The year 1536 marked the arrival of the printing press at New Spain; it was coincidental with the establishment of the Colegio de la Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, an institution of higher learning for the sons of native nobility. Within a decade the first Nahuatl language imprint was published. The Nahuas, key participants in all aspects of early Nahuatl studies, devised the compound term tepuztlahcuilolli (tepuztli: “copper,” i.e., “nonprecious metal” and tlahcuiloliztli: “act of writing something”) to describe the process of colonial book production. Apt, the term still serves, as evidenced by Ascensión León-Portilla’s study of some four and one-half centuries of printed works on the lingua franca of Middle America.
The first of two large volumes is a detailed chronology of Nahuatl scholarship around the world. Chapters are organized by century and provide historical and thematic information about the highs and lows of interest and production and the practicability of Nahuatl research, inevitably the product of political vicissitudes over the years. Volume 2 is a catalog of the printed works in Nahuatl, or materials relating to Nahuatl, spanning the period 1546-1980. It is an annotated bibliography of 2,961 items, ordered alphabetically by author with a subject index at the end. Most works were published in Mexico, although there are numerous contributions from the United States, Spain, France, Germany, and even Poland and Russia. Titles cover a gamut of subjects relating to religion, art history, and ethnohistory, with a plethora on Nahuatl philology. It is an impressive store of information. If one had a wish list regarding the bibliography, it would be for the inclusion of specifics about repositories, especially those housing the rare and obscure imprints from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
León-Portilla’s dedication to bringing together such a vast array of Nahuatl materials is commendable. Ahmo onen ocatca (“It was not in vain”). Tepuztlahcuilolli will serve as an invaluable reference tool for Nahuatl scholars everywhere.
