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Focusing on reading methods and practices in rural Indian Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, this article explains why schooling had little impact in terms of literacy in Spanish yet played a successful political and ceremonial role resulting in what I call a ritual literacy. At the time, the emerging educational system did not consider the difficulties of speakers of indigenous languages faced with a Spanish-only programme. The late nineteenth century saw the introduction of important pedagogical innovations such as the simultaneous teaching of reading and writing but none addressed the needs of those who did not speak Spanish. Even when the direct method was adopted in the 1920s to teach Spanish as a second language, problems persisted. Throughout the period, educationists insisted that reading skills enabled pupils to decipher any text, and not just well-known schoolbooks, but the context of diglossia, together with local politics and ceremonial life, encouraged a "simulation" of reading, including the recitation of memorised text and the deciphering and pronunciation of words without understanding their meaning. In a socioeconomic context where individual literacy had limited value, the simulation of reading fulfilled an important symbolic role but did not necessarily encourage children's acquisition of Spanish literacy.