Encoded messages in a Spanish-language reading primer: Nacho Estados Unidos Libro Inicial de Lectura

Recently, I acquired a Spanish-language reading book for beginning readers intended for the schoolchildren of the USA. The title is Nacho - Estados Unidos - Libro Inicial de Lectura, which means "Nacho" - United States of America - First Reading Book." The boy on the cover appears to be named Nacho, for that is written on his cap. 

I played around with the letters on the front cover, doing double-letter-cancellations with letters in the same color font or with the same color outlining them. In doing so, I found hints that this reading primer had encoded messages, which would mean someone at the publisher, Susueta, was probably putting in coded messages way back in 1974 when the book first was published.

I tried double-letter-cancellations on an inside page, using letters that appeared in the same color font (black, blue, red, gray, etc.) and then applying the "OL cipher" from my previous decoding efforts with predominantly English-language works:

• A B C D E F G H I J K L M
• Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N

Nothing happened. No apparent encoded messages. Since this is a book in Spanish, which has more letters than the English alphabet, I tried again with the added letters of "ch" and "ñ"; I didn't added "ll" and "rr" because they are doubled letters and so would cancel themselves out in any algorithm that couldn't distinguish when they were being used as a digraph (i.e., a two-part letter). That gave me an "OK cipher":

• A B C Ch D E F G H I J K L M
• Z Y X W  V U T S R Q P O N Ñ

This cipher gave results!

Here's an example from page 10. The red letters, when double-cancelled, give PIEOSA.

Applying the "OK cipher" above, I get

P I E O S A

J Q U K G Z

However, I have learned from doing a lot of decoding that an additional step is often needed, applying a "see-saw" of sorts using specific letters. In this book, it looks like I'm supposed to use the page number--10 here--to decide which letter to use as my "fulcrum." The tenth letter of the Spanish alphabet (still excluding ll and rr) is "O", so I switch lines at the "O" point to get the following:

P I E G Z

J Q U S A

The first requires the use of the "Z" (zigzag from outside to inside) and results in P I E G, which looks like a mockery of "G" from "Pie Jesu." The second looks like it's referring to something in the USA; from my previous decoding efforts, I've seen that J on its own often signifies some kind of "hook" and "Q" on its own often refers to smart people who are running something. "G" on its own often appears to refer to a secular group, perhaps from "Gaea," the Greek mythology word for the personification of the Earth/world.

Page 6 had some reddish letters that quickly yielded a short, plausible decoded message when I used the "OK cipher" above and "E" (because its the sixth letter) as the "fulcrum." But page 6 gave me problems when I tried to decode the letters in black font. My efforts just didn't seem to result in anything.

I was about to give up and try a different decoding algorithm when I noticed that the printing of the publisher's name in the lower left was so poorly done that the letters were black instead of the usual blue:

For comparison, see the same word on page 10 here:

So I did double-letter-cancellation on all the black letters on page 6 again, this time including "susueta" at the end. After using "E" as a fulcrum, I got a string of letters that yielded possible messages. 

This points to the likely involvement of people in typesetting and approval of the final print job (i.e., the quality assurance gatekeepers in the publishing industry) in hiding messages. Authors could be completely innocent of sneakiness and yet have their books used to pass around messages, some innocent and some not.