Abstract

MANOSALVA-CORREA, Andrés. The History of the Semanario El Campesino: A Catholic Newspaper for the Colombian Peasantry, 1958-1990. Historelo.rev.hist.reg.local [online]. 2020, vol.12, n.25, pp.54-88. ISSN 2145-132X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/historelo.v12n25.85003.

This article presents the history of the Semanario El Campesino, a Catholic weekly newspaper directed at Colombian peasants that circulated between 1958 and 1990. Using Teun van Dijk's Critical Discourse Analysis and the contributions made by Antonio Gramsci for press analysis as starting points, the article examines the role of the newspaper's directors as well as its main informative agendas, contents, materiality, circulation, and publicity. Likewise, the continuities and changes that occurred in the weekly newspaper over time are studied. These were responses to changes in the newspaper's directorship, the religious context -the 2nd Vatican Council- and the political and economic contexts -the Cold War and developmentalism. Finally, the article concludes that the main characteristic of this newspaper was the diffusion of the idea that the peasantry was expected to be the agent of its own development through education and productivity, and that the critical positions regarding the structural problems of the countryside, recurrent in the first editions, were progressively omitted over the years.

Keywords : Semanario El Campesino; history; Catholic press; peasantry; Acción Cultural Popular; Colombia.

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