Voices in dispute. Press, politics and religion in the origins of the Argentine Republic

Abstract

Throughout the first decades of the 19th century, an increasing presence of the press as a media of political struggle took place in the territories of the former Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata. Along the decade of 1820, the controversial views around the ecclesiastical reform in the province of Buenos Aires used the press as its main media of expression and that was the reason why the arguments stretched beyond the provincial boundaries. This paper approaches that debate in order to analyze the origins of a public space, as well as its possibilities and limitations in relationship to the political strategies used by the antagonists aimed at articulate politics and religion in the transition from the religious unanimity sustained by the Catholic Monarchy to the origins of the Republic.