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Introduction: Hacer patria
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
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During the first week of December in 1920, teachers, parents, and students came together to celebrate the progress and promise of schools. Local committees organized conferences, exhibitions, and parades that acknowledged schools as “a great factor in the progressive action of the people of Puerto Rico.”1 In Mayagüez, teachers and staff of the Reform School held a parade and school festival in the town plaza. During the morning of December 6, school students, or, rather, asilados (inmates), paraded through city streets carrying banners that read: “Pueblo que no educa a sus hijos, crea su propia desgracia” (A people that does not educate its children creates its own misfortune), “Escuelas significan progreso; Analfabetismo , desgracia” (Schools signify progress; illiteracy, misfortune), “Hombres que vais al poder: ¡Más escuelas! ¡Más escuelas!” (Attention men in power: More schools! More schools!), and “Se necesita el pan de la enseñanza” (Education is our nourishment).2 The children’s parade, testifying to the value of schools in the community and to student demand for instruction, generated positive reviews. A newspaper article titled “Hacer patria” (To build the nation) celebrated the school activities, for they best typified the practice of creating citizens and building the nation. “The practice of making patria is entrusted, in part, to the mentors of our youth. Making patria, developing patriots, is the noblest of missions that the guides and shepherds of peoples can have. . . . And you make patria by creating a youth that is vigorous, strong, dedicated, enterprising, a lover of progress, reverential of the virtue of citizenship, and defender of its land and its home.” The key to forming a modern community of citizens committed to the progress of the nation was education, that is, schools and teachers. Patriots were “created neither in the 3 introduction Hacer patria battlefields nor in the military.” Rather, “the patriot and the patria were created [se forman] in the school.” As the Mayagüez Reform School transformed its “juvenile delinquents” into “citizens useful to society,” it was practicing the “regeneration of humanity.” The article concluded with an enthusiastic call for all to support schools in the nation-building process: “Let us build patria through the school. . . . Let us make patriots through instruction.”3 Other activities, framed within a similar enthusiasm for schools and progress, were organized in communities throughout the island. Teachers in the town of Coamo, for example, distributed flyers announcing the week’s local events. Addressed to interested and committed members of the community, the flyer called on “fellow citizens” to attend and “demonstrate their interest (today more than yesterday) in the progress of our School.” It introduced the guiding concepts that defined the relationship between schools, teachers, the patria, and citizenship . “Distinguished patriots: New times demand new ideas. Institutions are sustained on the spirit of ideas, and they, ideas, eternally evolve as they obey the invariable laws of progress. Today a new era begins, an era of great moral as well as spiritual significance for the progress of our society. Different today from yesterday are time, circumstances, and methods.” The post–World War I period was a historical moment guided by new ideas and methods. It promised to be a “modern era,” one that demanded sweeping change, transformation, and adjustment . Teachers acknowledged that the people of Puerto Rico had “transcendental problems to resolve such as the social, economic, cultural, political, and so on.” And they designated themselves as the dynamic actor of the community who would lead in the evolution and progress of the island and its people. “The teachers of Puerto Rico [la clase magisterial], an undeniable factor in the progressive evolution of the Puerto Rican people, will never remain indifferent to these problems .”4 Parents, too, were responsible for participating in the changes that defined the era through which they were living. They called on parents to awaken, gain consciousness, and take action. The activities in Mayagüez and Coamo embodied the framework that shaped the relationship between schools, communities, colonialism, and modernity in early twentieth-century Puerto Rico. Teachers proposed that “progress” and “modernity” were just around the corner for the island and its people. They were within reach of everyone. Schools represented wheels of change and progress. They were the sites through which all positive, modern, and “regenerative” methods were practiced. Modern education, in particular, was the key to transformation . However, it was the teacher who could unlock all these promises for students and their families. The changes teachers and schools promised students were greater...