Colegio Militar (Argentina)

The Colegio Militar (Military Academy) trains the future officers of the Argentine army. Brief attempts to consolidate its foundations had been made since 1810, but difficulties surrounding the process of national organization prevented this from happening. Once the disputes between Buenos Aires and the interior provinces had been resolved in 1862, the national state began to take shape, thus allowing for the creation of the National Military Academy in 1869 as part of the "modernization" program promoted by President Domingo F. Sarmiento (1811–1888). The first director of the academy was Colonel Juan F. Czetz (1822–1904), an Argentine of Hungarian background.

Officer training was increasingly inspired by the German model. Nationalism based on territorial identity and conservative values rooted in Catholicism were also decisive influences. The ideological orientation of the Colegio Militar was not far removed from the view that the armed forces was the ultimate guardian of the nation, over and above even the nation's constitution.

Key changes in the organization and orientation of the Colegio Militar took place after the Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) War in 1982. The collapse of the military dictatorship of 1976 in 1982 forced the armed forces to democratize its ranks. In the early twenty-first century, the Colegio Militar allows women to enroll on equal terms with men, and it also serves as a university-level institute.

See alsoSarmiento, Domingo Faustino .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

García Enciso, Isaías José. Historia del Colegio Militar de la Nación. Buenos Aires, Círculo Militar, 1970.

Potash, Robert. El Ejército y la política en la Argentina. Buenos Aires, Sudamericana, 1994.

Sarni, Miguel Angel. Educar para este siglo. Buenos Aires, Dunken, 2005.

                                        Vicente Palermo