Biography of José Vasconcelos | Politician, Mexican writer and thinker.

(Oaxaca, 1882 - city of Mexico, 1959) Politician, Mexican writer and thinker. He was the founder of the Ministry of education in his country, from which developed a fruitful and extraordinary work, which earned him the nickname of the master of the youth of America.

Law degree from the National School of jurisprudence in 1907, he presided at the Ateneo de la Juventud, of which he was founder in 1909. He was supporter of the Mexican revolution from the beginning, since it participated in the movement Madero as one of the four secretaries of the Antirreeleccionista Center of Mexico. He was appointed Co-Director of the newspaper El Antirreeleccionista by Félix F. Palavicini.

In the uprising of 1910-11 was Secretary and substitute Francisco Vázquez Gómez, Madero in Washington confidential, and founder of the progressive Constitutionalist Party Agent. After the coup d ' état of Victoriano Huerta, Venustiano Carranza appointed him confidential agent to the Governments of England and France, to try to avoid that these give financial aid to the dictator.

In 1914 he was appointed director of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria. He then fled to United States, since Venustiano Carranza tried to arrest him by sin of critic. Upon his return he attended the Convention of Aguascalientes and served Secretary of public instruction during two months in the Cabinet of Eulalio Guzmán.

In 1915 he was exiled in the United States. In 1920 he met with Álvaro Obregón and gave their support to the Plan of Agua Prieta, which purported to dismiss Venustiano Carranza of the Presidency of the Republic, and thus consolidate the presidential candidacy of general Álvaro Obregón. Adolfo de la Huerta appointed him head of the University Department and fine arts. In this role imposed on the National University the current coat of arms and the motto "The spirit will speak for my race".

He continued in the role under the chairmanship of Álvaro Obregón, who appointed it head of the Secretariat of public education to create this dependency. From this position he imposed the popular education, Mexico brought outstanding educators and artists, created many popular libraries and the departments of fine arts, school and libraries and archives; he reorganized the national library, managed a program of mass publication of classical authors, founded the magazine El Maestro, promoted school and rural missions and led to the celebration of the first exhibition of the book. During his tenure were commissioned murals to decorate public buildings to the painters José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera, although some have claimed wall sayings had to overcome tenacious resistance of the Minister Vasconcelos, whose understanding Orozco had "horrible cartoons".

After the signing of the treaties of Bucareli, he condemned the murder of Senator Field jury and resigned from his post in the SEP. He was candidate to the Oaxaca Government but was defeated and opted for exile. In Paris and Madrid published the first epoch of the magazine the torch (1924-25). Upon his return to Mexico he was candidate to the Presidency of the Republic by the national party Antirreeleccionista.

To proclaim the triumph of the officer candidate Pascual Ortiz Rubio, the antirreeleccionistas denounced electoral fraud and Vasconcelos proclaimed in Sonora Guaymas Plan, unsuccessfully calling an armed uprising. Imprisoned after enacting his plan, is autodesignó "only legitimate authority" and ignored the Federal, State and municipal authorities who "tease the public vote for thirty years". Already released into exile in Paris, where reissued the torch. On his return he was the address of the national library during the Presidency of Manuel Ávila Camacho (1940-1946).

The work of José Vasconcelos

His abundant literary work has been classified into five basic sections. In philosophy, influenced no doubt by the writings of Schopenhauer, which had in great esteem, became the champion of the fight against positivism and utilitarianism, that such a predicament had reached in America at the time.

At the philosophical level, include books such as Pythagoras, a theory of rhythm (1916), aesthetic monism (1918) and Organic logic (1945), organized by a system based on the aesthetic judgement, where beauty becomes a higher reality form and the synthetic music method emphasizes the universal concrete; He said that his philosophical doctrine was "a based on the aesthetic monism".

For Vasconcelos, the task of philosophy is to coordinate all areas of the self and all the faculties of the self, to achieve a Supreme unit, which is no longer the Logos, but harmony. The true knowledge could be obtained using a synthesis coordinate elements and modes of apprehending intellective, mystical and emotional. Any distinction between object and subject is just phenomenal. The truth would be in the aesthetic judgment, by way of beauty and harmony.

