The Crown and The Printing Press in Colonial Spanish America

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Contesting the Word: The Crown and

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Luna Njera
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University of Illinois , Chicago
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Portugal and Latin America, 89:4, 575-596, DOI: 10.1080/14753820.2012.684923
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Bulletin of Spanish Studies, Volume LXXXIX, Number 4, 2012
Contesting the Word: The Crown

and the Printing Press in Colonial
Spanish America
JERA
LUNA NA
University of Illinois, Chicago
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Providing a global survey of Spanish early modern printed books for

the sixteenth century, Iberian Books. Libros ibericos (hereafter IB)1 offers
scholars of Spanish America a panoramic view of literary output in colonial
Mexico and Peru following the introduction of the printing press in 1539 and
1581, respectively. Drawing on IB, I provide a general overview of the types
of books that were printed in sixteenth-century Mexico.2 I then turn my
attention to the evolution of the Spanish Royal Councils stance toward
the publication of ethnographic studies, historical accounts, and theological
treatises about Spains enterprise in America, demonstrating that policies
toward book production on such subjects were deeply influenced by the
Crowns attempt to exert greater jurisdiction and authority over its Spanish
and Amerindian vassals.
1 Alexander S. Wilkinson, Iberian Books. Libros ibericos. Books Published in Spanish

Or Portuguese Or on the Iberian Peninsula before 1601. Libros publicados en espanol o
portugues (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
2 For 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), 277305. For a general introduction to book history, see Jose Luis Martnez,
El libro en Hispanoamerica, 2a ed. (Salamanca: Fundacion German Sanchez Ruiperez, 1986)
and Jacques Lafaye, Albores de la imprenta: el libro en Espana y Portugal y sus posesiones de
ultramar (siglos XV y XVI) (Mexico: FCE, 2004). For a comprehensive study of the printing
press in Spanish America based on primary sources, see Fermn de los Reyes Gomez, El libro
en Espana y America: legislacion y censura (siglos XV XVIII), 2 vols (Madrid: Arco/Libros,
2000). The foundational studies in the field are: Jose Torre Revello, El libro, la imprenta y el
periodismo en America durante la dominacion espanola (Buenos Aires: Instituto de
Investigaciones Historicas, 1940); and Jose Toribio Medina, Historia de la imprenta en los
antiguos dominios espanoles de America y Oceania (Santiago de Chile: Fondo Historico y
Bibliografico Jose Toribio Medina, 1958).
ISSN 1475-3820 print/ISSN 1478-3428 online/12/04/000575-22

# Bulletin of Spanish Studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2012.684923
576 BSS, LXXXIX (2012) JERA
LUNA NA
Not Just a Medium for Evangelization

An examination of entries in IB for books printed in Mexico confirms the
general view that the production of religious texts accounts for most of the
printed books in the colonial period. In this regard, the predominance of
religious literature in America was much like that found in Spain and in other
parts of Europe.3 Religious texts published in Mexico in Spanish include the
Bible, the Gospels, sermons, books on mystical theology, catechisms,
songbooks (pasioneros and psalmodies), books of canonical hours, missals,
prayer and baptism books, and confessionals. Other similar though distinct
religious texts include: liturgical texts, papal bulls, indulgences, decisions
of church councils, rules for religious orders and diocesan constitutions.
In addition to these types of texts, colonial Latin Americanists have identified
a second predominant category that is intimately related to religious texts,

including religious literature translated into Amerindian languages and
compilations of vocabularies and grammars of the Amerindian language.
As demonstrated by a number of decrees ordering the examination of
proselytizing literature in the period, religious works in translation
were especially subject to the scrutiny of the Council of the Indies and
the Inquisition in Spain.4 Research into religious works in Amerindian
languages has yielded studies on the contributions of Franciscan, Dominican
and Augustinian friars to the conservation of indigenous peoples history and
their languages, as well as critical studies focusing on the ideological
implications of Western notions of literacy in the New World.5 IB provides
a fuller picture of the myriad of languages in which friars worked to reach
potential converts in their own languages, as well as of the various audiences
to which religious works were directed.
On the eve of the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1521, about nineteen
million people spoke Nahuatl, the lingua franca over a vast area of
Mesoamerica.6 Nahuatl was the official language of the Aztecs, a fact that
accounts for the predominance of religious literature translated into that
language. For example, among the translations of the Doctrina cristiana
3 Alison P. Weber, Religious Literature in Early Modern Spain, in The Cambridge

History of Spanish Literature, ed. David T. Gies (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2004), 14958;
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 OBrien, Derek Keene, Marjolein t Hart, and Herman van der Wee
(Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2001), 23348 (p. 235).
4 Some illustrative decree samples appear in Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a, II, 786.
5 Georges 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).
6 Miguel Leo n-Portilla, Mesoamerica before 1519, Colonial Latin America, ed. Leslie
Bethell, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1984) I, 35 and Herbert R. Harvey, Relaciones
THE CROWN & THE PRINTING PRESS: COLONIAL SPANISH AMERICA 577
into indigenous languages, more than half (seventeen out of thirty-one)

are in Nahuatl. The other languages into which the Christian doctrine
was translated were: Chontla, Huastec, Mixtec, Mayan, Otomi, Tarascan,
Tepuzcululan and Zapotec. A similar pattern can be observed in the
translations of confessionaries. Out of ten recorded confessionaries, six are
in Nahuatl and the remaining four are in Tarascan and Zapotec. The
translation of so many religious texts into Nahuatl, as has been noted,
stemmed from the fact that this language was widely spoken in central
Mexico, and also resulted from the endeavours of members of the religious
orders, in particular the Franciscans, whose task it was to convert
Amerindians to the Catholic faith. In commenting upon the fact that some
indigenous languages were studied by certain religious orders, while other
orders focused on studying different native languages, Walter Mignolo

observes the following general tendencies: Dominicans concentrated on
languages of southern Mexico and Guatemala [. . .] Franciscans devoted
themselves to the major Amerindian languages, like Maya, Nahuatl,
and Otomi in Mesoamerica [. . .] and [beginning in the 1570s] the Jesuits
devoted themselves to minor languages, like Taraumara and Totonac.7
Translations of the Doctrina cristiana were sometimes published
alongside Castilian or Latin versions, confirming Fernando Bouzas
observation that the teaching of Spanish (Castilian) and the Catholic faith
were indistinguishable.8 For instance, there are versions of the Doctrina
cristiana in Nahuatl and Castilian (IB 1030 and 13108), in Zapotec and
Castilian (8674), and in Huastec and Castilian (10975). In other cases,
there are trilingual editions of the Doctrina cristiana, such as the Cartilla
para la ensen anza de la doctrina crisitana en lengua zotil [Tzotzil?], latina y
castellana (Me xico: Antonio de Espinosa, s.d.), and Melchior de Vargass
Doctrina christiana, muy util, y necesaria, en castellano, mexicano y otomi
(Me xico: Pedro Balli, 1576).9
Didactic books called cartillas are among the second rank of best sellers
next to the Doctrina cristiana, although in some instances the two are
combined into one product, known as cartillas de doctrina cristiana.
Cartillas are short booklets comprised of one or two sheets in quarto or in
octavo. Aimed at children and adults, the cartillas facilitated literacy skills
geogra ficas, 15791586: 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), 279323 (pp. 31415). 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.
7 Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance, 53.
8 Fernando Bouza, Communication, Knowledge, and Memory in Early Modern Spain,
trans. Soria Lo pez and Michael Agnew (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 61.
9 For 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.
LUNA NA
by offering a reproduction of the alphabet, syllabaries, spelling, and

