This essay is on the author of the speech delivered at the Ateneo de Montevideo, Antonio Miguel Grompone, on “the culture of liberation,” where he highlights the cultural and political importance of the “peoples” universities or adult education centers. The precedent had been published in the first publication of the Revista AIAPE (AIAPE Magazine in Uruguay). In France at the end of the nineteenth century and in response to the social and cultural crisis these “peoples” universities and educational institutions began to emerge founded by groups, associations and social organizations that promoted literacy and the rapprochement to cultural manifestations in sectors that were furthest removed such as rural populations, marginalized sectors and the proletariat. In the first decades of the twentieth century, many intellectuals struggled against conservative policies and classicist authoritarianism and such was the case of Uruguay.

To be noted is the interest that the Universidades Populares [people’s universities] presents to this research project (ICAA-Uruguay) due to intervening fact that visual artists at the time were involved conducting exhibitions and eventually lectures in a realm of initiatives independent of the conservative and at times dictatorial government. It sought to carry out an experience similarly to a “protraction of the university” into the slums of Montevideo which was basically a strong political constituency against the dictatorship of Gabriel Terra.

The Uruguayan lawyer and educator Antonio Miguel Grompone, creator of the Instituto de Profesores Artigas (IPA, Institute of Artigas Professors) presented a speech at the Ateneo de Montevideo promoting not only a cultural renewal but also educational reform of new “people’s” universities that emerged at the time of the dictatorship, as an ostensive reaction to the “cold and pedagogic instruction. The spirit of liberation that materialized in the “peoples” universities promoted participation and social inclusion of the proletariat. They were instituted as the “university for the working class” with the argument that the populace should make declarations on the cultural interests of the masses and be assisted technically by the intellectuals.

The document “Cultura de Liberación” covered a series of concepts that could be linked to those expressed by Michel Foucault some thirty years later. The thinker distinguishes very clearly knowledge, power and subject in the following terms: “Power creates knowledge and in turn creates subjects of that knowledge.”  This process is generated through discipline. One can suggest the thoughts and proposals of Michael Foucault were linked to the orientation of the “peoples” universities at least in principle, many years before Foucault.  They constituted the core foundation of the sociopolitical powers and the respective knowledge and subjects it produced.  The generated knowledge was acknowledged as the counter power over the political power of the state. For Grompone, culture was the representation of human values and not an instrument for class repression. That was why the “new university” and education reform would be conducive to social restoration. It is necessary to note that many of these principles would eventually claim legal and institutional status with the Ley Orgánica Universitaria [The University Organic Law] that was passed in 1958 in Uruguay.