San Carlos de Guatemala, University of

The University of San Carlos de Guatemala was begun with a legacy left by Francisco Marroquín, first bishop of Guatemala, who endowed the College of Saint Thomas, attached to the Dominican convent in Guatemala City. The town council at once tried to raise the college to the status of a university, but encountered financial problems and bureaucratic delays. In 1622, the Jesuits secured the right to confer degrees in their own college, further complicating the town council's efforts. It was only in 1676 that a combination of a fortunate legacy and patient maneuvering finally induced the crown to authorize a public university, named for the then reigning Charles II.

The new foundation followed the pattern used at the University of Salamanca by confiding governance to the body of doctors and masters in residence (called the Cloister) led by a rector elected annually from its members. Both were subject to crown authority through the captain-general. Faculty positions were filled by oposiciones, contests of specimen lectures, given before a body of judges. Winners of the oposiciones filled junior chairs for a term of years, and senior (proprietary) posts were held for life. The faculty consisted of nine to twelve professors at a time. Between 1625 and 1821 2,006 students received bachelor's degrees and 504 earned advanced degrees.

The university's economic base was always fragile. Guatemala was a poor area, and the crown adamantly resisted using any of its monies for education. In addition, relations between the University and the Jesuits remained delicate. Until their expulsion in 1767, the Jesuits continued to grant degrees and enjoyed a high reputation for their instruction.

San Carlos, like other Hispanic universities, exemplified and exalted the neoscholastic learning of sixteenth-century Spain. But again in common with others, the curriculum had become stale and routine by the first decades of the eighteenth century, and demands for reform emerged.

In 1784 a Dominican professor, newly arrived from Spain, officially accused his colleagues of laxity and backwardness. The responses to these charges showed that quiet changes had been going on for a decade or more. For example, the Franciscan José Antonio Goicoechea had taught experimental physics since about 1770. Goicoechea and others submitted plans of reform, and over the next three decades there was a ferment of new projects and ideas. These included incorporating mathematics and up-to-date geography and cosmography in the curriculum, introducing experimental (Newtonian) physics, and shifting the theology curriculum to emphasize scripture study, dogmatic theology, and moral philosophy at the expense of speculative scholasticism. A strong regalist impulse was imposed on law studies, with great emphasis on the power and authority of the crown and the importance of Spanish law. Finally, the study of medicine was made current by new texts, anatomical studies, and training in botany and chemistry.

These reforms in the university were encouraged and paralleled by the actions of a coterie of government officials, professors, clerics, students, and prominent citizens who clustered around the Sociedad Económica De Amigos Del País and wrote in the Gazeta De Guatemala. They clearly had access to new books and benefited from contact with two visiting scientific expeditions. The Gazeta discussed such questions as the wisdom of replacing Latin with Spanish as the language of the schools, advocated sensationalist psychology, and considered various plans to improve the lot of the Indians as well as numerous other economic questions.

The political and intellectual significance of the university and the impact of the intellectual changes made after 1780 is best indicated by the fact that nine of the thirteen signers of the 1821 declaration of Guatemalan independence were graduates of San Carlos.

See alsoDominicans; Enlightenment, The; Universities: Colonial Spanish America.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The definitive study is John Tate Lanning's twin volumes, The University in the Kingdom of Guatemala (1955) and The Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment in the University of San Carlos de Guatemala (1956). Lanning's Academic Culture in the Spanish Colonies (1940) provides a general comparative picture.

Additional Bibliography

Cazali Avila, Augusto. Historia de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, época republicana (1821–1994). 3 vols. Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 1997.

Kobrak, Paul. Organizing and Repression in the University of San Carlos, Guatemala, 1944–1996. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science: Centro Internacional para Investigaciones en Derechos Humanos, 1999.

Pattridge, Blake D. Institution Building and State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America: The University of San Carlos, Guatemala. New York: P. Lang, 2004.

                                           George M. Addy