grammar instruction.10 Like the latter, the cartillas de doctrina cristiana
were instrumental for cultivating future readers, yet in addition to teaching
literacy they imparted key principles of Catholic doctrine. In his study of
cartillas published in early modern Spain, Vctor Infantes observed that
alongside the printed works of Christian doctrine, pliegos sueltos (loose
sheets), and libros de cordel (hagiographies, short novels, and comedias),
cartillas were among the most fundamental products published in the period,
demand for them increasing as the century progressed.11 Surviving copies of
cartillas printed in Spain include Hernando de Talaveras famous Cartilla y
doctrina para ensen ar a los nin os a leer (Granada: s.n., 1498?). The only
three recorded examples of cartillas printed in Spanish America that target
children are Maturino Gilbertis Cartilla para los nin os en lengua tarasca
(Me xico: s.n., 1559), Bartolome Rolda ns Cartilla y doctrina christiana, breve
y compendiosa, para ensen ar los nin os, y ciertas preguntas tocantes a la dicha
doctrina, por manera de dia logo (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1580), and Juan de
Zuma rragas Doctrina cristiana breve para ensen anza de los nin os (Me xico:
s.n., s.d.). Two cartillas for indigenous and non-indigenous adult readers are
Pedro Betanzos, Cartilla de oraciones en las lenguas guatemalteca, utlateca y
tzutigil (Me xico: s.n., s.d.), which provides instruction on how to pray in three
languages, and the Cartilla para ensen ar a leer, nuevamente enmendada, y
quitadas todas las abreviaturas que antes tena (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte,
1569), which focuses on imparting literacy skills. As Infantes noted, these
didactic materials played a substantial role in producing new readers, and,
therefore, constitute a significant branch of study in the history of the book.
The proselytizing mission of the Spanish Church in America resulted in
the production of indigenous language dictionaries in Chiapanec, Chinantec
(spoken in Oaxaca and Veracruz), Nahuatl, Tarascan (Michuaca n), Zapotec,
Mixtec, Matlatzinca (spoken in the Toluca Valley), Otomi and Popolocan
(spoken in the valley of Tehuaca n, in Puebla), Zenda and Zoque (spoken in
Chiapas, Oaxaca and Tabasco). Other works that emerged in response to
that evangelization mission included liturgical books written for Spanish
clergy members to guide their work with Amerindian populations. Examples
of books with instructions on how to administer the sacraments and to
teach the Christian doctrine to Amerindian populations are: Miguel
de Za rates Forma brevis, administrandi apud indos sanctum baptismi
sacramentum iuxta ordinate sanctae Romanae ecclesiae, exconcessione s. d.
Pauli papae III nuper summa cura, et diligentia limata, ac praelo mandata,
per fratrem Michaelem a carate, minoritam (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1583),
which was translated and printed in Spanish as El baptisterio de
10 For a description of cartillas, see Vctor Infantes, De la cartilla al libro, Bulletin

Hispanique, 97:1 (1995), 3366 (pp. 4041).
11 Infantes, De la cartilla al libro, 36.
administrar los santos sacramentos a los indios (Me xico: Pedro Balli, 1595);
Juan de lAnunciacio ns Doctrina christiana muy cumplida, donde se
contiene la exposicion de todo lo necessario para doctrinar a los yndios,
y administralles los sanctos sacramentos (Me xico: Pedro Balli, 1575); and
Juan Baptistas Advertencias para los confessores de los naturales (Me xico:
Melchior Ocharte, 1600).
As this brief survey of printed books demonstrates, book production in
sixteenth-century Mexico, and in other parts of Spanish America where
the printing press was introduced in subsequent centuries, was intricately
tied to the interests of the Council of Castile and of the Church.12 Thus,
in addition to the production of religious texts, the other kinds of materi-
als that constituted the bread-and-butter output of the first printing pres-
ses in America were documents connected with the law, the most famous
of which is Vasco de Pugas compilation of legislative acts in his Provisiones,
cedulas instrucions de su magestad, ordenanc as de difuntos y audiencia,
para la buena expedicion de los negocios, y administracio n de justicia
(Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1563). Other minor, though important legal
publications include templates for powers of attorney and for proofs of
limpieza de sangre.13
In addition to the constraints that the Church and the Royal Councils
policies placed on publishing houses, the high costs of importing paper and
the purchasing practices of the local consumers played a major role in
limiting the output of the printing presses. Studies of Inquisition trials,
private library catalogues and shipment records have demonstrated that
elite Spanish and Hispanicized Amerindians who wanted to remain abreast
of the latest trends in Europe, which involved reading works that were
subject to the scrutiny of the Spanish Inquisition, imported their books
(either legally or illegally) from Spain and many other printing centres in
Europe, despite the high costs and the risks that this represented.14 Yet,
despite these restrictions, publishing houses did produce academic works,
including philosophical and scientific treatises, as well as local histories.
The establishment of universities and colleges encouraged the publication
of academic books. Americas first university, the Universidad Nacional
Auto noma de Me xico, owed its foundation in 1551 to the earlier efforts made
to bring this about by the first bishop and archbishop of Mexico, Don Fray
Juan de Zuma rraga. As well as being the force behind the establishment of
the UNAM, Zuma rraga established the Franciscan Colegio Imperial de
12 The printing press arrived in other parts of Spanish America as follows: Puebla
(1640), Guatemala (1660), Havana (1701), Santa Fe de Bogota (1736), Buenos Aires (1780),
Caracas (1808).
13 See IB 13648 and 13649 for a template for powers of attorney, and 13677 for a purity
of blood form. All were printed on broadsheets.
14 Michael Mathes, Humanism in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Libraries of
New Spain, The Catholic Historical Review, 82:3 (1996), 41235 (pp. 42223).
LUNA NA
Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco in 1536, which was a higher education institution

that sought to educate the children of Amerindian nobles.15 These outcomes
of Zuma rragas endeavours, together with his introduction of the printing
press in 1536 and his donation of books to the Colegios library, which was
the first library in America, leave no doubt as to the centrality of the Western
book and the vibrancy of intellectual life in Spanish America during the post-
conquest period.16
The scientific studies, dissertation and lecture titles, philosophical
treatises, and other miscellaneous works recorded in IB underscore the
richness of intellectual life in colonial Mexico. In the field of medicine,
for example, Francisco Bravos Opera medicinalia is the first medical book
printed in America (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1570). Other scientific studies
followed, including the work of the UNAM graduate, Juan de Cardenas,

who in his Primera parte de los problemas, y secretos maravillosos de las
Indias (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1591) discussed the amalgamation process,
a technical question that concerned miners in New Spain.17 Similarly
concerned with making scientific knowledge accessible to the local
population in New Spain, Agustn Farfa n published a treatise on medicine
entitled Tractado breve de anothomia y chirugia, y de algunas enfermedades,
que ma s comunmente suelen haver en esta Nueva Espan a (Me xico: Antonio
Ricardo, 1579) and the Tratado breve de medicina y de todas las
enfermedades (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1592). Lastly, five years before the
end of the century, Alonso Lo pez de Hinojoso published a book on surgery
and blood-letting entitled, Summa y recopilacio n de ciruga, con un arte
para sangrar, y examen de barberos (Me xico: s.n., 1595). Other scientific
works outside of the field of medicine are Diego Garca de Palacios widely
known military and nautical manuals: Dia logos militares, de la formacio n,
e informacio n de personas, instrumentos, y cosas necessarias para el buen uso
de la guerra (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1583), and the Instruccio n nauthica,
para el buen uso, y regimiento de las naos, su trac a, y govierno conforme a la
altura de Mexico (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1587). Further, there appears to
have been a demand for the writings of European scientists. For instance, in
the last quarter of the century, the publishing house of Antonio Ricardo
published De sphera (1578), by the Italian mathematician and astronomer,
Francesco Maurolico.
While publications of or about Aristotles works are to be expected
(Francisco de Toledos Aristoteles, Introductio in dialecticam Aristotelis
15 For 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), 25777.
16 On Zuma rragas library, see Alberto Mara Carren o, The Books of Don Fray Juan
Zuma rraga, The Americas, 5:3 (1949), 31130.
17 Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and
the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2006), 7578.
[Me xico: Antonio Ricardo, 1578] is a case in point), the printing of

