Colegio de México

The Colegio de México is a prestigious institution of higher education in Mexico City. Its origins go back to the Casa de España en México, created by a presidential decree of Lázaro Cárdenas in 1938 to receive Spanish Republican artists, scientists, and intellectuals in the face of imminent Republican defeat in the Civil War. The first members of the Casa were three Spaniards who were already in Mexico: Luis Recaséns Siches, León Felipe, and José Moreno Villa. The first to arrive from abroad were José Gaos, Enrique Díez-Canedo, Juan de la Encina, Gonzalo Lafora, Jesús Bal y Gay, Adolfo Salazar, Isaac Costero, and Agustín Millares Carlo. Membership implied a salary, a requirement to give talks and courses, and a possibility of publishing. In 1940 the Casa de España was transformed into the Colegio de México to guarantee its continuity. The first president, Alfonso Reyes, who was familiar to the cultural elite in Spain ever since his decade in Madrid (1914–1924), continued in office. Reyes guided the early growth of the institution and continued to lead it until his death in 1959. His principal collaborator was Daniel Cosío Villegas, named initially as secretary and, after Reyes's death, president until 1963. Conceived initially as a space for research, the Colegio de México gradually became a center for both research and teaching in the humanities and the social sciences. Since 1976 the institution has been housed in a striking modern building in the south of the capital. In the 1950s Reyes had the shrewd idea of offering grants to young writers (among them, Luis Cernuda, Octavio Paz, Juan Rulfo, Juan José Arreola, and Tomás Segovia). The Colegio always had a close relationship with the state publishing house, the Fondo de Cultura Económica, founded by Cosío Villegas in 1934. The first centers dedicated to research and teaching were the Centro de Estudios Históricos, created in 1941; Estudios Sociales, in 1943; and Estudios Filológicos (now the Centro de Estudios Lingüísticos y Literarios), in 1948. The first and third of the preceding centers coexist in the early twenty-first century with five others: Estudios Internacionales, Estudios Económicos; Estudios Sociológicos; Estudios de Asia y Áfricap; and Estudios Demográficos, Urbanos y Ambientales. The prestige of the Colegio de México can be measured by the quality of its staff and graduates, by its contributions to problems of knowledge, and by some of the great publishing ventures that established new paradigms, including the ten volumes of the Historia moderna de México (1955–1972) or the five volumes of the Cancionero folklórico de México (1975–1985). The institution received international attention through its journals, the first of which were the Nueva revista de filología hispánica (from 1947), Historia mexicana (from 1951), and Foro internacional (from 1960). Since the late twentieth century, it has undergone moderate growth and a deep process of internationalization.

See alsoReyes Ochoa, Alfonso .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lida, Clara E. La Casa de España en México. Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1988.

Lida, Clara E., and José A. Matesanz. El Colegio de México: Una hazaña cultural, 1940–1962. Mexico City: Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1990.

Zoraida Vázquez, Josefina. El Colegio de México: Años de expansión e institucionalización, 1961–1990. Mexico City: Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Históricos, 1990.

                                          Anthony Stanton