The College of History. Three Moments in its Day-to-Day Life

The Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (FFyL) is and has been a great container for me, and the College of History one of its most fruitful seedbeds. Its never quiet spaces, altered as they are intensely lived, and the steps of us walking through, all leaving a mark behind, testimony of so many stories, that there would hardly be ink enough to record.

Three images that I try to turn into words come to my mind when I try to decipher what the enormous satisfaction of being part of this house means to me. The 70s: a time to open our eyes. The 80s and the 90s, time to add and value experiences that were definitive. And the new century, to contemplate the profiles of a world that is reconfiguring itself, and to yield a possible harvest. 

First Section: To Open the Eyes
Discovering the faculty by slowly observing the subjects’ schedules offered for the first semester of the History program, made me realise that I had arrived at a place where the horizon was so much wider than I ever imagined. The history on display may  have been the past that some of my classmates hoped to unravel and know as accurately as possible. It wasn’t only the travel in time what was opening up.A program that I barely knewrevealed that it was necessary to take cautious steps through other knowledge fields, some of them firmly anchored in the preferences that led me to humanities so early on. Other subjects that were undoubtedly indispensable to make from our transit through the classrooms some disciplined individuals. Literature, Philosophy, and Art for me in the first term; then Sociology, scientific thought, economic and political thought which had to forcibly accompany the guiding axes that introduced us to History itself, and then guide us along the road of its own history, carrying in the briefcase, as soon  as it could be, the instruments to measure and weigh the indispensable sources to survive, and which were at hand of those young people about to enter into a foggy region: the past. 

Two years and we got to know the nodal points for a preparation that will never be complete. At the same time, fast trips through that part of the neighbourhood that is inevitable and needed to cross the foggy zone with a bit of success: research techniques and general and Mexican historiographies whish supposedly enabled us to start feeling identified with our “most necessary tools” alongside the mirror provided by those who, in their time, took paths similar to our own. 

Then visiting those aspects that we perhaps had seen as contextual resources before, to talk about causes and consequences of events imprinted in our usual way of conceiving ourselves as historical beings, which demanded our attention to the essential factors of politics, economy, and society. And what to say about that knowledge without which History cannot even think of existing, Geography? As in a revelation, it allowed me to know that it was, as everything else, historical. Also there, to prepare us to accomplish a task understood as substantive, as our participation in “solving the national problems”; the general and specific didactics of history. And a tool that opened our senses to meditative reading of documents and texts: a class to learn to comment them. 

Those first two years, I got immersed into a universe which sent signals to different directions. Without even realising it, the universe threw us into the task of finding out why we were there, sitting on the benches listening to a motley faculty, ready to define the orientation of the next stage of our learning process. Two years to choose in the immense sea of history a way to access any part of the past that, for whatever reason, seemed appealing for us. I am heartily grateful to have had a place of freedom that allowed a great number of generations to opt for the set of subjects that awakened and consolidated each individual’s interests. The past doings, infinitely generous (it could not be otherwise) presented itself fragmented and the young that we were believed to have our favourite dish at reach. 

My gratefulness for the teaching program of those years would be incomplete without acknowledging the teachers who delivered their accumulated or recently acquired knowledge with admirable dedication. On a strictly personal matter, my recognition to José Antonio Matesanz, Eduardo Blanquel, Arturo Azuela, María Rosa Palazón, Rosa Camelo, Álvaro Matute, Alfredo López Austin, Manuel Cazadero, Ignacio del Río, Jorge Alberto Manrique, Juan Antonio Ortega y Medina, Carlos Bosch; a route that makes me stop in each station. Starting my master’s studies in the middle of that decade also meant mentioning Gloria Villegas and Roberto Moreno de los Arcos. 

Something worth remembering, to keep in a special place, is having sowed friendships that have nurtured my life since then until today, like Adela Pinet, Rebeca García, Elvira Espinosa, María Eugenia Arias, and the unforgettable Marcela Morales. They all were my classmates in a few classes (it remains to be remembered which ones); those who completed their studies with or without the degree and enjoyed the opportunity to work using the tools obtained in different fields. We owe to meeting in the College of History, with the basic ingredient of walking together the hallways for several years and communicating experiences, discovering our affinities and those of our research, that is always diverse, like life itself.