Secondly, in the works of sociology and pedagogy, as the cosmic race (1925) and Bolivarianism and Monroismo (1934), it highlights an anthropological and historical concept that postulates the formation in Latin America of a future race, which will end up imposing the higher form of life born and influenced by his aesthetic temperament, contrasting it to the of the Anglo-Saxon America. The cosmic race, essay on American identity, including controversial ideas about racial superiority.

A third and fruitful field is the trial and his extensive work as a journalist: Gabino Barreda and contemporary ideas (1910) or Victor Prometheus (1920). A teeming journalistic work, which encompasses and affects all aspects of news and culture may be included in this section.

Another important facet of their intellectual activity was setting the historical works, such as his brief history of Mexico (1937) and Hernán Cortés, creator of the nationality (1941). Biographical volumes devoted to Simón Bolívar and Evaristo Madero.

It is in his memoirs where a greater literary force, and it is thanks to them that he remained as a living presence in Mexican letters after his death. These involve personal experiences, precluding conceptual reflections and awareness of having lived in a historical period that included the fall of an old regime, the armed struggle of the revolutionary forces, strengthening of national institutions and the disappointment caused by the successive Governments. The cycle begins with Ulises criollo (1935), continues with the storm (1936), advances to the disaster (1938) and culminates with the Pro-Consulate (1939): the four volumes are considered a model of the genre. The last volume of his autobiographical work, titled the flame, appeared posthumously (1959). Vasconcelos could be considered a great historian if he had been able to get rid of his irrepressible passion at some point.

Author of a small dramatic output, this is considered the least significant part of his work, and his pieces rarely are staged for lack of a real sense of the theatrical dynamism. Perhaps the most interesting of them is the robachicos (1946). Nor do his work of fiction, which is absent the authentic literature has great weight. They are not without charm, however, works like magic sonata (1933) and Baghdad wind (1945).

Its political ideology

Its political ideology, inspired by an anti-imperialist romantic regenerationism, the revolution can only be as (in the words of Joaquin Cardenas Noriega) "Manhood for good and progress, social justice and free personality and demagogic quackery, human dignity." So beware of the lower classes as high and believes that only the political direction of the middle classes can give continuity and stabilize the revolutionary process.

So says: "Manuel Rivas, as did I, belonged to the professional middle class that invents, owns and operates the treasures of culture at all latitudes. True aristocracy of the spirit. It is this kind placed between rudeness and incompetence of the underdog and corruption, stupid selfishness of those above. Hapless people in our class not mastered, does not impose the orientation and system. "Destroy the cultivated kind, pouring over the Indian that just will not do but sit to be outcast from the large Texas that will be all over Mexico, behold one of the purposes of the Pocho imperialist Plan, and they have been methodically fulfilling it."

This programme of regeneration of the homeland, and entire America, has in the defense of the truth, even at the expense of the sacrifice of life, exile or jail, North that guides, in his own words, his prophetic action: "proclaim the truth in the face of those who support its domination in the lie, is a function of the prophet" more even than the hero's. Curse that seeks to please the wicked rather than report it! Damn who sees sinking his boat in seas of treason and cowardice, and does not desist from condemning injustice, error, deception! ... Launched the Brega, the truth cannot be serene, must be agitated as the tempest and bright as lightning, strong as the beam that knocks down the towers of the pride of the world."

The great admirer of the Spain colonizing and Hernán cuts, and great flagelador of what it regards vices of his country, parallel to those of the Spanish generation of 98 regenerative purposes, not is biting never language, like not the Spanish Miguel de Unamuno biting it is: one and another were philosophers, individualists, donquijotescos cool.

The illustrious Mexican thinker emphasized alternatives that, in his opinion, may be considered the continent in his essay what is communism? (1937), where it ends, however, publicly confessing their Catholic faith even without giving up early intellectual influences and without that offended him, in the campaign against Western imperialism when the second world war is in its infancy (1939-1940), the coincidences that can be found with the Marxist-Leninist theses in his thinking.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas