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The Church-State Dispute Over Education in Mexico from Carranza to Cárdenas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Stanley E. Hilton
Stanley E. Hilton*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin, Texas
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Extract

The delegate from Tabasco definitely believed that the destiny of Mexico was at stake. At President Carranza’s behest an assembly had convened at Querétaro charged with the duty of drafting a constitution which would embody the ideals of the Revolutionary element. Although he was still a young man in his early thirties, the delegate, Francisco Múgica, was a former military commander and governor of Tabasco, and he now occupied the strategic post of chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Reform whose task was to recommend the necessary modifications of the proposed constitution. It was December 13, 1916, and the committee’s report on a key article of the future constitution was being discussed. Múgica, the chief spokesman for the radical majority at the convention, rose to defend his views. The discussion of this particular article, he declared, was “the most solemn moment of the revolution. [No other moment] has been so great, so important, so solemn. … [The issue is] nothing less than that of the future of the nation, the future of our young people. …” The article which prompted Múgica’s dramatic remarks engendered one of the longest and most heated debates of the convention, and in the ensuing two decades it formed the basis of an important area of conflict between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church. This was Article 3 which deals with education.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , October 1964 , pp. 163 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1964

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