who tried to become their leaders, without proper knowledge” (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, “Essay Putting Forth,” p. 3) that had become a real issue, one more obstacle related to the rural population’s personal and social improvement. This was a much more serious obstruction than the very “ignorance” that “humble country people” experienced. For example, Indigenous people showed great interest for school, an institution to which they had had no access for many generations: Their enthusiasm even transformed into action when a few well-informed individuals supported and educated them, Torres Cuellar observed (p. 3).

She assessed that lack of “character” among the Mexican people and stagnancy as a nation were the result of the long historical process that stemmed from colonization and the influence of the Catholic Church on family life. She strongly believed that both the Mexican Revolution and the new federal government had created the conditions for Mexico to be able to experience very significant social and cultural growth, especially for campesinos. Rural education was indeed key to such transformation. One issue was that cultivated men and many teachers at previous stages had not been able to build a robust nation. Therefore, it was necessary to form a plan with clear ways to get Mexico out of the chaotic and stagnant situation in which it was immersed. A core element would be the creation of a new morale (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, “Essay Putting Forth,” p. 4).

To Torres Cuellar’s mind, Mexico could only be delivered from chaos by strengthening the economy and empowering its people through education. Economic prosperity was a fundamental requirement; however, it was not enough to achieve people’s well-being. The country owned very valuable material resources. That wealthy men showed no interest in the life conditions of the working class and peasants was a serious issue; they were only interested in their own material well-being and personal wealth. Such material abundance, badly distributed, had led to long-lasting armed clashes. The richness of national soil, along with Mexico’s children’s continuous and mounting work, had not translated into abundance for most of the population. Foreign companies made the most profit, while workers lived under very precarious conditions, receiving miserable wages (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, “Essay Putting Forth,” p. 6).

Another serious problem, she thought, had to do with low agricultural production and the migration to cities; these were two of Mabel Carney’s great concerns in the United States, as she noted in her 1912 book Country Life and The Country School. Mexico was experiencing a similar problem, with very particular characteristics indeed, given that migration was intense within Mexico, as well as abroad to the United States of America; for instance, Chicago, Illinois, was experiencing a boom in growth at this time. Saint Louis, Missouri, and Detroit, Michigan, were other major destinations for Mexicans then. According to Torres Cuellar, Mexican agriculture “was dead” in 1924, a year when agricultural products had to be imported from the United States at a cost of 149 million pesos to the federal government (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, “Essay Putting Forth,” p. 8).

In her TC schoolwork, Torres Cuellar expressed high hopes for rural education, opining that against all odds, it was paving new paths. Despite her history with José Vasconcelos, she expressed appreciation for the endeavor he undertook as rector of the National University, and as SEP’s first secretary, to advance industrial education. She also highlighted the work being carried out regarding school meals in the country’s capital. Torres Cuellar recognized the work carried out by Roberto Medellín, a chemist; José Peralta, professor of physical education; Federico Méndez Rivas, who was responsible for the construction and repair of several schools; and the young Jaime Torres Bodet, who played an important role in public libraries. ³

In her paper, Torres Cuellar explained that the success of efforts for rural education in Mexico depended on several initiatives: One was the high-quality, long-term training of men and women teachers so that they would acquire adequate knowledge to promote the type of cultural change that the country needed. Teachers should receive a scholarship to carry out their studies under good conditions and be invested in them full time. Another requirement was securing adequate funds to hire engineers who would be responsible for building modern, central schools, as well as for reconstructing some already existing rural schools. Finally, she saw it as essential to organize a national campaign of urgency for rural education. In other words, it was necessary to persuade “public opinion” in favor of reform efforts.

In addition to her school essays, the correspondence between Mabel Carney and Torres Cuellar shows the influence of Carney’s mentorship on her student. In 1925, Carney helped arrange the opportunity for the Mexican education reformer to visit the Normal College in Ypsilanti, Michigan (the Michigan State Normal College, today Eastern Michigan State University). There, she took a professional development course for rural teachers given by Marvin Summers Pittman, a pioneer in developing rural education in the United States (Carney, 1925–1928, M. Carney to Torres Cuellar, June 6, 1925). In Mabel Carney's letters, it is possible to identify two topics that became central to the implementation of rural education in Mexico in the second decade of the 1920s. One of them was the emphasis Carney placed on music education as a central element for community recreation and cultural change in rural communities. The second is the commercialization of agricultural production and cooperative marketing (Carney, 1925–1928, M. Carney to Rural Education students, March 27, 1925). As other letters between them show, the professional and personal bond that they formed while Torres Cuellar was at TC would continue long after she returned to her native Mexico to continue working in rural education.

