Laws have no effect where opinion is not recorded. Public Opinion and Political Publicity in the Gazeta Ministerial de Cundinamarca (1811-1816)

The article carries out a critical assessment of the conditions of possibility and the implications of publicizing government actions for the construction of the local political community, on the basis of the study of the Gazeta Ministerial de Cundinamarca (1811-1816), the most widely read newspaper in the early Republic of New Granada. Special attention is given to the forms of circulation and appropriation of the Gazeta, and to the way it permanently invoked public opinion in its pages, which are two central aspects for the understanding of the political culture of the period. In this sense, the article aims at pointing out the complex relations between the culture of the press and the production of political meaning during the first Republic of New Granada.