Guerrilla Librarian

In one of history’s most incandescent bursts of library-building, the post-revolutionary Mexico of the 1920s created some two thousand new libraries in less than four years. This project’s driving force was Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos, an intensely energetic idealist who combined political savoir-faire with a rare enthusiasm for books, libraries, and literacy. This text examines the important successes and shortcomings of Vasconcelos’s work, and traces its continuing influence o...