Stella Maris College (Montevideo)

The Christian Brothers College of Montevideo, commonly referred as Stella Maris College – Christian Brothers or just Christian, is a private, co-educational, not-for-profit Catholic primary and secondary school run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland. The school is located in the residential neighborhood of Carrasco Norte, Montevideo, Uruguay. The school's headmaster is Patricia Ponce de Leon. The school is a member of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), currently offering the International Baccalaureate Diploma Program (IBDP). The college also offers valuable international exams such as the IGCSE programs and the A levels. It has a long list of distinguished former pupils, including economists, engineers, architects, lawyers, politicians and even F1 champions.
The school has also played an important part in the development of rugby union in Uruguay, with the creation of Old Christians Club, the school's alumni club.
The school is located in the south-east neighborhood of Carrasco Norte in Montevideo's metropolitan area.
It was founded in 1955 by the Christian Brothers, the founders also of Cardinal Newman College, Buenos Aires.
At the time of its founding, many Uruguayan upper class Catholics were dissatisfied with the public school educational system and desired that their children receive a religious education. Between 1953 and 1954 the Christian Brothers established a congregation in Uruguay and founded a school for boys in the exclusive suburb of Carrasco.
They had an organizational committee composed of the Moor family, Davie, Surraco Germain, Manuel Pérez del Castillo and Stella Ferreira, Adolfo Gelsi Bidart, Enrique Rozada, Antonio Barreiro, Conrad Hughes, Francisco Ferrer, Rodolfo Anaya, Antonio Galan, Eduardo Strauch and Jorge Alvarez Olloniego. They also worked with Gallinal Alberto Heber, William Strauch, Roberto Houni, Jorge Eduardo Aznárez and Berenbau.
After arduous negotiations, in early 1955, Brothers Nairobi J. I. Doorley and J. V. Ryan arrived from Nairobi to make final arrangements for the opening of the school. They rented a house located at 6585 Republic of Mexico Promenade Corner Puyol. Brother Doorley returned to Buenos Aires and was replaced by Brother P. C. Kelly. Shortly after, Brothers J. V. O'Reilly and H. G. McCaig arrived.
Classes began on May 2, 1955. That year a polio epidemic forced authorities to postpone the start of courses. Brother Patrick Kelly was a devotee of the Virgin Mary and, since the school was facing the sea, decided to call it "Stella Maris", as the parish in the area.
The beach in front of the school became the sports playing field. Later, the Carrasco Polo Club provided the students the use of their courts. The school grew rapidly. From 93 students in 1955 the school grew to 137 in 1956 and 279 in 1958. Another house was added to the campus in 1957, Potosi 1536, amidst the houses of Puyol and the Rambla. Classes began in 1959 with four teachers. The school's current location on the street of Tajes Max opened on March 12, 1961 with the blessing of Cardinal Antonio María Barbieri. The first generation of students graduated the fourth grade in late 1962. A system of "Houses" (Casas) was instituted in 1963, which categorizes all students into four groups: Prior, Sion, Iona and Newman, each with a color identifier. In 1972 a new section of the building was added for a high school. In 1976 this area was completed with the construction of a second high school section that included a library and laboratories for physics, chemistry and biology.
The school became co-ed in 1985 with the addition of high school girls, and girls were admitted to the primary school starting in 1989. Since that year the school became gradually mixed at all levels with three groups by grade rather than the existing two. In 1991 the school added preschool starting at age four. The Christian Brothers do not currently have a presence in Uruguay, having stopped their affiliation with the school in 1998, although the institution remains the property of Edmund Rice Education Association, whose local address is that of three Christian Brothers members.
The school gained accidental fame when its alumni rugby team crashed in the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972, on Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The story of the crash and rescue was first told in the 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors and in the 2006 book Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home. The school also appeared in the documentary, Alive: 20 Years Later.
Twelve of the 45 people on board the plane died in the crash, with several more dying of their injuries in the ensuing days. Another 8 perished in an avalanche. The remaining survivors endured hunger, crash-related injuries, altitude sickness, and temperatures that fell to 30 degrees below zero at night. On their eighth day in the mountains, they heard on the radio that the authorities had stopped searching for them. When their scarce food reserves were gone, they were forced to eat those who had died in the crash.
On December 12, 3 of the remaining survivors set out to find help, hiking west across the Andes Mountains to reach Chile. After scaling the 15,000-foot Mount Seler, they realized that the trek for help would take them much longer than they had thought. Therefore, to conserve their limited food supply, one of them returned to the crash site and the other two continued hiking west.
On 21 December 1972, the ninth day of their journey, they were found by huasos who grazed livestock in the high country, and the next day, the world learned of the 16 survivors who had cheated death for 72 days in the Andes mountains, in part by resorting to cannibalism.