Background After the triumph of the
Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) the governments that followed focused on making systemic changes to promote the goals of the revolution. On July 20, 1934, general Plutarco Elias Calles, a politician, revolutionary leader and former president, pronounced the speech known as "Grito de Guadalajara": "Eternal enemies stalk her and try to make her triumphs nugatory. It is necessary that we enter the new period of the Revolution, which I call the psychological revolutionary period; we must seize the consciences of childhood, the consciences of youth because they are and must belong to the Revolution. It is absolutely necessary to get the enemy out of that trench where the clergy are, where the conservatives are; I mean school. It would be a very serious blunder, it would be criminal for the men of the Revolution, if we did not wrest the youth from the clutches of the clergy and from the clutches of the conservatives; and unfortunately the school in many states of the republic and in the capital itself is run by clerical and reactionary elements." Articles 3 and 24 of the
Constitution of Mexico enshrined respectively secular education and freedom of belief. They seriously restricted the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexican education. In 1934, article 3 was amended to mandate a "socialist education" in public school. In 1933, Marxist and traditionalist factions in the
National University were in conflict to determine the ideology of the university. On the conservative side,
Antonio Caso, former university rector, argued under the banner of "
academic freedom" that this freedom was essential to academic life and to the advancement of science and national leadership as stipulated in the
Constitution of 1917. That led to multiple arrests and deaths and the closure of the school. The public university was reopened in 1935. The strikes ended when the governor of Jalisco, Everardo Topete, gave permission for the creation of the first private university in Mexico: Universidad Autonoma de Occidentes (University of the West), later renamed Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. Nuñez building 28, was the first seat of the university. The founders started dividing the foundational tasks such as renting houses for schools and colleges, set curricula, organizing the team of teachers and initiate enrollment, while incorporating studies of the
National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
First classes The first dean of the Autonomous University of the West was the lawyer Agustin Navarro Flores, under whose leadership the first faculties were organized. On May 5, 1935, named Director of the School of Jurisprudence to Mr. Alberto G. Arce.; On May 15 were designated as Director and Secretary of the School of Medicine medical doctors Adolfo Esteban Saucedo and Cave Brambila; Dr. Agustin Hernandez was the first Director of Dentistry; the engineer Luis Ugarte was of Engineering and Professor Maria Villanueva assumed the leadership of the
High School. On April 21, 1956, the second dean of the UAG Dr. Fernando Banda, with the Lic. Manuel Calvillo, Director of Schools Incorporated, sent on behalf of Dr. Nabor Carrillo Flores, at that time Rector of the UNAM, the foundation stone of the University City, First Section, where there is now the Institute of Biological Sciences. From 1965 to 1973 the objectives of the first stage of the Master Plan were fully met. The Autonomous University City, whose construction had begun in 1968, was inaugurated on April 30, 1970, for the third dean Dr. Luis Garibay Gutierrez. In 1970 the Central Library building was completed, where technical processes are concentrated and simultaneously the School of Library. In 1972 the works of the Women's School educational complex were completed.
Completion of autonomy In 1991, the Mexican federal government issued the 158th Agreement which granted the university full academic independence and the right to award degrees in all levels of education. This agreement was made effective in July 26 of that year when it was published in the Official Gazette. The university sought and obtained support from other educational institutions in Mexico and in the international context, especially in Latin America and the United States. In the seventies and eighties, UAG expanded its network of cooperative agreements around the world, also playing a leading role in the founding and development of groups and international organizations such as the Latin American University Group for the Study and Improvement of Education (GULERPE) associations; Ajijic Center for the Improvement of Higher Education in America (CAMESA); the Instituto Ajijic on International Education (IASEI) and the council. Inter University for Economic and Social Development (CUIDES). In 1987 the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP), elected as its President Dean of the Autonomous University of Guadalajara. UAG plays a leading role in the IAUP and in several international educational organizations. == Innovation ==