Paraguay

Early in the twentieth century the twin legal foundations of public education in Paraguay were the law of 22 July 1909 and Article 8 of the Constitution, both mandating compulsory primary instruction for all children ages 5 to 14. That pattern has nominally persisted.

Under the constitution of 1967 as amended in 1977, the country was divided into 19 administrative departments with little autonomy, especially because the Paraguayan national government held the purse strings. Subdivisions of the departments are municipalities and rural districts called partidos. A national bureaucracy dominates public education, which has a heavily centralized administration.

The traditional ruling party in Paraguay, the National Republican Party or Colorado Party—has been the one to which all civil servants belonged and has remained a component of Paraguay's government even after the 1989 coup. Opposition parties have participated in elections since the 1980s. In 1999, peacefully elected President Luis Gonzalez Macchi presided over Paraguay's first coalition government and promised ambitious economic and institutional reforms that would, if enacted, benefit education. But the constitution of 1992 did not end intermittent chaos at the highest government levels.

Since the 1960s the universities have enjoyed autonomy, so that the government or army cannot seize a university, and students have immunity from arrest. Though such protection is largely technical because university funding is from the government itself, leaders throughout South America have tended to respect and to some degree fear student power as far back as the student revolt at the University of Córdoba in Argentina just after World War I, an incident that had far-reaching effects throughout the continent.