César Navarro Gallegos, social fighter and eternal rebel, passed away

Laura Poy and Cesar Arellano

Newspaper La Jornada
Monday, January 31, 2022, p. 12

Normalist teacher, doctor and historian, César Navarro Gallegos passed away this Sunday in Mexico City at the age of 71, after a long illness. Researchers, academics, teachers and former students mourned his death and remembered him as a eternal rebel, a fighter, the companion of a thousand battles.

Communist and staunch defender of social causes, I never hesitate to clearly define which side I wanted to be on: with the people, with the peasants, with the teachers and with all those who fought for a fairer societythey affirmed.

Doctor in History from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he also completed his master’s degree, doctor graduated from the Faculty of Medicine of the Juárez University of the State of Durango, his native entity, and normalist professor at the Escuela Normal Rural de San Marcos, Zacatecas, Navarro Gallegos was politically trained in the radical Popular Socialist Party (PPS) of the 1960s, together with Alejandro Gascón Mercado and the peasant leader Álvaro Ríos Ramírez.

Professor-researcher at the National Pedagogical University (UPN) and the José María Luis Mora Institute, from a very young age, recalled his son and historian Pavel Navarro, he accompanied the land invasions in defense of the peasants.

He was a member of the PPS until started to twist for electoral fraud in Nayarit and later joined the Unified Socialist Party of Mexico (PSUM), his last party stage, although always found causes to support: movements of workers, teachers, Zapatismo and solidarity with Cuba..

After receiving the Spirit of San Marcos Award for Merit in 2018, José Santos Valdés recalled that his mother, a cardenista teacher, informed him at the end of primary school that he was going to go to the rural normal school. I arrived at 11 years old. He was a boarding school. A school for the poor, influenced by socialism. With a great political background, it was my home for six years.

Tatiana Coll, a companion of Navarro Gallegos for several decades and a UPN researcher, recalled that since his years as a medical student he began a long history of struggle, which led him to accompany peasants, workers and teachers, but also the towns of El Salvador and Cuba. For many years we promoted the Promotora Va por Cuba and we were present at many important moments on the island.

Co-authors in the works Bad education in times of the right: Policy and educational projects of the government of Vicente Fox Y The hijacking of education. The educational administration of Elba Esther Gordillo and Felipe Calderónamong others, Coll pointed out that “something that characterized him was a clear intelligence, very acute, lucid.

He had an enormous ability to strategically look at the processes, which led us to gradually join the strikes at the UPN and advance in joint work with the National Coordinator of Education Workers and with the country’s teachers, but a very endearing subject for him, and that motivated him a lot, were the normal rural.

The researcher Tanalís Padilla, an expert in the study of normalism, recalled that He was very clear about its importance. He said that the peasant movements of the 20th century in Mexico could not be understood without knowing the role played by the graduates of the rural normal schools. He had an almost organic understanding of them and of the cardenista project.

Francisco Bravo, former leader of the dissident teachers in Mexico City, affirmed that in the most difficult moments of the teachers’ struggle, put his pen at the service of truth, regardless of the repression. He never hesitated to publicly state which side he was on. His departure leaves us with a huge void, but also a great lesson in consistency and value..