Incorporation of new sources for the reconstruction of the historical discourse for the IPN

Abstract

This work shows that the historical discourse elaborated within an institution of the Mexican State, in this case by the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN, National Polytechnic Institute), provides a broad area of work for historical reconstruction, since the intentions, structures, and actions of the actors, values, administrative practices, the formation of academic groups, antagonisms, and a large etcetera, are incentives for the elaboration of new questions that require explanation from the historian. It is shown how sources that had not been considered, or that had been considered superficially when developing a legitimizing discourse, have the potential to support richest explanations of the past, considering the moment in which the events occurred, the intentions of the protagonists and the ones of those who constructed the historical discourse. The argument highlights an agency whose substantive functions are education and research in hard sciences (physics, chemistry, mathematics) and by law it must guarantee the preservation of its historical memory, and that this provision opens the door to a vast interaction with other dependencies, such as the General Archive of the Nation, resulting in attractive lines of archival and historical work. One of them is explored, the search and incorporation of historical documentation referring to the first years of existence of the IPN in the institutional reportorium: the Historical Archive of the IPN.