Federico Reyes Heroles
A deep sadness visits us. We have known each other for decades, since Tlaxcalilla, in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico, began to transform itself. With a state of caciques (rural bosses), commerce gradually displaced agricultural activity. Today, it is a thriving commercial center. We call the crowded establishment the “Costco of Tlaxcalilla.”
Fruit and vegetables are there: delicious guavas, perfectly ripe avocados, and tomatoes without bruises. A new cell phone cable that broke, you’ll find it there, behind pencils and watercolors for children, notebooks, batteries of all kinds. And if you dare to look around a little, there they are, thermoses at very good prices and frying pans of all sizes. We often go to “Costco” for essential items: chipotle peppers, rice, beer, or whatever else we need. The warehouse in the back is huge, with large pots for tamales, tricycles, and even tequila or rum, just in case.
“Oh, man,” she tells me, “this is bad. At night, there are stolen trucks on the run from the federal highway, or the huachicol (fuel thieves) who are everywhere.” Drugs have already reached us, even among young people. This is happening in the municipality of Hidalgo, which already has a preschool, a huge elementary school, a middle school, a high school, and, nearby, a technical college that is growing steadily. That campus has opened up vital horizons for hundreds of students. She and her siblings now belong to what we would call the middle class. But she knows that all this was possible thanks to the growing educational structure. They are a fairly close-knit population, which has nothing to do with the Mezquital Valley of the 1970s, which was an example of the worst indicators: maternal and infant mortality, malnutrition, terrible back pain in women who did everything—washing, cooking, raising children—on the floor. I remember men lying for days on the streets made of rock, with flies buzzing around their mouths, endless binges of uncontrolled pulque production. Today, there is a good doctor with a well-stocked pharmacy. They already have two good wells, and they are now in the fourth generation of municipal demands—as a municipal mayor told me—for water treatment plants.
The common term is social mobility—the hope and reality, when things go well, of rising income. But that is not the most important thing; education is the key to expanding employment opportunities and to accessing a standard of living measured not in pesos but in daily activities. How many cases do we know of peasant parents, mechanic children, and professional grandchildren? Social mobility, whatever people may say today, was a hidden treasure of Mexican society: hope is a powerful engine for improvement. The Espinosa Yglesias Research Center has first-rate studies on this subject. As the world changes, educational and employment requirements must also scale up. Here is the painful reality.
In the 2024-2025 school year, 994,219 young Mexicans dropped out of school nationwide. This is a 20% increase over the previous year. In primary school, the dropout rate reached 2.8%. In the 21st century, not having a primary school education is a sentence to marginalization and poverty. Achieving total—or near total—coverage in primary school required a national effort and decades of continuity that today some naively want to erase from our history. In preschool, there is still a long way to go: classrooms, budget, teacher training, and materials. In secondary school, it was the same until we reached 84% coverage. High school education is complex, and the temptation to work is enormous. Last year, the dropout rate soared to over 11%. And what can be said about higher education, that dream bordering on fantasy? Dropout rate: 7.1%. The result: of every 100 children who enter primary school, only 84 reach high school, and 28 manage to complete a bachelor’s degree. The female dropout rate is a tragedy of another dimension: it is mothers who provide support to their children and manage to instill determination in them.
Their sadness is justified.
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