Bartholomew Miter definitively linked his name to Argentine journalism for being the founder of the newspaper LA NACION, in January 1870. However, his participation in the world of the press dates back many decades and due to his performance in various countries, parallel to his political, literary and military training.
His beginnings in River Plate political life began in Montevideo. There, at an early age, he committed himself to the anti-Rosista cause.
He took part in the battles of Cagancha (1839), Arroyo Grande (1842) and in the defense of the Siege of Montevideo (1843), under the orders of General Fructuoso Rivera. From 1837, the first publications of the young Miter began. In this early stage, he published poems and theater reviews in The Evening Paper and later in the newspaper the initiatorfounded by Andrés Lamas and Miguel Cané.
These moments of his life were linked to writing and his military training in the artillery weapon. Over the years, although he never abandoned poetry, a greater degree of intellectual maturity is observed in Miter when approaching another genre of work. These ranged from material for the training of future artillerymen –such as the writing of the Practical Artillery Instruction– to the first incursions into one of the records that would definitively consecrate it, the biographical genre.
In 1845, the newspaper The National de Montevideo published his first biography, dedicated to José Rivera Indarte. His thematic range expanded and he thus wrote about tactics and strategies of war and also about the forms of government and their most urgent needs. The newspaper The new age of Montevideo published his article “Need for discipline in the republics”.
After his forced exile from Montevideo and his frustrated attempt to join the army of General José María Paz, in the province of Corrientes, his interests and ideals took him to Bolivia through links with the Bolivian General Guiliarte. In the liberal republic of President Ballivian, Miter assumed various responsibilities.
He was appointed director of the Military College, where he also wrote a treatise for the artillery weapon. He participated in the battles of Vitiche and Lalava under the orders of General Ballivian, and at the same time he was one of the founders of the Patriotic Society of Bolivia. These activities were not separate from his participation in the press.
There he was entrusted with the direction of the newspaper The time, owned by Wenceslao Paunero. With the revolutionary events that overthrew the Ballivian government, he began a new exile. This time the final destination would be Chile, a country that was already home to a large number of anti-Rosista exiles.
When Miter arrived in Valparaíso in April 1848 at the request of Juan Bautista Alberdi, he was 26 years old, married to Delfina Vedia and had three children who lived in Montevideo. He accumulated in his baggage experiences in the press, politics and important military. However, there is a certain consensus that it was in his stay in Chile, in that political laboratory of great debates and intellectual exchange, where he reached his political maturity.
This stage of Chilean political life, known as that of the “pipiolos” (young liberals among whom José Victorino Lastarria stood out) and the “pelucones” (conservative sectors that responded to Minister Montt) was a moment of great formation in the field of the press. In May 1848 he had been commissioned to write the newspaper Trade of Valparaíso, and the following year, the direction of the newspaper Progressfounded by Sarmiento in 1842. His political perspectives and his liberal positions regarding popular democracy and the republic began to be published there more frequently, influences not only generational, but also the result of the aftermath of the French Revolution of February 1848. and its postulates for greater degrees of freedom and equality.
The article published on October 24, 1849 in the newspaper Progress, entitled “Revolution”, referred to the importance of political institutions in managing the “passions” of the people. The accumulated experience and his pragmatism indicated to him that if there was no “revolution from above” that would enable the instances of participation and agreements, political passions would open the feared paths towards “anarchy”, destroying the projects of stability and elaboration of great consensus.
This deep political romanticism, which marked a large number of young people of his time, was weaving a growing arc of solidarity through the writings in the press in different American cities, turning newspapers and pamphlets into one of the the great transformative potentialities of the mid-nineteenth century, along with electoral practices, civic participation in the militias and education in general.
From April 1848 to October 1851, when he embarked together with Sarmiento and Paunero to join the Great Army under the command of Justo José de Urquiza, Miter directed and was in charge of writing newspapers that outlined a political thought linked with a popular democracy that advanced in the conquest of higher levels of equality. It was the content that stimulated for political action in a republic and a law-abiding society. He was already acting like a statesman.
In Progress published, on June 23, 1849, a column entitled “Systems and Specifics.” It was a note in which he emphasized the importance of the legal order and the advantages of having a framework of political sustainability that would enable social modernization as the basis for progress. Once the Rosas regime had fallen, he was in charge of directing the newspaper Los Debates. This one reproduces, on June 19, 1852, the same note “Sistemas yspecificos”, but in a much more extensive way and addressed specifically to Urquiza. In it he not only took up the main ideas of the column published years ago in Chile, but also challenged the winner of Caseros with a view to the goal of major national agreements through institutionality.
The novelty on this occasion was that his journalistic comment was preceded by a quote, not at all innocent, from Saavedra, who said: “Impious and reckless doctrine that mandates that the causes of disunity be open, to begin the fight when appropriate. Healthier is the advice of the Holy Spirit: that we seek peace and keep it.
Like many of his companions of ideas and action, it was not possible for Miter to conceive of political activity separated from the world of newspapers. On the contrary, it was necessary to have an opinion in the press that would be amplified by the readers and the nascent “public opinion” in many cities of the world. In this way, he would contribute to the improvement of the ideas of the debates and the affirmation of the republics, even when they should wait to become realities in the American territories.
Researcher at the Miter Museum