Returning to Mexico

When Elena Torres returned to Mexico in 1926, the undersecretary of public education, Moisés Sáenz, invited her to return to work for the SEP (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Las Misiones Culturales, 1939, p. 87). It was then that Torres created the Dirección de Misiones Culturales (Office of Cultural Missions) ⁴ along with doctors, lawyers, agronomists, and even painter Diego Rivera, who all hoped to establish an education system capable of generating among the rural population the abilities necessary to lead a “normal and peaceful life” (p. 88) Such an effort was part of the “campaign” to reopen or establish schools in regions where schooling had been affected or disrupted by the Revolution (Rockwell, 2022, this issue). In cooperation with state governments, the SEP sent teams of professionals to rural locations to help campesinos plan and manage a hygienic and modern lifestyle in accordance with socialist ideals. They were stirred by the desire to foster people’s capacities to enjoy the fruits of their labor, contribute to the well-being of their community, and allow rural inhabitants to take advantage of education according to their own needs (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, Fundamental Education in Mexico, n.d., p. 7).

All six teams that Torres organized included one director, one doctor, one agronomist, one small industries teacher, one expert in physical education, and one woman as a social worker. The Missions’ work programs included aspects such as (1) courses for rural teachers; (2) workshops to improve agricultural production, such as seed selection, fertilization, crop rotation, and public garden creation; (3) training in how to prevent and fight contagious diseases, purify water, and improve the living conditions of all households; (4) lessons on steps to preserve fruit, carpentry methods, and furniture making; and (5) lessons on playing games and collection of traditional music and dance (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, Fundamental Education in Mexico, n.d., pp. 8–9).

For Torres Cuellar, granting “the same opportunities to women” was crucial, and thus it was important that women social workers were included in the Cultural Missions teams. At this point, the federal government recognized the need to go beyond schools to promote social and cultural change. The role of social workers shifted gradually and would become one of the most significant aspects of the Permanent Cultural Missions beginning in 1928. ⁵ It was for this reason that Elisa de Acuña y Rosseti, a woman of “character” and sharp intellect, directed one of the 1926 working groups (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, [List of feminists], n.d.). ⁶ In subsequent years, the Cultural Missions included social workers who were very committed to the SEP, women who believed in the “urgency” of educating housewives and transforming households. Jovita Muñoz took part in the San José Morelos Experimental Cultural Mission and may be considered, in my view, Mexico’s first woman social worker in rural education. Jovita Muñoz continued working in the Cultural Missions for several years. Another example was that of Catalina Vesta Sturges, a U.S. citizen, who collaborated with the Secretariat both in the Itinerant and the Permanent Cultural Missions, carrying out different projects in Actopan, Hidalgo. Furthermore, Elena Landázuri was also a social worker; in fact, she was the main proponent of the Permanent Cultural Missions, playing a highly relevant role in the Xocoyucan case, in the state of Tlaxcala, in 1928 (Calderón, 2018).

