El Mercurio
Chilean newspaper
El Mercurio is a Chilean broadsheet newspaper published in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Valparaíso edition, founded on 12 September 1827, is regarded as the oldest continuously published Spanish-language newspaper in the world, while the more prominent Santiago edition, founded on 1 June 1900 by Agustín Edwards Mac Clure, is Chile's paper of record. Long nicknamed el decano de la prensa chilena ("the dean of the Chilean press"), it holds a right-wing, conservative and economically liberal editorial position.
The paper's history is most notably marked by its opposition to the government of Salvador Allende: declassified U.S. documents show it received covert CIA and, at times, personal White House funding between 1970 and 1973 to campaign against Allende, and historians have credited it with playing a significant role in setting the stage for the 1973 military coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, after which it maintained sustained editorial support for his dictatorship. Opposition to the paper had already produced the protest slogan "El Mercurio miente" ("El Mercurio lies") during the university reform movement of the 1960s, which was later revived against the military government's university appointees in the 1980s.
El Mercurio is owned by El Mercurio S.A.P. (Sociedad Anónima Periodística), under the Edwards family since Agustín Edwards Ross acquired the Valparaíso paper in 1880 and now led by Cristián Edwards del Río; the company also operates 19 regional dailies and 32 radio stations across Chile. Its print edition is organized into numbered cuerpos covering news, business, national affairs, and the arts, alongside long-running magazine supplements and the EMOL news portal.
History
Founding and early ownership
The Valparaíso edition of El Mercurio was founded by Pedro Félix Vicuña (Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna's father) on 12 September 1827, and was later acquired by Agustín Edwards Ross in 1880. The Santiago edition was founded by Agustín Edwards Mac Clure, son of Edwards Ross, on 1 June 1900. In 1942 Edwards Mac Clure died and his son Agustín Edwards Budge took over as president.
“El Mercurio” enters the record as chilean newspaper. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mercurio, Chilean and newspaper can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1324321. The Library of Congress control number is n84064053. Authority coordinates are -33.383, -70.593. 2 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1827, 1900, 1970 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “El Mercurio” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.