philosophical writings produced within Mexico itself, or translated into
Spanish for the local market, conveys the full vigour of intellectual life only
four decades after the Spanish conquest. This vigour is illustrated by the
writings of Fray Alfonso de la Vera Cruz (15071584), a disciple of Francisco
de Vitoria. Vera Cruz was a prolific writer who published a study on
Aristotle, entitled Phisica speculatio, in Mexico (1557) and in Salamanca
(1562). He was also the author of conduct literature, as evidenced by his
Speculum coniugiorum (Me xico: Juan Pablos, 1556), reprinted in Mexico by
Paulus Bribenbes Calchographus in 1557 and in Salamanca and Alcala in
1562 and 1572, respectively. In addition to his numerous translations of
Aristotles works, some of which he published in Mexico and in Spain, Vera
Cruz translated into Spanish the De secreti del reuerendo donno Alessio
Piemontese, a book that has been attributed to an Italian alchemist, physican
and cartographer named Girolamo Ruscelli.18 Vera Cruzs translations of
Ruscellis works were published in Alcala and in Antwerp, attesting to the
contribution made by intellectual work carried out in Mexico to the diffusion
of humanist ideas on both sides of the Atlantic. While remarkable, Vera
Cruzs intellectual endeavours were not the exception. Francisco Cervantes
de Salazar (151475), the official chronicler of Mexico City and professor of
rhetoric at the UNAM, published his commentaries on Juan Luis Vives
Exercitationes lingua [sic] latinae (Me xico: Juan Pablos, 1554), as well as a
description of the UNAM and of Mexico City, in his Dia logos (Me xico: Juan
Pablos, 1554).19 To be sure, Cervantes de Salazars description of the city was
not without precedent. In 1549, Antonio de Mendoza, count of Tendilla and
first Viceroy of Mexico, published a history of the founding of Mexico City,
entitled Comienc a la ystoria y fundac io n de la cabdad [sic.] de Mexico
(Me xico: s.n., 1549).
IB contains listings of dissertation defences, lectures and degree
conferrals printed on broadsheets that evidence an active engagement with
weighty issues, such as questions arising from the Tridentine Council.
A glance at the subjects of the lectures affirms this view. The impact of the
Council of Trent can be registered, for example, in Pedro Gonza lez de Prados
dissertation on papal law, Quaestio pro doctoratu in iure pontificio utrum
doctoralia insignia quae in gradus praestatione conferuntur, de ipsius
doctoratus essentia et substantia sint [. . .] (Me xico: Pedro Ocharte, 1584).
18 Vera Cruzs translations of Girolamo Ruscelli are: Seys libros de secretos llenos de
maravillosa differencia de cosas (Alcala de Henares: Sebastia n Martnez, 1563) and Secretos
de don Alexo Piamontes, divididos en seys libros, llenos de maravillosa differencia de cosas
(Antwerpen: s.n., 1564).
19 Born 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.
LUNA NA
Another example is Juan Ferna ndez Salvadors lecture, for degree

attainment purposes, on imperial law, entitled Quaestio pro doctoratu in
iure caesareo utrum minori iuris perito doctori, competat in integrum
restitutionis beneficium (Me xico: Pedro Balli, 1584). Other dissertation
topics allow a glimpse into preoccupations that reflected a wider, modern-
seeming concern with the regulation of vagrancy at all levels, affecting
people from picaresque-like figures to priests. For instance, Pedro Mun oz
de Espinosa explores whether it is possible for monks and priests to beg for
alms in his Quaestio pro laurea doctorali suscipienda in sacra theologia,
per licenciatum Petrum Mun oz de Espinosa. An liceat religiosis elemosynas
Petere Mendicando? (Me xico: Enrique Martnez, 1600). Lastly, publishing
houses printed announcements about spectacular events on broadsheets and
in quartos. As would be expected, publications of this type include funerary
eulogies on Charles V and Philip II.20 There are, as well, short publications
on natural events, such as an account of an earthquake that shook
Guatemala in the 1540s.21
Parallel to the regulation of book production in New Spain itself, the
Crown kept a watchful eye within the Iberian Peninsula on the exportation
of non-religious books to Spanish America. While the laws that regulated
publishing and licences for the sale of books and pamphlets in Spanish
America during the first half of the sixteenth century were modelled on the
laws that the Catholic Monarchs had issued for Castile, additional restrictive
measures designed to address the Crowns specific concerns in Spanish
America emerge in response to challenges made to Royal jurisdiction in the
early 1540s.22 What follows demonstrates that the Royal Councils stance in
regard to the publication of books about Spanish America and its inhabitants
is marked by three concerns.23
The collection of ethnographic information was critical to Spain, to assist
its government of vast territories and of the conglomeration of peoples that
inhabited the Spanish colonies. However, the administrative interest in
documenting such information was difficult to reconcile with the Crowns
efforts to curtail the circulation of facts about Spains recently discovered
territories among its European competitors. This difficulty can be deduced
20 Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Tu mulo imperial de la gran ciudad de Mexico

(Me xico: Antonio de Espinosa, 1560).
21 Juan Rodrguez, Relacio n del espantable terremoto que agora nuevamente ha
acontescido en las Yndias en una ciudad llamada Guatimala (Me xico: Juan Cromberger,
1541).
22 For a discussion of the similiarity between royal policies on printing for Spain and for
Spanish America, see Juan Friede, La censura espan ola del siglo XVI y los libros de historia
de Ame rica, Revista de Historia de Ame rica, 47 (1959), 4594.
23 I 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).
from a royal decree issued on 2 August 1527, in which the Crown required
foreigners to obtain a special licence if they were desirous of obtaining
illustrative or written information about the Spanish Indies.24 Besides
the Crowns cautionary stance when it came to the wider dissemination
of cartographic information about the New World among its European
neighbours, there was its concern that the writings of military captains
might be used as evidence by other countries to challenge Spains legal
claims in the New World. Also of concern were legal claims made by Spanish
soldiers and their descendants for remuneration, because these claims
and petitions were often accompanied by official and non-official histori-
cal accounts of the Spanish conquest, and could be supported, too, by
theological treatises in which was discussed the justice or otherwise of
the use of violence to subject Amerindians to Spanish rule. The role that
printed books played as evidence in such legal claims intensified the Crowns
watchfulness when it came to overseeing the printing and circulation of
historical accounts and chronicles about Spanish America. In the remainder
of this essay, I shall trace the shift in royal policy toward the publication
of books concerning America and its people, and shall draw attention to
key events that define how, in the sixteenth century, the Crown viewed
and treated ethnographic, historical, and theoretical publications about
America and its inhabitants.
The Franciscan Orders Inconvenient Books

In his study of the Spanish conquerors, Jacques Lafaye points out that
in the latter part of the Spanish military enterprise in America (15191545),
the Crown dealt with Spanish America in legislative, not military terms.25
The change towards better governance of the new territories, through
more comprehensive legislation, is reflected in the reform of the Council of
the Indies, one of the fundamental institutions through which the Crown
governed its subjects and safeguarded the production and circulation of
books in and about America. In 1597, the Council of the Indies gained
exclusive authority to regulate the publication of books on matters related
to Spanish America,26 a development which was the outcome of a general
reform that began in 1566, when Diego de Espinosa, Bishop of Sigu enza
and president of the Council of Castile, sought to gain a more realistic
understanding of how Spanish America should be governed. Espinosas
inquiry revealed that the members of the Council of the Indies posses-
sed only an inadequate knowledge about the people and laws of the
24 Recopilacio n de leyes, IX: tt. 23, ley 14.

