BETWEEN QUECHUAS AND AYMARAS

Quitchouas et Aymaras. Étude des populations autochtones des Andes Boliviennes. Extrait du bulletin de la Société Royale Belge D´Anthropologie et de Préhistoire. Buxelles, 1933. 

This essay was published in 1933, when the Society Bulletin of the Royal Belgian Society of Anthropology and Prehistory published it under the title “Quechuas and Aymaras. Study of autochthonous populations of the Bolivian Andes”. Georges Rouma, its author, had already published in 1911 "The Quichua and Aymara Indians of the Bolivian Altiplano: results of the Anthropological Mission organized in 1911 under the auspices of the government of the Republic of Bolivia and the Sucre Anthropological Society, under the direction of the author”.

Rouma (1881 - 1976), a prominent pedagogue, had studied Anthropological Sciences and in 1909 obtained a doctorate in Social Sciences at the Free University of Brussels. That year, a Bolivian mission led by Daniel Sánchez Bustamante and Felipe Segundo Guzmán traveled through Europe to learn about the pedagogical methods used in Germany, France and the Scandinavian countries in the plan to be adapted for their country. There they made contact with Georges Rouma, who finally worked in Bolivia, making great contributions to education. He founded the first Normal School in the country, where he had Elizardo Pérez as a student, considered the founder of peasant education.

In 1928, upon his return to Bolivia as commercial representative of Belgium, he was hired by the national authorities to carry out a diagnosis of the educational system; As a result of that work, the "Report of Dr. Georges Rouma, general director of primary, secondary and normal instruction" was published.