“To combat tyranny and control power” The political uses of freedom of the press in New Granada and Colombia (1810-1830)

Abstract

This article describes and analyzes the way in which some New Granadan public figures, serving as press editors and acting as sponsors or sympathizers of independence, invoked, claimed and used the freedom of the press in connection with their intention to break ties with the Spanish monarchy. and to forge and establish a new political and institutional order. To this effect, it is argued that, by claiming it in the terms in which they did and by using it for the political and ideological purposes they pursued, these men not only sought to overthrow the control and monopoly that the crown had imposed on the printing press, but also to , based on this claim, they also sought to validate the break with the monarchical regime, legitimize the establishment of the republican order,
control the authorities of the nascent State, and even vent in this way the disagreements that (...)