The Financing of Official Elementary Schools in Tlaxcala: An Interpretation of Educational Legislation, 1857-1898

Abstract

It is in the financing of elementary schools in Tlaxcala from 1857 to 1898 that one can look at the gradual centralization of education in the hands of the state. In this article, I reconstruct the fiscal policy of schools through the analysis of legislation, in which I pay special attention to the origin of public education funds, the institutional actors that administered them and how they were invested. The successive introduced reforms in the legislation suggest that, initially, the economic resources were locally managed by the towns and municipalities. However, in 1882, with the arrival of the Porfirian governors, the local control was displaced, and the funds of public instruction were collected and distributed by the representatives of the state government: the treasurer, the political prefect and the governor.