Acta Universitatis Danubius. Relationes Internationales, Vol 8, No 2 (2015)

Jaime Torres Bodet and the Intellectual/International Cooperation of Postwar

Alexandra Cristina Pita¹

Abstract: History of UNESCO and particularly of his early life, has been insufficiently unexplored. In this sense, the article studied the ideas of the second Director or this organization, the Mexican Jaime Torres Bodet, during the 1940s and early 1950s. Specifically, it try to explain how the term Intellectual Cooperation is being replaced by International Cooperation and why this change was related to a new meaning of education. For this reason, it is emphasized a perspective or continuity rather than a brake between the new organization and his predecesor. This means, support the perspective which states that the early beginnings of UNESCO were made under assumptions of Intellectual Cooperation. Then, to understand the history of the organization of the early 40's it is needed to understand the role of its predecessors and ideas on “cultural internationalism”. To make this work, we use as a primary source documentary the official publication of the organism, El Correo, and the memories of Torres Bodet.

Keywords: The History of UNESCO; education; international relation; cultural international relations

“Wars begin in the minds of men, and are in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed”.

Constitutive Act of UNESCO

1. Introduction

Before the end of the Second World War, a new international order was conceived. Created after the First War, The League of Nations was replaced by the United Nations (UN). Specialized agencies were created, such as the United Nations for the Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO), which replaced the labor started by the organization of Intellectual Cooperation.²

As synthesized in the words in the heading, this was proposed to foster peace through a change of mentality relying on education just as its predecessor during the interwar. Even though this founding statement marked a line of continuity between the two, it is clear that their actions were different, among other factors because the sense of cooperation was changing. In fact, if we think of the speeches delivered by the first directors of UNESCO, we immediately associate science with the English Julian Huxley and mass education with the Mexican Jaime Torres Bodet. Nothing would seem to get them closer to the meaning of Intellectual Cooperation and its conceptual universe.

However, as we intend to show in this paper the change of meaning was a process. In this sense, we analyze the speeches of Torres Bodet in order to understand how was the replaced of the term of Intellectual Cooperation by International Cooperation in the new organization. It is considered therefore a wide temporality that begins in 1940 and ends with his resignation in 1953, but not before making a brief history in the interwar period, in which he was formed as an educator, writer and diplomat. The proposal then is to contribute to the history of UNESCO,³ from a perspective that emphasizes the continuity rather than a break with the previous experience, to understand the founding of the UNESCO, as a process of adaptation to the “persistent tension between unity and diversity in the field of Intellectual Cooperation”. (Pemberton, 2012, p. 35) This means, support the perspective that assumed that the early beginnings of UNESCO were made under assumptions of Intellectual Cooperation. Then, to understand the history of the organization of the early 40's it is needed to understand the role of its predecessors and ideas on “cultural internationalism”.⁴ As Emma Rothschild says, when a word - and the ideas to which is associated-, crosses borders and nationalities to become a shared semantic universe, we have the opportunity to associate the analytical perspectives of intellectual history and international history.⁵

2. Letters, Education and Diplomacy

By 1940, the interwar had reached its end and the world was in war again. In May, German troops invaded Belgium, where Jaime Torres Bodet was a resident since 1938 in charge of business affairs of Mexico. Although he managed return to his country, this event marked the end of a formative period through which the Mexican had accumulated many experiences in the world of letters, education and diplomacy.

By then, Torres Bodet had experience.⁶ During the last two decades he has an active participation in the world of the letters and in an ambitious project of education under the leadership of the intellectual José Vasconcelos. Despite this, he resigned in 1924 and worked as a private secretary of Fernando J. Gastelum, who was appointed head of the Department of Health. Thanks to the sponsorship of Gastelum, in 1928 founded the magazine Contemporáneos along with other Mexican writers.⁷