Despite her great enthusiasm and intense activity, Elena Torres Cuellar only worked for half a year as director of the Cultural Missions. Because of her feminist ideals, Luis N. Morones—the powerful union leader of the Confederación Revolucionaria Obrera de México (Mexican Revolutionary Worker Confederation, CROM), the “right-hand man” of President Plutarco Elías Calles—became her adversary. ⁷ Afraid of being assassinated, she sought refuge in the United States. She was hired as a social worker for the municipal government of Saint Louis, Missouri, a city where a significant number of Mexicans were migrating at the time (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Las Misiones Culturales, 1939, pp. 91–92). Further, Elena Landázuri, Elisa de Acuña, Jovita Muñoz, and Catalina Vesta Sturges were gradually excluded from the Cultural Missions (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, La Mujer Campesina [The Peasant Woman], 1935, Folder 1, p. 7). ⁸ Torres Cuellar managed to find a job in the United States thanks to Mabel Carney’s networks and encouragement. In a letter dated March 14, 1928, Carney expressed shock that the Mexican government would not be taking advantage of Torres Cuellar’s ample expertise and suggested that if she could not find work in Mexico, her skills could surely be put to use in Texas or Arizona working with Spanish-speaking children. In fact, she wrote that she had already contacted Mary Shipp Sanders, from the Education Department in Austin, about possibly arranging such a job, and further, that she would speak to Rafael Ramirez about the necessity of keeping Torres Cuellar employed with the work of the Cultural Missions (Carney, 1925–1928, M. Carney to Elena Torres Cuellar, March 14, 1928).

The Education of Women in Normal Schools

After working in Missouri for two years, Torres returned to Mexico in 1929 during a time of great political turmoil in the country, which disrupted the implementation of the Cultural Missions. By 1932, Narciso Bassols was minister of public education and Elena Torres, as an employee of the SEP, was sent to visit several Escuelas Normales Rurales (Rural Normal Schools) to analyze the issues that those institutions were facing with school discipline. Rural Normal Schools were coed boarding schools that, in addition to training teachers, sought to foster industrialization of farming and improve or create small local businesses. For most youth, life at these schools was drastically different from life in their respective places of origin; for this reason, issues of student behavior often arose (Civera, 2008). After observing some of the schools, Torres concluded that the strategies being used so far “were insufficient” to solve the specific problems they were facing. She undertook subsequent research through which she sought to build “adolescents’ character” and to settle “definite rules” and suitable forms to “handle school discipline” (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Folder 1, La Mujer Campesina, 1935, p. 3).

Without going into further detail, in one of her unedited manuscripts, she noted that some of her thoughts on the issue of school discipline were inspired by Havelock Ellis, ⁹ an English doctor who was interested in studying human sexuality, and a supporter of socialism and eugenics. However, there is no doubt that for Torres, all people, men and women, were equal in capacity, and the problems linked to the “backwardness” of the rural population had their origin in social issues, not genetics (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Folder 1, La Mujer Campesina, 1935, p. 4). Her study included a questionnaire about young men’s and women’s opinions on “the organization of teaching,” as well as on “the difficulties” that they faced “to be able to live their life, without feeling that their personalities were being destroyed” (p. 4) through schooling. The questionnaire also included items about the assumed “superiority and inferiority of women in comparison with men” (p. 4).

The directors of the Normal Schools of the states of Nuevo León, Puebla, and San Luis Potosí participated in this research; however, Torres affirmed that her inquiries faced several barriers, given that the information she collected was mainly from women. As a woman, it was complicated for her to obtain data on men, and resources available for the research were limited. For instance, she lamented that she did not have laboratories to carry out chemical analyses related to hormonal decrease or increase and “the anatomic-physiological transformations” that result from physical exercise. For the same reason, she had to resort to the studies of others, such as one undertaken by Carabelli Koeller, professor at the University of Chile, who had been able to carry out tests in a lab (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Folder 1, La Mujer Campesina, 1935, p. 5).

For Torres Cuellar, a basic point about the education of “ladies” and “teenage girls” lay in the “knowledge of their own biological nature.” Torres believed that “the principle of human improvement” in “males and females” depended on that type of differentiated “nature” whose traits became more evident during puberty. With the goal of “leading social interests to succeed,” education should explain that “biological nature” of men and women (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Folder 1, La Mujer Campesina, 1935, p. 2). Therefore, an essential element of her research was “to determine the characteristics of human females” (p. 2). For Torres Cuellar, owing to remarkable developments in anatomy, physiology, chemistry, medicine, and the nutrition sciences that showed the influence of hormones on “private and social behavior,” it was possible to create effective strategies to improve behavior and coexistence forms. All that scientific knowledge and the specialization of education for girls and women could “contribute considerably to the physical and moral improvement of humankind” (p. 2).

