Results by title

When railroads connected the United States and Mexico in 1884 and overland travel between the two countries became easier and cheaper, