History Seminar: From Revolution to Democracy: Publicness and the Freedom of the Press in Latin America, c. 1790-1860
16 October 2025
Convener(s): Eduardo Posada-Carbo
Speaker(s): Juan Neves-Sarriegui, La Salle Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, Spain
This paper analysed the origins of modern democracy in Latin America from the perspective of the freedom of the press. Between 1810 and 1811, the Spanish American liberal revolutions abolished the colonial system of censorship, establishing the freedom of the press in the region. In 1821, Brazil followed suit in the context of liberal revolutions in the Portuguese-speaking world. Those events were consequential for the creation of representative institutions as growing numbers of newspapers became active forces in parliamentary politics, in elections, and in the emergence of a public sphere. After the revolutionary decades (1810-1830), the newly independent countries went through a period of internal conflict and state-building efforts. By the third quarter of the century, as the modern nation-states consolidated, the freedom of the press came to be seen as integral to democracy and to the democratic institutions then taking shape. The imporance of the freedom of the press in this long process of state-building and emerging democratisation can be seen in its role as a pre-condition for the development of representative government, in enabling political participation and the creation of political rights, and in its contribution to novel to practices of public deliberation and legitimate opposition.
