Bulmer-Thomas V., Coatsworth J., Cortes-Conde R. The Cambridge Economic History of Latin America: Volume 2, The Long Twentieth Century

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442 Fernando Reimers

all. The purpose of elementary school was largely political. An inclusive

ideology spread – one that openly espoused equality of educational oppor-

tunity as a foundation of the new society. Those distant historical inﬂuences

are still reﬂected in the higher levels of educational attainment of people in

these countries and in greater educational equality relative to other coun-

tries in the region.

In Argentina between 1914 and 1930, most children gained access to

elementary school.

In Chile, during the second half of the nineteenth

century, enrollments in primary school increased tenfold and by 1887, one

in ﬁve children in the age group six to fourteen was in school. The expansion

of education continued, in part as a result of the autonomy of the education

system from larger social forces, and accelerated between 1965 and 1974 as

part of two political projects – a Social Christian project under Eduardo

Frei and a socialist project under Salvador Allende. This expansion would

stop during the military regime of Augusto Pinochet.

The creation of a mass-based public education system and the transition

from a church-dominated to a state-dominated education system were not

without conﬂict. Church–state relations mediated the consequences of this

conﬂict for the new educational legislation supporting the establishment of

the Estado Docente.

In Colombia, beginning in the 1930s, the state had to

overcome overt resistance from the church and private groups in the inte-

gration of gender-segregated schools and in fostering greater socioeconomic

integration in schools.

In Chile, the 1925 Constitution separated church

and state and upheld the principle of freedom of teaching while establishing

that education was a preferential matter of the state. These changes were

opposed by the oligarchies, contributing to the political instability that led

to the coup of 1931.

Every political transition proclaiming radical change was accompanied

by an education reform, although some of them were short-lived. In 1917,

Costa Rican President Gonzalez Flores’s reformist agenda included an

education reform aimed at increasing the links between schools and the

Dario Pulfer and Ana Vitar, eds., Sistema educativo nacional de Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1993).

C. Rodr

ıguez, “Chile: System of Education,” in Torsten Husen and Neville Postlewhaite, eds.,

International Encyclopedia of Education (London, 1994), 738–46.See also Ivan Nu

nez, ed., Sistema

educativo nacional de Chile.

T. Bruneau, The Political Transformation of the Brazilian Catholic Church (Cambridge, 1974); Daniel

Levine, Churches and Politics in Latin America (Beverly Hills, CA, 1980); and I. Vallier, Catholicism,

Social Control and Modernization in Latin America (New York, 1970).

Serrano, ed., Sistema educativo nacional de la Rep

ublica de Colombia.

nez, ed., Sistema educativo nacional de Chile.

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Education and Social Progress 443

productivity of small farmers. It sought to generate funding in farm-schools.

This reform was highly contested by teachers, parents, and public opinion,

and eventually by members of Congress.

The 1952 Bolivian Revolution

of Victor Paz Estenssoro included education reform among the four core

pillars of the revolution (along with nationalization of the mines, agrarian

reform, and universal voting rights). The reform’s emphasis was to extend

education to rural areas, to strengthen national identity. It created a code of

education with participation of the confederation of workers, the church,

private schools, and the National University.

At mid-twentieth century,

the states in Costa Rica and Venezuela made educational expansion a cor-

nerstone of democracy consolidation projects and, in the case of Cuba, of

socialism. Peru would follow with an ambitious reform in 1968 that was to

support a broader project of socialist political and economic restructuring.

All of these countries expanded educational access signiﬁcantly in the early

years of the political transition.

In 1957, Costa Rica approved an education law (Ley Fundamental de

Educaci

on), which articulated a rationale for education as part of a demo-

cratic project. Venezuela’s democracy turned to schools as an instrument to

reshape the nation. Primary enrollment growth increased from 7 percent

per year prior to 1958 to more than 20 percent per year in the years imme-

diately following the democratic transition. Secondary school enrollment

growth doubled in this period. Growth in university enrollments increased

from 12 percent per year in 1957 to 60 percent in 1959.

The Cuban socialist revolution turned to education early. A 1959 educa-

tion law established the creation of ten thousand classrooms and another

law of December of the same year established a framework for a com-

prehensive education reform. These reforms increased primary education

enrollments from under 50 percent in 1959 to 90 percent in the ﬁrst few

years of the revolution. A massive literacy campaign in 1961 and follow-

up adult education programs targeted the more than one million adults

who could not read in 1959 (23%ofthe adult population) and virtually

eliminated illiteracy. A 1962 university reform law established preferential

admission policies for the children of peasants and workers.

