Calle de José Vasconcelos

The name travels from Oaxaca, where José Vasconcelos Calderón was born in 1882. Trained as a lawyer and a philosopher by vocation, he became one of the voices that most shaped twentieth-century Mexican thought and a central figure in education after the Revolution. From the newly created Ministry of Public Education he launched a literacy campaign across the country and opened the walls of official buildings to Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros. Modern Mexican painting was born, in part, from those commissions of his. As head of the National University he left the motto that still defines it, Por mi raza hablará el espíritu (“Through my race the spirit shall speak”). The calle de José Vasconcelos lies in an area of the Chamartín district where the street names honour figures from across Latin America, next to the Hispanoamérica neighbourhood. A philosopher from Oaxaca is thus lettered onto the north of Madrid.