The Brazilian press was born late, 276 years after the start of the occupation of Brazil by the Portuguese Crown. Investigating the particularities of this process in the Northeast region, there is an intention to rescue the genesis of typographic activities in Maranhão, whose milestone is the newspaper. O Conciliador do Maranhão, that was issued between November 1821 and July 1823. The objective of this text is to identify the sociocultural factors that explain the delay of the press in the State. To do so, we performed a historical research adopting double methodological strategy: qualitative – in order to comprehend the circumstances that contributed to delay the arrival of press to the capital of Maranhão, conditioning the nature of ari...