One year later, he resigned and started a diplomatic⁸, moving to Madrid until 1931 where he became second secretary and from there to Paris between 1931 and 1934, when he travels to Buenos Aires as business manager for a short time because the next year he goes back to Europe to take over as first secretary of the Embassy of Mexico in France. Between 1937 and 1938 he returned to Mexico to take over as head of the Diplomatic Department of the Foreign Ministry and in the same year he returned to Europe to perform in charge of business affairs in Brussels between 1938 and 1940. In these charges, he alternated solving specific requests in the foreign services with the promotion of Mexican culture abroad.⁹

His close relationship with Latin American and European intellectual networks and his diplomatic efforts let him to maintain contact with Intellectual Cooperation, which by 1940 had worked intensively through various Conferences and meetings, where it was launched an ambitious plan of review the textbooks, among other measures.¹⁰ While he served as Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1940-1943), he participated in several decisions related to the initiative to temporarily relocate its headquarters to Havana during the German occupation of Paris.¹¹

He shared the principles of this organization in special, the promoting of the peace among children and youth. Also, was agreed what the idea that the intellectuals like the representatives of culture has an important place in this ambitious program. Therefore it is not surprising that when he became Minister of Education in his country (between 1943 and 1946), he appointed a reviewer commission of plans, programs and textbooks to modify the contents to promote”the mutual understanding between countries”, following the guidelines of the statement of Intellectual Cooperation which had been signed by Mexico but not implemented few years before¹². As he noted in another event, universality defending Intellectual Cooperation required both intellectual exchange between institutions and nations around the world and the need to provide a general education based on scientific methods.¹³

3. The (First) Transition

After the war, the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation tried to resume its activities but would be insufficient to stay, so it began a slow process of transition before it disappeared in the late 1940s. This was not easy. France tried to maintain the autonomy provided by the Institute and the influence it had on him.¹⁴ The Anglo proposal insisted that the institute only developed cooperation between intellectuals and the desirability of establishing a relationship of greater base under the domain of education. This proposal prevailed during the Conferences of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME), which met on several occasions to plan how and in what way would be the restoration of culture and education at the end of war. Between 1943 and 1945 this meetings showed that deciding on the name that the organization was a complex game of interests. Thus, discussions on the organization’s name remained until its constitution, while science was gaining ground to position in the same level as education and culture.¹⁵

Preparatory discussions will point to what extent sought to distance Intellectual Cooperation, the intention to disengage from the previous organization, as justified by criticizing the elitism of that one. Thus, the scientist hegemony required amongst other things that the charge as the first director of UNESCO fell on the known English scientist Julian Huxley and not his countryman Alfred Zimmern who had participated during the interwar as director of the Committee for Intellectual Cooperation since 1926 to 1930.¹⁶

To the Education Conference (London, November 1945), where eventually UNESCO was constituted, Torres Bodet went with other Mexican delegates: Samuel Ramos, José Gorostiza and Manuel Martinez Baez. (Martínez, 2011, p. 6) In his memoirs mention that although the Allies agreed that an educational reconstruction of nations occupied during the conflict was necessary, there was no agreement on how to carry out the promotion of education and culture, and what role the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation would play. The balance fell to the proposal that a permanent organization within the framework of the United Nations that would meet its guidelines on political, economic and social cooperation. Mexico's position was that it was not seeking to create a “simple organism of intellectual cooperation”, but a larger organization (UN) dedicated to all educational and cultural issues not only in the countries devastated by conflict but all those countries that had not received until then “the benefits of universal culture”. (Torres, 1981, vol. I, pp. 380-383)

Thus, in his speech he said that the world hope laid in the affirmation of international cooperation as undeniable means of affirming culture, but it should be given a step of intellectualism understood as mere evaluation of truth and virtue of intelligence, to a more democratic education”by the efforts of all and for the good of all”. (El Correo, Torres, “Gran Bretaña: el ambiente cultural en 1945”, año XXXVIII, 1985, p. 9.)