Second Section: Adding Up, Adding Value
It is priceless, the fortune of being part for more than 50 years of a now-centennial institution. Eight years after entering its classrooms, in 1979, I began a new stage that would lead me to experience life in the College in a different way. Five years earlier, school learning already had an effect of providing me with some tools to work as a “historian”, but the request of Eduardo Blanquel, one of my admired professors, to become his teaching assistant in the General Historiography subject, was a gateway for adventure which tested my vocation and made me be certain of the choice that will constitute the central focus of my interests. Teaching in an area that had long been considered essential, was and has continued to be a challenge. I never imagined it would bring me so much satisfaction to develop this activity surrounded by teachers I already knew with many more I met afterwards like Andrea Sánchez Quintanar, Víctor Castillo, Ernesto Lemoine, Alfonso García Ruiz, to mention a few; and even by colleagues whose interests I had been able to detect throughout my career: the “Cármenes”, Yuste, de Luna, and León Cázares; Josefina McGregor, Miguel Soto. 

Tightening our ties or just being close, saying hello, chatting every now and then, to end, as we did, in an animated discussion on the studies program that we had to elaborate and that brought us growth that we wouldn’t get any other way. If our meeting in 1996 brought coincidences and differences to the conversation in the way of approaching the studies, it was at the same time a reason to think and rethink our own convictions. The outcome from all of this, in any case, paved the way for the practice that we decided there to show in time its strengths and weaknesses. The voices of then young Renato González Mello, Alicia Mayer and Federico Navarrete, energetically argued and proposed changes that they considered pertinent. The heated discussion on some topics did not inhibit the will to find a way to reconcile opposing views. The efforts of the commission which had prepared a proposal in five years, confronted the Alternative Plan that sought to dissolve it or, at least, to seriously modify it. The agreements published in the faculty’s Bulletin of February-March 1997, after those days of intense exchange, led to the drafting of a teaching program in which a bit each of the projects proposed remained in place. 

All this happened when the century was about to end and the perspectives for teachers and students had changed over the years. The surviving photograph and the pages I wrote about this memory, made me relive it and, perhaps, reconfigure it. Some of what was said indicated the urgency of preparing students for professional practice, noting that learning by doing research could lead to strengthening their abilities to make their own way. On the other hand, the fact that many graduates were expected to work as teachers seemed to convince a good number of those professors present about the convenience of covering more historical knowledge than that resulting from the free choice of subjects that prevailed in the previous program. Two discordant points of view which, nevertheless, both had worthy arguments of the greatest attention. 

During the 80s and specially the 90s, research was forced to take an increasingly prominent place. Not only we must emphasise that it was the basis of the ability for practise as a professional historian, since the path to a degree basically involved the production of an original work of historical research, but it was also about demonstrating that the real value of an individual holding a History degree depended on this same ability. This aspect became really important for professors’ evaluations both inside and outside the university. 

The research projects sanctioned within the university by the people in charge of examining them, became one more way to stand out and compete. It was important that a large number of professors prepared their classes with care and even devotion, but this was not considered sufficient to make clear that students were trained beyond the classroom in research workshops that had institutional recognition; this became imperative. 

Undoubtedly, the benefits were and are obvious, but demographic and budgetary reasons influenced some kind of classification for teachers and students for which variety of formation was questioned to preferentially honour those who fit into the narrow space of professors in charge of programs and scholarship students. Certainly, the model imposed generated gains and losses. I have asked myself which of them and how do they influence the idea that students have of themselves when they study, get a degree and remain outside an experience which seems to be just for some. 

In the end, it is difficult to achieve a modality with full realisation for those who opt for the historical discipline but go to it with very different capacities, facing at the same time very different opportunities to reach their goals. It is a privilege, all in all, to see from a distance how many of the students who began their learning in the groups of the first semesters that I had the opportunity to attend and managed to put into practice particular ways of exercising the discipline succeeded without the obstacles that, I presume, could only have hindered them. 