25 Jacques Lafaye, Los conquistadores, 2a ed. (Me xico: FCE, 1999), 1718. He observes
that the exceptions were the Araucanian wars in Central and Southern Chile and Southern
Argentina.
26 Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, II, 831.
LUNA NA
new territories,27 a problem which, thanks to Espinosa, Philip II

became aware of c.1568, and, therefore, authorized the Licentiate Juan de
Ovando y Godoy to carry out a rigorous inspection of the Council of
the Indies.28 Ovando y Godoy, whose findings confirmed Espinosas
impressions about the Councils shortcomings, urged the codification of
all legislation concerned with Spanish America and called for the creation
of an official chronicler of the Indies.29 His recommendations, which re-
quired official inquiries to be made into all matters related to the Indies,
strengthened already existing demands for research into the pre-Hispanic
past of Amerindian people.
The Spanish administration was concerned chiefly with acquiring
geographic information useful for the allocation of encomiendas and land
during the first decade following the conquest of Mexico in 1521.30 Baudot
explains that official inquiries about the lands and the populations of Mexico
and Peru were made in 1525 and 1533, as lack of knowledge on these subjects
hindered determination of the number and size of available encomienda
grants and the taxes that could be derived from them for the conquerors, the
settlers, and the Crown.31 While the Crown initially obtained descriptions of
the land and its people from the Spanish military captains, the responsibility
for writing official reports in reply to a set of questions formulated by the
Crown (relaciones), became part of the official duties of the designated
servants of the Crown in the 1570s.32 This did not necessarily mean,
however, that royal officials were not entrusted with such a task prior to
that year, nor did it imply that members of religious orders were excluded
27 Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 511. Also see, Ro mulo D. Carbia, La cro nica
oficial de las Indias Occidentales (La Plata: Imprenta Lo pez, 1934), 9798.
28 Ovando was a member of the Council of the Inquisition and became the president of
the Council of the Indies in 1571.
29 Carbia, La cro nica oficial de las Indias Occidentales, 98. A transcription of the
ordinances issued upon Ovandos recommendations appears in Marcos Jime nez de la Espada,
Relaciones geogra ficas de Indias, ed. J. U. Martnez Carreras, BAE 183185, 3 vols (Madrid:
Ediciones Atlas, 1965), I, 61.
30 Baudot, 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).
31 Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 2930.
32 See 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 Geogra ficas of the Spanish Indies,
15771648, in Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 12, pt. 1, ed. Cline, 183242. For a
comparison of relaciones with chronicles and history, see Walter Mignolo, Cartas, cro nicas y
relaciones del descubrimiento y la conquista, in Historia de la literatura Hispanoame ricana,
coord. Luis In igo Madrigal, 3 vols (Madrid: Ca tedra, 1982), I, 57116.
from collecting ethnographic information. On 4 November 1525, for instance,

Luis Ponce de Leo n, the judge in charge of the final review into the conduct of
the Spanish conqueror Herna n Corte s, was asked to carry out an
investigation in and around Mexico-Tenochtitla n that included doing
research into the way of life of its indigenous inhabitants. The judges of
the royal courts (audiencias) assumed responsibility for the realization of
this project in 1528. A similar requirement was made of royal officials in
Peru in 1533. Subsequently, the bishops and members of the Franciscan and
Dominican religious orders assumed the task of producing studies about the
Amerindian populations that usually exceeded what was required by way of
information for official purposes. An example of such work is the Historia
general de las cosas de la Nueva Espan a by the Franciscan friar Bernardino
de Sahagu n (14991590). In this Historia general, Sahagu n provides a rich

account of the rites and ceremonies of the Nahua people, focusing on
understanding their cosmovision so as to better integrate into the Spanish
ways and to indoctrinate them. Interestingly, in a royal decree issued on 22
April 1577, Philip II forbade the circulation of Sahagu ns Historia general.
While acknowledging that the intention of Sahagu ns work was good
(aunque se entiende que el celo del dicho Fr. Bernardino haba sido bueno,
y con deseo que su trabajo sea de fruto), the king declared that it was
inconvenient for the Historia general and other works that described the
superstitions and way of life of the Indians to be printed or to circulate in
the New World.33
The practice of gathering ethnographic information about Amerindian
people was indispensable for the business of government because it facili-
tated the regulation of social relations among Amerindians. Baudot points
out, for example, that between 1530 and 1538, the Crown employed
the knowledge afforded by such investigations to formulate a series of
instructions [designed] to strictly limit the right of native lords to enslave
their subjects.34 The Crowns demand for studies to be conducted on the
Amerindian pre-Columbian past also made sense from an economic
perspective because knowledge about the resources, as well as the customs,
tributes and duties of the pre-Hispanic societies enabled the Crown to impose
and collect taxes from them more efficiently. Moreover, Spanish legislation
that took into account the history and customs of pre-Hispanic peoples could
operate more efficiently to bring about their Hispanicization by exploiting
existing social and religious structures.
The Crowns awareness that the cooperation of Amerindian leaders was
indispensable to bring about the pacification of the Amerindian population,
33 Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, II, 821. Sahagu n 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.
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notes Baudot, generated ethnographic research about these leaders, as

shown by a document of 1550, which ordered detailed information on the
[native] nobility, its laws of succession, and the rights of the nobles.35
Matters of taxation as affecting or affected by the rights of the indigenous
nobility continued to concern the Crown three years later, as indicated by
Prince Philips request for information about pre-Hispanic tribute practices
in Mexico. The Crowns pro-ethnography stance continued uninterrupted
until the project it had generated assumed other, less practical and even
subversive tendencies in the hands of Franciscan friars. In opposition to
the Crown, the Franciscans ethnographic and linguistic research formed
part of an effort to realize the eschatological prophecies of Joachim of Fiore
(c.11301201/02), which foretold the appearance of a society resembling
that of the Mexican civilization, and signalling the End Times and the
imminence of the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit. Pursuing that vision, the
Franciscans not only Christianized Amerindians, but also sought to protect
them from the corrupt ways of the Spanish settlers by arguing for a separate
Indian republic. Moreover, their propagation of Christian dogma in Nahuatl,
rather than Spanish, throughout the continent proved to be an obstacle
to the Hispanicization of Amerindian people that the Crown favoured,
thus undermining the practical interests of the Crown. In Baudots view, the
tensions created by these differing agendas explain the Crowns prohibition
of writings about Amerindian peoples history in the previously mentioned
decree of 1577. Indeed, despite the practical utility of the ethnographies,
Philip II not only prohibited their publication and circulation, but ordered,
additionally, their confiscation on 5 July 1578.36
The Crowns radical change of posture speaks to the fragility of its
authority when this conflicted with the Franciscan movement and its poten-
tial for inspiring dissidence among the newly Christianized Amerindian
subjects. Baudot suggests that the Crowns move toward the eradication
of eschatologically-inspired movements in 15701571, the year in which
the Jesuits and the Inquisition arrived in New Spain, was further moti-
vated by the attempted revolt of Martn Corte s (the son of Herna n Corte s)
in 15651566.37 The Franciscans, Baudot notes, had bestowed a prominent
role on Herna n Corte s in their vision of the future of the Church in Mexico.
Because of the charisma and prestige that Martn Corte s name bore,
continues Baudot, after the death of Herna n Corte s it was only natural that

