Social Promotion in Alto Peru: the School for Female Orphans in Charcas at the End of the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

The late eighteenth-century bishop of Charcas, José Antonio de San Alberto, promoted the foundatiun of girls' schools in Cordoba, Catamarca, La Plata and Potosí. His educational programme for women reflects contemporary interest in the cultural improvement of this social group, but the regulations of the schools themselves give priority to women's role in the domestic area. The schools, which accept Indian and Spanish girls alike, represent in the viceroyalty of the River Plate a timid attempt to undermine the prevailing system of castes, at the same time as they involve society as a whole in their financing and organization. The educational promotion studied here also shows the light burocratic control that the Borbon state imposed on American institutions as well as conflicts of interests which often led to the reciprocal invasion of jurisdictions between political and religious powers.