Agustín de Vetancurt, Teatro mexicano (Mexico, 1698)
A natural history of the New World written by a Mexican-born Franciscan who called himself "Mexicano" on his own title page, printed in Mexico City by a woman, and built around Nahuatl names. Its first part opens by refuting the ancient doctrine that the torrid zone could not sustain life, prints a ledger of what Spain brought and what the land already had, and stops in the middle of a chapter on pearls to record a Spanish soldier tearing an ornament from an Indian woman's face.
Why this wins its question: Vetancurt reaches English almost only as a bibliographic entry, or as the source of a sentence about a convent, and always through the 1870-71 Mexico reprint; what the 1698 Mexico folio actually contains is not on the open web in any form a reader can check. This object opens it and quotes it: a title page on which an American-born friar writes "Mexicano" beside his own name and a woman's imprint closes the sheet; an introduction that states the commission, the eight months in Latin and the arithmetic of seventy-four foundations and one hundred and fifty lives; a first chapter that refutes the ancient doctrine of an uninhabitable torrid zone using the authorities that taught it; and two facing inventories of what Spain brought and what the land had, the second written in Nahuatl. It refuses to stop there. The same folios carry a government destroying a wheat crop on a false health finding, and a soldier tearing a pearl out of an Indian woman's face - printed by a Franciscan in Mexico City, in a book licensed by his superiors.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
The title page of the copy read here reads "TEATRO MEXICANO DESCRIPCION BREVE DE LOS SVCESSOS EXEMPLARES, HISTORICOS, POLITICOS, Militares, y Religiosos del nuevo mundo Occidental de las Indias", and gives the author as "EL R.P. Fr. AVGVSTIN DE VETANCVRT, Mexicano, hijo de la misma Provincia, Difinidor actual, Ex-Lector de Theologia, Predicador Jubilado General, y su Chronista Apostolico, Vicario, y Cura Ministro, por su MAGESTAD, de la Iglesia Parrochial de S. JOSEPH de los Naturales de Mexico". The author states his American birth in the second word of his own name line, and his parish is the Indian parish of Mexico City.
The imprint at the foot of that page is "CON LICENCIA DE LOS SVPERIORES. En Mexico por Doña Maria de Benavides Viuda de Iuan de Ribera. Año de 1698." The press that produced this folio was run, at least under this imprint, by a woman trading in her own name as the widow of the previous printer. What her share of the work was, and how long she held the shop, is not stated anywhere on the sheets read here.
The Introducion on printed folio 1 states the commission and its arithmetic rather than leaving them to be inferred. The author was joined to the Provincia del Santo Evangelio by the patent letters of the Minister General and the Comisario General de Indias and "me eligiò por Escritor, y Colector de ella, para que desde el año de 1600. hasta el de 1681. recogiesse lo sucedido"; "en termino de ocho meses en lenguaje Latino escrevi veinte y vna fundaciones en la Provincia: cinco de Monasterios de Religiosas, doce de Tampico, y treinta y seis de la Nueva-Mexico; que hazen setenta y quatro fundaciones"; and the lives came to "ochenta y siete" illustrious men plus "sesenta y tres" religious women, "que hazen por todas ciento y cinquenta vidas". Both totals check against their parts.
The first chapter of the first treatise is an argument against classical authority from American evidence. It opens "CALVMNIA FVE DE LA antigua cosmografia en sus primeros tiempos contra este nuevo mundo llamar la region desierta, infatigable, y enemiga de la vida humana", a zone called "incognita, torrida, fogosa, incapaz de plantas y animales", and it recalls that Charles V "mandò borrar à las Columnas de Hercules el Non dejando q se leyesse el Plus, y el Vltra". The margins of the same page cite Solorzano, Aristotle's De caelo, Augustine Contra haereses and Isaiah - the refutation is conducted inside the authorities it is overturning.
