Transnational Ambitions: Student Migrants and the Making of a National Future in Twentieth- Century Mexico Rachel Grace Newman Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2019 © 2019 Rachel Grace Newman All rights reserved ABSTRACT Transnational Ambitions: Student Migrants and the Making of a National Future in Twentieth- Century Mexico Rachel Grace Newman This dissertation explores how the Mexican state came to embrace study abroad as a key piece of national education policy. The study begins with the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) and traces the changing politics and institutional pathways of student migration through 1982. During this period, hundreds and then thousands of Mexican students hailing from the country’s middle- and upper classes chose to finish their education in the United States. The dissertation’s central argument is that this student migration shaped the process of Mexican state formation in the wake of the Revolution. Even as scholarship programs responded to the impetus to modernize, achieve development, or foment science by importing foreign knowledge, youth demand for the chance to study abroad was a key yet unrecognized factor that explains why the state supports students’ transnational ambitions. By harnessing narratives of nationalism and modernization, Mexican youth pushed the state to develop institutions that granted international scholarships. Students aspiring to go abroad pioneered the political rationales that undergirded international education policy, which was then designed and implemented by foreign-trained Mexicans. As privileged youth, students shaped the state not by organizing but by leveraging their social and cultural capital as individuals. This dissertation points out that migration was a strategy that appealed not only to Mexico’s working-classes, but also to its “best and brightest” who sought to improve their prospects with a sojourn abroad. The dissertation’s first chapter examines how study abroad, a long-standing practice of the Mexican elite, became politicized after the Revolution. It traces debates in the press to show how a lack of state discourse about student migration gave other voices the opportunity to define the stakes of study abroad. Chapter two analyzes revolutionary-era scholarship granting practices, showing that paternalism persisted from the Porfiriato to the post-Revolution. However, the chapter reveals that Mexican students introduced revolutionary ideas into their petitions for scholarships, reframing their studies as an act of patriotism. The third chapter examines three major scholarship programs in the mid-twentieth century. It looks at both selection practices and the demographic profile of those who were chosen. These programs favored an already-privileged sector of young Mexicans, its university graduates. Chapter four, also set in the mid-twentieth century, explores the lived experiences and understandings of identity of Mexican students in the United States. This chapter argues that they pursued an ideal of middle-class mexicanidad during their sojourn abroad but found that this status was one of fragile prestige. The last chapter, covering 1960 to 1982, considers the genesis and early years of Mexico’s most important, and still extant, international scholarship granting institution, the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. This scholarship program served as a kind of social policy for young, upwardly-mobile Mexicans even as it obeyed the logic of development and science policy. The dissertation includes tables with statistical information on the Mexican students in the United States, with more detailed data for students in scholarship programs run by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Banco de México. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures..................................................................................................................................ii List of Tables..................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... v Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Public Debates on Student Migration in the Era of Revolutionary Nationalism ........ 30 Chapter 2: Scholarship Granting as a Paternalist Practice, 1900-1940 ........................................ 78 Chapter 3: Molding Mexico’s Future through Scholarship Programs, 1940-1965 .................... 126 Chapter 4: Student Migrants Navigating Middle-Class Mexicanidad in the Mid-Twentieth Century ........................................................................................................................................ 172 Chapter 5: Nurturing Transnational Ambitions and Institutionalizing Scholarship Granting, 1960- 1982............................................................................................................................................. 220 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 275 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................... 287 Appendix 1: Quantifying Mexican Student Migration ............................................................... 305 Appendix 2: Mexican students at selected U.S. universities ...................................................... 325 Appendix 3: Analyzing the Backgrounds of Scholarship Recipients ......................................... 335 Appendix 4: Biographical data, heads of committees for the Instituto Nacional de Investigación Científica’s 1970 study Política nacional y programas de ciencia y tecnología ....................... 341 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Concepción Reza Inclán, left, with a Texan student, 1952 ........................................... 14 Figure 2. The murdered students, Emilio Cortés Rubio and Manuel Gómez García, and survivor Salvador Cortés Rubio, 1931 ........................................................................................................ 59 Figure 3. Information form submitted by Carlos Eugenio Pérez Guerra, 1924. ........................... 98 Figure 4. Mexican students in the United States, with breakdown by sex, 1940-1965 .............. 163 Figure 5. Banco de México becarios in the United States by Mexican educational institutions attended prior to holding a scholarship, 1944 to c. 1959 ............................................................ 165 Figure 6. The yearbook photograph of the Club de México at the University of Texas, 1948. 184 Figure 7. Gloria González Garza y Vásquez Tagle, Wellesley College graduate student and Mexican Vice-Consul in Boston, 1946 ....................................................................................... 187 Figure 8. Pablo Velásquez Gallardo, as painted by a woman who met him at in a class at UC Berkeley, c. 1943 ........................................................................................................................ 199 Figure 9. Mexican students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, 1958-1983 ................... 232 Figure 10. Number of scholarships awarded by Conacyt, 1971-1983. ....................................... 252 Figure 11. Advertisement for Multibanco Comermex, “El investigador científico es uno de los grandes personajes de México,” 1978 ........................................................................................ 257 Figure 12. Conacyt advertisement for prospective becarios, 1980 ............................................. 258 ii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Data on pensionados from the Universidad Nacional, 1927-1929 ............................... 106 Table 2. Mexican students in the United States, 1913-2017 ....................................................... 311 Table 3. Percent change in number of Mexican students in the United States, 1913-2017 ........ 315 Table 4. Sex breakdown of Mexican students in the United States, 1935-1973 ........................ 316 Table 5. Mexican students by area of study, 1926 ...................................................................... 318 Table 6. Mexican students by area of study, 1950 ...................................................................... 319 Table 7. Mexican students by U.S. state, 1919 ........................................................................... 320 Table 8. U.S. colleges and universities with the largest numbers of Mexican students, 1919 ... 321 Table 9. Mexican students by U.S. state, 1968 ........................................................................... 322 Table 10. Percent of Mexican student migration to selected U.S. states in 1919 and 1968 ....... 324 Table 11. Mexican students at Stanford University, 1891-1971 ................................................ 327 Table 12. Mexican students at the University of California-Berkeley, 1944-1971 .................... 330 Table 13. Mexican students at the University of Texas by year of first enrollment, 1900-1959 331 Table 14. Mexican students at the University of Texas, 1961-1998 .......................................... 333 Table 15. First year studying abroad among RF becarios in