The name Juan Gavarrete appears only in connection with Popol Vuh and his identity remains apocryphal and elusive. Whatever can be gleaned from the scant historical record indicates that Gavarrete was an archivist working in Guatemala City in the mid-nineteenth century.
While Scherzer unceremoniously identified Gavarrete in 1857 as “el Señor Don Juan Gavarete [sic] en Guatemala” (xiv), Brasseur identified Gavarrete with at least five different titles. In 1857 Brasseur described Gavarrete as “un jeune et zélé archéologue guatémalien […] l’un des notaires de la cour ecclésiastique” (Histoire des nations xxix, lxxxiii). In 1861 Brasseur wrote that Gavarrete was “le savant archiviste du Palais national” (Popol Vuh v, vii). But in 1871 Brasseur characterized Gavarrete in several forms, first as “secrétaire archiviste du palais national à Guatémala,” and then as “notaire public, conservateur des archives nationales,” and finally as “directeur du dépôt des archives nationales” (Bibliothèque Mexico-Guatémalienne 70, 73, 143).
There some additional evidence that Gavarrete was either a government archivist or a university archivist. Both Scherzer and Brasseur imply that Gavarrete enjoyed unfettered access to precious manuscripts at the Universidad de San Carlos library. Additionally, Juan Gavarrete’s name appears on a copyscript of Ximénez’s Historia de la provinçia manuscript (which, contrary to Munro Edmonson and Jack Himelblau, is not lost).