With the use of the term international cooperation, Torres Bodet echoed strong criticism of elitism with which the founders of the new organization crossed out his history with its predecessor, trying to start his own tradition with the use of a new term.¹⁷

Indeed, for the Mexican this action could not be performed under the same patterns as it was done previously, because the effects transcended the contact established between the intellectual elites to the people they represented. This was in his opinion, one of the reasons why without abandoning the above methods, changes were made to the Act of UNESCO, so that the idea of mutual understanding was directed at”action to knowledge and understanding of the masses”, beating the solidarity of”a minority of spirits” but without stifling the sense of the individual. However, maintaining a separation between mass and individuals would have negative consequences. The entire population needed the experience of the”high culture” to educate. Without it the situation it would be absurd as”build dams in an irrigation system would consider it necessary, without opening the channels through which they would cause water to circulate those dams to fertilize the land that await”. For that reason it is essential to overcome the opposition of intellectualism of the eighteenth and nineteenth century materialism. As an example of overcoming, refers to the Mexican case of the campaign against illiteracy, where the new education educate both “the learner and the one teaching”. Because of this, it proposed to form a new agency for intellectual cooperation, which with the support of governments to focus less on theory and more in favor of solidarity proposed discussions. (Pita, 2014, p. 258)

By February 1946, the League of Nations was dissolved to form the United Nations (UN) and shortly thereafter the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation remained without effect upon joining UNESCO. The first director was the scientist Julian Huxley (1946-1948), who appealed to continue the line drawn by it, but from a new direction: the global scientific humanism. This should work as a philosophy that encouraged international understanding, continuing the previous efforts between wars, but from a scientific view of spiritualism retreating from war. Part of the premise that science and culture “are not only means to reach a practical end, but the means themselves are their ultimate goals”, so that while education should have a social and individual function, should be based on research. Therefore, the “atmosphere of scientific internationalism” was spreading in every aspect of the proposal during the first two years of UNESCO.¹⁸

However, the organization should face the immediate effects of the war so during these early years, a plan was launched to help countries devastated by the war. Therefore, the aim of the first General Conference of UNESCO focused on projects to help in this regard, taking advantage of the reconstruction to guide the means and purposes of education based on the idea of international understanding and promoting of peace.¹⁹ This type of education, it was required that specialists and teachers came together to discuss how the education for the peace should be in primary and secondary schools to disseminate the purpose of the United Nations, similar to what the League of Nations had done in the twenties.²⁰

These plans began to be called by the term economic, political and social cooperation, which in general were encompassed by international cooperation. This new terminology was associated -and used in the practices-, with the program of technical assistance. The urgency of reconstruction after the war seemed to justify the change, but that seems more an argument than a justification. In America’s continent -less affected by the battle-, this conceptual universe was part of the lexicon of the new body of the Organization of American States (OAS). Torres Bodet, was conscious of this appropriation. In the creation of this regional organization he also played an important role, participating in the most important Conferences that happens between 1945 y 1948 to founding. In his memories write about this meetings, and notes that such the new term of international cooperation was viewed with suspicion by Latin American, because in this stage implies a justification of paternalistic imperialism by which the United States would help the rest of the American countries. (Torres, 1981, vol. I, pp. 600-657)

Parallel to this, and despite the political situation in the Middle East, the Third General Conference of UNESCO met in Beirut (November 1948). In it, the annual report of the General Director, Huxley was presented and Jaime Torres Bodet was appointed as the new Director, resigning as Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico (occupied since 1946). He had to move immediately to Beirut to take part in the conference of the meeting closure. In his last speech as a director, Huxley declared feeling calm to leave the direction to someone like him for his “record of service” in diplomacy and education; he had shown great conviction by the value of education.²¹

Meanwhile, in the speech of the takeover (which was emblematically titled I have faith), Torres Bodet emphasized that despite knowing the doubts that fell on UNESCO, he held the conviction that it was necessary to raise “the intellectual and moral condition of men” in order to disappear in them the idea of war. To realize this peace education, planning a series of measures: associating youth to the program of UNESCO through essay and poster contests; to review and improve teaching manuals of History and Geography, with their respective guides for teachers who lecture the subjects; teaching assignments to cooperate in the study and improvement of curricula; conduct seminars for teachers and educators permanently. Finally, the new Director added a new action that characterized his tenure as director- adult education as an active part of society.²² The measures retook the actions made it for Intellectual Cooperation, but this not contradicted the previous point expressed in the Education Conferences, because the education of adults –as an essential part of the program-, exceeded the criticized elitism. Thus, without using the term he appropriated its meaning.

