Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T12:19:23.744Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Primer for a New World

Fr. Pedro de Gante's Cartilla para enseñar a leer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2020

Estefanía Yunes Vincke
Estefanía Yunes Vincke*
Affiliation:
Independent Researcher ennadagan19@yahoo.com.mx
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Cartilla para enseñar a leer (1569), attributed to Flemish Franciscan Pedro de Gante, was one of the most important primers from the early years of the viceroyalty of New Spain. Nevertheless, the primer's importance during the process of cultural contact has been largely ignored. As did other primers of the period, the Cartilla contained the most important prayers, but what sets the Cartilla aside is that its selection of prayers is presented in a trilingual version, in Castilian, Latin, and Nahuatl. The content of the Cartilla invites the question as to why Gante, a missionary focused on writing doctrinal works in Nahuatl, would compose a primer that is trilingual, but raises another that is perhaps more perplexing: Why were most of the prayers in Castilian? In this article, I intend to shed a light on Gante's decision to create a complex tool that could be employed by a mixed audience of Castilian, creole, mestizo and Nahua children. By doing this, Gante unwittingly started a process of cultural contact in which language played a pivotal role. The Cartilla thus presents itself as a multifaceted tool that helped shaped the culture of the Basin of Mexico during the early years of the viceroyalty.

Keywords

Nahuatl Christian textstrilingual primersFranciscanscultural contactlanguage dissemination
Type
Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 77 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 129 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author wishes to acknowledge Alexander Samson, who provided valuable feedback on an earlier version of the manuscript. I am deeply grateful to Mark van der Enden, who commented on various drafts of this research note. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for The Americas for their insightful comments and their help in shaping the final form of the manuscript. Research for this article has benefitted from the generous support of the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT; Mexico) and the Joint Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies.

References

1. There were other languages spoken by other ethnic groups in the Basin of Mexico, such as Otomi. However, the most widely spoken language of the area was Nahuatl.

2. Kobayashi, José María, “La conquista educativa de los hijos de Asís,” Historia Mexicana 22:4 (April–June 1973): 437–464Google Scholar; José María Kobayashi, La educación como conquista. Empresa franciscana en México, (Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1996),180.

3. Kobayashi, “La conquista educativa de los hijos de Asís,” 437–464; Kobayashi, La educación como conquista. Empresa franciscana en México,180.

4. Victor Infantes, “De la cartilla al libro,” Bulletin Hispanique 97:1 (1995): 40–41, 48, 55; José Sánchez Herrero, “Alfabetización y catequesis en España y en América durante el siglo XVI,” in X Simposio Internacional de Teología de la Universidad de Navarra, J.-I. Saranyan, P. Tineo, A. M. Pazos, M. Lluch-Baixaulli, and M. Pilar Ferrer, eds. (Navarre: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Navarra, 1990), 1:246, 249; Victor Infantes, “La educación impresa,” Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 3 (2004): 233–234; Lorenzo Rodríguez, “Un capítulo de la historia de la escritura en América: la enseñanza de las primeras letras a los indios en el siglo XVI,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos 56:1 (1999): 52; P. F. Rueda Ramírez, “Las cartillas para aprender a leer: la circulación de un texto escolar en Latinoamérica,” Cultura Escrita & Sociedad 11 (2010): 21.

5. Lorenzo Rodríguez, “Un capítulo de la historia de la escritura en América,” 52; Pedro Rueda Ramírez, “Las cartillas para aprender a leer,” 21.

6. Pedro de Gante, Cartilla para enseñar a leer (Mexico: Casa de Pedro Ocharte [1569], Academia Mexicana de la Educación, 1959).

7. Infantes, “De la cartilla al libro,” 52.

8. Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico (Oakland: University of California Press, 1966), 48–49; Luis Resines Llorente, “Los agustinos y los catecismos para los indios en América,” Coloquio Traducción Monacal: La Labor de los Agustinos desde el Humanismo hasta la Época Contemporánea (2005), https://docplayer.es/82367576-Los-agustinos-y-los-catecismos-para-los-indios-en-america.html (accessed November 19, 2019), 3; Luis Fernando Lara, “Para la historia de la expansión del español por México,” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 56:2 (2008): 297–362.

9. Emilio Valton, El primer libro de alfabetización en América: cartilla para enseñar a leer, impresa por Pedro Ocharte en México, 1569, estudio crítico, bibliográfico e histórico (Mexico City: Librería Robledo, 1947).

10. Estefanía Yunes Vincke, Books and Codices: Transculturation, Language Dissemination and Education in the Works of Friar Pedro de Gante (PhD diss.: University College London, 2014).

11. Ignacio Márquez Rodiles, Cartilla para enseñar a leer de fray Pedro de Gante (Mexico City: Academia Mexicana de la Educación, 1959), 6; Valton, cited in Gloria Bravo Ahuja, Los materiales didácticos para la enseñanza del español a los indígenas mexicanos, (Mexico City: Colegio de México, 1977),19–20; Valton, El primer libro de alfabetización en América: cartilla para enseñar a leer, impresa por Pedro Ocharte en México.

12. Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico, 48–49.

13. Antonio Rubial García, La hermana pobreza: el franciscanismo de la Edad Media a la Evangelización Novohispana, (Mexico City: UNAM, 1996), 168–169; Manuel Aguilar Moreno, “The Indio Ladino as a Cultural Mediator in the Colonial Society,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 33 (2002): 152–153; Kobayashi, La educación como conquista, 192–1903.

14. Josefina Muriel, Hospitales de la Nueva España: fundaciones del siglo XVI (Mexico City: UNAM, 1990), 116–117.

15. This was a very common financing method and saved the crown added costs. Completing this task, however, was not easy for the administrators of such places as the Hospital de los Naturales. They did not print the material themselves, but needed to enter into agreements with the printers regarding the publishing of their material and the resulting financial implications. Pedro Rueda Ramírez, “Las cartillas para aprender a leer,” 23; Fermín de los Reyes Gómez, El libro en España y América: legislación y censura (siglos XV–XVIII) (Madrid: Arco/Libros, 2000).

16. Gante, petition, February 15, 1552, cited in Ernesto Torre Villar, Fray Pedro de Gante, maestro y civilizador de América (Mexico City: Seminario de Cultura Mexicana, 1973), 46–55.

17. Jorge Klor de Alva, “Nahua Colonial Discourse and the Appropriation of the (European) Other,” Archives de sciences sociales des religions 37:77 (January–March 1992): 27–28.

18. Klor de Alva, “Nahua Colonial Discourse,” 27–28.

19. Amber Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico: Colonial Subjectivity and the Circulation of Native Knowledge,” The Conquest All Over Again: Nahuas and Zapotecs Thinking, Writing, and painting Spanish colonialism: 124–143 (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2011), 282–283; Victor Infantes, “La educación impresa,” 231; G. Payas Puigarnau, “The Role of Translation in the Building of National Identities: The Case of Colonial Mexico 1521–1821” (PhD diss.: Ottawa University, 2005), 7–8; Elena Irene Zamora Ramírez, “Los problemas de traducción del catecismo en América en el siglo XVI,” Lingua, cultura e discorso nella traduzione dei francescani (Perugia: Pubblicazione dell'Università per Stranieri di Perugia, 2011), 567–568; Mark Christensen, “The Use of Nahuatl in Evangelization and the Ministry of Sebastian Assumption College,” Ethnohistory 59:4 (Fall 2012): 692.

20. Bravo Ahuja, Los materiales didácticos, 33; Pilar Máynez, “Los primeros registros alfabéticos en la Nueva España,” Boletín del Instituto de Investigaciones Bibliográficas 8:1–2 (2013): 14; Richard Konetzke, Colección de documentos para la historia de la formación social de Hispanoamérica, 1493–1810, vol.1 (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1953), 272; Justino Cortés Castellanos, El catecismo en pictogramas de Fr. Pedro de Gante, (Madrid: Publicaciones de la Fundación Universitaria Española, Biblioteca Histórica Hispanoamericana, vol.10, 1987), 50.

21. Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico,” 282–283; Payas Puigarnau, The Role of Translation, 7–8; Infantes, “La educación impresa,” 231; Christensen, “The Use of Nahuatl in Evangelization,” 692.

22. Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico,” 279.

23. Solange Alberro, Del gachupín al criollo: o de cómo los españoles dejaron de serlo, (Mexico City: Colegio de México, 2006), 55; Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico,” 280–281.

24. Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico,” 286–287; Martin Nesvig, “Spanish Men, Indigenous Language, and Informal Interpreters in Postcontact Mexico,” Ethnohistory 59:4 (2012): 747.

25. Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico,” 286–287.

26. Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de la Nueva España. No. 97. Hispanic society of America, (1914):33, cited in Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico,” 286.

27. Nesvig, “Spanish Men, Indigenous Language, and Informal Interpreters in Postcontact Mexico,” 747.

28. Grass, Roland, “America's First Linguists: Their Objectives and Methods,” Hispania, vol. 48, No. 1 (March 1965), 60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de León-Portilla, Asunción Hernández, “Fray Alonso de Molina‚ lexicógrafo e indigenista,” Caravelle, Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Brésilien 76/77 (2001): 236Google Scholar; de Mendieta, Jerónimo, Historia eclesiástica indiana (Mexico: Antigua Librería [1596] 1870), 220, 551Google Scholar, 685.

29. Beililcke, Federico Beals Nagel, “El aprendizaje del idioma náhuatl entre los franciscanos y los jesuitas en la Nueva España,” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl 24 (1994): 424Google Scholar; Brian, “Don Fernando de Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Narratives of the Conquest of Mexico,” 289; Roland Grass, “America's First Linguists: Their Objectives and Methods,” 62.