2807563983 Cuadernos de Viaje: Contemporary Mexican Travel - Chronicles Thea Pitman, Doctoral Thesis University College London, 1999 ProQuest Number: U643485 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest U643485 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This thesis aims to prove the existence of contemporary Mexican travel-chronicling. Section 2 concentrates on two recent series of travel-chronicles commissioned by Alianza Editorial Mexicana and the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes (1989-1997). The purpose of this section is to examine the variety of contemporary, and possibly postmodern, approaches to this stubbornly realist and traditional genre. Authors studied in detail are: Juan Villoro and Francisco Hinojosa (an ironic approach to the effects of postmodemity and postmodernism on Mexican life and the practice of travel-chronicling); Rafael Ramirez Heredia and Orlando Ortiz (the commonplaces of the contemporary travel- chronicle); Hector Perea and Alvaro Ruiz Abreu (an increasingly speculative, metaphorical approach); Fernando Solana Olivares and Hugo Diego Blanco (a move towards ‘archival fictions’ (Gonzalez Echevarria) which use previous travel-chronicles as an ‘archive’, rather than as models for form and content). The background to, and blueprint for, these works is covered in Section 1: post- Independence Mexico developed a substantial tradition of internal and external travel- writing in order to counter foreign travel-writers’ representations of Mexico, and to lay the literary foundations for a sense of Mexican national identity. This is compatible with the aims of costumbrismo, and with the Romantic and Realist movements in general. The practice of writing travel-chronicles boomed in the last years of the nineteenth-century with the increased economic stability and ease of travel of the Porfirian ‘peace’ years: modemista authors developed the first touristic travel-narratives. Authors singled out for comment are Manuel Payno, Guillermo Prieto, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Manuel Gutierrez Najera, Justo Sierra, and Amado Nervo. This tradition has continued throughout the twentieth century, gradually coming to concentrate more on the human faces of Mexico than on its natural resources. Authors studied here are José Vasconcelos, Salvador Novo, Fernando Benitez, and Jorge Ibargiiengoitia. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: Solo los mexicanos hemos escrito poco.. SECTION 1: THE HISTORY OF THE MEXICAN TRAVEL-CHRONICLE 12 Chapter 1: The Nineteenth-Century Tradition 13 Chapter 2: Anthropology & Tourism in the Twentieth Century 43 SECTION 2: THE CONTEMPORARY TRAVEL-CHRONICLE 85 Introduction: Postscript 86 Chapter 1 Postmodernity in Yucatan & Los Angeles 98 Chapter 2 Commonplaces in Guerrero & Las Huastecas126 Chapter 3 Speculative Cities: Mexico City& Villahermosa 152 Chapter 4 Dream States: Oaxaca & Puebla 178 PALABRAS PASAJERAS (Conclusion) 203 Bibliography 204 ***** INTRODUCTION Solo los mexicanos hemos escrito poco a cerca de nuestro pais Los mexicanos viajan poco, y los que viajan no escriben, ni publican sus impresiones o sus recuerdos. Esta es una verdad tan notoria en México, que no necesita demostrarse. [...] Figürasenos que hablar de nuestras poblaciones, de nuestras montanas, de nuestros nos, de nuestros desiertos, de nuestros mares, de nuestras costumbres y de nuestro caracter, es asunto baladf, y que al ver escrito en una pagina de viaje un nombre indio, todo el mundo ha de hacer un gesto de desdén. [...] Hay cierta repugnancia para conocer el pais nativo, y ésta es la causa de que no puedan desarrollarse vigorosamente todas las ramas de nuestra literatura nacional. Sôlo el tiempo y la civilizaciôn harân desaparecer estos hâbitos de la vida colonial. Por eso nuestra literatura de viajes en el interior del pais, es singularmente escasa. No tenemos una sola colecciôn pintoresca o descriptiva; artfculos sueltos, narraciones aisladas, algùn pequeno estudio publicado hace anos en el Museo Mexicano, en el Liceo, en el Album’, algunas estampas litogrlficas: eso es todo. Muchas veces tenemos que acudir a los libros extranjeros para tomar algunos datos.l El libro de viajes es sobre todo un género del Norte: la mirada sobre las tierras conquistadas o por conquistar. [...] Si los toros pudieran escribir una historia de la tauromaquia seguramente no contendna el elogio de los grandes diestros. Los mexicanos estamos en una situaciôn parecida respecto de los libros de viajes. No debe de haber muchos otros paises que hayan inspirado tantos relatos donde se juzgue a sus habitantes con tal vehemencia para condenar y con tan poca generosidad para entender.2 The first of the above epigraphs, written by the Liberal statesman, pedagogue and novelist Ignacio Manuel Altamirano as an introduction to the Mexican Luis Malanco’s Viaje a Oriente (1882), displays the widely-held opinion that Mexicans do not produce travel- writing of their own. His comments on the lack of Mexican travel-literature are ironically quoted and annotated by Felipe Teixidor in the prologue to the first edition of his anthology of Mexican travel-writing at home and abroad, Viajeros mexicanos: siglos XIX y XX (1939);3 by Francisco Lopez Camara in his book Los viajes de Guillermo Prieto: estudio introductorio;^ and again by Emmanuel Carballo in the introduction to his anthology of Mexican travel-writing about the United States, ^Quépais es éste?: los Estados Unidos y los gringos vistos por escritores mexicanos de los siglos XIX y XX.