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Lira Popular, chilean broadsheets from the late nineteenth century: a graphic
referent and its relation with sheets from Brazil and México
MALACCHINI, Simoné / Teacher and Designer / Universidad de Chile / Santiago of Chile
Graphic identity / Latin American / Broadsheets / Broadsides /
Identity boundaries
Lira Popular is a group of broadsheets printed in Chile between
the years 1880 to 1930, written in ten-line stanza by workingclass
poets from the countryside to the city. The following paper
will describe, firstly, the print’s origin and context for then
to focus in the relation with other prints of the region, particularly
in Brazil and Mexico, emphasizing the fact that it would be
a graphic considered ‘local’ and ‘identitary’, despite clear references
would remain within the continent, without excluding the
European background.
1. Lira Popular, Chilean broadsheets
By ‘Lira Popular’ is known the group of broadsheets printed and
published in Chile between 1870 to 1940 approx. Also known as
‘Cordel literature’, they were verses written in ten-line stanza.
Over the time it was evolving to a journalistic-type content, giving
more attention to the sensationalist press.
In the Lira Popular profusion years, 1860-1910 circa, it was settled
a recognizable visuality (fig. 1 and 2) where frequently in
the high part of the sheet could be found an engraved illustration
of the most ‘important’ news; the white part was generally filled
by clichés which mostly didn’t have relation with the content in
the sheet. In the central part a title possibly flamboyant, with a
big-sized font showing the most sensationalists facts. Here were
often mixed different typographic styles, according to the late
nineteenth century usage. Finally, in the bottom half-part of the
sheet, were the ten-line stanzas, 5 to 6 depending on the format
of the sheet.
Generally, compositions were published at one poet per sheet,
who used to print his name at the end of the sheet (Millar 1989:
18). Even though there was no date of printing, sometimes were
included the address or the printer’s mark acting as a point of
sale. The poets besides being authors were the editors and
manager of their own work publishing sheets when the news
required it.
Usually they were working class poets coming from the countryside
to work into the city, most of them were illiterate, from a culture
of oral tradition, which prioritized the sung popular poetry.
In a rural context they would be singers and rhyme-singers 1 but
when they entered to the metropolis, decided to print the verses
that before were just spread in an oral way. This is how the Lira
1 In spanish: payadores.
Popular tends to be a ‘link’ between a culture quite rural of its
public and the ‘modern’ represented by the printing press. It will
constitute in a contribution to the transition that was carried by
the peasant on having moved to the metropolis in a constant
process of modernization, once it vestured the oral tradition with
the printing.
Most of the Lira Popular’s public were illiterate, having in 1875 a
rate of 77.1% of illiteracy (Labarca 1938: 275-280), which reinforces
the print’s closeness to the oral tradition through the use
of the tenth-line stanza and the image.
In a context where the poorest layers of the population to whom
the sheets were directed, were basically not considered into the
cultural circle, the sheets were the counterpart of the newspapers
that avoided the tabloid’s news, being a sort of escape for
this kind of events (Uribe Echevarría 1973: 15-18).
Taking account the period where the Lira was born, where the
precedent of different wars in Chile influenced on its publication
(war against Spain in 1865, and the Pacific War between 1879
to 1884) it promotes an identification with the message issued,
where the popular culture is settled as a subject for the construction
of national identities, of an imaginary, creating a flagup
for and by its audience. The main topics of the Lira are part of
the image and collective unconscious of a social body in action.
Thanks to the Lira Popular, the audience could access to a concrete
way of expression that allowed them to be a part of the city
through their own language. According to Sunkel:
To the popular reader this press is relevant as it connects
essentially with their own reality (…) A first connection is with the
events that happen in the local-popular range, because this press
speaks to their readers from and about them (Sunkel 2001: 153).
The public identifies with the Lira Popular, because the facts are
portrayed closely to their reality and happens in their daily life.
Are directly related to “the urban peasant” lifestyle, as the worker
that enters to the city leaving behind the countryside, and this
is also why it connects with a sense of ‘origin’ on the Chilean
imaginary. This has meant that over the time Lira Popular has
been settled as a depositary phenomenon of Chilean identity: It
is from the heavy identity burden attributed to the sheets, and
considering the high rate of illiterate public, that, further the content
in decimas, the appearance of the image becomes relevant.
Thus, through the engraving will be enhanced a visuality associated
to an ‘identity imaginary’.
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies / Proceedings of the 8th Conference of the International Committee for
Design History & Design Studies - ICDHS 2012 / São Paulo, Brazil / © 2012 Blucher / ISBN 978-85-212-0692-7