RISE AND FALL OF SOCIALIST REFORM IN THE UNIVERSIDAD MICHOACANA, 1926-1940

The first decades of the twentieth century are thought of as years of university reforms in Latin America. Alumni at universities were politically active and ideologically militant, which oftentimes led to radicalization. Groups that identified with revolutionary leftist groups assumed leadership and political control of the Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolas de Hidalgo, which is one of the oldest in Mexico and the first to become autonomous. During the twenties and thirties, a significant portion of the students seized control of the institution in order to imprint a socialist orientation upon it, as well as to support Lazaro Cardenas' political agenda. The text deals with the process of creation and reordering of the student powers and organizations within the Universidad Michoacana of the twenties and thirties. The scenery is that of a socialist educational system and the attempts by the university authorities to control the organized students, both politically and ideologically. Furthermore, the article makes reference to the consolidation and validity of the socialist leadership. The socialist movement for university reform functioned as a school of ideology from which a number of student leaders who soon occupied prominent positions in the national political scenery emerged.