Barreda, Gabino (1818–1881)

Gabino Barreda (b. 1818; d. 1881), Mexican philosopher and educator. Born in Puebla, Barreda is credited with introducing Comtian positivism to Mexico. After studies in Mexico at the Colegio de San Ildefonso, he entered law school but later abandoned it to pursue his passion for the natural sciences in the Mining School and School of Medicine. After enlisting as a volunteer in the war against the United States, he left in 1847 for Paris, where he took courses with Auguste Comte. Returning to Mexico in 1851, he completed his degree as a medical doctor and taught in the School of Medicine.

In 1867 President Benito Juárez appointed him to preside over a commission to reorganize Mexican education. The resulting Leyes orgánicas de la educación pública in 1867 and 1869 made public schooling lay, free, and obligatory for the Federal District and territories. Professional school programs were reformed to eliminate speculative thinking and emphasize the positive sciences. Attention was focused on the founding of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria for men in the old Colegio de San Ildefonso, with Barreda its director.

With a uniform curriculum based on Comte's interpretation of the physical and social sciences, the school addressed what Barreda believed were the causes of Mexican backwardness: a disdain for productive labor and entrepreneurialism; a proclivity for clericalism, which had inhibited the development of a scientific attitude; and a liberal preoccupation with abstract principle. Like Comte, Barreda believed in a hierarchical social order in which a team of social engineers would aid captains of industry to ensure orderly economic progress.

Opposition to Barreda's positivist ideas on the part of Liberals and Catholics led to his appointment in 1878 as ambassador to Germany. However, his intellectual contribution was great. He is credited with the formation of a generation of Mexican positivists, many of whom successfully combined statesmanship and business, among them Francisco Bulnes, Francisco G. Cosmes, Joaquín Casasús, José Yves Limantour, Pablo Macedo, Justo Sierra, Roberto Núñez, Rafael and Emilio Pardo, Porfirio Parra, Rafael Reyes Spíndola, Rafael Hernández Madero, and Miguel Macedo.

See alsoEducation: Overview .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

William Dirk Raat, "Leopoldo Zea and Mexican Positivism: A Reappraisal," in Hispanic American Historical Review 48 (1968): 1-18.

Leopoldo Zea, El positivismo en México (1968); Mary Kay Vaughan, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880–1928 (1982).

Francisco Javier Guerra, México, del antiguo regimen a la revolución, vol. 1 (1988).

Charles A. Hale, The Transformation of Mexican Liberalism (1989).

Additional Bibliography

Robledo Mesa, José Antonio. Gabino Barreda y la mitologema liberal. Puebla, Mexico: Gobierno del Estado de Puebla: Benemerita Universidad Autonoma de Puebla, 2003.

Ruis, Rosaura Gutierrez. "Gabino Barreda and the Introduction of Darwin in Mexico." In Mexican Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, edited by Santiago Ramirez and R.S. Cohen. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995.

                                    Mary Kay Vaughan