THE GREAT POSTAL FRAUD

In the late-1869 time-frame, some person (or persons) in Mexico decided to pursue their own production of stamps. Whoever this entrepreneur  was, had some official capacity as they had access to the Government Printing Office where the stamps were produced. These people, we'll call them postal forgers, gained access and in a clandestine manner produced stamps using the GPO's own printing plates. For some reason, the postal forgers did not have access to the portion of the GPO where the letterpress printing was performed. Nor were they able to gain access to the actual paper stock on which the production 1868 stamps were being printed.

So, with the use of the production printing stones and their own paper and  letterpress printing equipment, the forgers set forth and produced a very large inventory of stamps and sold them to businesses and other large volume users of postage; primarily in the capital city.

Very quickly, within perhaps less than a year, this fraud was discovered. The official surviving records from the Mexican postal system make reference to the fraud that was then fully established. Transcripts of the important passages in those records may be found in this web in the discussions of tipos, habilitados and anotados.

TIPOS

These postal forgeries were called tipos from the longer term "tipo de Mexico" ("type of Mexico") by early researchers because the stamps were thought to have been used only in Mexico City. In fact, most are cancelled in Mexico City.

The Administration immediately planned a new issue of stamps in order to re-gain control of the stamp stock being sold to the public. But because it would take some time to prepare and print the new issue, the 1868 issue stamps continued until March or April of 1872. So a plan was prepared and set into action and the 1868 issue would cease to be produced late winter in 1872.

Due to production problems in preparation of the new issue of stamps the Administration ran the country dangerously low of stamp inventories in the February, March and April time-frame of 1872. And, in order to fill the void, the Administration put a couple of procedures into effect in order to keep the mails moving.

ANOTADOS

In Mexico City, it was decided that stamps of the 1868 issue that had been returned for destruction could be temporarily placed into service. It was decided that, for a brief period during the shortage, that stamps would be marked at the post office with a handstamp of "Anotado" (noted or accounted for), thereby revaluing the stamp for use. Stamps so treated were treated indiscriminately whether they were genuine of tipos.

HABILITADOS

While Mexico City was solving their shortage of stamps with the "Anotados" other postal districts had to make do with whatever procedures could be implemented. Several of the offices chose to implement a procedure where they would produce their own "provisional" stamp. Guadalajara was one of the more successful, producing "provisional" postage stamps by applying a cancels to sheets of paper to form "stamps" that were later cut into postage size squares (cancel image being the "stamp design") and would later affix the provisional stamp to their letters, canceling those with a different cancellation.

In Veracruz a different approach was utilized. The Veracruz postmaster instead of creating his own "provisional" issue, proceeded to use stamps of the 1868 issue and validating them by placing his own "VERACRUZ" district name on the face of the stamps thereby validating the stamps for postal use. These stamps were called habilitados and are scarce to rare today.

Much rarer, but also habilitado usage, stamps may be found used in Puebla where that postmaster affixed the additional overprint "PUEBLA" to his habilitados.