A Companion to the History of the Book (27 page)

Native traditions of recording in ancient Mesoamerican societies, as well as among Quechua-speaking inhabitants of Peru, are by no means a new concern in the historiography of early Spanish America. The earliest Spanish accounts of Peru mention the
quipus
, a system of color-coded knotted cords apparently used to document past events as well as for quantitative recordkeeping. In Mesoamerica, the Maya, Mixtec, Nahua (or Aztec), and other native cultures had developed writing traditions inscribed on various forms of paper, animal skin, tree bark, tombs, architectural structures, pottery, and other objects and materials. But those that made a deeper impression on the Spaniards because of their similarities to (and differences from) Western books were the painted manuscripts produced with a variety of materials, including native amate and agave paper, and in different formats. Initially, Amerindian painted books were viewed as curiosities by the Europeans, and descriptions appeared in a number of historical accounts of the time. However, once the process of evangelization was underway, they were construed as vehicles of idolatry and demonic beliefs. Most were burned or otherwise destroyed in wars of conquest or by zealous missionaries and administrators anxious to eradicate idolatry; some were destroyed by native leaders as a tactic of survival. Nevertheless, there are at least sixteen surviving pre-Hispanic painted manuscripts from the Mayan, Nahua, Cholultec, and Mixtec cultures.

A few decades after the conquest, it became clear that the Christianizing mission could best be carried out by learning the cultures and traditions of native peoples and teaching the faith using native languages. Thus, a process of alphabetization began, as priests worked with native scribes to develop conventions for writing Mesoamerican languages. Through this collaboration, native texts were produced throughout the sixteenth century by alphabetized Amerindian scribes, who transcribed traditional texts in Latin, Castilian, or their native languages or composed new ones on commission by local Spanish authorities. Since the nineteenth century, the entire corpus of native painted manuscripts has been known as the Mesoamerican codices.

During the eighteenth century, in response to European preconceptions of the supposed inferiority of America, a number of apologetic works written by patriotic
criollo
scholars exalted the ancient Amerindian writings as part of a common New World intellectual tradition. In the nineteenth century, Mexican bibliographers also included the codices in their inventories. Contemporary art historians, literary scholars, and anthropologists examine the ways in which the material aspects of native documents (whether they are painted screenfolds, rolls, or knotted cords) shape the production of meaning.

The rise of
gacetas
or newspapers during the late colonial and revolutionary periods is the main focus of book historians for this period. Colonial presses had sporadically produced broadsides featuring information about natural disasters and the arrival and departure of fleets since 1541, when the first such publication appeared in Mexico. The first Spanish-A merican periodical to be published regularly was the monthly
Gaceta de México y noticias de Nueva España
(1722), which lasted only six months; Lima’s first newspaper,
Gaceta de Lima
(1743), was also of short duration. The
Gaceta de Guatemala
initially lasted two years (1729–31) and was subsequently revived (1794–1816). By the end of the eighteenth century, a number of specialized periodicals devoted to science, medicine, and literature were also being published, most of short duration.

Since at least the 1990s, a growing number of historians have sought to understand the role of the printing press and newspapers in broader social, cultural, and political transformations during the waning years of colonial rule, the revolutionary period, and the first two decades after independence (1780s–1850). To what extent did the printing press function as a catalyst of change, a vehicle for the dissemination of republican ideals that united the colonists in the cause of freedom against Spain? What role did the printed word play in the formation and consolidation of cohesive national identities in the fledgling republics? Recent research on the much-debated issue of the Enlightenment in the region has tended to stress that it was the cultural, scientific, and economic aspects of Enlightenment thought that took hold in eighteenth-century Spanish America rather than the more politically subversive ideas, which were promoted retrospectively as a result (not a cause) of the independence movements.

