Albert A. Palacios, "Preventing 'Heresy': Censorship and Privilege in Mexican Publishing, 1590-1612"
In this essay published in Book History, an annual journal devoted to the creation, dissemination, and reception of print culture, UT History doctoral student Albert A. Palacios examines the process that scrutinized the content and regulated the economics of New Spain’s publishing industry from 1590 to 1612. Four central questions guide his research: “How did a manuscript reach the Mexican press? Who were the authors, censors, licensing authorities, and printers? What was the nature of their relationships? How much influence did each role exert in a book’s publication?”(117).
This essay seeks to distinguish between two types of Spanish censorship of the sixteenth-century Mexican press: punitive and preventive. The Inquisition was responsible for punitive censorship, or the examination and expurgation of printed books while preventive censorship fell under the purview of various bureaucracies independent from the Holy Office. The current literature on print censorship concentrates on two lines of inquiry: The first concerns the establishment of print technology and its first publications in Mexico and Peru, and the second traces the proliferation of published European thought in the colonies. According to Palacios, few studies have considered the bureaucracy that determined and regulated the output of New Spain’s early printers. Palacios’ essay contributes to the scholarship in Mexican book history by providing a critical examination of the preventive censorship conducted by the viceroyal bureaucracies and discussing how this censorship was distinct from the often-studied punitive censorship of the Inquisition.
Palacios opens with an overview of the sixteenth-century European industry to contextualize the viceroyalty’s practice. The structure that follows mirrors preventive censorship in Mexico City. The essay begins with a prosopography of New Spain’s authors published 1590 –1612, followed by an analysis of each level of review manuscripts underwent. Palacios provides specific examples that illustrate the complex procedure and explain deviations from standard practice. His investigation pays particular attention to viceregal licensing in order to comprehend the nature of printing privilege outside of Europe. The title pages, licenses, reviews, dedications, prologues, and colophons in thirty-seven books published between 1590 and 1612 form the basis of Palacios' study.
While the essay successfully answers the central research questions Palacios poses, its analysis is limited in scope to one aspect of book history: the political and legal restrictions of book production and circulation. It examines the political/legal context of New Spain’s publishing industry but does not engage thoroughly with the socio-cultural context, especially the role of indigenous printers and government officials within the viceroyal bureaucracies that influenced preventive censorship of printed materials. Also, the case study’s focus on the 22 year span between 1590-1612 cannot be interpreted as representative of all preventive censorship trends within other decades of the colonial period. Regardless of these limitations, Palacios’ essay successfully contextualizes an understudied concern within Latin American colonial book history, preventive censorship, and paves the way for further scholarship in this area. With its focus on preventive censorship, this essay also helps move away from the dominant narrative within book history regarding the Inquisition’s stronghold on censorship practices in New Spain. Other entities of power within the colonial bureaucracy contributed to regulating the printing industry and Palacios’ research helps to further flesh out the printing industry landscape in sixteenth-seventeenth century colonial Mexico.
