Information and Disinformation in Late Colonial New Granada

Abstract

In 1814, Alexander von Humboldt, the great traveller and explorer of the Americas, drew attention to an unusual feature of the movement for independence in the Viceroyalty of New Granada: the establishment of printing presses and newspapersfollowedrather thanprecededthe outbreak of war. Humboldt was struck by the contrast New Granada's war of independence offered with the two more famous political revolutions of the age. A great proliferation of printed pamphlets and periodicals had preceded the outbreak of revolution in both the Thirteen Colonies and France. How curious, Humboldt commented, to find the process reversed in Spanish America. Humboldt is not alone in viewing the newspaper as the expected harbinger of change in the age of Atlantic revolution. While the precise role played by the printed word in the French and American revolutions remains a subject of debate, many historians acknowledge the importance of print in creating a climate conducive to revolutionary challenge. Were newspapers and the press really latecomers to the revolution in the Viceroyalty of New Granada, as Humboldt suggests? What does this tell us about late colonial New Granada? How, in the absence of a developed press, did information, revolutionary or otherwise, circulate within the viceroyalty? Moreover, what means were available to either the Spanish crown or the American insurgents to create and manipulate news and opinion? What, indeed, does it mean to speak of the spread of news in a society such as late colonial New Granada? This article seeks to address these questions.