ABSTRACT
During much of the sixteenth century, books moved to the colonies from Spain and Portugal. The printing press arrived in Mexico first, and later in Peru, but printing of books in America was strictly limited to works deemed “pleasing” to Spanish royal and church authorities. Newspapers appeared late in Latin America due to a scarcity of paper in the colonies, but during the late eighteenth, and especially early nineteenth, centuries, newspapers, literary societies, and libraries were organized in the Americas. Newspapers and scientific journals produced in America were seen as dangerous, particularly by royal officials who feared change, openness, and dialogue. After the independence period, newspapers, magazines, and intellectual salons began to play important roles in constructing national identity and culture throughout Latin America. The lofty ideas of the Enlightenment, newspaper publication, and scientific journals hardly reached the majority of citizens in Latin America, before or after independence.
