Of Almanacs and Magic Lanterns: Print Capitalism and Popular Apocrypha in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

In 1847 a pamphlet describing the “Prophecies of Madre Matina” appeared on the streets of Mexico City. Published by the local printing establishment of Valdés y Redondas, the text relayed a story of a pious woman’s mystical visions of national calamity decades before Mexico became independent. More troubling they spoke of happenings eerily similar to what Mexicans had experienced between 1810 and 1850: civil strife, foreign invasion, economic crisis, and secularization. In 1857 an almost identical pamphlet emerged from the presses of Luis Abadiano y Valdés. At about the same time fall adverts promoting the coming year’s almanacs reveal that the prophecies were also appearing in this quintessential popular literary genre. Indeed, Manuel Murgía’s Calendario Nigromántico (an annual staple of the famed editor’s almanac line specializing in blithe forays in the occult) featured madre Matina in 1858. Some liberal newspapers complained, but during the 1860s other printers followed suit. By the end of the decade the prophetess had become a symbolic fixture of Mexican lore representing female irrationality and popular fanaticism. For the next century she inspired devout concern, rationalist scorn, satirical derision, and reformist angst even though she was most likely entirely fictitious from the start.

This paper focuses on pamphlet printing and almanac niche marketing amidst some of the most turbulent years in Mexican history (1847-1867) in order to explain how this bit of mystical apocrypha approached cultural-touchstone status. Scrutinizing the confluence of sales strategy and the multi-faceted attempts to sell popular literary entertainment and nation-building texts, this paper argues that printers/writers, perhaps inadvertently, turned a figment of anti-liberal propaganda into an iconic social type of Mexican popular culture. The crux of this argument is a very close examination of the almanac tradition and its patterned market-driven presentation/visualization of devotional culture, information, and entertainment.