Extremely rare, significant and pretty Yucatan imprint

Francisco de Paula Toro (1799-1840).

Contestaciones Habidas entre los Señores General D. Francisco Toro, actual Gobernador de este Estado y el Ciudadano Juan de Dios Cosgaya su Antecesor.

Mérida de Yucatán, Imprenta del Gobierno, de la Propiedad de L. Segú, 1834.

8°. [2], 21, [1 blank] pp. Wit a woodcut illustrated title and two woodcut text illustrations.

Modern blue calf with gold-tooled title on front cover, new endpapers.

Unrecorded first and only edition of a politically sensitive work by the current Governor of the State of Yucatan, General Francisco de Paula Toro. He publishes here his correspondence from April 22 to May 31 1834 with the previous Governor, “citizen” Juan de Dios Cosgaya, who was removed from his post and imprisoned in the same year as this publication. Toro took over from Cosgaya with the backing of the new President Antonio López de Santa Anna, who was also his brother-in-law. In a 2-page instruction Toro addresses the people of Yucatan.
               The relation between Yucatan and the centralist regime in Mexico had always been problematic. In the first years of Mexican independence the relations were driven from tension to tension, due to the different interpretation that both parties had of federalism or, seen from another angle, of centralism. The vision of the Yucatecans was that they had been incorporated into the Mexican nation as a federated republic, with clear rights of autonomy and self-determination. This vision did not reconcile on various occasions throughout the 1830’s. Toro was a centralist and placed in Yucatan to fight the federalists, but he lasted only a few months because his mandate was declared unconstitutional. However he became Governor again from 1835 to 1837 and moved his seat from Mérida to Campeche.
               The first books were printed in Merida de Yucatan around 1815 and printer L. Seguí seems to have started printing at Merida de Yucatan in 1828.

Condition: minor wear to head of title-page, otherwise in fine condition.

Reference: not found in WorldCat; KVK; RBH; Biblioteca Nacional de México; Benson; Texas A&M; LoC etc.