Sep 24, 2020 - Sale 2546

Sale 2546 - Lot 319

Price Realized: $ 6,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 10,000 - $ 15,000
NAHUATL BROADSIDE ANNOUNCING A NEW VICEROY (MEXICAN IMPRINT--1800.) Félix Berenguer de Marquina. Teuctequiquitzquícátzintli nónóhuian . . . Ni quin machiztilia. Letterpress broadside, 17 x 12 inches, on sealed paper, signed in type by Berenguer as Viceroy with his manuscript rubric; moderate worming and minor wear. Mexico, 18 July 1800
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A broadside which heralds the coming of a new viceroy, Félix Berenguer de Marquina (in office from 1800–03), and the exit of his predecessor Miguel José de Azanza (in office 1798-1800). It represents an effort by the crown to ensure the loyalty and understanding of indigenous people during the uncertain transition period between viceregal administrations. The broadside attempted to reassure its indigenous audience that the new viceroy Marquina would be benevolent and affectionate to Natives, insisting that he would care for and protect the entire Mexican populace. This was a time of considerable indigenous unrest; Marquina's term would include an uprising which attempted to resurrect the Aztec Empire.
Curiously, very few Spanish loanwords appear. This is a marked break from the practice of earlier colonial Nahuatl scribes who were quick to incorporate Spanish terminology. Doubtless due to a late colonial surge in indigenous ethnic pride, the authors of the broadside translate nearly every Spanish political and legal term into Nahuatl, even those that were already well entrenched in the Nahuatl lexicon. Thus, Nueva España or New Spain, ubiquitous in prior colonial Nahuatl texts and surely understood by the indigenous populace, appears here translated word-for-word as Yancuic Caxtillan; similarly, audiencia is rendered as tlatoca-tlacaquiloyan, 'lordly place where things are heard.' Though the translation is anonymous, it possibly came from scholars or students at the Colegio de San Gregorio, a school for elite Natives where scholars of indigenous languages taught. San Gregorio would produce several Nahuatl writers who wrote other similar Nahuatl broadsides and documents later in the nineteenth century. León-Portilla, "Tepuztlahcuilolli, impresos en náhuatl," page 98, describes it as one of only 7 viceroy's decrees in Nahuatl; none traced in OCLC or at auction.