Mexico’s 1917 Constitution: Social [Deep Dive] - February 5th, 2026

[00:00] Jonah Klein: From Neural Newscast, this is Jeep Dive. [00:03] Jonah Klein: I'm Jonah Klein. [00:05] Jonah Klein: Today is February 5th, and we're starting with a document that didn't just rebuild a country. [00:10] Jonah Klein: It kind of changed what constitutions could be. [00:13] Jonah Klein: Mexico's 1917 Constitution, ratified in Caredo during the Mexican Revolution. [00:20] Maya Kim: I'm Maya Kim. We'll break down why that constitution is often described as the first in the world to spell out social rights and what that looked like on the ground, land reform, labor protections, and secular public education, things that still shape Mexico today. [00:37] Jonah Klein: Let's start in Caretaro in 1917, because this is one of those moments where law and public [00:43] Jonah Klein: health really overlap. [00:44] Jonah Klein: The rules of a society shape who gets education, protections at work, and access to basic opportunity. [00:50] Jonah Klein: On February 5th, 1917, the Constitution of Mexico was ratified by the Constitutional [00:56] Jonah Klein: Congress in Caretaro, right in the middle of the Mexican Revolution. [01:01] Jonah Klein: The headline here is it's widely recognized as the first constitution [01:05] Jonah Klein: anywhere to explicitly lay out social rights, not just political ones. [01:10] Maya Kim: Yeah, because a lot of earlier constitutions were focused on government structure and individual [01:15] Maya Kim: liberties in a narrower sense. [01:18] Maya Kim: Mexico's 1917 document went further, spelling out obligations and guarantees tied to daily life, education, working conditions, and land. [01:28] Maya Kim: And it became a template later reformers around the world looked to. [01:32] Jonah Klein: President Venustiano Carranza is central here. [01:35] Jonah Klein: After years of civil upheaval, he wanted to legitimize the revolutionary state through a new constitution and an elected framework. [01:43] Jonah Klein: So, a constitutional convention met in Santiago de Carretero, bringing in a new political class, [01:49] Jonah Klein: often middle-class reformers, to write what became a pretty forward-leaning document. [01:54] Maya Kim: And what's striking is how specific some of these rights got. [01:58] Maya Kim: It's a long constitution with a lot of articles, but three stand out in the social rights conversation. [02:05] Maya Kim: Articles 3, 27, and 123, education, land, and labor. [02:12] Maya Kim: Basically, the foundations of stability and health in a society. [02:16] Jonah Klein: Article 3 is the education piece, free, obligatory, secular public education, explicitly separated from clerical supervision. [02:26] Jonah Klein: In plain terms, the state is saying education is a right, and it's not going to be administered by the church. [02:32] Jonah Klein: That separation of church and state is one of the big promises people associate with 1917. [02:38] Maya Kim: Article 27 is the land reform engine. [02:42] Maya Kim: It asserted national authority over land and subsoil resources, [02:47] Maya Kim: and pushed the idea of returning lands taken from peasant communities, [02:51] Maya Kim: including lands that might not have formal written titles. [02:55] Maya Kim: That's a major power shift away from entrenched landholding structures and toward communal and public claims. [03:03] Jonah Klein: Then, Article 23 reads like a labor rights starter pack for the modern era, [03:08] Jonah Klein: an eight-hour workday, a six-day workweek, minimum wage concepts, equal pay for equal work, [03:14] Jonah Klein: and the explicit right to organize, bargain collectively, and strike. [03:19] Jonah Klein: It's basically saying the economy doesn't get to run on unlimited hours and disposable workers. [03:25] Maya Kim: The impact is kind of twofold. [03:27] Maya Kim: First, it puts social welfare and economic fairness into constitutional language, [03:34] Maya Kim: which is harder to ignore than a temporary policy. [03:38] Maya Kim: Second, it raised expectations, even if implementation took decades. [03:44] Maya Kim: The promises were sweeping, but making them real across a fractured country is a long, [03:50] Maya Kim: uneven process. [03:52] Jonah Klein: Okay, from a constitution that tried to redefine rights, let's shift to three people born on February 5th, [03:59] Jonah Klein: who each, in their own lane, changed what leadership and excellence looked like. [04:04] Jonah Klein: In civic life, in sports as a civil rights stage, and in the globalized era of elite athletics. [04:10] Maya Kim: First up is John Witherspoon, born in 1723. [04:13] Maya Kim: He was a Scottish-American minister, an academic