Translation and revolution during the era of Spanish-American independence

Historians have clearly demonstrated the influence of the Independence of the United States and the French Revolution on the emancipation movement of the Hispanic American countries in the period between 1776 and 1810. This influence, however, is not restricted to the ideas that shaped the independence movement of the Spanish colonies. It is also present in the founding documents of the first Latin American republics. The purpose of this article is to show that the presence of these documents and ideas on Latin American soil, specially in Venezuela, was made possible by the translations of Manuel Garcia de Sena (the North American documents), Antonio Narino (The Declaration of the Rights of Man Of 1789) and Juan Picornell (the Declaration of the Rights of Man Of 1793). Comparing the texts and analyzing the conditions of production and reception of the documents we were able to establish the ideological link of the three revolutions and to identify the transformations worked by the translators, both conceptually and linguistically, in the Spanish translations. Once again we are dealing with the appropriation of the original texts, a characteristic of Latin-American translations (Bastin 1996, 1998), to conceive another independent document with a life of its own. Additionally, an emphasis is made on the political and intellectual contributions of both translators and translation to the dissemination of revolutionary ideas in eighteenth century Latin America.