La maestra rural [The Rural Teacher]

"The Rural Teacher," based on a scene from Diego Rivera’s monumental frescoes at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City, highlights the complexities of the role of female teachers in the aftermath of the revolution. Here we see a woman of indigenous descent teaching under the watchful eye of a Federal guard. Such teachers worked with extremely limited resources to reduce the ninety percent illiteracy rate and inform the people of their rights as citizens. Since these rights included claims to ancestral lands, anti-revolutionary forces were a constant threat to this rural education program. Women who pursued this new opportunity for socially engaged work were also putting themselves at grave risk of violence.