In El Mercurio Peruano, a major contribution to the topic, the French scholar Jean-Pierre Clément summarizes several years of meticulous research on this late-eighteenth-century newspaper of the creole aristocracy of Lima. The author, a professor of Spanish American literature and civilization at the University of Poitiers and chair of the French Association of Hispanicists, submitted his dissertation for the doctorat d'État in 1983 and since then has published extensively on this topic. In the first four chapters, Clément discusses the material aspects of the paper: its creation, production, and public reception; the second part (comprising five chapters) deals mostly with the ideological aspects and sources that influenced the authors. Needless to say, Clément displays a magnificent knowledge of the 12-volume collection that makes up El Mercurio Peruano as well as a command of contemporary historical studies.
In depicting the material circumstances surrounding the publication of this biweekly paper, the author employs a wealth of statistical charts, graphs, and other visual aids. Notwithstanding its relatively low pressrun (between 400 and 575, depending on the times), El Mercurio Peruano enjoyed a wide distribution among the white population of Spanish descent in both Lima and in some of the provincial cities of colonial Peru. Clément produces a table (pp. 95-96) that shows that geography, medicine, and history were the topics most commonly discussed; together they accounted for up to 50 percent of the entire “printed surface” of the newspaper. This preference in content highlights the fact that the editors were concerned about stressing the physical and human reality of Peru, their home country, both past and present.
El Mercurio Peruano was the official journal of the Sociedad Académica de Amantes del País, an intellectual corporation that a variety of upper-class individuals, inspired by the renovating principles of the French Enlightenment, founded in 1790. Although, as Clément notes, the members tended to be “modern bourgeois,” the Sociedad actually included high bureaucrats, nobles, military knights, and clergymen along with merchants, bankers, landowners, mining entrepreneurs, and manufacturers, among other members of the colonial elite.
In defending their privileged position, the rich creoles made a plea for controlling the Indians and castas who made up the majority of the population and, thus, cooperated with the Spanish monarchy. In this regard it is interesting to observe the creoles’ attitude toward the French Revolution and its radical political agenda, an event that coincided with the publication of El Mercurio Peruano (see pp. 148-52). In several different articles and news items reproduced from abroad, the newspaper declared its opposition to the excesses of the revolution, considering them as sacrilegious and antihuman.
Given this alliance with Spanish governmental interests, it seems difficult to accept Clément’s concluding assertion (p. 263) that the limeño journal disappeared, in 1795, mainly due to the opposition of viceregal officials. Another, and perhaps more suitable, explanation can be found in the financial crisis of the late eighteenth century and rising prices in the local market; more than anything else, these factors probably put an end to the journalistic venture. This and other eventual objections notwithstanding, Jean-Pierre Clément’s study is certainly a masterly contribution and a solid piece of research that leaves the door open to several different interpretations. Given these qualities, there is no doubt that this book will remain a “state of the art” work on El Mercurio Peruano for a long time to come.