Qualla: Colegio del Uruguay

Colegio del Uruguay: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agus ferrocarril, CC BY-SA 4.0. Count the presidents who once sat at these desks and the arithmetic gets strange for a provincial school in a river town. Three Argentine heads of state. Two presidents of Paraguay. Governors, supreme court justices, poets, physicians, the second woman ever to earn a medical degree in Argentina. The Colegio del Uruguay, founded in 1849 in Concepción del Uruguay, was not built to be ordinary. It was built by a strongman who believed that an idea could reshape a nation faster than an army, and that the idea was education open to anyone, free of charge and free of the Church.

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Image: Agus ferrocarril | CC BY-SA 4.0

Colegio del Uruguay: A Caudillo's Gamble on Schoolbooks

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Belgrano, Public domain. Justo José de Urquiza was a caudillo, a regional strongman who governed Entre Ríos and would later become Argentina's first constitutional president. On 28 July 1849 he created the Colegio del Uruguay, and in doing so made something Argentina had never had: a secondary school tha...

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Image: Belgrano | Public domain

Colegio del Uruguay: The Frenchman and the Golden Age

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Foto Salavin, Alsina 1781, Buenos Aires, Public domain. In 1854 Urquiza handed the school to Alberto Larroque, a French republican who became the engine of its so-called golden age. Larroque came from a noble family; when his father's death made him a baron, he is said to have answered that the only nobility he accepted or envied was ...

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Image: Foto Salavin, Alsina 1781, Buenos Aires | Public domain

Colegio del Uruguay: The Roll Call

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The list of alumni reads like an index to a continent's history. Julio Argentino Roca, twice president of Argentina. Victorino de la Plaza and Arturo Frondizi, presidents as well. Juan Bautista Egusquiza and Benigno Ferreira, both presidents of Paraguay. Beyond the heads of state...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Colegio del Uruguay: Scars and Second Lives

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Consejo General de Educación de Entre Ríos, CC BY-SA 4.0. History did not leave the building untouched. In 1870, during the rebellion led by Ricardo López Jordán, the college was sacked. It endured, and in 1942 it was declared a national historical monument, its importance to the country formally recognized. For its 150th anniversary in...

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Image: Consejo General de Educación de Entre Ríos | CC BY-SA 4.0