Why didn't they teach us that in school?

In both public and private schools, they teach us only one side of Mexico: the side of war. They insist on telling us about the conquest, La Malinche, and the torture of Cuauhtémoc; they teach us about independence, Father Hidalgo, Juan Aldama, Ignacio Allende, and José Mariano Jiménez, and how their heads were cut off and displayed at the Alhóndiga de Granaditas; about Maximiliano and Carlota, he executed by firing squad and she lost to madness; about the Niños Héroes who died for their country; they teach us about the Porfiriato and the abuse suffered by hacienda laborers, about the Revolution with Pancho Villa and Zapata and Venustiano Carranza, and everything that came afterward. At school they teach us only the history of a bloody Mexico, mired in poverty, abused by everyone: by the Spanish, by the gringos, by dictators, and by those in government.

Why do schools insist on teaching us only one side of the coin?

I want to know why they do not teach us about the Mexico made up of inventors, scientists, philosophers, writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, and designers. I want to know why they do not teach us at school that Mexico is, and has long been, a cultural powerhouse and that there is so much worth reclaiming for us to feel proud of. I want to know why, in middle school, they do not have you read a book by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Juan Rulfo, Juan José Arreola, Jaime Sabines, Carlos Fuentes, or Octavio Paz; why they do not teach you about and explain the marvelous works of Mexican muralism; why textbooks are not flooded with the works of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Gerardo Murillo, Jorge González Camarena, Juan O'Gorman, and so many others. Someone explain to me why there is not an entire class in high school devoted to knowing and appreciating Mexican design, why young people are not being taught about the houses of Luis Barragán or the buildings of Mario Pani, Abraham Zabludovsky, Ricardo Legorreta, Pedro Ramírez Vázquez, or Juan O’Gorman.

And if we do not know our past, we know our present even less. Can you name, right now, a Mexican painter or sculptor who has risen to fame in the last 5 years? Can you name a Mexican architect who has created a work acclaimed worldwide in the last 5 years? Do you know of a project by a Mexican scientist that has won an award or secured significant research funding in the last 5 years? They exist, but we do not know them because school made sure to engrave in our minds that we are a country of victims; no one ever told us that we are a country of creators.

If, out of all the names I mentioned above, there is one—just one—that you do not know, you have fallen victim to this schoolroom brainwashing. Stop reading this blog right now and get yourself to a library to catch up.

Is it not shameful that people in other countries know Mexican art, design, and culture better than we do here? People come to our country from all over the world specifically to see the buildings by our architects and the works of our artists; how many have you gone to see so far this year?

And it is not only art. What about traditions? Why did they never teach us at school what the Danza de los Viejitos or the dance of the Chinelos mean? Why is it so difficult for most Mexicans to distinguish between Huichol and Tzeltal handicrafts when they are so different? Did anyone learn at school about the Eastern roots of Mexican cuisine?

Is it not shameful that we are so ignorant of our own culture, both historical and contemporary? That all we know, and only halfway at that, is the history of the odd war and the odd murder or execution? Why, when we hear about '68, do we think only of the massacre of the students and never remember the Olympics, for which one of the most ambitious, extraordinary, and revolutionary design projects in the world was undertaken—a project that continues to be talked about and discussed in other countries to this day?

I do not believe we should discard the wars, betrayals, murders, executions, and tyrannies from our history, but I do believe that we have been shown an incomplete picture in which everything else that makes up Mexican identity has been diminished. It is as if, in a black-and-white photograph, we were shown only the black without the white: the image becomes indecipherable. We have been taught that the only way to be heroic is to wrap ourselves in the flag and throw ourselves into the void; they have overlooked the heroism of revolutions not waged with weapons: revolutions of thought, art, and design.

What schools teach will not change soon, but we have two responsibilities: the first is to educate ourselves, and the second is to educate our children. We must teach the new generation who the great Mexicans of yesterday were and who the great Mexicans of today are; from that teaching will emerge the great Mexicans of tomorrow.