Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College

Raúl Isidro Burgos Rural Teachers’ College, best known as Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College, is a higher level institution for males only, located in Ayotzinapa, in the municipality of Tixtla in the Mexican state of Guerrero. It is part of the rural teacher’s school system that was created as part of an ambitious mass education plan implemented by the state in the 1920s. Moisés Sáenz was the head of the Secretariat of Public Education at the time of the college's creation. The project for rural teachers' colleges had a strong component of social transformation, which has made it a hotbed for social movements. In that sense, Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College is of high importance because it is where important figures like Lucio Cabañas Barrientos and Genaro Vázquez Rojas were educated and later on were the ones to lead important guerrilla movements in Mexico during the 20th century.

The Rural Isidro Burgos Teachers’ College offers licensing to students that want to work in the elementary education system. The college is regulated by the educational standards that rule the state of Guerrero and in all of Mexico. According to a survey made by the State's Secretariat of Public Education of Guerrero, in Ayotzinapa there were 532 students, served by 6 Technical Support workers. The students are all male. The students come primarily from poor families that live in areas with the lowest human development indexes in Mexico and areas with a high illiteracy rate.

Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College was founded in 1926 by the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico, directed by Moisés Sáenz. These colleges were based on the ideals of taking education to smaller towns, an idea proposed by José Vasconcelos, the Mexican president at the time. In Ayotzinapa College’s classrooms, important figures like Lucio Cabañas Barrientos, Genaro Vázquez Rojas and Othón Salazar were educated. Cabañas was a leader of the Party of the Poor (Mexico), a guerrilla organization with a notable presence in the southeast of Guerrero. Because of this history of social leaders, Ayotzinapa Teachers’ College is considered a hot bed for guerrilla conflict. Every year the students at this college get together and go to the capital city of their state, Chilpancingo, to ask for a solution to their needs through things like protests and demonstrations. Among other things, they ask for renovations in their institution and a revision of the budget assigned for students’ on-campus living.