Among romanizers and liberals: the Modern education in the province of Pará during the XIX Century

Abstract

The present article analyses the educational scenario in Pará during the late nineteenth century, emphasizing the disputes between Liberals and Romanizers for the hegemony in the educational area. It presents the ideological belief of the Brazilian educational privileged as a means for social transformation that arrives in Pará and is articulated to the issue of race. Liberals, defenders of the Republic, make use of this discourse and start an open debate through the newspapers of the province’s capital on conditions of the public education in the region. Romanizers, threatened of losing their political power that the clerical elite had in the region, specifically in the educational matter, defend the point that only the Catholic Church would be able to manage the publishes teaching towards progress and civilization, against barbarism and degradation.