Bassols, Narciso (1897–1959)

Narciso Bassols (b. 22 October 1897; d. 24 July 1959), Mexican intellectual and public official, a member of the intellectual generation of 1915, whose leaders, the "Seven Wise Men," included Alfonso Caso y Andrade, Manuel Gómez Morín, and Vicente Lombardo Toledano.

Born in Tenango del Valle, Bassols was the great-nephew of President Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada and the son of a humble judge, Narciso Bassols. He attended the National Preparatory School in Mexico City (1911–1915), and graduated from the National School of Law on 29 May 1920, after which he taught at both institutions. At the law school he made his mark as a brilliant professor, and scores of his students went on to become leading public officials. As dean of the law school from 1928 to 1929, he attempted to introduce academic reforms, including a trimester system, which provoked a student rebellion. Meanwhile, in addition to his academic duties, he wrote the agrarian law of 1927. He continued teaching law, becoming professor of constitutional law and of writs and guarantees, but left teaching in 1931 to pursue a career in public life.

Bassols employed his multiple talents in reconstructing Mexico's modern banking system in 1930 and 1931. He also became a key cabinet member in the six-year interregnum between the presidencies of Plutarco Elías Calles and Lázaro Cárdenas, serving as secretary of public education (1931–1934) and secretary of government (1934). He served as secretary of the treasury in the first cabinet of Cárdenas, but believing loyalty and integrity to be more important than political expediency, he resigned in 1935, when Cárdenas broke with Calles. Bassols later served as ambassador to London, Paris, and Moscow. Disenchanted with the direction of public policy, in 1941 he founded the League of Political Action with Vicente Lombardo Toledano, and in 1947 he was one of the founders of the Popular Party, the forerunner of the Popular Socialist Party, which for many years was the only leftist opposition party in Mexico.

See alsoMexico: Since 1910 .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Narciso Bassols: En memoria (1960).

John W. F. Dulles, Yesterday in Mexico: A Chronicle of the Revolution, 1919–1936 (1961).

Narciso Bassols, Obras (1964).

Roderic Ai Camp, Mexican Political Biographies, 1884–1935 (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Bassols, Narciso. Narciso Bassols, pensamiento y acción: Antología. Introduction by Alonso Aguilar Monteverde Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995.

                                             Roderic Ai Camp