“For Love to the People”: the organization of the catholic university of Valparaíso and the Making of the Middle Class in Chile During the 1920s

Abstract

Th is paper explores how sectors of Chilean Catholicism articulated a discourse that promoted the making of the middle class in order to face the challenges
experienced during the early decades of the twentieth century. It focuses on the organization of the Catholic University of Valparaíso in 1928. By analyzing documents and newspapers, this paper argues that the founders of the university developed this project to promote a practical education to contribute to the economic progress and to stimulate the presence of Catholicism in Chile’s public life. Th e combination of both aspects would shape the existence of a new social sector, the middle. Class which would behave according to Catholic values, playing a specific role in the local economic context and, ultimately,
demonstrating an improvement of the moral and material conditions of society.