Fifty School Books from the Yucatan Peninsula, 19 th Century

Abstract

The initial purpose of this research was to develop a catalog of printed schoolbooks in the Yucatan Peninsula during the 19th century. Frequent links between the local literate elite and the dynamic activity of printing and reprinting schoolbooks in the region appeared in the process of detailed book registration. The regional catalog of nineteenth century schoolbooks appears at the end of this article in the form of an annex: it is a provisional list that will necessarily continue to grow with the contribution of researchers from southeast Mexico. For now, it is a list of fifty books printed in Campeche, Mérida and its surroundings during that century. The variety of educational branches -patented in the assembled school books- is the sum of the fields of knowledge that Mexico´s public policy designated as priorities for education at the beginning of the independent stage of the nation and after the Reformation Laws (separation of Church and State). The search and registration of schoolbooks, printed regionally, allowed documenting and writing a narrative about the relationship between local literate elites and the relevance of nineteenth-century public education in cities like Campeche and Mérida.