Contesting the Word: The Crown and the Printing Press in Colonial Spanish America

Abstract

This article has two principal objectives. Firstly, it seeks to offer an overview of printed works in sixteenth-century Mexico, including a discussion of a variety of religious and didactic texts, as well as an account of the intellectual vigour reflected in the publication of scientific, juridical, philosophical, and historical writings, and even printed ephemera. Secondly, it seeks to identify the socio-political factors that shaped the history of the Western book in Spanish America, paying particular attention to the Crown's conflicts with the Franciscan order and the Spanish settlers. The article argues that while the printing press was instrumental for the Spanish Crown's governance of its Spanish and Amerindian subjects, this new information technology also presented potential challenges to Royal sovereignty, which elicited censorship.

Notes

¹Alexander S. Wilkinson, Iberian Books. Libros ibéricos. Books Published in Spanish Or Portuguese Or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601. Libros publicados en español o portugués (Leiden: Brill, 2010).

²For a recent survey of the field of Latin-American book history, see Hortensia Calvo, ‘The Politics of Print: The Historiography of the Book in Early Spanish America’, Book History, 6 (2003), 277–305. For a general introduction to book history, see José Luis Martínez, El libro en Hispanoamérica, 2^a ed. (Salamanca: Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez, 1986) and Jacques Lafaye, Albores de la imprenta: el libro en España y Portugal y sus posesiones de ultramar (siglos XV y XVI) (México: FCE, 2004). For a comprehensive study of the printing press in Spanish America based on primary sources, see Fermín de los Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América: legislación y censura (siglos XV–XVIII), 2 vols (Madrid: Arco/Libros, 2000). The foundational studies in the field are: José Torre Revello, El libro, la imprenta y el periodismo en América durante la dominación española (Buenos Aires: Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, 1940); and José Toribio Medina, Historia de la imprenta en los antiguos dominios españoles de América y Oceania (Santiago de Chile: Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico José Toribio Medina, 1958).

³Alison P. Weber, ‘Religious Literature in Early Modern Spain’, in The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature, ed. David T. Gies (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2004), 149–58; Werner Waterschoot, ‘Antwerp: Books, Publishing and Cultural Production before 1585’, in Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, ed. Patrick O'Brien, Derek Keene, Marjolein ‘t Hart, and Herman van der Wee (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2001), 233–48 (p. 235).

⁴Some illustrative decree samples appear in Reyes Gómez, El libro en España, II, 786.

⁵Georges Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico: The First Chroniclers of Mexican Civilization (1520–1569), trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano (Boulder: Univ. Press of Colorado, 1995) and Walter Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1995).

⁶Miguel León-Portilla, ‘Mesoamerica before 1519’, Colonial Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1984) I, 35 and Herbert R. Harvey, ‘Relaciones geográficas, 1579–1586: Native Languages’, in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 12, Guide to Ethnohistorical Sources, pt. 1, ed. Howard F. Cline (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1972), 279–323 (pp. 314–15). Harvey describes the variety of indigenous languages and the regions in which they were spoken on the eve of the arrival of the Spanish in Mexico.

⁷Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 53.

⁸Fernando Bouza, Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain, trans. Soria López and Michael Agnew (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 61.

⁹For a discussion of how the teaching of Latin grammar superseded the teaching of Castilian in sixteenth-century Mexico, see Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, Chapter 1.

¹⁰For a description of cartillas, see Víctor Infantes, ‘De la cartilla al libro’, Bulletin Hispanique, 97:1 (1995), 33–66 (pp. 40–41).

¹¹Infantes, ‘De la cartilla al libro’, 36.

¹²The printing press arrived in other parts of Spanish America as follows: Puebla (1640), Guatemala (1660), Havana (1701), Santa Fe de Bogotá (1736), Buenos Aires (1780), Caracas (1808).

¹³See IB 13648 and 13649 for a template for powers of attorney, and 13677 for a purity of blood form. All were printed on broadsheets.

