In the "Foreign News" section of its November 5, 1934 issue, Time magazine published a short news item on Mexico entitled "Facts of Life." This article included the following criticism:
"In politics and economics the [Mexican] Government [then run by the National Revolutionary Party] sees everything through pinko-socialist glasses. It rejects religion as a fraud, holding that God does not exist. As to sex, the Government favors teaching even little boys and girls all about themselves. Last week pious parents throughout Mexico were inciting their offspring to play hooky from schools in which such things are taught."
In response to this report was a series of correspondence between Anita Ailer Ayala, a teacher from Longfellow School in New Mexico, and the Constitutional Governor of Tabasco, Tomás Garrido C. Ayala expresses her gratitude to the Governor of Tabasco for his affirmation that "the horrid article in Time magazine was, as [she] knew it to be, untrue." It appears that she used information sent by the governor in presentations to different audiences to support her claim that "the Mexican school system is one of the most wonderful systems in the world," expounding on her respect for the socialist system.
From the guide to the Anita Ailer Ayala photograph collection, 1934, (Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico.)
