Cardozo, Ramón Indalecio (1876–1943)

Born in Paraguay's interior department of Guairá in the period following the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), Ramón Cardozo dedicated himself from an early age to public education, which, in his country, he saw as poorly administered and woefully grounded in the old-fashioned. For sixteen years he was the director of schools in the town of Villarrica, where he experimented with an approach that eschewed the "encyclopedic" methods of the past. He eventually moved on to Asunción, where the Eligio Ayala government asked him in 1924 to prepare a comprehensive plan for the reform of the nation's schools. Cardozo responded with a practical, more scientific, and vocational curriculum that he believed would better suit the needs of the rural population. He also brought many young people into Paraguay's teaching colleges and saw the number of primary schools expand exponentially during his career of more than thirty years of public service. Cardozo also contributed extensively in historical work and journalism, and in half a dozen studies made a name for himself as the chief scholar of his home district. In 1937 he was one of the founders of the Instituto Paraguayo de Investigaciones Históricas. He died in Buenos Aires.

See alsoAyala, Eligio; Education: Overview; War of the Triple Alliance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Parker, William Belmont, ed. Paraguayans of To-Day. New York and London: Hispanic Society of America, 1921.

Zubizarreta, Carlos. Cien vidas paraguayas. Asunción: Araverá, 1985.

                                 Thomas L. Whigham