Printed folio 44 sets out the transfer as two facing inventories. Paragraph 141: "Debele à España aquesta tierra de las semillas el Trigo, la Cevada, el Aniz, el Culantro, los Cominos, Garvanzos, Alvergas, ò Alverjones, Abas, y Lanteja; de las plantas Lechugas, Coles, Vetorradas, Cardos, Escarolas, Verengenas, Espinacas, Azelgas, Sanahorias, Calabazas de Castilla, Melones, Pepinos, Sandias, Peregil, Ajos, y Cebollas; de todo se da en abundancia." Paragraph 142 answers it: "Proveyò el Autor de la naturaleza en lugar de aquellas semillas el Mays, Frisoles, Tlalcacahuates, Papas, Chayotes, Calabazas talamayotes... Tomates, Chiles, Palmitos, Tzatzamoli, Cacomites, y Xicamas; al Mays llaman Tlaoli", of which the Chalco grain "es mas vsual porque al cozerlo crece, y de el se hazen tortillas, que es el pan vsual".
The same folio records an internal American transfer under a Nahuatl name: of the tubers it says "las Papas se llaman Peloncamotli, porq vino la semilla del Perù". Beans are given their Nahuatl name too - "A los Frisoles llaman Yetl, los ay blancos, negros, y chichimecos" - and the peanut appears as Tlalcacahuates, which "se dan debajo de tierra como las Papas... tostados se venden como los chochos en España". The book's working vocabulary for the food of New Spain is Nahuatl, in a Spanish text, sixty-six folios long.
Folio 44 also prints an official food scare and its retraction. Of the Blanquillo wheat, "el año passado de 78. passò su contradicion, depusieron de el que era causa de enfermedades graves, y aun le negaron el que fuesse Trigo, por lo qual se mandò que lo sembrado comiessen los animales, y lo que està en Arina se derramasse, y con dolor de sus dueños se hechò mucha Arina en los rios, y se daba à los puercos el grano, el tiempo descubriò la inocencia del Trigo, y volviose otra vez à vsar". A colonial administration destroyed a crop on a mistaken health finding, and the correction is printed in the same sentence as the order.
The cost is in the book, in the chapter on pearls, and it is not softened. Folio 24 says the Margarita fishery has ceased "por justos juyzios de Dios", and that the pious give as the cause "que porque huvo quien las estancara queriendo fuesse para vnos la riqueza q Dios avia criado para todos". It then reports that a soldier, repeatedly refused a pearl worn as a nose ornament by an Indian noblewoman, "con audacia atrevido llegò el Soldado y con violencia le arranco con la perla la punta de la naris de donde pendia con arto dolor de la tal India"; the Indians broke the peace, took the pearl from him and smashed it "en castigo", never again admitted Spaniards to that kingdom, "y se perdio lo precioso de las almas mas estimadas por Dios que las mismas perlas". A friar of the province printed this in Mexico in 1698; it is his report of an incident he does not date or source, not an independently attested one.
The closing folio shows the same method applied to birds, and shows the ocean the book faces. It names the hummingbird as Huitzitzilin, whose feathers are so prized "de que hazen Imagenes como si fueran de pinzel, de ellas ay vn ornamento de Casulla, y Dalmaticas en el Convento de N.P.S. Francisco de Mexico"; it lists Cozcacuauhtli, Huatzin, Tzopilotl, Tocatl, the bees called Xicotli and their wax Xicocuitlatl, and the chameleon Tapayaxin; and it reports the Manucodiatas "en las Islas Filipinas", of which the author says "algunos he tenido en mi poder, que traen de Filipinas". Nahua featherwork is described as liturgical vestments in use in the Franciscan house of Mexico City, not as a vanished antiquity.
What this digitisation is has to be stated with what it says. It carries the Primera Parte alone: printed folio 66 ends "y con esto concluyo con esta primera parte, y sus tratados", and the Chronica de la Provincia del Santo Evangelio and the Menologio franciscano that complete the Teatro mexicano are not in these sheets. Within the part that is here, the frame is imperial and providential - the first chapter celebrates an emperor "ocupando dos mundos" - the Indians appear as the givers of names and the users of plants rather than as named informants, and the author, who was cura of the Indian parish of San José de los Naturales, nowhere in the pages read here says which of his Nahua parishioners told him any of it.