36 The decree can be found in, Nueva coleccio n de documentos para la historia de
Me xico, ed. Joaqun Garca Icazbalceta, 5 vols (Me xico: Daz de Leo n, 18861892), II, Co dice
franciscano, app. 1, 24950.
37 Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 520. For a study about Martn Corte s and the
rebellion, see Manuel Orozco y Berra, Noticia histo rica de la conjuracio n del Marques del
Valle. An os de 1565 1568. Formada en vista de nuevos documentos originales, y seguida de un
extracto de los mismos documentos (Me xico: Tip. de R. Rafael, 1853).
those hopes for the future would be placed on his son. Martn Corte s
possession of several works by Erasmus, who was also popular among some
Franciscans, as well as his patronage of Franciscan monasteries, suggests
for Baudot that there were links between the separatist conspiracy and
the Joachinist movement of the Franciscans that would have been apparent
to the Crown, and which would have led it to withdraw its support for
ethnographic research.
Ethnographic research on Amerindian societies by members of the
religious orders could advance, as has been shown, the Crowns interests
in various ways. On the one hand, their studies provided practical
information about Amerindian peoples social modes of organization, while
furthering their evangelization mission through giving them a better under-
standing of the Amerindian cosmovision. Nevertheless, as the Franciscan
eschatologically-inspired movement shows, the research and publication

of books about Amerindian societies promoted insurrectionary tendencies
among segments of the Church with an agenda different from that of the
Crown. Similar tensions can be found affecting the relationship between the
Crown and its Spanish subjects in the New World. It is that relationship to
which I now turn.
Royal Jurisdiction and the Crisis indiana

The Spanish military enterprises in America brought together men of letters
and soldiers in a shared ideological struggle against Amerindian societies,
whose ways of life they deemed abhorrent to the Christian faith. The
relationship between Herna n Corte s and the historian Francisco Lo pez
de Go mara is one of the examples of collaboration between soldiers and
scholars that came about within the context of the Spanish conquest.38
Demetrios Ramos Pe rez traces a similar partnership between Pedro Mexa,
a cosmographer at the Casa de Contratacio n in Seville, and Gonzalo Xime nez
de Quesada (c.14991579), an explorer, conqueror and statesman. Ramos
Pe rez calls attention to the intellectual interconnections among Mexa,
Xime nez de Quesada, and the Spanish chronicler Gonzalo Ferna ndez de
Oviedo y Valde s (14781557), whose writings about the New World draw
material from Xime nez de Quesada.39 Opportunities for such exchanges and
mutual influences, notes Ramos Pe rez, were encouraged by none other than
38 For a recent biography and re-evaluation of Lo pez de Go maras oeuvres, see Nora
Edith Jime nez, Francisco Lo pez de Go mara: escribir historias en tiempos de Carlos V
(Michoaca n: El Colegio de Michoaca n, 2001).
39 Demetrio Ramos Pe rez, Xime nez de Quesada en su relacio n con los cronistas y el
eptome de la conquista del Nuevo Reino de Granada (Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano-
Americanos, 1972), 9798, 107. Commissioned to explore the Magdalena River in search of the
famous El Dorado in 1536, Xime nez de Quesada was one of the Spanish conquerors of
Colombia. He founded the capital city of Santa Fe de Bogota in 1538. Prior to his activities in
the New World, he practised law and had been a soldier in Italy.
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Herna n Corte s, whose organized gatherings in Valladolid and Seville

attracted the attendance of men of letters, as well as of military men, and
diplomats. Pedro de Navarra, Bishop of Comenge and a French Royal council
member, alludes to such meetings in his Dia logos de la preparacio n de la
muerte (Tolosa?: Jacobo Colomerio?, c.1565). Among those present at Corte s
gatherings, he mentions Cervantes de Salazar, Cardinal Poggio (a papal
nuncio), and Juan de Vega, Viceroy of Sicily.40
In addition to Navarras testimony, Juan Gine s de Sepu lveda,
an Italianized Spanish humanist and Charles Vs official Royal chronicler,
attests to having been among those invited to Herna n Corte s gatherings
in Valladolid. For example, in his De Orbe Novo (Madrid: Regia Historiae
Academia, 1780) he boasts of having heard an account of the massacre
of Cholula directly from Corte s lips. This was not their only encounter, for
in a letter that Sepu lveda wrote to Manrique Lara, the Duke of Na jera,
he refers fondly to a banquet that he attended in Laras company in
Barcelona in 1542. Its host was Pedro Fernando de Velasco, the Constable
of Castile, and in addition to Lara, the guests included the Duke of Cardona
and the Marquis of the Valle de Oaxaca, i.e., Herna n Corte s, all of whom
had gathered to celebrate the Duke of Albas victory over the French at
Perpignan.41
Further evidence of collaboration between the Spanish conquerors of
the New World and humanists, that is, of a convergence of arms and
letters, can be inferred from the gifts that the members of the Municipal
Council of Mexico sent to Sepu lveda during the early stages of his
involvement in the Spanish conquest controversy. In 1545, Sepu lveda
wrote his Democrates secundus, sive de iustis belli causis apud Indios
(written in 1545, posthumously translated and published by the Real
Academia de la Historia in Madrid in 1892) wherein he drew from natural
law theory, and particularly from Augustinian political theory, to claim
that the conquest of America was being carried out in conformity with the
principles of Christian piety and justice.42 While the Royal Council of Castile
rejected Sepu lvedas petition for a licence to publish his manuscript of
the Democrates secundus,43 the gifts that the members of the cabildo of
Mexico sent to him suggest that they were appreciative of his work. There
is no official confirmation of the gifts, but in his correspondence Sepu lveda
40 Quoted in Ramos Pe rez, Xime nez de Quesada, 113.

41 Juan Gine s de Sepu lveda, Epistolario, trans. A ngel Losada (Madrid: Ediciones
Cultura Hispa?nica, 1966), 13133.
42 Juan Gine s de Sepu lveda, Demo crates segundo; Apologa en favor del libro sobre las
justas causas de la guerra, ed. Jaime Brufau Prats, Alejandro Coroleu Lletget, Antonio
Moreno Herna ndez & A ngel Losada (Pozoblanco: Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Pozoblanco, 1997).
43 The 1997 edition of Sepu lvedas Demo crates segundo offers a comprehensive
summary of the history of Sepu lvedas manuscript. Also see Luciano Peren a, Misio n de
Espan a en Ame rica, 1540 1560 (Madrid: CSIC, 1956), 1618.
refers to the calumnies that his rivals launched against him suggesting
that he received some reward from the Council of Mexico in recognition of
his work.44
What these collaborations illustrate is that the potential for employing
the written word in support of private interests did not escape the notice
of Spanish settlers seeking to claim royal remuneration from the Crown.
In their hope to preserve their socio-economic status in the New World,
Spanish soldiers attempted to persuade Crown officials of the validity of
their particular claims for titles, lands and pensions by citing available
historical accounts of military actions in American territories and the theories
of war articulated in legal documents such as the Requerimiento (1513) and
in the works of thinkers like Sepu lveda.45 Additionally, a small number of
Spanish soldiers authored their own chronicles, as illustrated in the Historia

