To study law in Santiago de Chile reading a Gaditano and a Caraqueño. The literary legacy of José Joaquín de Mora and Andrés Bello in the legal curriculum at the National Institute and the University of Chile (1829–1890)

What did it mean to teach law in nineteenth-century Chile? At a time when national legislation was sometimes more of an aspiration than a reality, it often meant engaging in acts of selective translation and creative adaptation to local conditions and constraints of recent and contemporary transnational intellectual and literary trends that dictated the boundaries of the modern legal imagination. This activity was also carried out in ways that were highly sensitive to social and political contexts and dynamics that often disrupted the very efforts made to teach law and, on occasion, created scenarios and conditions favorable to the strengthening of legal education. Teaching law in this historical context also meant educating the social and political elite, invariably male, including practically all the major intellectuals, politicians and jurists of the time. In a country that was practically thrown into independence at the beginning of the century and therefore had to educate the leaders, and the lawyers, of the new sovereign state, this activity was especially relevant. This presentation will focus on the deep and lasting legacy that the teaching activities of Andrés Bello and José Joaquín de Mora between 1829 and 1832 had on the literature that was used for teaching and studying law in Chile during the nineteenth century.