A prime example of the intellectually progressive but politically conservative outlook that characterized earlier stages of the Spanish-American Enlightenment was the influential Peruvian newspaper
Mercurio peruano
, published in Lima from 1791 to 1794. While the publication was instrumental in forging a strong Creole patriotism by exalting all things Peruvian, it was nonetheless limited to an elite readership, including the Peruvian viceroy himself. So the
Mercurio
can hardly be regarded as a space for expressing politically subversive views. However, some scholars have pointed to a link between some late eighteenth-century
gacetas
and the independence movements. Such is the case of the community of readers that subscribed to the
Papel Periódico de Santafé de Bogotá
in the decade of the 1790s. While its readership was minute (150 subscribers among the estimated 1.8 million inhabitants in the Viceroyalty of New Granada), this publication nonetheless served as a forum of debate and progressive political opinion.

As for the role of the press in uniting the people in a common cause, it is increasingly clear that, initially, the movements for independence were not revolutions inspired by the French model, but rather political civil wars instigated by
criollo
elites, not by oppressed masses, in response to Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in 1808 and the crisis of the Spanish Crown. These were revolutions “from the top,” and did not substantially alter a centuries-long colonial legacy of social and racial hierarchies. The diverse ethnic and racial composition of the region, with a small, white, Europeanized minority, large Amerindian populations of widely different cultures and languages, slaves from numerous regions in Africa with their own distinct languages and religious practices, and growing numbers of
mestizos
, mulattos, and other racial mixtures, created deep divisions among the native born and hampered efforts to form cohesive national identities well into the nineteenth century. Moreover, urban centers that were peripheral during colonial rule, such as Santiago de Chile and most cities of Central America, did not have printing presses until after independence.

If printing presses did not serve to instigate the transition from an absolutist monarchy to representative government, they did play a role as vehicles in the formation of a public sphere for the first time in Spanish America, however uneven and circumscribed this process may have been. Several recent studies trace the emergence of new reading practices and communities centered around specific social spaces, such as cafés, print shops, bookstores, other commercial establishments, and
tertulias
(discussion groups). Perhaps the most marked trend toward modernization occurred in late colonial and early national Mexico, which experienced an exponential growth in print production. Bourbon educational reforms dramatically increased literacy in New Spain in the waning years of colonial rule. Based on school attendance figures, some scholars have estimated that one in six inhabitants in the Central Valley of Mexico received formal education in the decade of the 1780s, leading to a 62 percent literacy rate in Mexico City by 1820. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that between 1808 and 1814 printed works of a political nature increased dramatically, while religious and liturgical publications, which had predominated during the colonial period, decreased substantially. François-Xavier Guerra, one of the foremost scholars of the Spanish-American Enlightenment, has shown that the events of 1808 sparked a veritable explosion of writings, both printed and manuscript, as news of the crowning of Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain reached the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Initial public outrage supporting the deposed rightful monarch soon gave way to heated debate regarding the need for representation for the colonies in the newly founded caretaker Spanish junta and, ultimately, to cries for independence. These ideas circulated in manuscript form in personal correspondence and orally in
tertulias
, but also in existing newspapers. They generated an outpouring of pamphlets, flyers, broadsides, anonymous letters, satirical verses, manifestos, and other ephemeral publications.

The revolutionary role of the Mexican press during this period is a subject of some debate and, in any event, seems to have been the exception. In Lima, for example, there was an equally dramatic shift in the proportions of religious and political works during the same period, but the latter largely advocated the royalist rather than the revolutionary cause. In the Viceroyalty of New Granada, where literacy was a mere 20 percent by some estimates in 1835, an increase in printed works occurred only after independence. In Venezuela and Chile, with no printing tradition before independence, oral and manuscript forms of communication were the norm. This has led Rebecca Earle (2004) to suggest that it is more likely that the Spanish-American wars of independence transformed print and not vice versa.

There is no comprehensive regional study to date of the development of print culture in post-independence nineteenth-century Spanish America, although there are a number of monographs and articles on each country, and a handful of publications with a regional scope that cover limited periods. The fragmented character of the literature is not surprising, given the widely divergent historical development of the individual countries of the region and the scarcity of information regarding print runs, book circulation and distribution, imports, and other data. Nonetheless, some general patterns can be discerned.

