Mar 10, 2020 - Sale 2533

Sale 2533 - Lot 321

Price Realized: $ 6,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(MEXICAN IMPRINT--1803.) Iturrigaray, José de. Late colonial Nahuatl broadside announcing the tenure of Viceroy Iturrigaray. Letterpress broadside, 23 3/4 x 16 3/4 inches, signed in type by the author with his manuscript rubric, and signed by Ignacio de la Barrera as secretary; several small worm holes, light wear along vertical folds; uncut. Mexico, 15 October 1803

Additional Details

This broadside announces the transfer of power from outgoing viceroy Félix Berenguer de Marquina to José de Iturrigaray, who would serve until his arrest for his support of popular sovereignty in 1808. A rubric appears next to Iturrigaray's printed name which he likely signed himself.
Examples of late colonial written Nahuatl are rare, as a late 18th-century royal decree technically forbade the official use of indigenous languages. The text also stands out because its Nahuatl is lacking in Spanish loanwords, an oddity as colonial Nahuatl documents since the 16th century were typically peppered with Spanish. Instead, Vicente de la Rosa Saldívar, the official Nahuatl interpreter of the Audiencia, translated almost every Spanish term, including ones that had already made their way into everyday Nahuatl. Even the term Nueva España (New Spain, the viceroyalty that included Mexico), which is ubiquitous in the colonial Nahuatl corpus, is here rendered as Yancuic Caxtillan, the word-for-word Nahuatl equivalent. The Nahuatl renderings of Iturrigaray's titles are creative, with "General" appearing as "Yaoquizcá-yacanqui"--literally, "leader of going to war." Saldívar's motivations in translating the broadside in this manner are unclear. Nahuas themselves at the time may have been purging Spanish words from their language out of a purist ethnic pride, or it may reflect a kind of creole patriotism that sought glory in the indigenous past, rather than Spanish culture.
The text of this rare Nahuatl broadside begins "Nocnopil Joseph de Yturrigaray Técpilli monêtolti itechpa in Tlatecpantli Santiago." None traced in OCLC or at auction, but listed in Sabin 106220A. León-Portilla, "Tepuztlahcuilolli, impresos en náhuatl," page zzzzzzz describes it as one of only 7 viceroy's decrees in Nahuatl.