Olman Ram

ırez, Sistema educativo nacional de Costa Rica (Madrid, 1997).

Manuel Contreras argues that the Bolivian Education Reform of 1952 was an afterthought of the

revolution and that its results failed to match its rhetoric (personal communication, January 13,

2003).

Fernando Reimers, “Venezuela: System of Education,” in International Encyclopedia of Education,

6592.

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444 Fernando Reimers

The Peruvian education reform of 1968, under a socialist military gov-

ernment, sought to create a “new Peruvian man” in line with the aspirations

of the revolution. The goals of the Peruvian education reform were to con-

tribute to work and development, the structural transformation of society,

and the creation of a self-reliant and independent Peruvian nation. This

reform was highly contested, particularly its most transformative proposals

calling for education for collectivist organization in farming communities

and bilingual education policies. The reform restructured and expanded

basic education and restructured administration in rural areas in education

clusters.

Because education was so clearly perceived as serving political purposes,

authoritarian governments turned to schools to facilitate acceptance of the

new order. Throughout much of the twentieth century, educational institu-

tions fulﬁlled their traditional role of reinforcing traditional authoritarian

institutions, rather than the incipient and contested democratic practices.

Universities were particularly affected by authoritarian governments of

the right or left because they often provided oppositional leadership. In

Venezuela, the Central University was purged by the Christian Demo-

cratic administration in the early 1970s because the armed leftist insur-

gency received support from some university students and faculty. During

the same period, the National University in Uruguay provided leadership to

radical political opposition and was consequently targeted by security forces

under authoritarian rule. The military that ruled Argentina from 1976 to

1983 also closely scrutinized university faculty members and students for

ties to the insurgency that developed during the last few years of Per

on’s

regime. Many of the “disappeared” during the guerra sucia were members

of the university community. The military government that ruled in Chile

from 1973 to 1990 targeted universities as part of efforts to demobilize polit-

ical opposition. Under the intervention of military rectors, universities shut

down entire social studies programs. Many members of the academic com-

munity ﬂed Chile in fear for their safety under the military regime. In

El Salvador, toward the end of twelve years of civil war, the entire leader-

ship of the Catholic University was assassinated by elite counterinsurgency

battalions because they were perceived to provide moral leadership to the

opposition during the conﬂict, which ended in 1992.Attheend of the

twentieth century, the authoritarian government of President Ch

avez in

Venezuela actively sought to control universities to demobilize political

opposition and proposed legislation that greatly increased their control by

the executive. The greatest levels of ideological control on the university

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Education and Social Progress 445

community were those exerted by the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba,

where the Communist Party controlled faculty appointments, freedom of

speech in universities, freedom of faculty members and students to associate

and travel abroad, and employment prospects of graduates. The author-

itarian intervention of universities, the constraints to academic freedom,

the physical annihilation and prosecution of scholars and students, and the

use of terror toward the university community (part of the larger political

struggles that marked Latin America during the twentieth century) had

dire and long-lasting consequences on the ability of public universities to

fulﬁll their missions.

THE POLITICS OF BASIC EDUCATION

EXPANSION DURING THE TWENTIETH

CENTURY AND ITS RESULTS

The growth of public access was greatest in primary education because more

consensus was reached among elites on the importance of extending oppor-

tunity at this level. Conﬂict was greater regarding the need to foster equality

of access to secondary and tertiary institutions, and access in those levels

correspondingly did not grow as much as it did in primary. Also, a greater

percentage of students in those levels enrolled in private institutions, indi-

cating that social demand exceeded the capacity of public institutions. But

the challenges to the idea that all children should receive a quality education

continued throughout the century, often overtly, most commonly in the

benign neglect that produced dismal conditions in the schools attended by

the children of the poor. As recently as 1991,aformer minister of education

of Venezuela

argued in a publication of the National Education Council,

an advisory body of the Ministry of Education:

Faced with the choice of providing a ﬁrst rate education to a third of the population

or a mediocre education to all, I would not vacillate. I would choose a ﬁrst rate

education for a third of the population, because that third of the population would

pull the country forward.

Legal and constitutional changes in several countries during the 1980s

and 1990s sought to reduce state responsibility for the provision of

Venezuela is one of the Latin American countries that made educational expansion an important

priority during the democratic transition beginning in 1958.

Arturo Uslar Pietri, “Las dos opciones del arcangel,” Consejo Nacional de Educacion. September 6,

1991.

