ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth century, Spanish America began to feel the winds of change that had begun to sweep through Europe. A lively contraband in unorthodox ideas accompanied the growing trade between the colonies and non-Spanish lands. Colonial newspapers and reviews played a significant part in the development of a critical and reformist spirit and a nascent sense of nationality among the educated Creoles of Spanish America. These periodicals appeared in increasing numbers after 1780. The circulation and influence of forbidden books among educated colonials steadily increased in the closing decades of the eighteenth century and the first years of the nineteenth. As the influential tutor of Simon Bolilvar, Simon Rodriguez helped introduce Enlightenment thinking into the education of the future independence hero. Slave revolts were common in Brazil and Spanish America, despite being brutally repressed by colonial authorities. Often slaves escaped into the hinterlands to form settlements of their own.
