Ricardo Pozas Arciniega


Ricardo Pozas Arciniega was a distinguished Mexican anthropologist, scientific investigator and indigenista. He wrote the classic anthropological works Juan Pérez Jolote, biografía de un tzotzil and Los mazatecos y Chamula, un pueblo indio de los altos de Chiapas.
Arciniega's parents were Eduardo Pozas, an elementary school teacher, and Isabel Arciniega. Pozas began his studies in the Escuela Normal of San Juan del Río, Querétaro. After graduating he began teaching in Vizarrón de Montes, Querétaro, and later in San Sebastián de las Barrancas.
Then in 1929 he moved to Mexico City, where he taught in an elementary school for working-class children. Later he worked in Zamora, Michoacán. In 1938 he returned to Mexico City as a secondary school history teacher and a laboratory worker at the Escuela Nacional de Maestros. In 1940 he entered the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia as a student. It was there that he began his anthropological work. Pozas then went to the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México for postgraduate studies in sociology.
He worked as an ethnologist in the Museo Nacional de Antropología and as a researcher in the Instituto de Alfabetización para Maestros de Indígenas Monolingües of the Instituto Nacional Indigenista.
In UNAM he was one of the professors who founded the School of Political and Social Sciences, where he also founded the Sociological Research Workshops. His work at the university emphasized both teaching and research. He founded the journal Acta Sociológica, which had the objective of publishing the research works of the university students.
Near the end of his life, in recognition of his career and his dedication to anthropological and cultural research of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, he was awarded the Manuel Gamio Medal and the University Medal of Merit.

Works