How, or even whether, the printed medium influences attitudes, shapes or changes opinions, or creates issues within a society is a topic worthy of exploration. Unfortunately, Ocampo’s Historia del periodismo boliviano does little to illuminate the relationship between journalism and Bolivian society. The central theme of the book is an unsurprising one. Ocampo contends that Bolivian journalism has, in the main, been so closely tied to partisan political factions that it has served as a mouthpiece of established opinions, rather than as an educative mechanism by which an informed citizenry could be created. The extensive examples that Ocampo cites certainly support this assertion. The long excerpts of newspaper articles, ranging in date from the late colonial period through the early 1950s, are in fact the most interesting aspect of the book, for their style and content illustrate, far better than does Ocampo’s commentary, the inflammatory and hyperbolic character of Bolivian journalistic production.
The book is essentially a chronological catalog, listing the great number of extremely short-lived newspapers that have appeared in Bolivia since the late eighteenth century. Marred by the excessive use of secondary sources and by many typographical errors, it is unlikely that Historia del periodismo boliviano will aid scholars in evaluating either the role or the importance of the press in Bolivian society.