verdadera de la conquista de la Nueva Espan a (written 15511575; published
in Madrid: Imprenta del Reyno, 1632), an account of the Spanish conquest
of Mexico that the veteran soldier Bernal Daz del Castillo wrote to advance
his quest for remuneration from the King of Spain.46 However, most Spanish
settlers pursued their claims for remuneration through written official
petitions called probanzas de me ritos y servicios, which they submitted to
Audiencias in the New World for review by the Royal Council. None the less,
the publication of non-official historical accounts that could be employed to
support the claims of Spanish soldiers and officers was cause for concern.47
Indeed, toward the end of the 1540s, royal decrees prohibited the circulation,
sale, publishing and writing of books about America, which, though not
rigidly enforced, resulted in a tighter control over writings concerned with the
actions of Spanish soldiers in the New World. I shall briefly explain how this
shift in policy reflects the Crowns strategy for reasserting its jurisdiction over
the Spanish settlers in general.
As the conquerors discovered, the sources of wealth in the New World
lay not so much in the finite resources like gold and silver, but rather in
the indigenous labour that was essential for the extraction of bullion from
the mines and, in later years, from the employment of the Amerindian people
44 Juan Gine s de Sepu lveda, Epistolario, 241.

45 Beginning 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 Ame rica,
1 (1938), 2534.
46 For a study on Bernal Daz, see Carmelo Sa enz de Santa Mara, Historia de una
historia: la cro nica de Bernal Daz del Castillo (Madrid: CSIC, 1984).
47 For 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 me ritos y servicios (Leiden: Brill, 2011), Chapter 2.
LUNA NA
in agricultural production and stock-raising. Such labour could be secured

through enforcing labour service upon a community of Amerindian people,
by a process that was officially known as an encomienda de Indios. Spanish
settlers often considered the possession of an encomienda as a medium
through which to claim and occupy positions of political power in local
government.48 While not all settlers were encomenderos, those who
possessed encomiendas constituted a powerful social group whose political
and economic clout increasingly challenged royal authority in the Indies.
The highly disproportionate number of encomiendas in the hands of only
a few encomenderos (Corte s is reported to have had 23,000 Indians in his
encomiendas)49 threatened to reproduce the kind of lord-vassal social
order and relationship that the Catholic Monarchs had sought to minimize
in Spain shortly after 1492. The socio-economic ascendancy of the

encomenderos and the abuses which that ascendancy sometimes led to
(e.g., the unofficial adoption of titles and surnames that suggested the
ennoblement of its possessor, like Don or Don a, or the adoption of
illustrious or fine-sounding surnames, as happened in the case of Bernal
Daz who added del Castillo to his name in 1550), attracted the attention
of royal officials, and also that of a former encomendero and leader of
the Indianist movement, a Dominican friar named Bartolome de las Casas.
In the three treatises that he submitted to the Junta and Charles V, Las
Casas diagnosed the problems, proposed solutions and generated specific
plans for their successful execution. These treatises are, respectively, the
Brevissima relacion de la destruycion de las Indias (Sevilla: Sebastia n
Trujillo, 1552), Entre los remedios que refirio por mandado del emperardor
rey nuestro sen or para reformacio n de las Indias (Sevilla: Ja come
Cromberger, 1552) and Representacio n dirigida por el padre Las Casas al
Emperador (s.l., s.n.).50 Included in his proposed recommendations for
the scrutiny of the Council of the Indies, were the dismantling of the
encomienda system, and the restoration of the Crowns rights of direct
control over the Indians as its vassals. Reports of excessive abuses committed
48 Jay Kinsbruner, The Colonial Spanish-American City: Urban Life in the Age of
Atlantic Capitalism (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2005), 36.
49 Ernst Scha fer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias: su historia, organizacio n y
labor administrativa hasta la terminacio n de la Casa de Austria, 2 vols (Sevilla: Gra ficas
Sevilla, 1947), II, 272.
50 For a transcription of Las Casas Relacio n, see Coleccio n de documentos ine ditos para
la historia de Espan a, ed. Feliciano Ramrez de Arellano, Jose Sancho & Francisco de
Zabalburu, 113 vols (Madrid: Imprenta de Miguel Ginesta, 1879) LXXI, 42140. For a
discussion of Las Casas involvement in the formulation of the New Laws regarding
encomiendas etc., see Manuel Gime nez Ferna ndez, Fray Bartolome de Las Casas: A
Biographical Sketch, in Bartolome 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), 9296.
by the conquerors in Peru and New Granada against the indigenous

