We rarely stop to think about the implications offered by the fact develop our life in a world of letters. Our easy and daily relationship with the writing seems natural. However, reading and writing are social, cultural constructions and therefore historical, result of a long process that has been developed from specific communication needs. This paper explores the knowledge of popular practices written in the nineteenth century, when the use of writing was configured as a social necessity, to thereby deepen the understanding of the social conditions in which culture was read and written in the past. Despite having been in more than can be believed, the written testimonies of popular groups have undergone continuous and destructive processes today are still undergoing disposal practices and adaptation. The relegation, with no maintenance or destruction of the documents produced by the working class is not a coincidence, but speaks of a certain configuration of our history, our memory and, therefore, present our identity. Not surprisingly grab memory and oblivion is, in the words of historian Jacques Le Goff, one of the top concerns of the classes, groups, individuals who have dominated and dominate historical societies.