Internado Nacional Barros Arana

- Abr 2016

 

Location: 3535  Santo Domingo

 

Preservation Status: Historical Monument

 

The National Boarding School emerged in 1819 as a department of the National Institute. It was established to receive students from across the country. However, it was in 1902, under the Government of German Riesco, that the National Boarding School became independent of the National Institute and was forged as one of the most important educational institutions in the country.

 

The independence of its management was due to the former President José Manuel Balmaceda who in 1887 intended to create a democratic, secular, public and educational space for all students in the territory, attending to the geographical diversity of Chile. Therefore, its educational and historical heritage was born from one of the modern and political conceptions directed to the republican construction of Chile. Its motto in Latin is: Mens sana in corpore sano.

 

On November 13, 1907, former President Pedro Montt renamed the boarding school with the name of the historian, diplomat and political professor Diego Barros Arana, giving birth to the Internado Nacional Barros Arana, INBA (Barros Arana National Boarding School).

 

The sustained increase in the number of students resulted almost a hundred years later in its moving to Santo Domingo Street in the neighborhood west of Santiago, on the 17 hectares of land adjacent to the Quinta Normal. The building was designed by the French architect Victor Henry de Villeneuve.

 

After the coup of September 11, 1973, the INBA, due to the concept of its creation, was occupied by troops of the Third Regiment of Yungay de San Felipe, by the DINA Secret Police (National Directorate of Intelligence) from 1973 to 1977, and later by the CNI Secret Police (National Central of Informations), from 1977 to 1990. The educational establishment was converted into a center of detention, torture and death.

 

Among the infamous memories of the San Juan de Dios Hospital are the arrest and abduction of the Spanish priest José Alsina, who was then Chief of Staff at the hospital and faith ministry at the San Ignacio Parish in San Bernardo. He was dead shot on September 19, 1973 on Bulnes Bridge, next to the Kennel at Los Reyes Park sector. José Alsina was informed of his death sentence in the Barros Arana National Boarding School.

 

To the present day, Barros Arana Boarding School is perceived as one of the most important public educational institutions in Chile; a bulwark in the political and student development of our country.

 

In 2006 the INBA building was declared a Historical National Monument by the National Monuments Council.

 

 

Date

18 de April, 2016

Category

Spaces

Tags
Community, Diego Barros Arana, Memory, modern state, patrimony, public education, secularism