This paper presents a general outline of the fiscal structure of Colombian primary education at a time of historical crisis: the one that occurred after winning the war of independence against Spain 200 years ago (1819). This period brought with it great challenges and expectations, both for the new republican authorities and for the population in general in the framework of the process of invention of the Republic and constitution of the citizen. Among the main challenges presented to the new rulers was the reorganization of finances, even in the midst of the war being waged in certain regions (Pasto and Santa Marta) and the start of the Campaign of the South under the command of Simón Bolívar. This new stage of crisis marred by the war forced the newly founded Republic of Colombia to incur loans (internal and external) to meet military expenditures, which caused the Colombian fiscal structure to assume as the main items of expenditure from very early on: the payment of the debt and the military expenses.  

The consequences of the early form adopted by the Colombian fiscal system implied that key sectors for the republican construction were underfunded, which is proved by the case of primary education, which practically was endorsed to the parochial communities (municipalities): neighbors and particulary to the indigenous communities. 

Knowing how it was and how it worked both the Republic and schools of first letters at the local level allows the restitution of educational problems that the new authorities had to face in the crisis time process of invention of the Republic and constitution of the citizen and put into circulation, again , said problems and the ways in which they were solved. Thus, the general objective of this paper is to characterize and understand one of the most important governmental educational practices of the period 1819-1831 in the Republic of Colombia: to organize the territory and to provide to its basic units, the parishes, the primary schools with the purpose of constituting the subject by antonomasia of the new political community: the citizen. 

The question, then, that is intended to answer is: what was the structure of the financing of primary education in Colombia at the time of republican structuring and what were the consequences of this structure on the application of government public policies in education?

The objective of this paper is to characterize and analyze the educational practices that were followed in the Province of Bogotá (Colombia) between 1819 and 1832 with respect to the foundation, financing and location of primary schools, within the framework of the constitution process of the citizen and invention of the Republic of Colombia. The problem question to be solved is: How were they created? How many were they? Where were they? and how were the schools of first letters financed in the Province of Bogotá (Colombia) between 1819 and 1831? Thus, the paper starts by characterizing government practices aimed at stratifying the territory after the promulgation of the Fundamental Law of 1819: Republic, Province, Canton and Parish, the latter which served as a school district; then, a quantitative balance is made of the impact of governmental educational practices that took place in the Province of Bogotá between 1819 and 1831 aimed at massifying the schools of first letters considering variables such as: number of schools, source of funding, teaching model, location of schools and number of children per parish; Finally, the educational practices aimed at founding and financing the schools of first letters at the parish level are characterized, described and analyzed, particularly from the repartimientos of the indigenous reservations.

In spite of the financial problems that the construction of schools of first letters brought to the Republic under construction, the balance is not negative and positions the government of Santander (1821-27) as a fundamental moment in the history of Colombian education, in particular regarding the consolidation process of a primary education system. It can be said that the Republic produced a sort of educational revolution in terms of geographical coverage, at least in the Province of Bogotá, where almost 70% of the parishes had a school for the year of 1830. The means that the authorities followed to achieve this feat were based on the use of resources from the Catholic Church and local communities (particularly the repartimiento of communal lands of the natives) to finance the foundation of primary schools. The moment of historical crisis that followed the wars of independence meant one of the most dynamic periods in the history of education in Colombia, while the massification of schools of first letters took off. The results, in relative terms, are significant and speak of a commitment of the local communities in the foundation and financing of the first schools of first letters of the Republic. This process was quickly stalled, in the thirties and forties, forcing the republican authorities to take other measures, such as repositioning the Catholic Church as a synergistic agent in the operation of elementary education policy by relieving the communities The aim of this paper has been to characterize and analyze the educational practices that were followed in the Province of Bogotá (Colombia) between 1819 and 1831 with respect to the foundation, financing and location of the Colombian schools of first letters, in the frame of the process of constitution of the citizen and of invention of the Republic.

1.Brungardt, Maurice P. Tithe Production and Economic Change in Colombia, 1761-1833, 19?? 2.Caruso, Marcelo. «New Schooling and the Invention of a Political Culture: Comnunity, Rituals, and Meritocracy in Colombian Monitorial Schools, 1821- 1842». En Imported Modernity in Post-Colonial State Formation: The Appropriation of Political, Educational, and Cultural Models in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2007. 3.Caruso, Marcelo A. «Latin American Independence: Education and the Invention of New Polities». Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education 46, n.o 4 (2010): 409-17. 4.Clark, Meri. «Education for a Moral Republic. Schools, Reform and Conflict in Colombia, 1780-1845». Princeton University, 2003. 5.Johns, Roe Lyell. Full State Funding of Education, Evolution and Implications. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1973. 6.Jones, Phillip W. World Bank Financing of Education: Lending, Learning and Development. Routledge, 2007. 7.Koselleck, Reinhart. The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Stanford University Press, 2002. 8.Lancaster, Joseph, y Lancasterian Institute. The Lancasterian System of Education, with Improvements. Published for the author, and sold only at the Lancasterian Institute, 1821. 9.Mbua, Fritz Ndiva. Educational Financing: Issues and Perspectives, 2002. 10.Mohammed, Jennifer, y Samuel Lochan. Understanding Educational Financing: A Manual for Developing Countries. Commonwealth Secretariat, 2001. 11.Officers, Council of Chief State School. Education in the States: Nationwide Development since 1900. National Education Association of the United States, 1969. 12.Roldán, Eugenia, y Marcelo Caruso. Imported Modernity in Post-Colonial State Formation: The Appropriation of Political, Educational, and Cultural Models in Nineteenth-Century Latin America. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2007. 12.Safford, Frank. The Ideal of the Practical: Colombia’s Struggle to Form a Technical Elite. Texas: University of Texas Press, 2014. 14.Sowell, David. The Early Colombian Labor Movement: Artisans and Politics in Bogotá, 1832-1919. Temple University Press, 1992. 15.Tolley, K. Transformations in Schooling: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. New York: Springer, 2007 16.Upton, Dell. «Écoles lancastériennes, citoyenneté républicaine et imagination spatiale en Amérique au début du xixe siècle». Traducido por Françoise Balogun. Histoire de l’éducation, n.o 102 (1 de mayo de 2004): 87-108.