Between mountains and walnut trees: the history of the rural elementary school “heroes children” of the town el pueblito, Santa María Del Río, Mexico

ABSTRACT

In this article I present the historical process of the multigrade rural primary school “Heroes Children”, located in the town of El Pueblito, in the municipality of Santa María del Río, San Luis Potosí, Mexico, from its foundation (1933) to date. In order to understand how its journey through time has been in relation to the construction of the representations that students, teachers and parents, at different times, have elaborated on it. To carry out this research, based on a documentary and narrative inquiry, I have resorted to local archives, oral testimonies of students, teachers and parents, and photographs. In this sense, especially through the intersection of narratives with official documents, this contribution broadens the horizons of historiographic “creation” and broadens the historian’s “office”, from the possibility of operating with a variety of sources, as well as understanding life stories of teachers, biographical narratives and their representations of the multigrade rural primary school “Heroes Children”. Finally, it turns out that given the significant proportion of the educational service provided by multigrade schools to the rural child population in Mexico, and even though they represent the only opportunity of access to formal education for many students, this type of rural school and the teachers that they work there, they continue to be invisible to educational policy.

Keywords:
Rural primary school; Multigrade; Mexico