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To address the lack of educational opportunities available in south Texas, such as the absence of public schools in many rural areas and the cultural barriers found in existing schools, Mexican communities banded together to form escuelitas, ethnically Mexican schools that provided a robust education, instilled cultural and linguistic pride, and imparted bilingual and bicultural ethos in their students. The tuition-based schools maintained strong ties to the local community. In 1897, members of the Hebbronville ethnically Mexican community, including Ascencion Martínez, Tomás Barrera, Dionisio and Severo Peña, Francisco Barrera Guerra and Jose Ángel Garza, pooled resources to create a Hebbronville escuelita. Don Rosendo Barrera Guerra, from Mier, Tamaulipas, Mexico, became the first headmaster and teacher. Before his death in 1907, Barrera Guerra established the school’s celebrated rigorous intellectualism and named the school El Colegio Altamirano. Invoking the legacy of Ignacio Altamirano (1834-1893), an indigenous Mexican novelist, pedagogical theorist and Mexican supreme court justice.
Teachers included Don Lauro Diaz, Adelina and Ernestina Carmona, Angela Ramirez, Augustina Dávila and Emilia Davila. In 1929, several women, including teacher Augustina Dávila, founded Sociedad Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez, a fundraising society to benefit the school. Student life consisted of plays, musical performances and academic events. El Colegio alumni were often praised for academic excellence above their peers from other schools. Escuelitas sharply declined after World War II due to programs such as head start and other public-school investments focusing on English acquisition. El Colegio Altamirano closed in 1958. The building, maintained by Sociedad Josefa Ortiz de Dominguez and, later, the Franciscan fathers of Hebbronville, continued to be utilized for social, community and educational functions for several decades. (2021) |
