Elena Landázuri

Concerned about Mexican immigrants, while she was in Chicago Landázuri volunteered to work at Hull House, a settlement house which provided social services to poor and immigrant residents.[1] Her work there, and personal relationship with Jane Addams, influenced her later decision to become a social worker.[1][21] The press frequently referred to Landázuri as the "Jane Addams of Mexico".[22][23][24] She also worked with Mary McDowell at the University Settlement House and was a personal assistant to Grace Abbott.[11] She served as the official delegate for the Consejo Feminista Mexicano (Feminist Council of Mexico) to the 1921 Vienna congress of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), addressing the gathering on behalf of Mexican feminists on 15 July.[25][26][27] At the 1922 Pan-American Conference of Women held in Baltimore, Maryland, she and Antonieta Rivas Mercado served as translators.[1][28] The following year, the Pan-American Conference of Women was held in Mexico City and organized by Elena Torres and Landázuri. They hosted the some hundred delegates for ten days, presenting lectures and discussions on women's issues including alcohol abuse, child welfare, education, employment, families headed by women, immigration, trafficking, and voting. In addition, a discussion resulted in a resolution to recommend disarmament and instruction on peace, rather than war, in order to cultivate a sense of the world community.[29]

Caroline Duval Smith, an advisor from the US YWCA, went to Mexico City in 1922 to establish the first Mexican chapter of the organization.[30][31] At the time, there was distrust regarding US intervention in Mexico. Furthermore, the Mexican government had recently secularized the country, removing the former privileges of the Catholic Church and its influences on education. Smith wanted to find a local woman to lead the Mexican YWCA and convince both Catholic and Protestant women to unite and work together to solve the social and economic problems facing families.[31] Smith decided that Landázuri should become the first executive of the YWCA and delayed its founding until she had returned to Mexico.[32] The Asociación Cristiana Femenina (Women's Christian Association) was formally founded in Mexico in 1923, with Landázuri as its general secretary.[31][32]

Working with Smith, Landázuri created a Mothercraft Center to teach secondary and tertiary students, and poor mothers, on how to care for their children.[33][23] The facility was staffed by women doctors and medical students who were assisted by YWCA volunteers. The goal was to provide severely needed medical services for the poor while simultaneously making the volunteers aware of the importance of serving the community. They also pushed the Department of Education to allow them to establish girls' clubs to teach impressionable youth the values of good citizenship.[34] Despite their success, Landázuri resigned within six months, discouraged by the organization's focus on recruiting professional women and lack of action on women's rights issues.[32] She became a member of the WILPF Executive Board's Peace Missions Committee in 1924 during her attendance at the WILPF Congress of Washington, D.C., serving on the executive board until 1932.[35][21] In 1936, she was one of the featured speakers at a conference sponsored by the Catholic Association for International Peace in San Antonio, Texas.[36]

In 1915, Landázuri wrote the libretto for the opera Dos amores (Two Loves).[1][37] The translation into Italian was made by Edoardo Trucco and the score was composed by Rafael J. Tello, one of the most noted Mexican musicians of the era.[1] Within a year Due amori premiered during the Mexican Revolution, making Landázuri Mexico's first known librettist.[1][Notes 1] Throughout the 1920s, Landázuri presented lectures and folk music from Mexico to US audiences.[26][38] She worked with Muna Lee in 1922 to arrange music for folk songs which Lee translated. Among the titles were "Amapolita Morada" ("Little Purple Poppy"), "El Pavu Rial" ("The Peacock"), "El Toro y el Ranchero" ("The Bull and the Cowboy"), "La Guajira" ("The Peasant Girl"), and "Tecolotito" ("The Owlet").[39] In 1925, she participated in a weekly radio series Know the World, which broadcast international music from WBBM in Chicago. The segment on Mexico featured Landázuri on piano and as a soprano, singing with Francisco Escalera, tenor, and an instrumental trio.[40] In the 1930s while working in San Antonio, Texas, she resumed presenting Mexican songs to various gatherings in the state.[41][42]

During José Vasconcelos's tenure as Secretary of Public Education, Landázuri worked on his literacy campaign and established a school for indigenous children in the State of Hidalgo.[1][21] She was sent as Vanconcelos's representative to the World Conference of Educators in San Francisco, California, in 1923.[43][11] The first international gathering of teachers and educational administrators, the conference included representatives of sixty nations. It set out to establish networks for distributing educational materials and develop programs for administrators which would foster understanding among peoples.[43] Landázuri and Elena Torres also worked with rural teachers to bring issues about their salaries and teaching conditions to the attention of officials.[44]

Landázuri assisted Robert and Greta Redfield in their landmark evaluation of the social and cultural development of Mexico in the post-revolutionary period.[24][45] Sent to Mexico in 1923 with funding provided by Robert Ezra Park, a personal friend, she introduced the Redfields to Mexican intellectuals and took them to villages where they were able to evaluate pueblos battling between traditional ways of life and modernity.[24] When they returned in 1926 to conduct their studies at Tepoztlán, the Redfields again enlisted Landázuri's help, even living with her for part of 1927.[46] She was also chosen as an assistant in a study on migrants conducted by Manuel Gamio and the University of Chicago in 1926.[21][47] She and other Mexican intellectuals like Rivas Mercado, Manuel Gómez Morín, Gabriela Mistral, and Miguel Palacios Macedo supported Vasconcelos when he unsuccessfully ran for President of Mexico in 1929. His defeat led Landázuri to move from teaching to social work as head of the Children's Hygiene Service of the Ministry of Health. Under her leadership, the service founded a home health nursing corps which visited clients' homes to monitor the health and nutrition of mothers and children.[1]

Landázuri worked as a researcher for the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1930s. One study undertaken in 1935 at Our Lady of the Lake College in San Antonio, Texas, evaluated the social work undertaken by the city's Catholic institutions.[48] She wrote Children of Mexico: Their Land and Its Story with Irmagarde Richards that year.[21][49] The book gave basic information on the pre- and post-conquest of Mexico, national heroes, and culture.[49] In 1941, construction began on the Hospital Infantil de México (Infants Hospital of Mexico). It operated solely on an out-patient basis until July 1943.[50] Landázuri became the librarian for medical records at the facility. The hospital treated any child who came to its doors and linked parents to social services to provide for their care. Payment was based on the parents' ability to pay, but lack of ability to pay did not lead to refusal of treatment.[51]