History of the Instituto Don Bosco of Ramos Mejía

Abstract

The institution called “Casa Salesiana Don Bosco” of Ramos Mejía, is one of the oldest educational and religious entities in the area. Such is the case, that it has a wide local recognition as a cultural, social and even geographical reference point for the residents of Ramos Mejía and its surroundings. In this paper we take a tour of the history of the secondary level of said educational and religious work, called Don Bosco Institute. As will be seen in this research, this sector, as well as the others, was crossed by the different political, social, educational and economic circumstances of the country and the religious congregation to which it belongs that is global in scope and has its own processes that exceed national reality. In the 50 years of life of the Don Bosco Institute covered in this research (1963-2013), we can highlight: the process of plotting the land on which the school work is located, which gave rise to the Don Bosco neighborhood of Ramos Mejía; the large progressive growth of enrollment; the incorporation of women into their classrooms; the first lay management (that is, of persons without the order of the priesthood) of a Salesian congregational college worldwide; and the different consequences that the main national historical processes of these 50 years had, such as the military coups and dictatorships, the Falklands war, the return to democracy, the neoliberal model of the 1990s, and the 2001 crisis, between others.