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Yum e mac to ah bouat
Mac to ah kin
Bin tohol cantic
U than uooh lae
[O Father, who will be
the prophet?
Who will be the sun priest
Who will correctly interpret
The word of these glyphs?]1
The Chilam Balam of Chumayel
One of the most striking sights for visitors to modern-day Mexico City's Templo Mayor, the archaeological remains of the principal temple of pre-conquest Tenochtitlán, are the three quotations from conquest era works (by Cortés, Motolinía and Bernal Díaz respectively) etched in the wall to the rear of the site on Justo Sierra Street, adjacent to the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. While each of the three inscriptions presents an epic depiction of the pre-Hispanic city which Cortés encountered prior to the overthrow of Moctezuma, and are hence intended to celebrate the grandeur of pre-Hispanic civilization as well as to underscore the alterity of Nahua religion, it is nevertheless rather conspicuous that that same celebration should be undertaken solely by three representatives of the invading culture (Cortés - the military leader, Motolinía - the paradigmatic symbol of the 'spiritual conquest', and Bernal Díaz - the 'awestruck' common soldier), and more importantly, in a language and writing system alien to the scribal culture of the pre-conquest Nahua peoples. Of course, those same imposing quotations etched in stone symbolize, by their form as much as by their content, the conception of conquest as the (attempted) substitution of one cultural logic for another, and, simultaneously, the nationalistic use of pre-Hispanic ruins to assert the contemporary culture's transition to a modernity dependent on Castilian literacy. Moreover, we might note that one block southeast of the Templo Mayor, at the intersection of Moneda and Calle Lie. Primo Verdad, stands the Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América. Here, in the small museum that has been set up at the site of the first printing press in post-conquest Mexico, visitors might contemplate a replica of the actual press that was used from 1539 onwards by the first master printer, Juan Pablos (Giovanni Paoli). Under the patronage of the Cromberger family, Pablos began the work of reproducing the cartillas (manuals for learning the alphabet), grammars and dictionaries of indigenous languages, as well as sermons, confessionaries, catechisms and other works,...