population strengthened Las Casas case for such reforms. 51
Juan Friede points out that although Las Casas activism directly
threatened the economic welfare of the encomenderos, his pro-Amerindian
activism succeeded because it was part of a movement which already
embraced broad governmental circles and a large part of society.52 Friede
notes, however, that policies designed to curtail the Spanish conquerors
abuse of the indigenous population arose not so much in response to the
activism of people like Las Casas, or because of intellectual or moral
disquiet, but rather from the need for efficient social organization that
followed the period of military conquest.53 Charles V articulated his stance
toward the petitions received from the Spanish encomenderos in the
Instrucciones, written for his son Prince Philip (later Philip II) in 1548,
almost a decade before he abdicated.54 Charles V speaks with candid clarity
of the challenges that the unruly behaviour of the Spanish conquerors,
as well as the corruption of royal officials, posed for those attempting
to secure royal authority in Spanish America. He thus advises Prince Philip
to keep himself informed about developments there, to insist upon obedi-
ence to the Crown, and to maintain his royal authority by keeping a check
on both the claims made and the abuses committed by the Spanish settlers.
According to Charles V, gaining the good will of the Amerindian popula-
tion and controlling the abuses committed by the Spanish soldiers were
interrelated objectives, both essential for preserving royal ascendancy.
Recognizing the many differing opinions that the issue of the encomienda
provoked among royal officials, Charles V underscores the importance
of being kept well informed. Finally, he confirms that his counsellors
should possess a very clear understanding of the matters of the New World
and que tengan principal fin y respecto de guardar la preeminencia real, y lo
que toca al bien comu n de las dichas Indias. His Instrucciones clearly attest
to the importance of the encomienda issue in Charles Vs policy toward
America and his concern to maintain and strengthen his royal jurisdiction
over the Spanish settlers and the Amerindian population.
The caution, even distrust underlying Charles Vs Instrucciones is
noteworthy, and was rooted in his personal experience not only gained
through reading responses from the conquerors and settlers to the New Laws
of 1542, but, more specifically, through having had to contend with the
51 For 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 e tica en la conquista de Ame rica
(Madrid: CSIC, 1984), 16398.
52 Juan Friede, Las Casas and Indigenism in the Sixteenth Century, in Bartolome de
las Casas in History, ed. Friede and Keen, 127236 (p. 128).
53 Friede, Las Casas and Indigenism, 129.
54 Corpus documental de Carlos V, ed. Manuel Ferna ndez A lvarez, 5 vols (Salamanca:
Gra ficas Europa, 1975), II, 56992.
LUNA NA
rebellion that the New Laws provoked (15441548) among the Spanish
settlers living in Peru. Guillermo Lohmann-Villena, who has studied the
doctrines, arguments and justifications that the Spanish conquerors in Peru
put forward in attempting to legitimize their rebellion, believes that the
conflicts which broke out there had made an indelible impression upon
Charles V, for, at the time when he wrote the Instrucciones, not only had
the Spanish settlers overthrown the Viceroy, Blasco Nu n ez Vela, the man he
had sent to Peru to succeed Gonzalo Pizarro and enforce the New Laws,
but they had also murdered him in a conflict with royalist forces on 18
January 1546.55 Charles Vs Instrucciones make it abundantly evident that
the rebellion of the Spanish settlers of Peru and throughout Spanish America
heightened the Crowns awareness of the need for more rigorous policies
to bring the Spanish settlers under stricter control. These policies would
seek to assert royal sovereignty through the reform of the encomienda
and through the restrictions placed on the publication of historical and
political writings, while seeking to defuse the controversy over the legality
of employing violence as a means to subject the Amerindian populations
to Spanish rule.
The New Laws as drafted in 1542 targeted encomenderos by seeking
to establish that the Crown, and not the encomenderos, held jurisdiction over
the Indians in the encomiendas and over their labour.56 The final draft of the
New Laws called for the direct vassalage of the Indians to the Crown (Leyes y
ordenanc as nuevamente hechas por su magestad pa[ra] la governacion de
las Indias y buen tratamiento y conservacion de los indios [Alcala de
Henares: Juan de Brocar, 1543]). Among the ordinances that most
incensed the encomenderos were those that planned to reduce existing
encomienda grants, which stated that vacant encomiendas were to revert to
the Crown, which prohibited the slavery of the Indian peoples, and which
revoked the right of settlers to inherit or assign encomiendas.57 A section in
the New Laws also specified that conquerors that had participated in the
conflicts between Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro, and in the civil
wars of Peru (15371548) were to be deprived of their encomienda grants.
Additionally, the New Laws prohibited public servants and members of
religious institutions from holding encomienda grants.58 This meant that
most, if not all, encomenderos were deprived of their encomienda grants.
55 John Hemming, La conquista de los Incas. 2nd ed. (Me xico: FCE, 2000), 31516.
56 For a transcription, with historical introduction, of the New Laws, see Antonio Muro
Orejo n, Las Leyes Nuevas de 1542 1543. Ordenanzas para la gobernacio n de las Indias y buen
tratamiento y conservacio n de los indios, ed. Antonio Muro Orejo n, 2a ed. (Sevilla: Gra ficas
Sevilla, 1961).
57 These correspond to articles 26, 27 and 30. See Silvio A. Zavala, La encomienda
indiana, (Madrid: Imprenta Hele nica, 1935), 7982.
58 Article 31.
When the New Laws were passed in 1543, they provoked undesired
responses, not only from the encomenderos themselves, but also from soldiers
who did not possess encomiendas, but who were indispensable to their proper
management. Throughout Spanish America, Spanish settlers were generally
reluctant to comply with the New Laws, if not openly and violently opposed
to them. The fact that the Royal Council reconsidered and revoked certain
controversial sections of the New Laws, in particular those that prohibited
the allocation of new encomienda grants and those that rescinded grants
to encomenderos associated with the Pizarro-Almagro wars, clearly indicates
that the widespread political and eventual military mobilization of the
settlers in Peru against the implementation of the new legislation was
perceived and feared to be too big a threat to the Crowns overall authority
in the New World.59 What the Comendador Mayor of Castile, Juan de Zun iga
y Avellaneda, wrote in favour of revocation, confirms that this was indeed the
case. In a report he submitted to Charles V, Zun iga y Avellaneda urges him
to suspend the laws in order to avoid having to conquistar dos veces aquellas
provincias, una de los indios e otra de los espan oles.60
The impact of this crisis on the publication of books about America can
be assessed from the existence of a royal decree issued on 28 November 1548,
which ordered the confiscation of circulating manuscript copies of Las Casas
Confesionario.61 This confessionary, which Las Casas none the less managed
to print (Sevilla: Sebastia n Trujillo, 1552), instructed confessors in Spanish
America to deny absolution to encomenderos who were unwilling to com-
pensate the indigenous people for damages and abuses. Like Juan Gine s
de Sepu lvedas Democrates secundus, Las Casas Confesionario dealt with the
still raging controversy over whether the Spanish war in America and the
conquerors fight to preserve the institution of encomienda were just causes.
In his Confesionario Las Casas sought to promote the implementation
of the New Laws by making the granting of absolution conditional upon
the penitents swearing on oath to give up any property or wealth obtained
through the forced labour of Indians held within encomiendas. Extending
his efforts to undermine the interests of encomenderos, Las Casas opposed
the publication of works favourable to their cause, including Ferna ndez de
Oviedos latest addition to his Historia general y natural de las Indias (Sevilla:
Juan Cromberger, 1535) in 1548.62 A participant in the Spanish military
actions in the Caribbean, Ferna ndez de Oviedo aspired to become Charles Vs
59 Coleccio n de documentos para la historia de la formacio n social de hispanoame rica,

1493 1810, 5 vols (Madrid: CSIC, 19531962), I, 23637.
60 Carta Magna de los indios: fuentes constitucionales, 1534 1609, ed. Luciano Peren a
& Carlos Baciero, Corpus Hispanorum de Pace 27 (Salamanca: Univ. Pontificia de Salamanca,
1988), 249.
62 Jesu s Mara Carillo Castillo, The Historia general y natural de las Indias by
Gonzalo Ferna ndez de Oviedo, Huntington Library Quarterly, 65:34 (2002), 32144.
LUNA NA
royal chronicler, attempting to make an impression on the emperor by offering

him a history of the Indies in Castilian that drew on his first-hand experiences.
In the Historia general Ferna ndez de Oviedo described the people and the
geography of the New World, lauded the discovery of America by Spain, and
engaged in a dehumanizing discourse about Amerindians that implicitly
justified their subjection through violence.
The difficulties that Ferna ndez de Oviedo confronted as he sought to
publish his manuscript in the period between 1546 and 1549 arose from
the highly politicized atmosphere that the controversy over the encomienda
system created in Spain. The culmination of the controversy, and its effect
on attitudes to the Spanish conquest, took place in a meeting convoked by
the Council of the Indies in the second Junta of Valladolid (15501551).63
A detailed analysis of the confrontation between Sepu lveda and Las Casas
at the Junta is beyond the scope of this study. Suffice it to say that their
failure to persuade the members of the Junta in one direction or another
attests to the Crowns irresolution over the issue of the justice or injustice
of the conquest. To be sure, the issue of whether there was a just cause
for conquest and war, as Zavala infers from Chapter 9 of the Recopilacio n
de leyes de los reynos de las Indias (Madrid: Julia n de Paredes, 1681),
remained unsettled until the end of the seventeenth century.64 However,
after the confrontation between Sepu lveda and Las Casas at the Junta
of Valladolid in 1550, the Crown became increasingly determined to exert
more control over the conquest controversy and the discussions it provoked.
Thus, during the course of the Junta, the Crown issued a royal decree, on 5
September 1550, requesting that the officials at the Casa de Contratacio n
in Seville keep a detailed register of the books that were imported to Spanish
America.65
Additional decrees specifically impinging upon the publication and
circulation of historical writings about America followed. Unapologetic for
having written the Democrates secundus, Sepu lveda proceeded to write the
Apologia pro libro de iustis belli causis, in which he refuted the criticisms of
the Salamanca/Alcala jurymen and theologians. Defiant, he circumvented
the Spanish Royal Councils opposition to the publication of his Democrates
secundus by submitting the Apologia for publication in Rome in 1550. After
its publication there, the Apologia was immediately subject to confiscation
63 The 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 Gonza lez-
Rodrguez, La junta de Valladolid convocada por el Emperador, in La e tica en la conquista de
Ame rica: Francisco de Vitoria y la Escuela de Salamanca, coord. Luciano Peren a (Madrid:
CSIC, 1984), 199228.
64 Silvio Zavala, Herna n Corte s ante la justificacio n de su conquista, Revista Hispana
de Ame rica, 92 (juliodiciembre, 1981), 4969 (p. 68).
and its importation to Spanish America was prohibited, as evidenced by

