JOHN A. OCHOA Josd Vasconcelos, Compromised Utopianism and the Necessity of Failure Navegari por las olas civiles con remos que no Pesan. -Ram6n L6pez Velarde, "La suave patria' (1916) Josd Vasconcelos is best known on two counts: the racial theo- ries set forth in his influential essay La raz,a cdsrnica (1925) and his pa- tronage of the Mexican Muralist movement. Vasconcelos effected the lamer patronage when he was official arbiter of culture-a "caudillo cul- tural," as Enrique lGauze describes him in the title of his book, Caudilhs culturales en h reuolucidn mexicana-during the euphoric years imme- diately following the Mexican Revolution. During that period Vasconcelos held several important posts, first as Rector of the National Universiry and later as Minister of Public Education under the presi- dency ofAlvaro Obreg6n (1921-25). Vasconcelos proved to be both an outstanding administrator and a clever institutional visionary, and he exerted ffemendous sway over the shifting sands of the Mexican intellectual landscape. President Alvaro Obreg6n's was the first stable goyernment since the end of the Revolu- tion, and it operated without the disadvantages, or the benefits, of an ingrained bureaucracy, which had been purged by the war. Because of this bureaucratic vacuum, Vasconcelos found himself with an unprec- edented carte blanche: he managed to turn the Ministry of Education, which before the Revolution had been an underfunded, civil service backwater, into the centerpiece of the new government. Roberto GonzalezEchevarria has pointed out that the strategies of the educator and of the dictator have much in common, and Vasconcelos is an in- teresting case in point (GonztlezEchevarria l4-I5). Through the power of the Revolutionary dictator Obreg6n, Vasconcelos became an educa- tional dictator. Thking his cue from his nearest model, the Soviet post-revolu- tionary government, Vasconcelos Patterned his educational project and his administrative persona after Anatoly Vasilyevich Lunacharsky, the Reuistz dt Esndios Hispdnicos 36 (2002)