Background
Mexican collection at the Sutro library contains over a century and a half of printing and bookselling in Mexico. It has
been underutilized by researchers in Mexican history and culture. One of the characteristics that makes this collection
unique, is that it provides insight into what a late nineteenth-century Mexican bookstore would have looked like. The
collection was acquired when businessman and 24th mayor of San Francisco, Adolph Sutro, traveled to Mexico in 1889 and
purchased at auction the contents and library of the Abadiano Bookstore. This bookstore had been, until its closure shortly
after the death of Francisco Abadiano in 1883 , Mexico City’s longest running bookstore and principal publishing house and
“the culmination of a long and prestigious line of bookmen and printers.” The collection consists of books, Mexican
broadsides, and pamphlets dating from the sixteenth century to around 1890. Books on Mexican history, literature, religion,
philosophy, and political theory, as well as copies of works printed by Zuñiga y Ontinveros, Jáuregui, Valdés, as well as
the
Abadianos, are represented in the collection. For one period alone, the War of Independence, and the first ten years of the
Mexican Republic (1810-1830), there are between 8000-9,000 pamphlets, many of which are unique to this collection. For
the publicist and novelist, Lizardi (El Pensador Mexicano), of the 300 pamphlets known to have been written by him, 250
exist at the Sutro. In addition to this, 50 new ones are also present in the collection. And for Lizardi’s contemporary, Rafael
Davila, about 100 pamphlets are in the collection. Included in Sutro’s purchase were also books from many conventual
libraries, like the library of the Tlatelolco de Santa Cruz. Under the anticlerical liberal Constitution of 1857, and the
subsequent orders for confiscating religious properties, the Abadiano bookstore became a depository in order to avoid the
destruction of such property and religious literature. To this end, books from the oldest academic library in the New World,
the Tlatelolco de Santa Cruz, came to the Abadiano’s and consists of over 500 volumes identified by specific firebrandings.
The Mexican collection also contains the Abadiano bookstore ledgers, receipt books, corrected galley proofs, and
inventories dating from the late eighteenth century. In order to facilitate research, the Mexican Collection is divided into
four major sections: Pamphlets, Manuscripts, Library of the Colegio Imperal de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco, and General
Imprints. In addition to this, the WPA, while doing the Sutro Library project in 1938, provided many additional tools. One
tool is a legacy card catalog containing information more akin to an annotated bibliography, than say a traditional online
catalog record would.