ABSTRACT
The years that followed the independence of the Spanish American countries saw impressive changes in print culture. Printing and the circulation of books became much less regulated, mass education and literacy became a major concern of all the governments, and the reading public seemed increasingly avid for material through which to make sense of their new status in their country and in respect of the rest of the world. The printing press became a symbol of modernity and one of the principal agents for social change. Yet for all the modern values conferred to the printed word, the technical conditions of the publishing industry in Spanish America, although very varied among the different countries, were in general rather precarious. The book trade was incipient, the prices of books remained high and literacy did not increase at the speed that government reforms intended. This contradictory situation prevents historians-constrained by the limited research still available on the subject-from agreeing on whether there was indeed a 'revolution'
concurrencia a las discusiones de las Camaras y Asambleas legislativas... las juntas electorales, la forma representativa y las sociedades patrioticas, o reuniones ordenadas de los ciudadanos para examinar las resoluciones de sus gobiernos, podrian considerarse el equivalente de las reuniones de ciudadanos en la plaza publica de las antiguas republicas como Atenas, Roma o Florencia'. Lorenzo de Zavala, Ensayo historico de las revoluciones de Mexico desde 1808 hasta 1830, quoted in Ramiro Lafuente, Un mundo poco visible: Imprenta y bibliotecas en Mexico durante el siglo XIX (Mexico, UNAM: Centro de Investigaciones Bibliotecologicas, 1992), p. 32.
