Andrés Molina Enríquez

Andrés Molina Enríquez (b.1865 - d.1940) was a Mexican positivist sociologist, amateur anthropologist, and former Justice of the Peace in Mexico State.cite book|last=Joseph|first=Gilbert Michael|title=Revolution from Without: Yucatán, Mexico, and the United States, 1880-1924|publisher=Duke University Press|date=1988|pages=336|isbn=0822308223] cite book|last=Toffolo|first=Cris E.|coauthors=M. Crawford Young|title=Emancipating Cultural Pluralism|publisher=SUNY Press|date=2003|pages=86|isbn=0791455971]

Influence & work

Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales

Molina Enríquez is best known for publishing Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales (English: "The Great National Problems"), in 1909,cite book|title=Windows to culture II: a reading comprehension textbook|publisher=UNAM|pages=22|isbn=9683662005] which is noted as a being highly critical of Porfirio Díaz government.cite book|last=Niblo|first=Stephen R.|title=Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|date=1999|pages=368|isbn=0842027955] Molina Enríquez characterized the period after 1821 as the era of national disintegration. Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales highlighted issues of political sharp divisions, recurrent armed conflicts, and periodic foreign interventions.cite book|last=Tutino|first=John|title=From Insurrection to Revolution in Mexico: Social Bases of Agrarian Violence, 1750-1940|publisher=Princeton University Press|date=1986|pages=130|isbn=0691022941] Molina Enríquez focused particularly on two aspects, land reform and the rights of the indigenous people and their place in society socially. Molina Enríquez was arrested by the government of Francisco León de la Barra on August 25, 1911 for publishing the document, which has later been described as highly influential on the eve of the Mexican Revolution.cite book|last=Young|first=Eric Van|title=Hacienda and Market in Eighteenth-Century Mexico: The Rural Economy of the Guadalajara Region, 1675-1820|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|date=2006|pages=xxi|isbn=0742553566] cite book|last=Henderson|first=Peter V. N.|title=In the Absence of Don Porfirio: Francisco Leon de la Barra and the Mexican|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|date=1999|pages=181|isbn=0842027742]

Indigenous rights

Molina Enríquez argued indigenous people suffered because of position on national social structure. In order to resolve the suffering of the indigenous people, and create equality, Molina Enríquez believed they had to be integrated into the national state, this idea would be central to the indigenist movement when it went international.cite book|last=Gray|first=Andrew|title=Indigenous Rights and Development: Self-determination in an Amazonian|publisher=Berghahn Books|date=1997|pages=50|isbn=1571818758] Molina Enríquez has been cited as arguing that the only true Mexicans were the mestizos and that they would be the inheritors of Mexico, classifying the other social group in Mexico as Criollos, who were Spanish/French in their thinking and ways, the mestizos to Molina Enríquez, were a new race, with a new culture of their own and the majority of Mexicans.cite book|last=De Mente|first=Boye Lafayette|title=There's a Word for It in Mexico|publisher=McGraw-Hill Professional|date=1998|pages=xxix|isbn=0844272515]

Land reform

While focusing on highlighting the nation problems in Mexico at the time, Molina Enríquez believed land reform was needed. In August 1911, Plan de Texcoco was issued, in which Molina Enríquez called for establishing a dictatorship committed to land reform. The role of the dictatorship would be to parcel out large haciendas to individual, not communal claimants. Molina Enríquez would eventually go on to be a key adviser to the committee which drafted article 27 of the Mexican Constitution and a member of the National Agrarian Commission.cite book|last=Fowler|first=William|title=Ideologues and Ideologies in Latin America|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|date=1997|pages=62|isbn=0313300631] cite book|last=Raat|first=W. Dirk|coauthors=William H. Beezley|title=Twentieth-century Mexico|publisher=University of Nebraska Press|date=1986|pages=130|isbn=0803289146]

ee also

*Constitutions of Mexico
*History of Mexico
*Land reform in Latin America
*Politics of Mexico

References