Home Economics in Rural Schools

Shortly after her research in the Normal Schools, Torres Cuellar worked as technical officer at the Departamento de Enseñanza Agrícola y Normal Rural (Department of Agricultural and Rural Teacher Training). As mentioned, Torres Cuellar had created the Office of Cultural Missions years before, in 1926; however, that office became part of the Department of Agricultural and Rural Teacher Training in 1933. Here, she was able to contribute to the creation of Rural Normal Schools’ disciplinary codes; she also worked on the structure of the home economics programs for Indigenous boarding schools, which multiplied during the administration of President Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, Trabajos Realizados en Beneficio de la Mujer Campesina, n.d., pp. 7–8).

In her writings, Torres Cuellar showed concern for the impact of industrialization on homes, which, in her view, represented a considerable “threat” to “family life” (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer [Women’s education], 1934, p. 5). She thought that women ought to be prepared to efficiently face the serious responsibilities that they bore as mothers and wives in an increasingly economically complex context. Given the “existence of badly organized households” and of “low standards of daily life,” it was necessary to include the teaching of both home economics and home education in primary schools. Both subjects were intended to redress what were seen as serious social problems faced by households in rural areas; cooperation from the “most capable” mothers was essential. In fact, in 1933, Torres Cuellar included the subject of economía doméstica (home economics) in the curricula for Rural Normal Schools. A core element in her proposal was to ensure that household chores were no longer bothersome and repetitive. To do so, reorganizing the allocation of time and even money was necessary. Those goals would only be achieved by introducing into rural houses nixtamal mills, “presses to make tortillas,” sewing machines, and bread-baking ovens, among other elements. The teaching of home economics would include cooking, room cleaning, and laundry lessons. Her proposal, Torres Cuellar affirmed, did not include exotic or strange elements; it merely arranged “those tasks proper to most women” ( p. 1).

Men and women teachers who received training at a Rural Normal School were prepared to teach in primary schools in rural communities. According to Torres Cuellar, the “very superior” economic status of most normal school students was a strength, and their living standards were higher than in the places where they would teach after finishing their studies. The federal government assigned these women and men the important task of educating the boys and girls of the countryside so as to promote improved economic status and domestic life, along with the improvement of adults’ lives. As teachers and community leaders, these individuals had the duty to understand in detail “the life that locals had” and to carry out research on locals’ ideas regarding human behavior—all this with the goal of “creating suitable relations” that would lead to “success.” The goal was not only to “improve people’s daily life,” but also to foster a “more industrious life” and “clearer intelligence” (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer, 1934, pp. 1–2).

According to Torres Cuellar, economic living standards in the countryside were lower than those in urban spaces. The rooms of the great masses of the countryside were very modest, often dirty and uncomfortable. In that context, the purpose of education was not to create geniuses, but “better” men and women, and to promote “dignity” and “decorum.” Rural teachers, as researchers, were to examine the conditions under which offering quality education was possible, ensuring “character” building, thus securing “the people’s economic greatness” and strengthening “individuals’ intellectual capabilities” (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer, 1934, p. 3).

In Torres Cuellar’s opinion, “deficient physical vigor and poor mentality” among the rural population were the cause of social or “physical misery,” which in turn had an impact on economic conditions and poor nutrition. The purpose of teaching the subject of home economics was to fill “those everyday needs common to all people.” It was not merely a subject; rather, it represented a knowledge set and personal criteria put together, which would give way to “uprooting” people in the countryside from their daily routine, freeing them from an inadequate family life and allowing individuals to appreciate health and beauty. Physical health would lead to ensuring “humankind’s development of the mind.” In this way, men and women would be able to internalize a sense of justice, which in turn would lead to creating new social balance. People would become aware of their right to “eat well” and adequately; they would see the convenience of “grooming themselves with decorum” and living in houses with sanitary conditions, where the sun and air could freely enter—houses with beds, chairs, clean tables, and beautiful dishware (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer, 1934, p. 5).

In her writing on the education of the rural woman, Torres Cuellar went into minute detail on specifications for an ideal home. Regarding the kitchen, she specified things like the proper height of the stove and its ventilation, and that women should work on their feet instead of squatting to make tortillas for the sake of cleanliness and rapidity. With adequate storage and sufficient air and light, as well as plants to provide shade and food, the kitchen could become a desirable space for the family to gather (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer, 1934, pp. 8–9).

