DANIEL COSÍO VILLEGAS: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE, WORKS, PHRASES - BIOGRAPHIES - 2024

Daniel Cosío Villegas (1898-1976) was a Mexican historian, sociologist, economist, essayist and political scientist whose literary work was focused on debating the political system of his country and showing corruption. For his strong dissertations, the intellectual has been considered one of the most respected and controversial of the 20th century.

Cosío's publications were characterized by being critical, profound and analytical. He wrote them in clear and precise language, through which he explained the history and economy of Mexico, especially those of the presidential terms of Porfirio Díaz and Benito Juárez.

Daniel Cosío Villegas. Source: wikimexico.com.

Cosío Villegas' literary work is extensive and sparked various discussions in contemporary Mexican society. Some of the most prominent titles were: Mexican Sociology, The Mexican Political System, The Presidential Succession and The Personal Style of Government. The work of the intellectual extended to the creation of economic institutions.

Biography

Birth and family

The historian was born on July 23, 1898 in Mexico City. There is no information about his parents and relatives, but the educational training he received suggests that he came from a well-educated and well-off family.

Studies

Cosío Villegas attended his first years of studies in schools in his hometown. His training as a bachelor was spent at the Scientific and Literary Institute of Toluca and at the National Preparatory School. Then he studied one year of engineering and two of philosophy at the Escuela de Altos Estudios.

At the beginning of the 1920s, he began to study law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), graduating in 1925. Later, he studied economics at the universities of Wisconsin, Cornell, Harvard and at the European institutes London School of Economics and at the École Libre de Sciences Politiques de Paris.

First tasks

Cosío began his first work as a writer and journalist in his youth. In 1919 he began to develop in the journalistic field in the newspaper Excélsior, being by that time fresh out of high school.

Cosío's taste for letters promptly led him to publish his first two works: Mexican Miniatures in 1922 and the novel Our Poor Friend in 1924.

Cosío's participation in Mexican institutions

Young Daniel returned to Mexico in 1929 after completing his higher studies in Europe and the United States. That same year he was appointed Secretary General of the UNAM and served as economic advisor to the Bank of Mexico and the Ministry of Finance.

Coat of arms of the UNAM Faculty of Economics, of which Cosío was one of the founders. Source: Ferfosado, via Wikimedia Commons

In 1933 he took part in the creation of the National School of Economics and exercised its direction from that year to 1934. At that same time he founded the publication El Trimestre Económico and directed it for more than a decade, he was also head of the publishing company Fondo de Cultura Economical

Cosío and El Colegio de México

Cosío Villegas was an intellectual concerned with giving his nation quality cultural and historical institutions. For this reason, he founded La Casa de España in Mexico in 1938, a project that received Spanish scholars; there he served as secretary. Two years later the institution became the renowned Colegio de México, of which he was treasurer and president.

Epoch of featured posts

The intellectual capacity and the knowledge about history and economics that Cosío Villegas had about Mexico led him in the 1940s to publish two of his most interesting works. In 1947 he published the essay La crisis de México and two years later the book Extremos de América.

Statue of John Harvard, at Harvard University, where Cosío saw advanced classes in economics. Source: alainedouard, via Wikimedia Commons

In the three works he agreed to describe corruption and bad State policies that did not contribute to the advancement of the nation. In The personal style to govern he criticized the form of government of Luis Echeverría Álvarez. For Cosío, the personality of the president had a direct impact on the authoritarianism with which he exercised his mandate.

Death

Daniel Cosío Villegas died on March 10, 1976 in Mexico City, at the age of seventy-seven. Although the government of the day wanted to deposit his remains in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons, his relatives decided to bury him in the Garden Pantheon of the capital.

Style

The literary style of Daniel Cosío Villegas was characterized by being investigative and deep. The writer used clear and precise language, loaded with irony and sarcasm. In the works of this intellectual, the reasoning and intelligence he possessed is notorious, he also knew how to combine popular sayings with seriousness and cultivation.

Plays

- Political life (1955).

- United States against Porfirio Díaz (1956).

- The Constitution of 1857 and its critics (1957).

- The Porfiriato. Foreign political life (1960 and 1963).

- International issues of Mexico, a bibliography (1966).

- Essays and notes (1966).

- The Porfiriato. The interior political life (1970 and 1973).

- The Mexican political system (1972).

- The personal style of governing (1974).

- The presidential succession (1975).

- Memories (1976).

Fragment of some of his works

Ends of america

“The Mexican Revolution was in reality the uprising of a large and poor class against a small and rich class. And since the wealth of the country was agricultural, it was righted by force against the big landowners…

“… For this reason, too, the agrarian reform took largely the simplistic form of a mere division or distribution of the great wealth of the few among the poverty of the many…

“Unfortunately, even a measure that has its justification in the best social and moral reasons needs to endure a success that sustains it; there is no other yardstick to measure that success than its profitability… ”.

The personal style of governing (1974)

“… The candidacy of Don Luis Echeverría arose, a little-known person who reached that position through the traditional formula of 'Tapado', that is, his selection, far from having been made in daylight and in the public square, was produced within the darkness and silence of the corridor or the royal chamber…

“But very soon it begins to attract attention. Of course, with surprising loquacity, she talks about all the national problems, the existing ones and those to come… she reaches the most remote and abandoned towns and villages in the country… ".

Phrases

- "Knowledge should not begin with the false door of intelligence, but with that of the senses."

- "More than once I have tried to explain this strange and painful historical phenomenon: Mexico's inability to simultaneously advance toward political freedom and material well-being for all."

- "Human energy is wasted doing politics, it's incredible."

- "Science in Mexico is magic and men of science, magicians, knowing something in Mexico represents, and is, a miracle."

- "Individual freedom is an end in itself, and in view of the history of our days, the most pressing that man can propose."

- "The crisis comes from the fact that the goals of the Revolution have been exhausted, to the extent that the term revolution itself no longer makes sense."

- “Porfirismo was in its aftermath a pyramidal organization: at the top were the hundred families; the rest were helpless to a greater or lesser degree ”.

- “Of the revolutionary rulers it may be said that with the sole exception of one, who can be described as rude, and another as brusque, all the others have been courteous. But all of them have been secones, and none has been able to combine courtesy with cordiality… ”.

- “The last defining circumstance of the personality is experience, that is, what can teach an individual the life he has led. There are people who have been somewhat skeptical about man's ability… ”.

References

1. Daniel Cosío Villegas. (2019) Spain: Wikipedia. Recovered from: es.wikipedia.org.
2. Martínez, J. (2018). Daniel Cosío Villegas. Mexico: Encyclopedia of Literature in Mexico. Recovered from: elem.mx.
3. Daniel Cosío Villegas. (2017). Mexico: Fund for Economic Culture. Recovered from: fcede.es.
4. Daniel Cosío Villegas. (2019). Mexico: The National College. Recovered from: colnal.mx.
5. Cosío Villegas, Daniel. (1998). Mexico: UNAM Digital Publications. Recovered from: biblioweb.tic.unam.mx.