The Concept of Equality in the Buenos Aires Press During the First Revolutionary Decade: An Exercise on the Circulation and Reception of Political Vocabulary

Abstract

This article develops an analysis of the circulation and reception of the term equality in the Buenos Aires press during two specific moments. In the first of them, which we call revolutionary, we analyze the uses of the word equality by the Spanish newspaper Semanario patriótico in relation to the languages of the French Revolution to then examine its appropriation, reception and debate in the Gaceta de Buenos Aires in the Río de la Plata. Then, we move to the moment of independence, in which the debate on the forms of government was raised by the Buenos Aires press, in whose newspapers the concept of equality emerged through heterogeneous uses. In this context, we focus our analysis on the reception—via translation—and appropriation of the arguments John Adams by the newspaper La Crónica Argentina and of those of Jean Louis de Lolme by El Independiente and the Gaceta de Buenos Aires. Studying the term equality necessarily implies also analyzing its opposite: inequality. The reflections developed by the editors of those newspapers were based on this binomial which, although it is composed of related concepts—antithetical but supplementary—, is associated with different issues.