Comment from my friend Pedro Tomei, a diligent reader of The inclusion of critical and parallel Chiapas. In part in his commentary on my previous text on ENAH and in reference to the need for courses on the history of anthropology in Mexico, Pedro Tomei says: (Anthropology in Mexico is a science…) the hottest debates of postmodernism or prehistory of the 1968 movement, but part of it inseparable from the beginnings of the history of anthropology with the arrival of Bois and with him a whole style of thinking.” As Pedro Tome points out, the International School of American Archeology and Ethnology, founded in Mexico in 1911, bears the stamp of Boas who regards anthropology as a science of culture with a holistic approach. Therefore, when ENAH was established in 1942 within the INAH, the disciplines were physical anthropology, social anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, and archaeology. The Boas model assimilated into ENAH served other Latin American schools that were beginning to emerge encouraged, in many countries, by scholarship holders who, having studied at ENAH, returned to their countries to establish teaching in anthropology. ENAH encouraged, from its early years, an anti-colonial orientation based on nationalism that arose from anti-colonial struggles. Later, the nationalism that was seized by the state became other meanings. But at least in my generation we were nationalists in anti-colonial terms, and that was one of the main reasons for rejecting the so-called American “culture” and the structural functionalism of the British School. Of course, these are the aspects that should be discussed in courses on the history of anthropology in Mexico. Therefore, I have put forward a proposal to hold a cycle of conferences discussing the history of ENAH and focusing this history on the different generations that have passed through the school. I hope that in the study programs or curriculum maps for teaching anthropology in the various academic and university centers of the country, courses on the history of anthropology in Mexico are outlined. It would be interesting to see what a student from the University of Chiapas from UNACH knows about anthropology in Mexico compared to one from Jalapa or from ENAH itself or the Department of Anthropology at UAM-Iztapalapa. Not knowing which discipline path one is dedicated to leads to mistakes that are difficult to correct later. In this sense, the generational approach to the ENAH track would show how generations of anthropology students lived through different phases of the country. Thus, for example, it is important to have a conversation with Lionel Doran to find out why ENAH students supported the strike at the National Polytechnic in 1956. That year, Lionel Doran was the Secretary of the ENAH Student Association. , SAENAH. Margarita Nolasco, Mercedes Oliveira, Enrique Valencia, Guillermo Bonville, Poncho Muñoz and José Rendón were studying anthropology. In the body of the teachers were Paul Kirchhoff, Ricardo Pozas, Jorge A. Vivo, Joanna Faulhaber, Barbro Dahlgren, Pedro Bosch Jimbera, are among other notable men and women in anthropology. An anthropologist like Andrés Medina is a living source of information about ENAH’s life. The stages that the school has gone through are closely related to the life of the country since it worked in the streets of Moneda, passing the heights of the National Museum of Anthropology to its present location in the streets of Zapote, corner with Perisor, Colonia Isidro Fabella in the office of the mayor of Tlalpan.
Some time ago, the National Institute of Higher Education was no longer the only educational center for anthropology in the country. During the 1970-1990 decades, anthropology schools were established throughout Mexico, but ENAH still holds a very special place, precisely because of its history. Recently, after the expiration of the agreement signed between UNAM and INAH, a degree in Anthropology was established at UNAM, with the support of the Institute of Anthropological Research (formerly the Department of Anthropology in the Institute of Historical Research), the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Institute of Linguistic Research, Center for Seminar Island Humanities and Social Sciences and CIMSUR in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas. Even the School of Anthropology and History of Northern Mexico, founded by José Luis Sarego and other colleagues in Chihuahua, traces its origins back to ENAH, to which that school was dedicated for some time. Therefore, to make a detailed reflection on the origins and path of ENAH in Mexico, is to open the door to knowledge of the role that anthropology has played in the country since the emergence of the nation-state in the nineteenth century. In these times, it is essential to be clear about the role of social sciences such as anthropology in the future of the nation. Anthropology as a discipline moves between science and the humanities, with a special status in colonial and anti-colonial contexts, as well as a defense of human diversity. And in this, the role of ENAH has been very prominent not only in Mexico but in our America.
Agegic. Lake Chapala beach. As of January 16, 2022.
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