Magdalena Chocano Mena, "Imprenta e impresores de Nueva España, 1539-1700: Límites económicos y condiciones políticas en la tipografía colonial americana"
This article examines the economic and political conditions that placed limitations on the work of colonial printers in New Spain. Historian Magdalena Chocano Mena begins by engaging with and questioning the dominant belief within the field of book history that considers the printing press and book as cultural transmitters capable of drastically revolutionizing cultural systems and communication in colonial Spanish America. In order to critique this dominant assertion within the field, Chocano Mena studies the activities of colonial printers in New Spain and presents how their work was deeply impacted by 1) limitations in print technology due to lack of supplies and financial support and 2) a heavily regulated printing market with few possibilities for expansion that was a product of political institutions’ control. In these conditions, acquiescence to political authorities was a beneficial attitude to maintain their printing trade as a financially viable industry, since it was the members of civil and ecclesiastical bureaucratic organs who constituted the principle public for the texts produced by local printing presses.
By examining their material work conditions and the political systems in which they were involved, Chocano Mena asserts a theory about the influence printers had on the formation of colonial culture. The colonial printing industry was at the mercy of political and ecclesiastical power, and it is necessary to show the characteristics of colonial authority, in which political and religious institutions were positioned to control or decisively influence the political sphere. Due to the financial and technological limitations of the local printing industry, scholarly texts written by local intellectuals competed with texts of political and religious character for the limited resources of local printers. Chocano Menao argues that printers did not play a central role in the dissemination of local small scale works because it was more financially advantageous to print for viceregal and ecclesiastical institutions. Regulations on book printing in the colonies, and most importantly the high costs and chronic lack of supplies, worked in conjunction to make colonial print culture incapable of satisfying local print demands and financially dependent on religious and political institutions. Taking all of these facets of the colonial printing industry into account, Chocano Mena claims that It is necessary to interpret the diffusion of printed text in the colonies not as a sign of “revolutionizing culture” but instead as a medium that extended and recreated the hegemonic power of the metropole. Religious and political institutions were essentially able to reduce printers’ independent decision making power by making the local print industry financially unfeasible without their support.
Chocano Mena’s examination of the economic and political conditions limiting the independent decision making power of colonial printers in New Spain is significant because it is trying to change the dominant discourse within the field of Latin American Book History that frames the printing press and book as cultural transmitters capable of drastically revolutionizing cultural systems and communication in colonial Spanish America. Her theoretical perspective is challenging and attempting to reorient traditional understandings of book history that consider the printing press and book as cultural transmitters capable of drastically revolutionizing cultural systems and communication.
