La forja de una opinión pública: Leer y escribir en Buenos Aires, 1800–1810

Pablo Martínez Gramuglia's book, which sits at the intersection of history, literary criticism, book studies, philosophy of knowledge, and the technology of print, shows how the rapid appearance and expansion of a diverse periodical press in Buenos Aires during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries both reflected and affected the perception of a changing reality. Martínez Gramuglia identifies these changes as taking place “in both an anachronistic and synchronic sense” because fixing words to paper creates permanence and claims a different level of authority compared to the more ephemeral oral transmission of information (p. 19). His study adds to excellent research into the history of language and concepts, semiotics, modernity, power, and the patria by Argentine scholars Noemí Goldman, Noé Jitrik, and José Carlos Chiaramonte.The book consists of four distinct but interrelated thematic chapters. The first deals with readers and their reading of periodical literature, the second with readers and readings of poetry. Martínez Gramuglia's theoretical approach draws widely from the (mainly French) philologists and scholars of knowledge formation that one would expect to see in a book on public opinion: Pierre Bourdieu, Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, François-Xavier Guerra, Annick Lempérière, Jürgen Habermas. He traces how the print medium's form and content both created and reinforced hierarchies of class, gender, race, dialect, and professional credentials. Unsurprisingly, the first chapter emphasizes how a vigorous periodical press emerged from strong backing by the porteño merchant community who derived tangible value from the practical information it provided: price indexes, tidal charts, ship information, advertisements, and international news. What has been less commonly noted, however, is the astonishing prevalence of poetry, odes, acrostics, and other verse in these same pages. Martínez Gramuglia observes that choosing to “write in verse, far from being an accident, permits an accumulation of sounds and meanings that would not be possible in prose, at least not without blatant artifice” (p. 89). The lyrical repetition of words and sounds in praise of local geographies, people, pasts, and futures was essential to creating a new kind of patriotism and, he argues, was key in the political polarization of the 1820s and beyond.The third chapter is longer and devoted to the study of letrados (men of letters), with detailed case studies of Gregorio Funes, Manuel Belgrano, and Vicente López y Planes. Martínez Gramuglia selected them specifically to highlight how the letrado as a sociological category transitioned from being comprised primarily of educated clergymen in the late colonial period to being identified with a secular author cohort devoted to themes of patriotism and place and finally members of partisan political camps. He connects the rise of the modern letrado class with the expansion of the periodical press, their skillful use of both practical prose and poetry shaping public opinion and setting national policy priorities. As he sees it, the two phenomena ran parallel to—and fortified the power of—each other. This new, self-aware class of writers was particularly interested in the moral formation of the new country, whose authority came from a closer proximity to the truth. Of course, truth is a contested category, which makes the letrado a complicated and unstable category, one on which it is hard to construct a nation. With this observation, Martínez Gramuglia arrives at a conclusion similar to that of Mónica Ricketts, who documented how Peruvian letrados were pushed aside by the military's officer class in a struggle for power after independence was secured.The final chapter tackles the complicated subject of public opinion, which Martínez Gramuglia describes as having the character of a “transparent truth shared by all” based on both erudition and personal experience (p. 137). He argues that true public opinion could only have come into existence after the May Revolution's success; it was not present in the late colonial period as a political phenomenon distinct from mere chatter, gossip, or private thoughts. Rather, public opinion grew out of inter- and intraelite discourses on the printed page that sought to shape and control discourses of patriotism and the space available for political participation. Public opinion implies a dialogue between speakers and listeners, who occasionally change epistemic position but do not operate from equal standpoints of power. Here another paradox appears—namely, that public opinion was, to a significant degree, often indistinguishable from the opinions of those who were writing about it.Pablo Martínez Gramuglia has written an important, interesting, and valuable study of public opinion's formation in Buenos Aires during the nineteenth century's crucial first decade. As befits its subject, this is an explanatory account that is very much drawn from words rather than deeds. Epoch-defining events like the British invasions of 1806–7 recur across all four chapters, but the focus remains squarely on the new worlds being built on (and by) the page. Manuel Belgrano's shadow also falls across all the various forms of opinion-making activity discussed in this book, underscoring his tremendous importance to the May generation. The analysis is tightly focused on Buenos Aires print production but could be put usefully in conversation with contemporaneous public cultures taking shape in other late colonial port cities like New Orleans, Havana, Bogotá, and Caracas.

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