two royal decrees issued on 19 October and 3 November 1550.66 The issue of
additional decrees in 1553 and in subsequent years points to the Crowns
unrelenting attempt to control the circulation, printing, and sale of books
related to the history of Spains actions in America. For example, on 17
November 1553, Lo pez de Go maras Hispania victrix primera y segunda
parte de la historia general de las Indias (Medina del Campo: Guillermo de
Millis, 1553) was prohibited from circulation in Spanish America and all
existing copies were ordered to be confiscated and sent to the Council of
the Indies.67 In addition to banning specific works that took issue with the
Spanish conquest controversy, such as Fray Vicente Palavecinos Iure belli
adversus ynfidelis (s.l., s.n.) and Instructione recte (s.l., s.n.), Spanish laws
were also aimed to prevent the circulation of unlicensed publications: for
instance, a royal decree, dated 21 September 1556, outlawed the publication

and sale of books that were not approved by the Council of the Indies.68 This
ordinance was reissued on 14 August 1560 and, again, on 7 August 1566.69
This tightening of control to limit and regulate the production of all books
on themes related to the Spanish conquest and settlement of America
culminated in the establishment of an official post for a chief chronicler of
the Indies on 16 August 1572.70 All writings about the conquest and Spanish
America were to be gathered and made exclusively available to the royal
chronicler appointed.
Conclusion
Hortensia Calvo observes that in the colonies, the printing press served
the ideological, political, and administrative purpose of Spain, adding that,
in contrast to the position in Europe, the printing press served to consolidate
the status-quo in Mexico.71 The printing of religious literature in diverse
Amerindian languages illustrates that the printing press was understood to
66 Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, 793.

67 Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, 794. For more details on the
interrogations carried out among the booksellers in Seville in connection with the
effectuation of the decree, see Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, I, 181. Marcel
Bataillon draws a correlation between the prohibition of Goma ras works in 1553 and 1566
and the stamping out of Martn Corte s rebellion in 1566. See William Mejas Lo pez and
Charles Amiel, La Ame rica colonial en su historia y literatura (Lima: Fondo Editorial de la
Pontificia Univ. Cato lica del Peru , 1998), 198205.
68 Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, II, 79798 and 806.
69 For an extensive discussion of the royal decrees issued prior to and after 1556,
see Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, 18892.
70 Toribio Medina, Historia de la imprenta, 3536. 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 cro nica oficial, 10203.
71 Calvo, The Politics of Print, 27879.
LUNA NA
have utility for the Christianizing and Hispanicizing of Amerindian subjects.

Yet the very technology that facilitated the imposition of Spanish rule in
Mexico*through, for instance, the printing of legislation so as to extract
taxes from Amerindian, mestizo, and mulato subjects*could also impede
Hispanicization and undermine the immediate interests of the Crown. This
is illustrated in the conflict between the Crown and the Franciscans, who
viewed their ethnographic and linguistic studies as instrumental for
bringing eschatological prophecies to fruition. Cross-cultural collaborations
between Spanish friars and Amerindian scholars were vulnerable to the
latters appropriation of the Western book for the preservation of indigenous
values, as suggested by the publication of a book entitled, Huehuetlahtolli,
que contiene las platicas que los padres y madres hicieron a sus hijos y a sus
hijas y los sen ores a sus vasallos, todas llenas de doctrina moral y politica
(Me xico: s.n., [1599?]). The Huehuetlahtolli of the Aztecs were the words
of the elders, and consisted of ritualistic speeches about these values
delivered on various civic and domestic occasions.72 A similar dynamic of
simultaneously imposing and subverting authority can be seen to be at work
through the printing press. While the printing of geographic, metallurgic and
ethnographic studies facilitated the exploitation of the New Worlds natural
resources for the Crown and to the benefit of the Spanish settlers, the
printing of legal templates and encomienda documents enabled the Spanish
settler-litigators to resist the Crowns attempts to act in ways contrary to
their economic and political interests. The determination with which the
Crown sought to exert control over the printing press in Spanish America
and over the circulation of inconvenient books proves without doubt the
potential of information technologies*then, as now*for assisting opposition
and insurrection.
72 Gary Tomlinson, Ideologies of Aztec Song, Journal of the American Musicological

Society, 48:3 (1995), 34379 (p. 362).

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This article was downloaded by: [Pontificia Universidad Javeria]

On: 07 April 2015, At: 12:57

Bulletin of Spanish Studies: Hispanic

Contesting the Word: The Crown and

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14753820.2012.684923

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Contesting the Word: The Crown

Providing a global survey of Spanish early modern printed books for

1 Alexander S. Wilkinson, Iberian Books. Libros ibericos. Books Published in Spanish

ISSN 1475-3820 print/ISSN 1478-3428 online/12/04/000575-22

Not Just a Medium for Evangelization

a second predominant category that is intimately related to religious texts,

3 Alison P. Weber, Religious Literature in Early Modern Spain, in The Cambridge

into indigenous languages, more than half (seventeen out of thirty-one)

orders focused on studying different native languages, Walter Mignolo

by offering a reproduction of the alphabet, syllabaries, spelling, and

10 For a description of cartillas, see Vctor Infantes, De la cartilla al libro, Bulletin

Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco in 1536, which was a higher education institution

followed, including the work of the UNAM graduate, Juan de Cardenas,

[Me xico: Antonio Ricardo, 1578] is a case in point), the printing of

Another example is Juan Ferna ndez Salvadors lecture, for degree

20 Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Tu mulo imperial de la gran ciudad de Mexico

The Franciscan Orders Inconvenient Books

24 Recopilacio n de leyes, IX: tt. 23, ley 14.

new territories,27 a problem which, thanks to Espinosa, Philip II

from collecting ethnographic information. On 4 November 1525, for instance,

de Sahagu n (14991590). In this Historia general, Sahagu n provides a rich

notes Baudot, generated ethnographic research about these leaders, as

35 Baudot, Utopia and History in Mexico, 48.

eschatologically-inspired movement shows, the research and publication

Royal Jurisdiction and the Crisis indiana

Herna n Corte s, whose organized gatherings in Valladolid and Seville

40 Quoted in Ramos Pe rez, Xime nez de Quesada, 113.

Spanish soldiers authored their own chronicles, as illustrated in the Historia

44 Juan Gine s de Sepu lveda, Epistolario, 241.

in agricultural production and stock-raising. Such labour could be secured

in Spain shortly after 1492. The socio-economic ascendancy of the

by the conquerors in Peru and New Granada against the indigenous

59 Coleccio n de documentos para la historia de la formacio n social de hispanoame rica,

royal chronicler, attempting to make an impression on the emperor by offering

and its importation to Spanish America was prohibited, as evidenced by

instance, a royal decree, dated 21 September 1556, outlawed the publication

66 Reyes Go mez, El libro en Espan a y Ame rica, 793.

have utility for the Christianizing and Hispanicizing of Amerindian subjects.

72 Gary Tomlinson, Ideologies of Aztec Song, Journal of the American Musicological

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