In this article I focus on the oldest extant mathematics book published in the Colonial period in Central America: Padilla’s (1732) Arithmetica practica. In the first part of the article, I briefly recount my encounter with Padilla’s book and the contextual problems that I found in order to offer a facsimile edition of it. In the second part, I define the historiographic approach that I follow. I argue that to inquire about the history of mathematics is to inquire about mathematics as it was imagined, thought, and practisedwithin a certain cultural context.But I also argue that we can go further:I contendthat a certain cultural historical context can be understood only if we understand its intellectual life, and more specifically its mathematics. It is in this second line of thought that I wish to see how the book fit and responded ideologically to the constraints generated by the economic, political, and educational colonial structures.To do so, before dwelling on the book and its author, I discuss the cultural context of Padilla’s Arithmetica.