who became president of Princeton University [04:19] Maya Kim: and, notably, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. [04:22] Maya Kim: That combination matters. [04:24] Maya Kim: Education and public life weren't separate worlds for him. [04:28] Jonah Klein: Witherspoon's significance is partly institutional. [04:31] Jonah Klein: As Princeton's president, he shaped how civic leadership was taught and imagined. [04:36] Jonah Klein: And as a declaration signer, he's not just studying the idea of a new nation. [04:40] Jonah Klein: He's literally helping authorize it. [04:42] Jonah Klein: That's the kind of resume that turns a university into a political training ground. [04:46] Maya Kim: Next is Hank Aaron, born in 1934, an American baseball legend who held Major League Baseball's home-run record for 33 years. [04:57] Maya Kim: His story is not only athletic excellence, but also the pressure and symbolism that can come with breaking a record once treated as untouchable. [05:06] Jonah Klein: Right, and Aaron is also remembered as a civil rights icon. [05:10] Jonah Klein: When sports milestones happen in a charged social environment, they become bigger than the box score. [05:15] Jonah Klein: His career is a reminder that cultural change often shows up in everyday spaces, like stadiums. [05:20] Jonah Klein: where millions are watching who gets celebrated and why. [05:25] Maya Kim: And then we have Cristiano Ronaldo, born in 1985, [05:29] Maya Kim: a Portuguese professional footballer widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, [05:34] Maya Kim: and a five-time Bologna-Dor winner. [05:36] Maya Kim: His significance is modern, global, and measurable, sustained elite performance at a scale that's hard to replicate. [05:45] Jonah Klein: Right. And Ronaldo also represents the era where sports excellence is inseparable from worldwide attention. [05:51] Jonah Klein: Even if you don't follow football closely, you've probably seen how his achievements travel instantly across platforms, turning individual performance into a global cultural product. [06:01] Maya Kim: Putting these birthdays together, I hear a theme, systems and standards. [06:06] Maya Kim: Witherspoon shaped civic education. [06:08] Maya Kim: Aaron shifted what was considered possible and who could be centered. [06:13] Maya Kim: And Ronaldo shows how excellence scales globally when the whole world is watching. [06:18] Jonah Klein: Now for the fact of the day. [06:20] Jonah Klein: And this one is basically sitting on your desk, in your car, and in old family photos. [06:26] Jonah Klein: Bakelite. [06:27] Jonah Klein: On February 5th, 1909, Belgian chemist Leo Bakeland announced Bakelite at a meeting of the American Chemical Society. [06:35] Maya Kim: Bakelite is often described as the world's first synthetic plastic, and it helped usher in the modern age of plastics. [06:44] Maya Kim: It wasn't just a lab curiosity. [06:47] Maya Kim: It became a practical, everyday material, known for durability and the distinctive brown or orange look. [06:56] Jonah Klein: The examples really make it click. [06:59] Jonah Klein: Radios, telephone casings, jewelry, even billiard balls. [07:03] Jonah Klein: It's the kind of breakthrough that quietly redraws manufacturing, [07:07] Jonah Klein: because once you can mold a reliable synthetic material at scale, [07:11] Jonah Klein: you change what products can be made and how affordable they can become. [07:15] Maya Kim: And it also sets up a long arc we still live with. [07:19] Maya Kim: When a material becomes ubiquitous, society gains convenience and new tools, [07:24] Maya Kim: but also inherits responsibility for how that material is produced, used, and managed over time. [07:32] Maya Kim: Bakelite is sort of an origin point for that modern relationship with plastics. [07:36] Jonah Klein: So, today's thread is pretty tight. [07:39] Jonah Klein: A constitution that expanded the idea of rights. [07:42] Jonah Klein: Leaders and icons who shaped public life and culture. [07:46] Jonah Klein: And a material invention that reshaped the stuff of everyday living. [07:50] Maya Kim: And if you remember one headline from February 5th, it's this. [07:55] Maya Kim: Mexico's 1917 Constitution, ratified in Girethro, set a global precedent by writing social rights into foundational law, [08:06] Maya Kim: including land reform, workers' rights, and secular education that still matter today. [08:13] Jonah Klein: That's it for Deep Dive. I'm Jonah Klein. [08:16] Maya Kim: I'm Maya Kim. For more, head to deepdive.neuralnewscast.com, and we'll see you next time. [08:24] Maya Kim: Deep Dive is AI-assisted, human-reviewed. [08:27] Maya Kim: Explore history every day on Neural Newscast.