hand-woven huipil, owning farms or working professional or industrial jobs, and living in certain regions of the country or cities. But apart from national censuses, San Carlistas did not use the word ladino to describe themselves. Instead, they signaled their racial difference from indigenous people in debates over culture and literacy, educational plans, and even cartoons, which I discuss at greater length in the chapters to come.
By their own estimation superior to Guatemala’s indigenous population and the rest of Central America in terms of arts and learning, Guatemalan intellectuals were also self-conscious of how they compared to Mexico and the rest of the world. In 1921 as representatives of the AEU, Vela, Marroquín Rojas, and Orantes attended a meeting of the International Federation of Students in Mexico City. There they joined Vasconcelos and fellow students in celebration of a new hemispheric student culture and “ser universitario” (university identity or even student being).23 This was just one of many instances when the recent Mexican and Russian Revolutions, and the new state formations that they proposed, informed Guatemalan intellectuals’ understandings of political culture, the nation-state, and revolution.24
Inaugurating an effort to build national unity, USAC changed its motto from “University of Guatemala—Among the World’s Great Universities” to “Go Forth and Teach All” in 1922 and developed its first extension programs the following year.25 These programs varied widely, but they promoted the same vision: the creation of a more literate Guatemalan pueblo, united by a national culture, and prepared for the future. Universitarios would direct expertise from the university out into a deprived pueblo, and this would help the nation unite and move forward into modern life. This way of thinking reflected broader intellectual trends. In 1931, Chilean writer and educator Gabriela Mistral visited Guatemala and delivered a speech on the importance of education for Latin America. She said, “The University, for me, would be the moral double of a territory and would have a direct influence, from agriculture and mining to night school for adults, including under its purview schools of fine arts and music.”26 Mistral affirmed that the goals of the nation-state and the university were linked. As the state attended to the citizenry’s social needs, the university attended to its moral needs.27 Her words also captured the basic premises of emergent student nationalism: the belief that formal education was intimately linked to human progress, and by extension, the responsibility of students to lead the people. Her words connected San Carlistas to larger claims about a Latin American modernity built on private prosperity and public virtue.28
Less than eleven years after Cabrera’s fall, another dictator challenged the university, once more transforming its political culture. Jorge Ubico y Castañeda (1931–1944) outlawed all student organizations. Like Cabrera, he appointed cronies to high positions within the university and personally supervised its functions. Under this rigid structure the university became known as a “factory of professionals,” churning out credentialed graduates with little of the sense of universitario duty that had motivated the Generation of 1920. Occasionally, Ubico simply closed the university. When he did permit the university to operate, his control was far-reaching. Early in his presidency, Ubico granted himself authority over the University High Council (CSU) and appointed the university’s highest official, the rector, who controlled faculty hiring. Leaving little room for mischief, Ubico even supervised the behavior of students and faculty who were required to conform to certain standards of comportment. The university had become a school of “good manners,” chiefly occupied by the reproduction of credentials for the benefit of a small elite.29
Civil society was divided. Ubico’s dictatorship offered stability that encouraged foreign investment and brought economic prosperity to some. But political parties and most civic organizations were outlawed. Only Ubico’s followers could have successful careers in the professions and the Army. In 1942, a small group of friends from the Faculty of Law set out to change all of that. They took up the banner of the Generation of 1920. They agitated for change and soon, demanded Ubico’s resignation.
EDUCATION, YOUTH, AND THE CITY
San Carlistas would draw on and expand this celebrated history across the next five decades, sometimes as state-makers and in other moments as targets of government repression.30 If being a student was a call to lead the nation at midcentury, by century’s end, it represented the sacrifice of youth in the struggle for justice. But before we move into that history, a brief overview of Guatemala’s education system and students’ backgrounds will help to situate San Carlistas.
For most of the twentieth century, Guatemalan education has been separated into three levels: preprimary and primary education, educación básica (also called educación media), and university. A series of laws passed in the mid-nineteenth century made primary education secular, free, and obligatory for children aged 7–14. As I mentioned above, Mariano Gálvez worked to standardize primary education during his presidency. The liberal reforms of Justo Rufino Barrios provided for the construction of normal schools—one for boys and one for girls—in more than three hundred of the nation’s largest towns. The literacy statistics discussed below suggest that these efforts were largely unsuccessful, but education consistently appeared as a priority of the Liberal presidents. At the turn of the twentieth century, the kindergarten movement helped expand formal preprimary education. However, these programs ranged from expensive multiyear programs to inexpensive accelerated programs of a few weeks’ length. From their first encounters with the school system, children with scant economic resources received limited instruction. Around the mid-twentieth century, primary education was divided into two sections, basic education (educación fundamental) and complementary education (educación complementaria). Each of these sections involved three years of study, and a student progressed from one to the next by passing exams. The complementary education curriculum included classes in social studies, math, grammar and literature, music, physical education, natural history, and the physical sciences.
The next level was educación básica, more or less the equivalent of a U.S. high school. Education at this level was revised significantly during the 1944–1954 revolution. Under the new program, oral exams in front of a panel of teachers were replaced by written tests and three general education grades (called the ciclo de cultura general) were added to the more specialized sequence called the ciclo diversificado, which guided students into careers. The revolution also expanded literacy and prevocational programs in the countryside. After the counterrevolution in 1954, these rural education programs continued, but became contested sites of surveillance, developmentalism, and resistance. I address some of them in the chapters that follow. Students received diplomas in teaching, accounting, secretarial work, or the humanities-focused baccalaureate (bachillerato) in Sciences and Letters. Hundreds of secondary schools or colegios opened during the revolution, but most students were prepared for university study at the more elite schools, like the INCV, the Normal Central Institute for Girls Belén (referred to simply as Belén), and the Liceo Americano. The religious Liceo Javier and Liceo Guatemala, both founded after the counterrevolution overturned the prohibition on religious education, also prepared students for university. Students from all of these secondary schools were involved in the protests outlined in the pages below. Other secondary schools fed into USAC, too, including Rafael Aqueche Institute, the National School of Commercial Sciences, and the Instituto Normal para Señoritas de Centro América (Normal Institute of Central America for Girls [INCA]). Most USAC students came from the capital or had moved there when they were younger to attend one of these colegios. Fewer students came from the countryside and from secondary cities like Quetzaltenango (usually after attending the Instituto Normal para Varones de Occidente [INVO]), Huehuetenango, and Escuintla.
The social category of student included a wide range of ages, from the late teens to the early or midthirties. Often San Carlistas took more than four or five years to graduate. Degree programs routinely required six, nine, or twelve semesters of coursework before exams or a practicum, and many students had work or family responsibilities that prevented them from advancing steadily. Also, it was not uncommon for students to take classes intermittently