^ Ironically, all three 1 Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, Obrascomplétas, ed. by Nicole Giron (SEP, 1986- ), XIII, Escritosde literatura y arte, II(1988), 215-35 (pp. 215, 229-30). 2 José Emilio Pacheco,'BitâcoT3s\ Hojapor Hoja, 13 December 1997, p. 13. 3 Sepan Cuantos..., 350,2ndedn (Pomla, 1982), pp. 3-4. 4 (Cuernavaca: Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias, UNAM, 1994), pp. 13-14. 5 Sello Bermejo (CNCA, 1996), pp. 11-12. 4 critics uphold (with nuances) Altamirano’s declarations on the lack of Mexican travel- writing. Altamirano’s text deserves to be quoted in full: it is a brilliant and concise overview of travel and travel-writing from a Mexican perspective. He studies the history of demographic movements on Mexican soil from pre-Cortesian to contemporary times with particular respect to political and technological developments, concluding that the conditions in the 1880s are right for stimulating the practice of Mexican travel-writing, both at home and abroad. He analyses the blend of literature and science in the works of foreign travel-writers visiting Mexico, displaying a marked preference for the authority and impact of literature, and reaching out to the great figures of European Romantic travel-writing to justify this argument. He discusses the value of internal Mexican travel-writing to the Mexican people: the comparison of several subjective impressions will help stimulate readers to make up their own minds, and this independent exercise of critical faculties is a good sign of ‘civilisation’. Finally, he analyses Luis Malanco’s travel-book itself, with respect to its content, its style, and its relationship to other similar texts, drawing conclusions which define literary travel-writing.6 In his role as one of the key figures in the creation of the modem nation-state of Mexico and of a corresponding sense of nationality, particularly in the field of literature, Altamirano was determined that there should be a national brand of travel-writing to compete with the works of Europeans, North Americans and even other Latin Americans travelling in Mexico and elsewhere. From at least 1870 he was making statements to this effect,7 and indeed, by the early 1880s his words were having an effect. A significant number of travel-books were published in the 1870s, and from the 1880s onwards many more came into print - even ones concerning travel well before that date were finally written up and published.8 By the time that Altamirano made the statements quoted above Mexicans were already busy making up for lost time. His comments that only three writers had bothered to publish travel-books or articles on the subject of Mexico and that there was even less material by Mexicans concerning travel abroad - ‘nueve o diez libros a lo mas’ (p. 230) - are, of course, a deliberately biased view, designed to provoke even more Mexicans to publish travel-books.9 The second epigraph, written by the novelist, journalist and poet José Emilio Pacheco in December 1997, over a hundred years after Altamirano’s ‘manifesto for Mexican travel- literature’ , continues to deny the existence of Mexican travel-writing, concentrating on the overwhelming production of foreign travel-literature on Mexico. After briefly reviewing the history of European travel-writing from Classical Antiquity to the times of the Conquest, Pacheco concludes that travel-writing is not part of Mexican culture, even though, as Altamirano noted, Mexican culture has been created by travellers, both 6 His only failure - in my view - is to consider literary travel-writing as something of particular interest to women-readers on account of its display of emotional registers and picturesque consciousness... 7 See ‘Altamirano and Gutiérrez Nâjera’ in Section 1, Chapter 1 of this thesis. 8 See bibliography toTeixidor’sViajeros mexicanos, pp. 221-25. 9 Carballo corroborates the bias and selectiveness of Altamirano's vision in iQuépais es este?, p. 12. Europeans and indigenous Mexicans. Pacheco then goes on to defend the value of foreign travel-writing on Mexico; something with which Altamirano seemingly had no problem, despite wanting a national travel-literature of his own.