Talking about Sex: Urbanity, Morality, and Sex Education Debates in 1920s and 1930s Mexico

Scandals over attempts to implement sex education in Mexico's schools erupted in the 1920s and 1930s.  These debates took place within the context of a rapidly changing rural/urban landscape as a result of Mexico's 1910 Revolution, which more than doubled the capital’s population. This population explosion was accompanied by fears over the morality of city spaces; dance halls, cabarets, parks and other secluded locales offered havens for sexual activity. Anxieties over these new spaces also intersected with and were compounded by increasing concern over changing gender roles precipitated by the revolution. Fears about girls who went to the city in search of better lives but became prostitutes abounded.  For this reason, education for girls in Mexico City was a precarious enterprise and relied heavily on a tacit agreement between parents and educators about the moral rectitude of girls’ education. The proposed introduction of sex education threatened this tenuous pact. For this reason, the Department of Health's desire to use radio, pamphlets, presentations in cinemas, public talks, and posters in order to address the growing cases of syphilis, thereby drawing a public health issue into the realm of public education, was at odds with pressure on the Ministry of Public Education to provide a moral education that parents could trust. This paper analyzes newspaper articles from across Mexico to examine the ways in which debates over the morality of sex education in girls’ schools was articulated in spatial terms, as a symptom of growing urbanity.