¹⁴Michael Mathes, ‘Humanism in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Libraries of New Spain’, The Catholic Historical Review, 82:3 (1996), 412–35 (pp. 422–23).

¹⁵For a description of the teaching methods at the Colegio, see Susan Romano, ‘Tlaltelolco: The Grammatical-Rhetorical Indios of Colonial Mexico’, College English, 66:3 (2004), 257–77.

¹⁶On Zumárraga's library, see Alberto María Carreño, ‘The Books of Don Fray Juan Zumárraga’, The Americas, 5:3 (1949), 311–30.

¹⁷Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2006), 75–78.

¹⁸Vera Cruz's translations of Girolamo Ruscelli are: Seys libros de secretos llenos de maravillosa differencia de cosas (Alcalá de Henares: Sebastián Martínez, 1563) and Secretos de don Alexo Piamontes, divididos en seys libros, llenos de maravillosa differencia de cosas (Antwerpen: s.n., 1564).

¹⁹Born in Toledo, Cervantes de Salazar earned a law degree at the University of Salamanca. After a brief career in the Council of the Indies, he moved to Mexico City in the 1550s, where he taught Latin, rhetoric, and theology, eventually becoming rector of the UNAM.

²⁰Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Túmulo imperial de la gran ciudad de Mexico (México: Antonio de Espinosa, 1560).

²¹Juan Rodríguez, Relación del espantable terremoto que agora nuevamente ha acontescido en las Yndias en una ciudad llamada Guatimala (México: Juan Cromberger, 1541).

²²For a discussion of the similiarity between royal policies on printing for Spain and for Spanish America, see Juan Friede, ‘La censura española del siglo XVI y los libros de historia de América’, Revista de Historia de América, 47 (1959), 45–94.

²³I set aside here the issue of books of fiction. That subject is extensively studied in, Irving A. Leonard, Books of the Brave: Being an Account of Books and of Men in the Spanish Conquest and Settlement of the Sixteenth-Century New World (Berkeley/Los Angeles/Oxford: Univ. of California Press, 1992).

²⁴ Recopilación de leyes, IX: tít. 23, ley 14.

²⁵Jacques Lafaye, Los conquistadores, 2^a ed. (México: FCE, 1999), 17–18. He observes that the exceptions were the Araucanian wars in Central and Southern Chile and Southern Argentina.

²⁶Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, II, 831.

²⁷Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 511. Also see, Rómulo D. Carbia, La crónica oficial de las Indias Occidentales (La Plata: Imprenta López, 1934), 97–98.

²⁸Ovando was a member of the Council of the Inquisition and became the president of the Council of the Indies in 1571.

²⁹Carbia, La crónica oficial de las Indias Occidentales, 98. A transcription of the ordinances issued upon Ovando's recommendations appears in Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, Relaciones geográficas de Indias, ed. J. U. Martínez Carreras, BAE 183–185, 3 vols (Madrid: Ediciones Atlas, 1965), I, 61.

³⁰Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 27. An encomienda involved the grant of an Amerindian town, the population of which was obligated to render personal services and labour to the grantee, usually a Spaniard, without wages, in exchange for protection and religious instruction. An excellent authority on the encomienda is Lesley Byrd Simpson, The Encomienda in New Spain (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1950).

³¹Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 29–30.

³²See in IB, Indias. Instruction y memoria de las relaciones que se han de hazer para la descripcion de las Indias, que su magestad manda hazer para el buen govierno y ennoblecimiento dellas ([Madrid]: s.n., 1577). For a detailed discussion of these questionnaires see, Howard F. Cline, ‘The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577–1648’, in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 12, pt. 1, ed. Cline, 183–242. For a comparison of relaciones with chronicles and history, see Walter Mignolo, ‘Cartas, crónicas y relaciones del descubrimiento y la conquista’, in Historia de la literatura Hispanoaméricana, coord. Luis Iñigo Madrigal, 3 vols (Madrid: Cátedra, 1982), I, 57–116.

