Historically, Mexican education for indigenous children has reinforced linguistic ethnocide and assimilation in inefficient schools of low educational quality. Assimilationist policies generated interethnic, political, and economic conflicts. Recent constitutional changes resulted in minimal changes nationally, but a recent Oaxacan law protects…

This paper provides a general overview of Aztec education as it existed when the Spanish arrived in 1519. A brief history traces the rise of the Aztecs from lower-class squatters and mercenaries in the Valley of Mexico to the rulers of a loosely structured "empire" consisting of some 15 million people. Aztec society was highly…

Reviews the history of the Yaqui, first in Mexico, and then in Guadalupe (Arizona). Discusses the use of Yaqui, Spanish, and English within the community; community legal action against the school district over disproportionate special-education placements; resistance to school desegregation; a trilingual community school; and internal and…

In the 1930s, Mexican rural schools became arenas for cultural politics--the process of articulating and disputing definitions of culture, from national identity to the broader sense of social behavior and meaning. Created in 1921, the Secretaria de Educacion Publica (SEP) set up federal rural schools to nationalize and modernize rural peasants.…