El Maestro (1921)

I will give a talk on this short-lived attempt on Universal education tomorrow -- El Maestro (1921-23). The clear point of departure is Vasconcelos and El ateneo de la juventud mexicana -- which moved against the Porfiriato, positivism and a ridiculous bastardization of Darwinism.  Their move in the 1920s arrives after the advent of Latin American modernism, which, to my mind, is more about a complete upheaval of nation-dreaming, looking more towards a contradictory form of cultural anarchy.  I think I will get at a hypothesis of cultural cannibalism via these two images.  They suggest a few readings, but mine will deal with consumption, juxtaposition, digestion and knowledge production.  Ecological thinking would not be too far away...
A bizarre sort of neoclassicism -----> the indigenous production of knowledge

I am thinking that mere discussion of reception and production is naive here.  It is more about the recycling of universal knowledge, history and philosophy.  The result is a cannibalism, which is often credited as a type of liberation in Latin American modernism.  A series of juxtapositions (of the ekphrasitic sort) will demonstrate this consumption.