In the decades immediately following independence, Liberal political agendas largely prevailed, with the emphasis on curtailing the influence of the Catholic Church and secularizing education. The Liberal Spanish constitution of 1812 had declared limited freedom of the press, and among the first public acts of the newly formed republics was to expand this freedom by lifting censorship and eliminating tariffs on imported books. Most national governments established public education initiatives and programs to increase literacy, although they failed to fulfill these goals. The number of printing presses increased substantially due to state-sponsored and private initiatives, and their output reflected both the administrative demands of the new republics as well as public interest in the latest news and political and civic debates during those turbulent years.

Besides periodicals, the main products of local presses were instructional manuals, textbooks, ephemeral publications, such as pamphlets and flyers announcing civic events, and compendia of statutes and decrees. The bitter, violent, and protracted struggles between federalists and centralists that dominated the century led to a succession of short-lived governments, and it was not uncommon for printers and booksellers to face imposed or self-censorship in rhythm with the vicissitudes of political power. Despite this instability, printing presses were decidedly instruments of lively public debate on a wide variety of topics: morals, public education, literature and culture, scientific and medical knowledge, and news from abroad. Newspapers and printed material regularly provided a forum for dissension or acted as a mouthpiece for partisan politics, a far cry from the circumscribed role that printing presses had played during the centuries of Spanish rule.

Spanish-American presses produced few books but an extraordinary number and variety of periodicals: dailies, weeklies, and magazines devoted to poetry, literature, general culture, and the sciences. Nineteenth-century newspapers gradually diversified their formats to include special supplements and regular features and sections. Towards the latter part of the century, newspaper publishers occasionally embarked on book-publishing ventures as well. Educated Latin Americans received the latest titles from Britain, and later almost exclusively from France and Spain, via a European publishing industry that produced a variety of titles in Spanish translation. Early on, merchants regularly advertised titles for sale in newspapers, and these advertisements offer glimpses into the vitality of the book market and the reading habits of the Latin American public. Notices were placed for book raffles or to offer subscriptions for new publications; binders and translators also posted their services. In addition, books were sold not only in bookstores, but in a wide array of commercial establishments, such as shoe-shine salons, barber shops, bazaars, market stalls, clothing and sundry stores, or were peddled on the street. Readers could consult books or periodicals by buying, borrowing, or renting them from a reading salon or circulating library: by 1838 there were five such establishments in Buenos Aires.

An author from Havana, Bogotá, or Caracas who could afford to do so most likely would resort to self-publishing, an option open to a minority, or else seek a publisher in Paris, Madrid, New York, or Mexico City. Nonetheless, important Spanish-American historical and literary works of the nineteenth century were published locally as offprints of specialized journals or as
folletines
: series published in newspapers, sometimes later reprinted locally in one volume. In Cuba, and perhaps in other places, authors would find their way into print through a subscription system, whereby the writer would approach a publisher with a list of friends, relatives, and other potential readers, each of whom had pledged to buy a certain number of copies. In this way, authors were connected to their reading public, and printers could publish without risk.

The publishing scene in Cuba, which remained a Spanish colony throughout the nineteenth century, was particularly fraught with obstacles. Along with its colonial status, slavery sustained the Cuban economy and structured society until the 1880s, when the practice was also abolished in Brazil. Contrary to trends elsewhere, as the century progressed, illiteracy grew. Nonetheless, Cuban presses produced an array of periodicals and books by national authors, including medical and scientific treatises, almanacs, poetry, and other literary works. But local production as well as the importation of foreign titles remained subject to the watchful eye of colonial authorities. Cuban
tertulias
acquired at times an extra-official character, a place where intellectuals and writers would gather semi-clandestinely to discuss prohibited imported works and circulate their own unpublished manuscripts. Ambrosio Fornet (2002), the foremost historian of nineteenth-century Cuban letters, provides important insights into the paradoxes of Cuban print culture, particularly during a brief but significant literary flourishing in Havana between the 1830s and 1840s. Publishing mechanisms remained largely unchanged through the mid-twentieth century until the Cuban Revolution in 1959.