Non-schooled literacy in the conformation of the Latin American republics: additional elements for the debate

Abstract

This article deals with the ways in which the establishment of public systems of education in Latin America was conceived as a means to promote the type of citizen that the passage from the Ancien Regime to the independent republics required as a basis for the support of the new source of power: popular sovereignty. Based on data on the evolution of school enrollment rates in primary education and literacy rates from  the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, assumptions about distinctions that would have occurred between the different countries of America are put into question, which have traditionally placed a marked accent on North American countries influenced by the Protestant creed. With this, the political function of education, schooled but fundamentally not schooled, is put on the table as a key element in the conformation of the Latin American republics.