Archaeology of a Book: An experimental approach to reading rare books in archival contexts

Producing the Advertencias

When viewed through a bibliographical lens, rare books can become windows into the historical moment in which they were created. In the case of early Mexican printing, the scene is set in the first decades after an allied group of Spaniards and indigenous peoples including the Tlaxcaltecas and the Texcocans conquered the capitol Aztec city of Tenochtitlan. Elite members of various indigenous ethnicities vied for status in the shifting political climate. Spanish mendicant friars from multiple religious orders sought to consolidate their position in the new viceroyalty while working to spread their beliefs among the native populations. 

The first printing press in the Americas was established at the request of the Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, and Antonio de Mendoza, Mexico's first viceroy. The Cromberger printing house in Seville sent the press, along with the Italian printer Juan Pablos, to Mexico sometime around 1539; they held their monopoly over printing in New Spain until the death of Juan Cromberger in 1540.  Printing conditions during this time were difficult. All material aspects of the press, from type and woodcuts to paper and ink, were imported from Europe at great expense. (The first known paper mill in Mexico was established illegally around 1580)(Lenz 15). Acquiring these products became even more challenging after Cromberger's death.

Printing in the sixteenth century involved the participation of multiple individuals, often with diverse backgrounds. Pablos' press, for example, was run by a team that included Tomé Rico, Juan Muñoz, Antonio de Espinosa, and Diego Montoya. More broadly, printing houses could include the service of immigrants from across Europe; free or enslaved Africans; and indigenous or mestizo workers. Diversity could also be reflected by competing belief systems: multiple printers, most famously Pedro Ocharte, were convicted by the Inquisition of "Lutheran sentiments." Ocharte's wife operated the press during the year of his exile, becoming one of the numerous wives and widows who would dominate Mexican printing in the subsequent centuries of colonial rule. Printing houses can thus be seen as microcosms of the racial, ethnic, gendered, and economic mixing of the early colonial period.

At the center of this story is the document: the printed books, pamphlets, broadsides, and other textual objects that have survived the many centuries since the early colonial period. These objects are the artifacts that embody and preserve historical evidence. Just as their words provide us with information about the beliefs, priorities, concerns, and conflicts of the Spanish colonists, their material qualities can provide information about their production and their use. Bibliographical methods - counting catchwords, examining watermarks, collating volumes - can provide access to some of this historical information. 

This path explores how, by applying these methods to surviving copies of the Advertencias, we can paint a picture of the conditions under which the book was produced. One goal of this section is to consider how the Advertencias may have held a very different status - or been a very different kind of object - in the sixteenth century than it would be today. 

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