More is read now in a year than was read before in a hundred years.” So declared Lectura Popular, a Catholic publication aimed at the working classes of Chile, in September 1889. Such was the public’s appetite for written materials, the magazine warned, that “readings are devoured and that is why people become sick.” Peasants moving to the cities were adapting their traditional forms of poetry, orally transmitted for generations, to cover politics, scandal, and social commentary.
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