Jose Vasconcelos 1882 – 1959

Jose Vasconcelos Calderon was a Mexican philosopher, writer, and educator and the most influential intellectual of post-revolutionary Mexico. As Secretary of Public Education from 1921 to 1924, he organized a vast literacy and cultural program, founded the modern Mexican university, and commissioned the great muralists Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros to decorate public buildings. His philosophical works, including The Cosmic Race, Indology, and Aesthetic Monism, articulated an idealist philosophy of Latin American culture grounded in the synthesis of European, Indigenous, African, and Asian civilizations. His later political career was marked by an unsuccessful presidential campaign and an increasingly conservative turn.