[CHILI - JOURNALISME] San Martin. Periodico popular. Organo de los intereses americanos. Valparaiso, Imprenta de Chile, 80 numéros du n° 1 (29 août 1864), au n° 80 (24 mars 1866)

Rare collection of the first eighty issues of El San Martín. Periódico popular. Órgano de los intereses americanos, from no. 1 of 29 August 1864 to no. 80 of 24 March 1866, thus covering almost the entire known run of the newspaper, which ceased publication in the final days of March 1866. Each issue consists of two unnumbered leaves, making 320 pages in all.

Modern half red calf, smooth spine ruled in black and gilt, black shagreen lettering-piece, marbled paper boards, combed-paper endleaves and pastedowns. A few minor spots of foxing.

Founded and directed by Santiago Godoy, El San Martín was one of the most vehemently anti-Spanish newspapers published in Valparaíso during the Spanish-South American War. Its tone was political from the outset, often fiercely satirical, yet the paper ranged far beyond polemic alone; political attacks sit beside numerous poems, sometimes accompanied by small woodcuts, theatre programmes, classified notices and, on the final page of each issue, commercial advertisements that preserve something of everyday life in Valparaíso in the mid-1860s.

Its attacks on Spain were sufficiently violent to provoke protests from the Spanish chargé d’affaires in Chile, Salvador de Tavira, who demanded that the government punish the paper; the minister Álvaro Covarrubias replied by invoking freedom of the press and referring any alleged abuses to the courts. El San Martín continued to appear, multiplying its caricatures, satirical verse and attacks on Queen Isabella II, O’Donnell, Prim and the Spanish fleet.

A war first discussed from a distance eventually enters the pages themselves. One caricature targets leading Spanish figures; a poem refers to “la traidora Covadonga”, after the Spanish schooner Covadonga was captured by the Chilean corvette Esmeralda at the Battle of Papudo on 26 November 1865. As the conflict drew closer to Valparaíso, the newspaper followed almost week by week a crisis in which the city itself was soon to become involved.

No. 80 in the present run appeared on 24 March 1866. A few days later the newspaper ceased publication; on 31 March the Spanish squadron under Casto Méndez Núñez bombarded Valparaíso, and the former presses of El San Martín were themselves seriously damaged.

Begun in August 1864, as the crisis with Spain was taking shape, this run follows almost the entire escalation of the conflict; one week after the last issue preserved here, Spanish guns were firing on the city in which these pages had been printed.