1 “Indispensable in a Civilized Society, as Necessary as Food:” A Consideration of Manuel Payno’s ‘Monumental’ Effort to Found the Biblioteca Nacional de México by Phillip Jones 1111 6th Ave. Grinnell, IA 50112-1690 Office phone: 641-269-3355 Fax: 641-269-4283
[email protected] 2 This article combines history, biography and the translation of a nineteenth-century primary source to consider the role of Manuel Payno, a Mexican government official and noted writer, in establishing his country’s National Library. Included first are profiles of Mexican library history and of Manuel Payno which provide context for the appended English translation of Payno’s 1869 article requesting continued government funding to complete the Biblioteca Nacional. It is, however, Payno’s own writing that reveals the merit of his entrée into the nearly half-century effort to found this intellectual and cultural symbol for an emerging nation. 3 “Indispensable in a Civilized Society, as Necessary as Food:” A Consideration of Manuel Payno’s ‘Monumental’ Effort to Found the Biblioteca Nacional de México. Standing watch outside the reading room of the Fondo Reservado, the special collections annexed to the Biblioteca Nacional in Mexico City, are monuments of José María Luis Mora, Valentín Gómez Farías, Antonio Martínez de Castro, and Benito Juárez—government officials and presidents credited with principal roles in the forty-year effort to found Mexico’s National Library, an institution arising fitfully following Mexico’s independence from Spain in 1821.1 The role taken by Manuel Payno—a successful journalist and novelist and former Mexican finance minister—did not lead to one of the four government decrees created by these his contemporaries, yet Payno’s voice and vision offered to both Mexico’s leaders and citizens an image of what their Biblioteca Nacional should be and, largely, became.