Global Transformations as Promoters of New Creations: Birth of Latin American Identity in Missionary Pedagogy

Abstract

This article presents the results of a historical-pedagogical investigation, which objective was to establish the main features of hybrid pedagogy and missionary-educational system developed in the Spanish colonies in the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as to ascertain how they contributed to cultural hybridization and the construction of Latin American identity in tremulous conditions of meeting of two very different, even opposite ones, worlds and cultures. The authors found that despite the very complicated situation in which the first evangelizing missionaries found themselves, taking into account, among other things, their total ignorance of the local languages and cultures, they were able to devise innovative didactics using improvised means and all their ingenuity to be able to fulfill their duty: “to save the souls of sinners” by converting them to the Christian faith. Thus, they created the missionary-educational system, which the aspects of pre-Hispanic education with the elements of the European conventual schools joined in itself. This educational model contributed to cultural hybridization and the construction of Latin American identity from the first years of the conquest