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446 Fernando Reimers

education. The military government in Chile introduced drastic educa-

tion reforms in the 1980s that transferred educational management to the

municipalities and fostered the development of private schools through

avoucher ﬁnancing scheme. These, as well as the previous reforms of

the national curriculum and the changes in the universities, were locked

into place by an educational law passed on the last day of the military

in ofﬁce (March 10, 1990): the Ley Org

anica Constitucional de Ense

nanza

(Ley 18.962). This law created a public corporation, the Consejo Superior

de Educaci

on, which includes a representative of the armed forces and with

a composition that gives limited power to the executive. This body has

ﬁnal authority to approve fundamental changes in education, including

the curricula and the creation of universities or the approval of ﬁelds of

study within universities. A legal change of this nature can only be revoked

by another law that would require a majority in Congress. As a result, the

governments that have been elected in Chile since 1990 have been unable

to alter the structural changes made by the previous administration.

A 1991 constitutional reform in Colombia supported decentralization

and the participation of private providers, while containing state responsi-

bility for the provision of public education:

The Reform required the approval of diverse political bodies. Achieving its goals

and ensuring its internal coherence meant waging simultaneous battles in sundry

and changing terrains in the constitutional realm by ensuring that the text of

the new Constitution agreed with the desired goals, especially those regarding the

intensifying of decentralization and free and open private participation in the education

process ... (emphasis added)

The educational reform effort brought before the Constitutional Assem-

bly was directed at obtaining two speciﬁc objectives. First, to ensure that

general norms on education (contained in Title II of the Constitution,

“About rights, guarantees, and obligations”) would concur with the govern-

ment’s ideas. In this area, however, the political tasks were mostly defensive;

they centered on avoiding the approval of populist proposals such as the one

that would establish “free and mandatory public education for all Colombians”

and other similar initiatives.

Most of the expansion in access to primary and secondary schooling was

in public institutions. By the end of the century, primary education enroll-

ments in private schools were 42 percent in Chile; between 10 and 20 percent

Armando Montenegro, An Incomplete Educational Reform: The Case of Colombia (Washington, DC,

n.d.), 9–10.Emphasis added.

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Education and Social Progress 447

in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama,

Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela; and

less than 10 percent in Costa Rica, Cuba, and Mexico. The percentage of

private enrollments was much higher for secondary education, but most

students were still enrolled in public institutions.

Private enrollments were

the highest at the university level, with 34 percent of the students enrolled

in private institutions by the 1980s. This was up from 7 percent of students

in private institutions in 1955.

The educational expansion meant that most

children had the opportunity to exceed their parents’ educational levels. In

Mexico, for example, in 1998, 40 percent of students in the sixth grade had

already exceeded their fathers’ educational level.

The growing number of education institutions, bringing together teach-

ers, students, and parents, were arenas ripe for the emergence of politi-

cal organization. Recognizing this potential, the emerging political parties

and the state co-opted many of the new unions of teachers and students.

The political mobilization of education stakeholders supported educational

expansion with some autonomy from larger political forces. In Argentina,

the 1940s saw schools mobilize popular sectors and the emergence of teacher

unions and student unions, around the student government of secondary

schools (centros de estudiantes). During the 1930s, teachers in Bolivia began

to organize in cooperatives, credit unions, and associations, which formed

the basis of the Liga Nacional del Magisterio.President Paz Estenssoro’s

education reform of 1952 included a major mobilization of the universities,

trade unions, the Church, and private schools in the preparation of the

ﬁrst education code.

In Mexico, all teacher unions were uniﬁed in 1943

to create the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Educaci

on (SNTE),

recognized by presidential decree in 1944 as the only entity that could

represent all teachers.

The SNTE became a very important pillar of the

dominance of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional of Mexican pol-

itics in the twentieth century, and it would grow to become the largest

trade union in the hemisphere. In 1947,ateaching statute was approved

in Uruguay that established the Teacher Assembly as a consultative forum

for education policy. It also provides the framework for political and trade

mobilization of teachers.

UNESCO, WorldEducation Report. The Right to Education (Paris, 2000).

Daniel Levy, Higher Education and the State in Latin America (Chicago, 1986), 4–5.

Reimers, Unequal Schools, Unequal Chances.

arez and Comboni, eds., Sistema educativo nacional de Bolivia.

Alvarez, ed., Sistema educativo nacional de M

exico.

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448 Fernando Reimers

Although some of the politics supporting the development of mass edu-

cation were domestic, these were embedded and supported by international

inﬂuence and politics, as had been the case during the previous century. In

the late 1940s and 1950s, a transnational coalition of interests and develop-

ments overlapped with the interests of local elites promoting import sub-

stitution industrialization to mobilize a signiﬁcant educational expansion.

