Los Niños de Morelia
Document Type
Panel Presentation
Keywords
Spain, Spanish, Mexico, Spanish Civil War
Biography
Riley is a senior secondary education student, focusing in Spanish, from Huntington, West Virginia. His short term goal is to teach high school Spanish in an effort to encourage more West Virginia students to reach biliteracy With plans to earn a master's degree in literacy education, he hopes to work with kids in learning to read and write in both English and Spanish. Riley studied abroad in Spain during the Spring semester of 2019 and hopes to return to Spain to teach abroad for a year after graduating.
Major
Secondary Education (Spanish 5-Adult)
Advisor for this project
Shannon Butler
Abstract
Los Niños de Morelia is the name used to refer to approximately 460 Spanish children who were forced to evacuate to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War, the period when Francisco Franco and his nationalist regime established a dictatorship that would last until the mid-1970’s. [1] In 1937, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas decided to permit the refugee children to seek safety in Mexico. When the children arrived in Mexico on June 7, 1937, they were relocated to the city of Morelia, in the state of Michoacán. Officials created the Escuela España-México, where they were also housed. The Mexican government, believing that the children would only be seeking refuge in Mexico for a short amount of time, decided that the children would not be made available for adoption. Author Patricia Fagen writes that the fear within the Mexican government was that wealthy Spanish families would adopt the children and raise them to hold different values than their biological republican parents. [2] The children were to return to Spain at the end of the civil war; however, WWII caused many of the children to stay in Mexico. This project will look at individual decisions made for these children, then refer to modern reports on childhood trauma to analyze the possible adverse effects such decisions can have on a child’s development.
[1] The Nationalist party of Spain was the right-wing conservative party in this era.
[2] The Republican party of Spain was the left-wing liberal party in this era.
Los Niños de Morelia
Los Niños de Morelia is the name used to refer to approximately 460 Spanish children who were forced to evacuate to Mexico during the Spanish Civil War, the period when Francisco Franco and his nationalist regime established a dictatorship that would last until the mid-1970’s. [1] In 1937, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas decided to permit the refugee children to seek safety in Mexico. When the children arrived in Mexico on June 7, 1937, they were relocated to the city of Morelia, in the state of Michoacán. Officials created the Escuela España-México, where they were also housed. The Mexican government, believing that the children would only be seeking refuge in Mexico for a short amount of time, decided that the children would not be made available for adoption. Author Patricia Fagen writes that the fear within the Mexican government was that wealthy Spanish families would adopt the children and raise them to hold different values than their biological republican parents. [2] The children were to return to Spain at the end of the civil war; however, WWII caused many of the children to stay in Mexico. This project will look at individual decisions made for these children, then refer to modern reports on childhood trauma to analyze the possible adverse effects such decisions can have on a child’s development.
[1] The Nationalist party of Spain was the right-wing conservative party in this era.
[2] The Republican party of Spain was the left-wing liberal party in this era.
