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Maestro Cordero’s School by Francisco Oller

The subject of the painting is Rafael Cordero y Molina (October 24, 1790 – July 5, 1868). He was popularly known as Maestro Cordero and was a self-educated Puerto Rican who provided free schooling to the children of his city regardless of race or social standing. He is also known as the Father of Public Education in Puerto Rico.

Maestro Cordero was the founder of the first school in Puerto Rico for both the formerly enslaved and children of enslaved persons. By the late 1820s, the school admitted male children of all races and social strata. Cordero was the only teacher in the school, but also a manual laborer. He taught classes in a workshop like the one seen in the painting.

The children in the painting are all of different socioeconomic classes. The have different skin tones, hair color and hair textures. The artist, Francisco Oller, portrays the importance and accessibility of education to all races. The two children in the foreground, one holding an egg and the other holding bread, suggests racial integration. As an abolitionist himself, Oller advocates the importance of acceptance of race differences in a developing country in that period of time.

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