Agustin de la Fuente, Nahua scribe and compositor of Tlatelolco
The Nahua master of the college at Tlatelolco who wrote for Sahagun and for Pedro Oroz until Oroz died in 1596, then spent ten years as the hand behind another friar's press: everything that friar printed had passed through it. To see one book finished he learned to set type, and set almost all of it himself. His name is on no title page. It survives because the friar put it in a prologue, and because a bibliographer used it to identify who actually wrote out Sahagun's last work.
Why this wins its question: Ask who printed the Nahuatl books of sixteenth-century Mexico and the answer given everywhere is a list of Spanish, Italian and Flemish printers - Pablos, Ocharte, Ricardo, Balli. This object supplies the man on the other side of the case: a Nahua master of the Tlatelolco college who wrote out everything one friar printed over ten years, learned composition in order to see one book through, set almost all of a 709-page volume himself, and is credited by the author with its freedom from errata. It also fixes the one thing the name is usually cited for - that he was Sahagun's amanuensis - as a nineteenth-century inference rather than a document, and keeps in view that the same prologue which preserves his name was read by the man who reprinted it as proof that the friar had made great use of the ablest Indian students.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
He is named in the prologue to the Sermonario en lengua mexicana of Fr. Juan Bautista, printed at Mexico by Diego Lopez Davalos in 1606, as "Agustin de la Fuente, natural tambien de Santiago Tlatilulco, y maestro del colegio de Santa Cruz". The prologue describes him as of very good understanding and judgement, knowing "su lengua e idiotismos de ella con gran propiedad" - his own language and its idioms with great exactness.
His earlier employment is stated in the same passage: "toda su vida no ha entendido en otra cosa sino en escribir a los venerables padres Fr. Bernardino de Sahagun y Fr. Pedro Oroz (hasta que murio a veintidos de Junio del ano de mil quinientos noventa y seis)" - his whole life had gone in writing for Sahagun and for Oroz, until Oroz died on 22 June 1596. He is then called "uno de los mejores y mas liberales escribanos que ha habido en esta nacion de indios".
The claim about the friar's own books is unqualified: he had been ten years with the author, "y por su mano ha escrito y pasado todo cuanto he impreso hasta aqui y podre imprimir en muchos dias" - by his hand everything the author had printed up to then had been written and gone through, and everything he might print for many days to come.
He then crossed from manuscript into the printing house. Wanting to see the Sermonario in print, "ha aprendido a componer, y compone admirablemente, y asi va casi todo compuesto en la imprenta por el, que no ha sido de poca ayuda para que vaya bien correcto, que no lleva errata de importancia" - he learned to set type, composes admirably, and almost the whole book was set in the press by him, which was no small help towards its correctness, so that it carries no significant erratum. A Nahua master of the college is here credited with the accuracy of a 709-page printed book.
The prologue adds one more attribution, in a footnote to the same passage as printed in 1886: "Con su ayuda ha hecho el autor los tres libros de comedias que tiene para imprimir. El primero de la Penitencia y sus partes. El segundo de los principales Articulos de nuestra Santa Fe, y Parabolas del Evangelio. El tercero de Vidas de Santos." Three books of plays in Nahuatl, ready for the press, made with his help. No copy of them is recorded as printed.
The bibliographer who reprinted the prologue used this notice to answer a separate question about Sahagun's last years. Arguing that the aged missionary could no longer have written any of his final works in his own hand, he concludes: "su amanuense en aquellos dias se llamaba Agustin de la Fuente, y nos ha conservado su nombre Fr. Juan Bautista en el prologo de su Sermonario" - his amanuensis in those days was called Agustin de la Fuente, and Fr. Juan Bautista has preserved his name for us in the prologue to his Sermonario. The identification is the bibliographer's inference from the prologue, not a statement in Sahagun's own papers.
That a Nahua of the college should be setting type is not an isolated marvel in this record. The same volume's preliminary study states that the seventh and last Mexican printer of the sixteenth century, Melchor Ocharte - whose name is on the Confesonario of 1599 and the Advertencias of 1600 - had his press inside the Franciscan college of Tlatelolco, and that "los colegiales indios solian ayudar tambien a la composicion de las obras que se imprimian en su lengua". Indian collegians commonly helped compose the works printed in their language.
What the arrangement cost the man is not recorded and should not be smoothed over. Nothing printed in New Spain carries his name on its title page; his role is visible only because a friar chose to write it into a prologue, and the same bibliographer reads that prologue as evidence that the friar "saco gran partido de los estudiantes indios mas aprovechados, a quienes hacia traducir de castellano a mexicano lo que le convenia" - made great use of the ablest Indian students, having them translate whatever suited him. Nothing was found here on his wages, his dates of birth and death, his family, or whether he had any choice in the work.
What this object does not establish: which surviving manuscripts are in his hand, whether he worked on the Historia general of Sahagun or only on the late Mexico-based compilations, whether the "escribir" of the prologue means copying, composing or both, and what became of him after 1606. The Sermonario sheets themselves were not opened for this entry; the prologue is read in an 1886 transcription.