Third Section: Contemplate and Collect
I had taught courses at the College of History, first as a teaching assistant between 1979 and 1984, then from 1985 to 2016 almost without a break. From this last period, I keep in a notebook, which I open every now and then trying to set a name in time, the names of the students who took the courses of General Historiography I and II, as well as Contemporary Historiography of Mexico, then Historiography of Mexico III and IV. I lived this experience daily during 15 years of the 20^th century and more than 15 of the 21^st, and it is like a continuum since, determined to know the subjects, I seemed to be oblivious to the observation of change, but this was not the case. Not perceiving change is impossible for those of us who pretend to be attentive and attentive to know and explain it. 

However, what is certain is that experiencing the faculty and the College within its spaces by watching, even from a short distance, what is happening; is something that forces you to observe in a different way. Since I changed my assignment in 1998, I think the faculty has been acquiring the physiognomy of a place with a vitality different from the other space that I have made my own, the Institute of Historical Research. The presence of the students as a permanent stimulus is something that has contributed to my realisation in all aspects, since the best complement to the experience of occupying myself most of the time with my interests, has been to count on the young (and sometimes not so much anymore) who in undergraduate courses until 2016 and in graduate courses so far this century, let me observe what remains and what is modified in relation to our discipline. 

The correspondence between what one manages to see of the always-changing world and what happens in the sphere to which one belongs, demonstrates an obvious truth: nothing can be the same, but at the same time, nothing is totally new. Hence, one of the greatest satisfactions is to contemplate, sometimes at close quarters and sometimes at a medium distance, that new horizons correspond to new approaches and problems with deep roots, search for solutions that could have been anticipated in other times, but today are of urgent attention. 

Just as it was a pleasure to share with teachers and colleagues the experience of teaching at the College of History in the last two decades of the 20^th century, I must say that in this quarter century the incorporation of professors that I had the pleasure to meet as students in classrooms and, in many cases, admiring them since I read their first works, is for me a source of satisfaction and hope. I believe that the new generations face very different challenges from those of us who lived most of our lives during the previous century. If it makes sense to express concerns, I dare to express my fear that the demands of the academic career may be of such a nature that they can lead to the privilege of attending to it over the possibility of listening to what the even younger ones expect from learning in the historical discipline. 

A revolutionised and even convulsed world bears no resemblance to what in the second half of the 20^th century seemed, at first glance, easy to know and understand by applying the tools offered in courses of methodology and technique; or even in those courses that provided “theoretical framework” to derive from it the characterization of an issue and its possible description and explanation. The concerns of today’s young people differ greatly from those of the early 1970s, when we felt that protest could lead directly to the design of a more balanced and fairer world. 

History as a discipline that opens eyes and sensitises people about all that concerns change, has an enormous responsibility in fostering inside the minds and attitudes of those who choose to learn it, everything that orients their will towards the acquisition, creation and dissemination of knowledge that contributes to the strengthening of their personality. Combining the freedom to choose topics and perspectives that best suit the questions that each person harbours, with the indispensable tools to face the construction of the answers, results in the challenge of a faculty that is obliged to give the best of its experience and knowledge in conditions that are difficult to imagine even in recent times. 

Machado’s verses: “walker, there is no road / the road is made by walking / walking makes the road and when looking back / you look the path that you’ll never walk again”, contain a dose of truth that is worth keeping in mind. To glimpse the future through the eyes of the young people who year after year enter to the College of History in our FFyL, implies letting go of the place we have managed to occupy through the fulfilment of our own goals, and risk listening from many young students how unsatisfactory it is to receive lessons in which it seems that we teachers hold the only key to access the past. 

My confidence that the paths offered by the new program will come from a conscientious and as far as possible realistic work, makes me expect an effervescent and rich immediate future in which the College community manages to establish as many gates as possible between the different ways of approaching the past and the urgent need to assert its knowledge in topics that go beyond our hallways and classrooms. 

Finally, at this stage in which I have begun the eighth decade of my life, I want to say that I have harvested much more than I expected, and I continue to do so, since each student represents for me an opportunity to learn. And as most of those I have had the opportunity to receive are graduates of our College, my gratitude grows and makes me confirm that the historians who are formed in its classrooms acquire a light that is difficult to confuse. 

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