Dr Juan Neves-Sarriegui, post-doctoral researcher in our project, was a guest-speaker at the Xth Guerra Seminar which took place in Paris on 16 May 2024. His paper discussed key aspects of one of the themes of our project: the abolition of colonial censorship and the establishment of the freedom of the press in the first half of the 19th century. The presentation explored the main arguments in favour and against the freedom of the press, examining discussions that took place in the periodical press and in parliamentary bodies in Argentina, Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and México. Dr Neves-Sarriegui emphasised how, after the revolutions of independence (1810-30), the freedom of the press became closely associated with democracy and representative government. Frequently at the centre of constitutional politics and efforts for state-building, the freedom of the press was established as a fundamental principle in several countries across the region.
The Guerra Seminar took place in the Campus Condorcet in Paris with the participation of professors, visiting scholars, and postgraduate students of Mondes Américains, a research centre focused on the history and anthropology of the Americas. Originally launched in 2016, the purpose of the Guerra Seminar is to encourage regular academic exchanges between fellow historians of Latin America based in France and the United Kingdom. The seminar carries the name of the late François-Xavier Guerra (1942-2002), Professor at Paris I University, whose outstanding work offered fresh and novel understandings of the history of Latin American, while inspiring a new generation of scholarship on the region. After an interruption during the pandemic, this new iteration of the Guerra Seminar is convened by Professor Eduardo Posada-Carbó (Latin American Centre, Oxford), and Professors Geneviève Verdo and Clément Thibaud (Mondes Américains), and is jointly organised by the Latin American History Center (CRALMI-Mondes Américains), Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, the Research Center on American Words (CERMA-Mondes Américains), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales), and the Latin American History Seminar, Latin American Centre, University of Oxford.
