Page 12 - 2019 Fall Newsletter

Books and Power After the

Fall of the Aztec Empire

Special Collections Exhibit: November 1 2019 - February 3, 2020

This year marks the quincentennial of the start of the
Spanish-led invasion (1519-1521) responsible for the fall of
the Mexica Empire in Mesoamerica. In the aftermath of this
traumatic episode, Spaniards shattered old politico-religious
hierarchies, dismantled or absorbed indigenous armies and
conscripted the native elite to help further colonization.

Books played a central role in this process. Spanish
missionaries, cosmographers, chroniclers, and physicians
wrote major studies on botany, ethnography, navigation,
indigenous languages, war, and history aided by capable,
though often reluctant, indigenous informants. Native
and mixed-race intellectuals penned their own historical
accounts, natural histories, and cosmological studies,
wrote poetry and plays, and composed lyrics and music in
Nahuatl, Spanish, and Latin. Alphabetic writing spread to
other parts of Mesoamerica where Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec,
and Maya scribes used it to write in their own languages
petitions, wills, claims, and other legal records associated
with Iberian law.

During the sixteenth century, eight printers produced over
180 different books of various runs in the Viceroyalty of
New Spain, the political jurisdiction built on the contours
of the Mexica Empire. A majority of printed books centered
on religious matter. They included catechisms, manuals for
confession and the administration of sacraments, missals,
religious chronicles, memories of religious congresses,
sermons, hagiographies, pastoral letters, and autos de fe,
transcriptions of inquisitorial courts where hundreds could
be publicly tried at one time. Other types of works included
treatises on mining, medicine, history, cosmography,
agriculture, poetry, satire, and music. The following
century, American-born Spaniards, known as criollos, took
over the book printing industry in New Spain. During this
period, about thirty printers made over 1,800 different
books, a number higher than the output of books produced
in some major European cities.

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