Tw opowerful ideas in the ﬁeld of economics would support this expan-

sion. The ﬁrst was the identiﬁcation of human capital as the key factor in

the economic recovery of Europe after the Second World War. The second

was the idea that development could be planned. The ﬁeld of international

development cooperation thus emerged during the Cold War. Multilat-

eral and bilateral development agencies began to support, with cash and

technical assistance, the economic development of allies, and this included

supporting educational expansion.

Somewhat independently, beginning in the 1950s, the United Nations

system established an array of organizations to support the achievement of

rights outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Education

was recognized as a fundamental human right and United Nations Edu-

cational, Scientiﬁc, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) took on a cen-

tral rolein promoting the universalization of primary education and literacy.

UNESCO convened meetings of ministers and senior staff of Ministries

of Education and stimulated exchanges of ideas on how to achieve the

goal of universal primary education. The Inter-American Development

Bank and the World Bank funded loans to ﬁnance some of the infras-

tructural expansion, initially of the universities, then the technical training

institutions and vocational tracks in high schools and, last, the primary

schools. The Alliance for Progress, too, marshaled support for the educa-

tion development of the Latin nations. This unprecedented convergence of

interests resulted in an impressive quantitative expansion during the cen-

tury. It also resulted in the adoption of common planning methodologies, a

growing domination of an economic rationale for education development

and, eventually, the abandonment of the view that education was a means to

support political democratization or the universalization of human rights.

The victory of the progressive project in consolidating public education

systems, albeit of low quality and focusing principally on the lower levels

of education, is expressed in the fact that schools are one of the national

This was particularly true as authoritarian governments came onto the scene as part of the struggle

against communism that played out in Latin America during the Cold War.

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Education and Social Progress 449

institutions in which the public had most conﬁdence at the end of the

twentieth century. A sample survey administered to adults in 1998 found

that 89 percent of Chileans had much or some conﬁdence in schools, com-

pared with 61 percent who had similar levels of conﬁdence in the police, 57

percent in the press, 51 percent in the government, 53 percent in the army,

43 percent in Congress, or 27 percent in the political parties. In Mexico,

with overall lower levels of conﬁdence in all public institutions, 64 per-

cent of those interviewed expressed much or some conﬁdence in schools,

compared with 45 percent in the army, 33 percent in the police, 30 per-

cent in the government and political parties, 29 percent in the press, and

28 percent in Congress.

The preference for public provision of education

services is far greater in Latin America than in the United States. Whereas

42 percent of the adults in the United States prefer government ownership

of schools, the respective ﬁgures are 51 percent in Mexico, 59 percent in

Ecuador and Venezuela, 62 percent in Colombia, 66 percent in Bolivia and

Paraguay, 68 percent in Chile, 70 percent in Peru, 71 percent in Costa Rica,

72 percent in Argentina and Brazil, 74 percent in Guatemala, 75 percent in

Panama, and 84 percent in the Dominican Republic.

During the twentieth century, states extended not just access to primary

education, but also the duration of compulsory education, from ﬁve or

six years of schooling at the beginning of the twentieth century, to eight

or nine years of basic instruction toward the end. In 1967, Chile was one

of the ﬁrst countries to extend the duration of basic education from six

to eight years and to reduce secondary education from ﬁve to seven years

to four to ﬁve.

By the end of the century, the duration of compulsory

education was eleven years in Guatemala and Peru; ten years in Costa

Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, and Uruguay; nine years in

Argentina, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, and Paraguay; eight years in Bolivia,

Brazil, and Colombia; seven years in Venezuela; and six years in Haiti,

Nicaragua, and Panama.

By comparison, the duration of compulsory

schooling in Germany was thirteen years; in the United Kingdom and

the United States, twelve years; and in Canada, France, and Spain, eleven

years.

Joseph Klesner, “Legacies of Authoritarianism,” in Roderic Ai Camp, ed., Citizen Views of Democracy

in Latin America (Pittsburgh, PA, 2001), 118–38.

Kenneth Coleman, “Politics and Markets in Latin America,” in Ai Camp, Citizen Views of Democracy

in Latin America, 185–205.

Rodr

ıguez, “Chile: System of Education.”

UNESCO Institute of Statistics. http://www.uis.unesco.org/en/stats/statistics/database/DBIndex.

htm, accessed June 19, 2003.

