El Valedor
Mexico City: Lúcas el Brincón, 1884-1886. 58 issues, each 4pp., separately paginated. Contemporary quarter sheep and marbled boards; original Mexican binder's ticket on front pastedown. About very good. Item #3893
A rare, complete 58-issue run of this semi-comic political weekly published in Mexico City during the mid-1880s. The present set includes the very scarce five issues of volume two, and is comprised of almost entirely first issues with the original text and layout, which was changed for the more commonly seen bound collection of volume one only. Most of the small number of institutional copies recorded seem to be this bound re-issue of volume one, with "segunda edicion" printed in the masthead. The typesetting and content usually varies between editions as well -- the second edition issues, for example, typically have an advertisement inserted at the foot of the final page, whereas the original issues mostly do not have ads. Often the differences are even more significant -- in the second edition of issue seven, much of the content has been cut from the final page and placed into issue eight.
The text itself comprises a liberal satire of Mexican politics under the Porfiriato during the 1880s. The introduction to the first issue states the publication's political stance, which is support of the liberal 1857 Mexican constitution. Each issue opens with the publication's main rule, "Pagarlo antes de leerlo", or "Pay before reading," then follows an essay stating El Valedor's views on a topic, sometimes as a satirical reframing of an article in another periodical. The remaining pages of each four-page issue are given over to political poems, comic dialogues, and quips on various subjects. Typical of its era, the language is slangy, filled with nicknames and allusions to politicians, and it assumes a lot of knowledge of mid-1880s Mexican politics and newspapers. Porfirio Díaz, Romero Rubio, and Manuel González are among the politicians mentioned, and the editor (writing under a pseudonym that might translate as Lucas the Leaper) did not think much of them, referring to Díaz as "el Perfirito". A rare anti-Diaz periodical from the midst of his reign near the end of the 19th century.
Price: $2,750.00