4. Education for International Understanding

After assuming as director, felt the need to simplify the UNESCO not only administratively but also academically, when establishing priorities in his action programs. For that reason, defending the main problem in promoting a culture of promotion of peace. It was necessary that everyone knew each other and “nothing would contribute that much to such international harmony as spreading spiritual values thanks to the education of the masses”. The teaching of all people, the principle of equality that was in the Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in December 1948.²³ This meant that the desired civilizing progress of nations required of a new spirit of international relations. One in which the understanding of the other did not fall into the elites but into the people and for this was a prerequisite to combat illiteracy.²⁴

This position made explicit the change of direction, which was being operated on the concept of Intellectual Cooperation, although in practice it was tried to continue with several projects initiated in the previous decade.²⁵ Of these, undoubtedly the biggest boost was that one of education. As stated in the International Conference on Adult Education (June 1949), the mission of the organization “it is not to make a speech about peace but to pursue for it, creating the conditions to ensure it”.²⁶

Thus, Intellectual Cooperation vanished in two forms: one, which was associated with the principle of international cooperation and another, which joined education for international understanding. As already mentioned since its inception and during the First General Conferences, this principle was noted as a strategic point of the organism, but during these early years was more a brand identity than a concrete despite the several meetings performed by specialists.²⁷

The Fourth General Conference of UNESCO (1949) was a tense meeting. The increasing critics claimed that the organization was not complying with the proposed goals. There was thus a strong discussion by delegates on the budget that should be approved for the next year, because it was questioned that given the economic situation it was not possible for countries to meet their obligations if they increased.²⁸ The Director answered with a New Year‘s message, in which reflected on what had happened that first half of the twentieth century. His positive outlook, noted the progress and not the disasters of wars. He hoped that the States understood that collective security is stated on four basic guarantees: food, health, work and culture. Said that to conquer these guarantees is not only the work of several years, but of the whole century, and as long as a desire for peace is maintained.²⁹

Despite the attempt, the atmosphere of the next General Meeting in May 1950, showed the limits of the Mexican efforts to support the objectives of the organization, due to this he presented his first resignation (which was removed). Skepticism reigned hostilities in Korea, situation that confronted the organization with the beginning of the aggression of the Cold War. Despite this, Torres Bodet's proposal was to keep in his speeches the conviction that before the crisis, UNESCO should redouble its efforts to serve the UN conscience, to remind it the necessary”solidarity of free men”.³⁰

The work plan for the following year sacrificed several projects to focus on those, which may have in practice a much more immediate result, focusing on three groups requiring special attention: workers, women and youth³¹. It also maintained the proposal of the teaching of history as a means to foster international understanding, which meant -like it was tried with the revision of texts in the previous decades,”expelling the narrow nationalism that instills hatred and misunderstanding”.³² Aware of resistance to this internationalism, he said that this was not a subversive idea, because they did not seek to deviate the”national loyalty”but to understand in their duties as citizens”the international obligations subscribed to their homeland”. It was about creating internationalism of interdependent nations and not to promote a”superficial cosmopolitanism”.³³

To develop this, he tried to associate this proposal with other regional organizations such as the Pan American Institute of Geography and History (IPGH), for modifying the teaching from a perspective that respecting the universal principles of intellectual cooperation. Both bodies agreed that international understanding was due to a problem that parted from the teaching of these subjects, which vitiated by nationalism was biased, spirit which would have to be modified to create new world citizens. Therefore, he asked them to collaborate in creating a history of scientific and cultural development of mankind.³⁴

