This contribution deals with the adoption and interpretation of the monitorial system of education in Colombia between 1821 and 1844, a period during which this pedagogical method was almost mandatory for all the country's elementary schools. The analysis focuses on the differences between "local necessities" and "local semantic resources" in the interpretation and adoption of the method. The author shows that whereas its implementation in Colombia was closely related to the construction of a new, independent and republican political order, many practices and interpretations reveal astonishing similarities to the history of the method in Spain. These similar features are illustrated at the level of curriculum, teaching practices and educational knowledge. The author discusses how these continuities marked the reception of the method even though the cultural relations between Spain and Colombia were strongly weakened during this time. This fact is interpreted in terms of the persistence of a Hispanic American cultural semantics, which pervaded the circulation and appropriation of purportedly universal educational models.