Abstract

In the early XXth Century, in most parts of Latin America, important phenomena associated with incipient urbanization and industrialization began to occur in ways of living and working; together with these, social, political and economic crises were unleashed which had not been controlled when they arose once again. Nationalism and education emerged as tools able to counteract them, and throughout the continent, ideologies appeared that tried to understand, articulate and project them. John Dewey approached them from the United States of America, Pedro Henríquez Ureña from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Argentina, José Carlos Mariátegui did the same in Peru as did José Vasconcelos from Mexico. This study will show the approach Vasconcelos took to notions of education and nation, starting from a systematic process of content analysis of his work that makes it possible to weigh this intellectual as one of the grand masters among American youth, as young people from Peru, Panama and Colombia thought in their time.