As for the patio of each home, it was advisable to meet with other women in town, make clubs, and work in a coordinated fashion. Assistance from a specialist should be requested to create and grow a backyard garden. Legumes would improve families’ eating habits (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer, 1934, pp. 10–11). Another option to improve the economy of the household was a family farm. Breeding animals, Torres Cuellar pointed out, was good business. In the same way that well drilling required cooperation between several men, so was teamwork essential for animal breeding (p. 11). Torres Cuellar also elaborated extensively on the topic of making clothing. Among their many virtues, rural women knew how to use their hands, miraculously manipulating ixtle, hemp, wool, or cotton into threads, which would become blankets or fabrics to cover human bodies. Female hands also produced petates, baskets, and hats using spindles or “primitive” looms, giving way to home industries. By learning to read, country women would be able to learn various legends about spinning and knitting, stories that would be understood as moral teachings, life lessons for the creation and institutionalization of adequate habits at home. Knitting provided an “example of dexterity and work” for children and husbands alike. In that way, women would build “household virtue,” which in turn would lead to raising “happy children” as well as a “great homeland” (pp. 12–13).

Torres Cuellar explained in detail the purposes of home economics, considering children’s age; she noted that this education was not to be exclusive to girls, but should also be offered to boys. However, women were to play a main role at home. Domestic education’s objective was, from 6 to 9 years of age, “for children to become familiar with the correct use of those things that affect them in life, such as nutrition, housing, clothing, and grooming” (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer, 1934, p. 17). Learning should be practical, which is why “preparing lunch,” a meal, or dinner should be taught through example. With regard to girls, in “specific,” the purpose was to train them so that they could perform well what they were already doing, but in an adequate way. Another key goal was “to simplify” house chores, such as bean cooking, which required at least four hours using the traditional method (p. 17).

The purpose of home economics for children 9 to 12 years of age different from that for the younger age range. At this stage of life, girls and boys should be involved in “more serious tasks,” in addition to expanding their knowledge and experiences about those tasks having to do with “meeting the needs of life.” Girls should learn to calculate the amount of water and fire needed to cook beans; they should also learn to “make tasty food.” Learning how to “keep in good condition some liquid types of food like milk” and mead was included (Torres Cuellar, 1925–1934, La Educación de la Mujer, 1934, p. 19). Home education for those between 12 and 14 years of age was paramount because at that age, girls should learn how to lead and manage tasks at home in an integrated way. In that period of their lives, young women, as students of the Rural School, ought to become aware of their role regarding “the promotion of country home improvement.” At that time, most girls wedded in the early years of adolescence, becoming mothers and housewives at 14 or 15 years of age, or even younger (p. 20).

The Later Stages of Torres Cuellar’s Career

Torres Cuellar continued to work for the SEP in the government of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–1940). As part of the Cuerpo Técnico Consultivo de Educación Rural (Rural Education Technical Consultative Body), she wrote a document addressed to the minister of public education about socialist education. At that time, Torres was convinced that General Cárdenas’s program should be considered a “political statute.” There was no question that teachers needed to be told how they should put socialist education into practice. In such a context were three urgent areas: administrative, educational, and doctrinal. She felt it was essential for teachers to have complete freedom from the increasing control of teachers’ unions for three or four years so they could practice the new methods of the socialist doctrine. Eradicating illiteracy, improving “life conditions at home,” and improving “productive work” were foundational points in the education program. In her view, both urban and rural schools should share some elements, such as the teaching of the national language, arithmetic, and geometry. However, substantial differences existed between them. Regarding rural schools, adequate programs in home economics, as well as agricultural activity programs, should be introduced; for their part, in urban schools, industrial arts programs were to be included, in addition to programs specific to home economics (Torres Cuellar, 1935, Torres to the Secretary of Public Education, January 1, 1935).

