Movimiento Vasconselista 1929–1930

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Movimiento Vasconselista 1929–1930

José Vasconcelos Calderón (1882–1959), Mexico's first secretary of education during the government of Álvaro Obregón (1920–1925), laid the foundations of the national education system, promoted the National Teachers School, embarked on cultural missions in the country's poorest and most marginal regions, and reorganized the National University.

Vasconcelos distanced himself from the group in power and decided to leave the country when Obregón was reelected president. He returned in 1928 to launch a campaign for the presidency. Supported mainly by university students, he led a highly successful electoral campaign and won Mexico's main cities, but amid allegations of fraud the regime handed the presidency to its official candidate, Pascual Ortiz Rubio, and Vasconcelos went into exile once again. Before leaving the country he called on his fellow party members to take up arms to defend his triumph at the polls, through a manifesto issued on December 10, 1929. This was the end of the Vasconcelos movement.

See alsoNational Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) .

                             JosÉ R. Pantoja Reyes

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Movimiento Vasconselista 1929–1930

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