³³Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, II, 821. Sahagún was henceforth asked in 1578 to submit all of his writings on the Nahua people to the royal court. See Toribio Medina, Historia de la imprenta, 36.

³⁴Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 43.

³⁵Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 48.

³⁶The decree can be found in, Nueva colección de documentos para la historia de México, ed. Joaquín García Icazbalceta, 5 vols (México: Díaz de León, 1886–1892), II, Códice franciscano, app. 1, 249–50.

³⁷Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 520. For a study about Martín Cortés and the rebellion, see Manuel Orozco y Berra, Noticia histórica de la conjuración del Marques del Valle. Años de 1565–1568. Formada en vista de nuevos documentos originales, y seguida de un extracto de los mismos documentos (México: Tip. de R. Rafael, 1853).

³⁸For a recent biography and re-evaluation of López de Gómara's oeuvres, see Nora Edith Jiménez, Francisco López de Gómara: escribir historias en tiempos de Carlos V (Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán, 2001).

³⁹Demetrio Ramos Pérez, Ximénez de Quesada en su relación con los cronistas y el epítome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, 1972), 97–98, 107. Commissioned to explore the Magdalena River in search of the famous ‘El Dorado’ in 1536, Ximénez de Quesada was one of the Spanish conquerors of Colombia. He founded the capital city of Santa Fe de Bogotá in 1538. Prior to his activities in the New World, he practised law and had been a soldier in Italy.

⁴⁰Quoted in Ramos Pérez, Ximénez de Quesada, 113.

⁴¹Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Epistolario, trans. Ángel Losada (Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispa′nica, 1966), 131–33.

⁴²Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Demócrates segundo; Apología en favor del libro sobre las justas causas de la guerra, ed. Jaime Brufau Prats, Alejandro Coroleu Lletget, Antonio Moreno Hernández & Ángel Losada (Pozoblanco: Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Pozoblanco, 1997).

⁴³The 1997 edition of Sepúlveda's Demócrates segundo offers a comprehensive summary of the history of Sepúlveda's manuscript. Also see Luciano Pereña, Misión de España en América, 1540–1560 (Madrid: CSIC, 1956), 16–18.

⁴⁴Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, Epistolario, 241.

⁴⁵Beginning in 1513, the Royal Council decreed that military captains recite the Requerimiento in the presence of a public official prior to martial engagements with Amerindians. For a transcription and a general introduction to the Requerimiento, see Lewis Hanke, ‘The “Requerimiento” and Its Interpreters’, Revista de Historia de América, 1 (1938), 25–34.

⁴⁶For a study on Bernal Díaz, see Carmelo Sáenz de Santa María, Historia de una historia: la crónica de Bernal Díaz del Castillo (Madrid: CSIC, 1984).

⁴⁷For a study on the attitude and the use of history by Charles V and Philip II, see Richard L. Kagan, Clio and the Crown: The Politics of History in Medieval and Early Modern Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U. P., 2009). For a more recent study of the politics of historiography in Spanish America see Robert Folger, Writing as Poaching: Interpellation and Self-Fashioning in Colonial ‘relaciones de méritos y servicios’ (Leiden: Brill, 2011), Chapter 2.

⁴⁸Jay Kinsbruner, The Colonial Spanish-American City: Urban Life in the Age of Atlantic Capitalism (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2005), 36.

⁴⁹Ernst Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias: su historia, organización y labor administrativa hasta la terminación de la Casa de Austria, 2 vols (Sevilla: Gráficas Sevilla, 1947), II, 272.

⁵⁰For a transcription of Las Casas’ Relación, see Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España, ed. Feliciano Ramírez de Arellano, José Sancho & Francisco de Zabalburu, 113 vols (Madrid: Imprenta de Miguel Ginesta, 1879) LXXI, 421–40. For a discussion of Las Casas’ involvement in the formulation of the New Laws regarding encomiendas etc., see Manuel Giménez Fernández, ‘Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas: A Biographical Sketch’, in Bartolomé de Las Casas in History: Toward an Understanding of the Man and His Work, ed. Juan Friede and Benjamin Keen (DeKalb: Northern Illinois U. P., 1971), 92–96.