Elena Torres Cuellar collaborated with the Instituto de Orientación Socialista (Institute of Socialist Orientation) to advance the new social goals of the public education sector that the Cárdenas administration was fostering. Concepción Michel, José Zapata Vela, Arturo Pichardo, and Torres Cuellar were part of a commission that made decisions regarding the textbooks to be used for socialist education. In her writings, she stated that many changes were necessary, some more urgent than others. Dropping all the books written under an “individualistic approach” was paramount. The commission determined that many of the books used in schools did not suit the “social ideology.” Even when some parts of those resources could be reused, they had to be selected and placed in the proper order, according to the syllabus determined by the Institute (Torres Cuellar, 1935, Torres to the president of the Instituto de Orientación Socialista [Institute of Socialist Orientation], n.d.).

Around this time, from August to September 1935, a four-week Rural Education course for TC students was held in Mexico. Mabel Carney was head of the group, and Elena Torres Cuellar played a significant role in its creation and implementation. In Carney’s view, Mexico was playing a very important role in rural education worldwide; so it was productive for her other students to find out firsthand what kind of public education the federal government was implementing. Mexico was a country with 12 million Indigenous individuals who lived in the countryside, which made it a very interesting natural laboratory where relevant innovations in educational theory were being carried out, especially through the Cultural Missions. “Such agencies and practices,” Carney pointed out, would certainly be valuable to American educators interested in rural education in the United States (Carney, 1935).

Changes

In 1936, Elena Torres taught a home economics course for Mexico State’s Rural Teachers (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Un Libro de Técnica, 1937, pp. 7–8). There, she noticed firsthand that many of the ideals that she put forth were far from becoming concrete social reality, for several reasons. A core aspect had to do with families’ low economic income in the countryside; indeed, even assuming that teachers would learn well the home economics lessons that she was promoting, the material conditions in which people lived would hardly allow for the promotion of significant changes in their daily lives, their clothing, their eating habits, and in households themselves. Other problems had to do with some of the SEP’s workers’ authoritarianism, factionalism within the teaching profession, and the process of corporatizing education workers (p. 16). In other words, Torres Cuellar provided data about the issues that she began observing with clarity and that were perhaps diminishing her original optimism about the scope of the rural education fostered by the federal government.

Regarding the course tailored for Mexico State’s rural teachers, Torres Cuellar emphasized the great number of subjects that teachers had to take in only six weeks, heavy work schedules, “bad housing,” and the absence of an adequate place to take a break. Bad eating habits and inopportune meal hours seemed hypocritical. Without going into much detail, Torres Cuellar wrote, “The job started in an atmosphere honestly meant for purposes other than study.” Needless to say, the promised “perfect organization” to conduct the lessons did not exist when courses began, and it soon became evident that all the logistics of the “Great Institute” had been imposed. Setting all difficulties aside, Torres Cuellar set to work. It was a huge challenge given that more than 600 teachers had registered. The idea was to begin with some research, which was carried out in a very fragmented way because it lacked support from the SEP’s employees (who were engrossed in events related to one more anniversary celebration of the Mexican Revolution). In addition, recurrent union assemblies prevented the inquiries necessary to give the incipient work “a practical orientation” (Torres Cuellar, 1935–1939, Un Libro de Técnica, 1937, p. 17).

Little by little, Elena Torres’s optimism and enthusiasm faded away, and her life underwent very considerable changes in the 1940s. She had concluded that the postrevolutionary political system was authoritarian and male chauvinist. In a personal letter, she wrote on the topic, “These men from the Official Party have no imagination, they have had no ideal other than money and power” (Torres Cuellar, ca. 1935–1941, Torres to Manuel Gomez Morín, February 12, 1946). In addition, in her autobiography, she hinted at her then renewed Catholic faith being a key element that allowed her to “move on” with her life; the series of disappointments she experienced that were due to the revolutionary movement in which she had participated when young were finally affecting her. Despite playing a significant role in the feminist movement in the 1920s, and despite supporting the Lázaro Cárdenas administration in the 1930s, Elena Torres emphasized her sympathy for the Partido Acción Nacional (National Action Party)—that is, the first party that opposed the hegemony of the so-called postrevolutionary governments—in her correspondence with its founder, Manuel Gómez Morín (Torres Cuellar, ca. 1935–1941, Torres to Manuel Gomez Morín, National Action President, February 22, 1946). In another letter from the same time, she disappointedly underlined that the “Official Party” had committed fraud in the 1929 elections, when José Vasconcelos was the National Anti-Reelection Party candidate; in addition, she stressed her anger over the National Revolutionary Party plagiarizing her feminist claims related to women’s civil and political rights. She also mentioned her disappointment that as far back as 1921, Morones, the leader of CROM, and his allies had excluded feminists from that organization, the predecessor to the Confederación de Trabajadores Mexicanos (Confederation of Mexican Workers), emblem of labor corporatism and male chauvinism in Mexico (Torres Cuellar, ca. 1935–1941, Torres to Manuel Gomez Morín, February 12, 1946). She was seeing that women had been alienated from the postrevolutionary state from the very first years of the SEP’s creation.

