If, as has been asserted, the Mexican Indian owes his daily wage to the Third Mexican Council, then the attitude of that Council toward the question of Indian labor must be of surpassing importance for Mexican history. The transition of the Indian from an economy in which the wage system was unknow to a totally European system was the aim of the Spanish crown, despite such aberrations as the encomienda and the repartimiento. Any influence exercised on this progress by the Church is deserving of special study, not only because of the positive accomplishments that resulted but also because of the light that it can shed on the labor system as actually practiced in colonial Mexico.

Each nation views its own statesmen with a particular bias. This prejudiced opinion is generally more pronounced when the statesmen involved are “ founding father ” types. Other eyes, though not perhaps objective, saw prominent figures in United States history in a different light, and an alien culture elicited unique comments by one particularly literate and vocal observer.

Spanish preoccupation with what seemed to be the inexhaustible mineral resources of the Andes contributed to the collapse of the highly developed agrarian economy of the Incas. The disruption of stable food production and the end of Inca political authority, which had prohibited the indiscriminate chewing of coca, led to the extensive use of the leaf among the Indians as a stimulant, a nutritive substitute, and a fetish. Within a generation after the conquest, several missionaries began to oppose the use of coca by the indigenous population. The leaf soon became the center of a controversy in the Viceroyalty of Peru, which endured in varying degrees of intensity for nearly a century.

Among the numerous failures of the Porfirio Díaz government was the lack of education in rural Mexico. Statistics reveal only a fraction of the problem. In 1910 there were 11,750,996 illiterates in the population of 15,103,542, or a total of 3,352,546 who could read or write. Illiteracy may have been even more rampant than these figures indicate. Most of Mexico was rural, and most of the effective educational efforts were in urban areas.

The question arises as to whether the leading influential groups in Mexico gave serious attention to the problem. The purpose of this article is to examine the views of five important groups or persons during that period just preceding the revolution, to determine the extent of importance assigned rural education in Mexico. The viewpoints are those of the Díaz administration, the Labor group under Ricardo Flores Magón, the Catholic Church, Francisco I. Madero, and General Bernardo Reyes.