⁵¹For a summary of Las Casas’ activities in the Junta of Valladolid see Manuel Lucena, ‘Crisis de la conciencia nacional: las dudas de Carlos V’, in La ética en la conquista de América (Madrid: CSIC, 1984), 163–98.

⁵²Juan Friede, ‘Las Casas and Indigenism in the Sixteenth Century’, in Bartolomé de las Casas in History, ed. Friede and Keen, 127–236 (p. 128).

⁵³Friede, ‘Las Casas and Indigenism’, 129.

⁵⁴ Corpus documental de Carlos V, ed. Manuel Fernández Álvarez, 5 vols (Salamanca: Gráficas Europa, 1975), II, 569–92.

⁵⁵John Hemming, La conquista de los Incas. 2^nd ed. (México: FCE, 2000), 315–16.

⁵⁶For a transcription, with historical introduction, of the New Laws, see Antonio Muro Orejón, Las Leyes Nuevas de 1542–1543. Ordenanzas para la gobernación de las Indias y buen tratamiento y conservación de los indios, ed. Antonio Muro Orejón, 2^a ed. (Sevilla: Gráficas Sevilla, 1961).

⁵⁷These correspond to articles 26, 27 and 30. See Silvio A. Zavala, La encomienda indiana, (Madrid: Imprenta Helénica, 1935), 79–82.

⁵⁸Article 31.

⁵⁹ Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de hispanoamérica, 1493–1810, 5 vols (Madrid: CSIC, 1953–1962), I, 236–37.

⁶⁰ Carta Magna de los indios: fuentes constitucionales, 1534–1609, ed. Luciano Pereña & Carlos Baciero, Corpus Hispanorum de Pace 27 (Salamanca: Univ. Pontificia de Salamanca, 1988), 249.

⁶¹Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, II, 792.

⁶²Jesús María Carillo Castillo, ‘The “Historia general y natural de las Indias” by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 65:3–4 (2002), 321–44.

⁶³The first Junta of Valladolid took place in 1540. The second began in mid August and ended at the end of September 1550, recommencing on 11 April and ending on 4 May 1551. For a comprehensive and analytical study of the second Junta of Valladolid, see Jaime González-Rodríguez, ‘La junta de Valladolid convocada por el Emperador’, in La ética en la conquista de América: Francisco de Vitoria y la Escuela de Salamanca, coord. Luciano Pereña (Madrid: CSIC, 1984), 199–228.

⁶⁴Silvio Zavala, ‘Hernán Cortés ante la justificación de su conquista’, Revista Hispana de América, 92 (julio–diciembre, 1981), 49–69 (p. 68).

⁶⁵Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, II, 792.

⁶⁶Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, 793.

⁶⁷Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, 794. For more details on the interrogations carried out among the booksellers in Seville in connection with the effectuation of the decree, see Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, I, 181. Marcel Bataillon draws a correlation between the prohibition of Gomára's works in 1553 and 1566 and the stamping out of Martín Cortés’ rebellion in 1566. See William Mejías López and Charles Amiel, La América colonial en su historia y literatura (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Univ. Católica del Perú, 1998), 198–205.

⁶⁸Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, II, 797–98 and 806.

⁶⁹For an extensive discussion of the royal decrees issued prior to and after 1556, see Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América, 188–92.

⁷⁰Toribio Medina, Historia de la imprenta, 35–36. The unproductiveness of combining the office of the cosmographer with that of the chronicler led to their separation into separate posts after 1596. The office of the cosmographer remained intact until 1744. For more see Carbia, La crónica oficial, 102–03.

⁷¹Calvo, ‘The Politics of Print’, 278–79.

⁷²Gary Tomlinson, ‘Ideologies of Aztec Song’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 48:3 (1995), 343–79 (p. 362).