Conceived from a humanistic view, peace was the result of both agreements state (political fact), and the harmony of peoples” (moral value). To support this idea, he recalls two of the seven points of the statement made in 1933 under the auspices of the Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, when they asked about the future of civilizations. To continue with this work, UNESCO should oppose to the crisis”dikes of hope that would create certainty about the benefits of international cooperation. This meant the reinforcement of the idea that humanity exists as”an international society of spirits, which prefigures and prepares the universal society of peoples”.³⁵ This allusion takes up the idea put forward the previous decade by Paul Valery to justify Intellectual Cooperation alluding that the League of Nations is a Society of Spirits not as fiction but”as an undeniable force over time consisting not only of public events or written documents, but a huge amount of dialogues”. (Foncillón & Valery, 1933, pp. 11-21)

The defense of this principle was coherent for the director with the principles and goals of the new organization: there was no science or art without humanism and the immediate practical purposes were launched with the creation of international advice of specialists dedicated to reorganize the international communication. This quiet work as counselors of universal consciousness would guide the construction program of UNESCO, which will indirectly impact on the masses.³⁶ To subtract the UN and UNESCO climate crisis, it was essential to remember the”dimension of the durable”above the political level of immediacy. This should be combined with the urgency: the importance of teaching missions in underprivileged countries (Siam, the Philippines and Afghanistan), the campaigns against illiteracy (India and Brazil), hygiene education and scientific agriculture through the cooperation centers (Cairo, New Delhi, Shanghai and Montevideo) and scholarships for students from deprived zones to investigate the need for film, the radio and the press in these countries.³⁷

In early 1952, criticism increased by those who felt that the proposed activities were away from the practical purposes of the organization. Torres Bodet defends the technical”quiet work”of scholars, researchers, artists, and is urgent at that time because”the art cannot do without all humanism”.³⁸ Added to this, significant cuts were made in the budget, which ended with his irrevocable resignation in November 1952, a day after the new budget was approved.³⁹ As he mention, this serious decision about restrict the financial aid involved a regression for the organization, and it was not based on an economic problem because budgets on military resources continued to rise. Collective security cannot be more urgent than progress, because both are closely linked conditions for ensuring peace. Alluding to the objective of UNESCO is and should be to organize the international cooperation to “educate people and facilitate their access to science”, therefore concludes by proclaiming the priority of “the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind”. (Torres, 2002, pp. 121-126)

5. Conclusion

The history of the early life of UNESCO cannot separate from the context of the Second World War and its immediately post-war. But this should not lead us to interpret the actions and proposals of this international body only as a result of the historical context (marked by the financial crisis, the decolonization processes and the Korean War). It is necessary to consider it part of a long process that began since the end of the First World War with the founding of the Organization of Intellectual Cooperation and which was consolidated especially in the 1930s. The efforts of this organization not only formed a baggage of initiatives but an intellectual manifestation and its social function as guide of the universal consciousness.

As it was attempted to show in this article, there were several points of contact between this idea and shortly afterwards was presented by some of their key players. However, the transit as we call this process occurred during the decade of 1940 was not simple. None of the actors committed to the creation of UNESCO ignored the political implications, which had to assume the term of Intellectual Cooperation during the conferences that even during World War II planned what would happen in the immediate postwar period. Nor were oblivious to what was implied to incorporate new terms such as economic and social cooperation, political, technical assistance, international cooperation and education for international understanding.

For Jaime Torres Bodet this migration was initially justified because he trusted that it was essential to provide the new organization with a less elitist proposal that would adapt the role of the intellectual to the needs of the new international relations. This did not mean to abandon the humanist principles, which had sustained the previous postwar experience, which had formed him as a writer, educator and diplomat. It is significant that in his late years as Director, when he had to face criticism for the lack of immediate results, the Mexican made an explicit mention of Intellectual Cooperation. He tried to remember to the others, that the world need -as the heading said with which we began this work-, create the peace in the minds of men. It remains for future studies to wonder in which way the concept of intellectual cooperation continued to be transformed to become in the next decades in an apparent synonym of international cooperation (enunciated by moments under the synthesis of International Intellectual Cooperation).⁴⁰

4. References

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