The Development of the Press in Great Colombia

Abstract

There is probably no single institution which so clearly reflects the changing conditions of Latin-American life in the years during and immediately following the War of Independence as the periodical press. Quite apart from reporting of military and political events, patriot journalists left a record of the interests and beliefs of their generation even when they did nothing but print clippings from the National Intelligencer or quotations from Bentham and Cicero. The rapid expansion of the press was an indication that the Enlightenment of late colonial times was reaching a wider cross-section of the literate population; it reflected material progress and usually the active interest of governments as well. The latter is certainly true of Great Colombia, where Bolivar helped to found more than one newspaper, and Santander was a leading journalist in his own right. The Viceroyalty of New Granada, like other sections of the Spanish Empire, had already produced its colonial gazettes. Caldas ' Semanario del Nuevo Reino de Granada attracted attention, even in Europe, with its scientific articles, and Narinio 's activity as a pamphleteer began with his reprinting of the Rights of Man as early as 1794. On the other hand, most of the colonial gazettes can hardly be called newspapers even by the limited standards of the day, while the result of Narinfo's experiment showed that the time for political journalism had not yet arrived. Under the first patriot regimes of the patria boba most governmental obstacles to the development of the press were removed. Nariino was then able to bring forth his sprightly Bagatela, which served both to introduce the reading public to Bentham and to overthrow the first government of Cundinamarca. Similar journals and pamphlets were turned out by the presses of Caracas, Cartagena, and other centers. These presses, however, were limited in

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