In 1945, Torres Cuellar turned to the international arena and began working for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), first in London and then in Paris. She was part of a commission whose objective was to create an “education [program] for all peoples on Earth.” She thought that education would “erase,” in a gradual way, all “resentment,” “pain,” and “hatred” left behind by the Second War. To that end, a program that sought to “raise education levels,” in both children and adults, was created. One of the first tasks was to create a book around what was called fundamental education. To Torres Cuellar’s understanding, while the struggle during the Mexican Revolution had been “for the utter improvement of the Mexican people,” UNESCO worked toward “the wellbeing and brotherhood of all humankind on Earth” (Torres, 1964, pp. 146–147). Torres Cuellar was in charge of writing a part of the manuscript based on her experience at the Experimental Cultural Mission in San José, Morelos, and as director of the Cultural Missions. This book would be published in 1947. Such effort resulted in the creation of CREFAL, in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, in 1951.

Conclusion

During her lifetime, Torres Cuellar was focused on promoting rural education programs for Indigenous and rural populations in Mexico. From an early age, she strived to gain education herself, and she fought for other women’s right to education and was part of the revolutionary movement, working with politicians such as Francisco J. Múgica and Salvador Alvarado. Her experience in Yucatán helping to develop preschool and worker education under Alvarado formed the basis of her expertise in the education of girls and boys and her interest in creating the school breakfast program in public schools in 1923 in Mexico City. Through these experiences, she was able to establish contact with Mabel Carney, the director of Rural Education at TC. Under Carney’s mentorship, she continued to reflect on the potential of education for the transformation of rural communities in her home country. Her two years at TC gave her theoretical and practical knowledge about rural education and social organizations, and strengthened her belief in the necessity of intensifying agricultural production to support rural communities. When she returned to Mexico in 1926 with an MA degree form TC, Torres Cuellar worked with a group of alumni form TC, including the better known Moisés Sáenz and Rafael Ramírez, to organize the Cultural Missions. Although her male colleagues have received much of the credit for their work on the Cultural Missions, it is my argument here, based on Torres Cuellar’s writings, that she played a, if not the, central role in their creation—even if that role was not recognized by the SEP and others. Indeed, Gabriela Mistral considered Torres to be a lead figure in the promotion and organization of Mexican rural public education (Zegers, 2007). Her most important and long-lasting contribution was the inclusion of social workers in the Missions; her belief was that education needed to go beyond schools to accomplish the transformation of families and communities, and the education of women, boys, and girls toward the improvement of social and economic life in rural communities.

After her time at TC, in the 1930s, despite political turmoil and obstacles of the time, Torres Cuellar continued to push for cultural change among the rural population through education, both in Normal Schools and Indigenous boarding schools, paying special attention to home education issues in the industrialization context. Despite her disappointment in the postrevolutionary political regime, she continued to push for cultural change as a core element of the formation of a democratic society. She played a significant role in the creation of CREFAL, an important institution where teachers from many Latin American countries received training and where materials were produced to combat illiteracy and move basic education forward. Unfortunately, little is known about Elena Torres Cuellar’s last years. She passed away at age 77, in Mexico City, on October 13, 1970. Surely, many more relevant elements of the life and work of Elena Torres Cuellar not covered in this contribution merit further extensive research.