The Press and the Global History of Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

On 23 May 2024, all the members of our project participated in a roundtable at the Latin American History Seminar of the University of Oxford, to discuss central aspects of the relationship between the press and democratic developments in 19^th-century Latin America. Eduardo Posada-Carbó, Paula Alonso, Laura Cucchi, and Juan Neves-Sarriegui highlighted how the study of the press serves to better characterise the political regimes that emerged in the region after the revolutions of independence (1810-30). The expansions and contractions of the right of expression, the discussion of parliamentary politics in local newspapers, the materiality, literacy, and market conditions of the press were among the issues presented to an international audience that joined at the Oxford Latin American Centre and virtually from the United States, Europe, and Latin America. While the focus of the panel discussion was on the press, this was also an opportunity to present and discuss the wider aspects of our project ‘the global history of democracy in Latin America’.