Otros en la escuela: campaña de Buenos Aires, 1860 – 1880

Abstract

This article characterizes identity processes that occurred in public schools. Were there opportunities for references other than those shaped by the national logic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Is it possible to trace a periodization that signals changes around the theme? The analysis focuses on the decades from 1860 to 1880, but offers a longer-term perspective by integrating developments since the post-independence period. In this context are reconstructed experiences related to the link between schooling, indigenous people and transoceanic immigrants. In doing so, aspects linked to ethnicity, religion, the presence of national flags and symbols in the classrooms are recovered. A heterogeneous group of features that, together, support the criticism that is made of the commonplace that associates elementary schools and the construction of nationality. The text is organized in six parts: an introduction, a review of the bibliography that has addressed these issues, a section outlining features on the subject recognizable since the early 19th century, a fragment devoted to the link between indigenous people and schools, another one that deals with somewhat heterogeneous issues linked to identity themes to finally conclude. These issues are treated from sources generated in public schools, mostly for boys, from the Buenos Aires campaign and preserved in the collection of the General Directorate of Schools of the Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires.

Keywords

• History of education
• 19th century
• Buenos Aires campaign; identities.