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450 Fernando Reimers

During the twentieth century, most Latin American states delivered on

the promise of providing initial access to compulsory primary education to

all children. A remarkable expansion of enrollments took place during

the century, far exceeding the rapid population growth. This expansion of

the incipient systems of education established in the nineteenth century

was stimulated by import substitution industrialization and the associated

urbanization of the Latin American population. Most of this expansion was

in public institutions. For the progressives, this consolidation of the Estado

Docente represented a victory over an education dominated by the Church,

perceived to legitimize class differences (by the preferential emphasis on

educating elites), differences in gender roles (by segregated education), and

acceptance of the authority of the Church.

The number of children enrolled in primary schools increased from

15 million in 1950 to 85 million in 1997;atthe secondary level, enrollment

increased from 2 million to 29 million; and at the tertiary level, from

300,000 to 9.4 million.

The expansion in the capacity to enroll children in elementary school

was dramatic. In 1950, none of the countries in Latin America had enough

capacity to enroll all children of primary school age in school. Most could

barely enroll half of them, as indicated by the gross enrollment ratios shown

in Table 11.2.Only Argentina and Uruguay had gross enrollment ratios in

primary school of more than 90 percent. Primary school systems were large

enough to incorporate between 60 percent and 76 percent of the relevant

age group in Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, El Salvador, Panama, and Paraguay.

In the remaining countries, fewer than three in ﬁve children of primary

school age could attend school.

The differences in 1950 enrollment rates among countries reﬂect varying

emphases of policy over the previous ﬁfty years. Argentina and Uruguay

developed inclusive educational ideologies earlier than the remaining coun-

tries and, as a result, expanded their education systems accordingly. At

the lower end of the distribution of enrollment rates, Brazil, Nicaragua,

The struggle between the conservative and progressive projects took place also within the Church,

especially after the Puebla and Medell

ın Bishops’ Conferences, where a preferential option for the

poor was adopted as an ofﬁcial framework of the Latin American Church. Some of the progressive

practices are those where Church-based education organizations and social movements partner to

empower marginalized groups and communities. Examples of these practices are the work of the

Society of Jesus, with popular education in marginalized communities through the organization

Fe y Alegr

ıa. Although the educational practice of Church-related organizations have become more

diverse since Puebla, the traditional role of Church-related educational institutions was to serve the

needs of the most privileged members of the Latin American societies.

UNESCO, WorldEducation Report, 116,Tables 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3.

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Education and Social Progress 451

Table 11.2. Enrollment rates in primary education in Latin America,

1950–2000

Gross enrollment rates Net

1950 1965 1970 1980 1990 2000 2000

Argentina 94 101 105 106 106 120 107

Uruguay 90 106 112 107 109 109 90

Panama 76 102 101 106 106 112 100

Chile 74 124 104 109 100 103 89

Paraguay 74 102 109 104 105 111 92

Peru 67 99 107 114 123 128 104

Cuba 66 121 121 106 98 102 97

Costa Rica 61 106 110 105 101 107 91

El Salvador 61 82 84 75 81 112 81

Ecuador 57 91 99 117 116 115 99

Dominican

Republic

54 87 100 118 96 124 93

Mexico 53 92 106 120 114 113 103

Venezuela 51 94 97 93 96 102 88

Brazil 39 108 119 98 106 162 97

Nicaragua 39 69 78 94 94 104 81

Colombia 36 84 101 112 102 112 89

Bolivia 35 73 78 87 95 116 97

Guatemala 28 50 58 71 78 102 84

Honduras 28 80 87 98 108 106 88

Haiti 19 50 53 76 48

Note: For the year 2000,gross and net enrollment rates are provided. See footnote 44 for

adeﬁnition of gross and net enrollment rates.

Sources: Data for 1950 are from Ricardo Nassif, German Rama, and Juan Carlos Tedesco,

El sistema educativo en Am

erica Latina (Buenos Aires, 1984). Data for 1965 are from World

Bank, Social Indicators of Development Database.Data for 1990 are from UNESCO, The

WorldEducation Report 2000 (Paris, 2000). All other data are from the UNESCO Sta-

tistical Database: http://www.uis.unesco.org/en/stats/statistics/database/DBIndex.htm,

accessed June 19, 2003.

Colombia, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Haiti had more exclusion-

ary education systems. These conditions of access in 1950 inﬂuenced the

ensuing development of education systems, making it more challenging for

some countries to catch up with the rest in closing access gaps.

Between 1950 and 1965, the capacity of primary education systems

expanded dramatically. By 1965, the gross enrollment rate exceeded