The primers of the National Campaign against Illiteracy (1944-1946)

Abstract

In Mexico, illiteracy remains an educational problem that reflects the strong inequalities of the population and reveals the government´s incapacity to eradicate it and guarantee full access to one of the most important instruments of knowledge in societies such as ours. Illiteracy has been studied in Mexico through the history of education in each state, or as part of studies on the coverage, growth and expansion of the educational system or on the results of certain policies in elementary education. However, few works have been devoted specifically to the study of illiteracy as the focus. This reflects that the problem should be resolved with historical studies. Through this article, I hope to show the relevance of literacy campaign primers as a historical source that sheds light on certain processes of literacy campaigns and on illiteracy itself. I focus on the primers elaborated for the National Campaign against Illiteracy (1944-1946), during the presidency of the General Manuel ívila Camacho. The campaign began after an "emergency law" was promulgated in August 1944. In this law, the government mandated the creation of a national primer, in the form of a writing notebook. The creation of bilingual primers was introduced for the indigenous population, which was largely monolingual at the time.