Education in Mexico after Franciscans

With the conquest in 1521, Spain's new reign was established, and the education of the natives fell on the hands of the Jesuit and Franciscan religious orders. But the natives already had an educational system, a culture, and their own language. Education faced the great challenge of the clash between two cultures...

The first Franciscan Friars to arrive in New Spain were Br. Pedro Melgarejo and Br. Diego Altamirano, who came in the Cortes troops to the soldiers' pastoral service. Since they came as military chaplains and not as missionaries, their participation in evangelization had little relevance.

Afterwards second group of three Franciscans of Belgian origin arrived in 1523. Of which two traveled with Cortes in their incursion to Honduras and died along the way. The third was Br. Pedro de Ghent, who immediately began evangelization in New Spain.

The first really structured mission arrived in Mexico on May 13, 1524 with twelve friars headed by Br. Martin de Valencia and who were later called "the twelve apostles." The mission came with two objectives: the evangelization and conversion of the natives and the legitimization of their origin to the lineage of Adam.

First strategies included painting passages in the Bible on canvases to explain them through interpreters. The education problem required legislation, developed by Bartolomé de las Casas, who watched over the education of the Indians and indicated the need to learn to read and write. The opening of the first schools in the Castilian language allowed all Indians to learn.

The first schools in Latin America were created with Pedro Ghent in 1523; and with Fray Juan de Zumárraga he was the first Bishop and Archbishop in Mexico and founded a school for boys and girls in Texcoco. Principles of doctrine were taught with the Franciscan method and fieldwork was also done.

Vasco de Quiroga gave rise to a socialist education, receiving patients for the first time in a hospital, and educating children. Later, indigenous higher education would arrive, with the Holy Cross school, in Tlatelolco, which taught Latin, humanities, indigenous medicine, music and theology.

From this university, the idea of ​​creating an academic institution where all sciences were taught for the benefit of Spaniards and natives came out. This university consolidated the careers of wise men, theologians, philosophers, poets and doctors, descendants of various cultural castes.