What is hidden inside Olinto Camacho’ hemerography archive: the humor

Abstract

Olinto Camacho was a biology professor and pediatrician who dedicated his life to the construction and consolidation of middle, high school, and college education, particularly at the National Pedagogical Institute (Instituto Pedagógico Nacional), currently named, Pedagogical Institute of Caracas (Instituto Pedagógico de Caracas). From the mid-1930s until the date of his death in 1989, he participated in the modernization and transformation of education to adapt it to the national needs, making proposals for every level of the educational system. His private archive is rich in sources related to this process of change, allowing individual historical reconstruction, of the groups that participated in it, and of the way in which it was organized and acquired its own profile. The hemerographic richness it contains is important and carefully classified until 1959; he gathers all kinds of information related to the subject from the capital's press and his sense of humor appears in it, reflected in brochures, official or semi-clandestine newspapers, and in caricatures. The investigation will reveal Olinto Camacho’ sense of humor through all the sources contained in his private archive. Using methods and techniques of historical and qualitative research to process them, which allow us to conclude that humor is used as an escape from tensions, to give balance to emotions, develop bonds and laugh at yourself.