Presented by Gabriela Iturriza (Université de Montréal)

To date, two important Venezuelan historians have maintained that the revolutions in the Spanish colonies occurred without access to printing presses and without communication among the colonies.
Keeping in mind the identification of foreign newspapers as sources of information for the Venezuelan newspaper Gaceta de Caracas, we will examine in detail the translation strategies of the anonymous manifesto “Americanos” (1810), which appeared in the French royalist newspaper L’Ambigú, and then, the trans-editing of this piece in the Venezuelan Gaceta. On one side, the French press reads the manifesto as a revolutionary paper, and on the other, the Venezuelan press, uses “Americanos” as an intellectual masquerade to ensure loyalty to the Spanish Crown.
We will demonstrate how both the negotiation and intertextuality of this manifesto came to be, and how these elements were delivered later through other American and English newspapers such as the Salem’s Gazette, The Morning Chronicle, The Bell’s Weekly Advertiser and El Español – to determine political alliances between the forming nations. Notably, this research helped us identify the real diffusion date of this revolutionary paper along with the identity of its author.