The colonial schools during the visit of Moreno and Escandon to the northeast neogranadino: toward the road of secularization and urban equipment

Abstract

The present article is a case study which analyzes the status of elementary schools in the Spanish populations visited in 1778 by Attorney General Francisco Antonio Moreno y Escandón in the northeastern fringe of New Granada. The idea is to obtain a panorama at regional level of the advances and vicissitudes regarding primary education not only in relation to physical infrastructure but also regarding the secularization process and control dealt by the Viceroy’s government. The above-mentioned also implies an examination of the achievements of these establishments of basic teaching inside the scale of priorities of urban equipment and the enormous difficulties that still-at the moment of the decline of colonial period parishes, villages and cities in their social, administrative and cultural development-had to face.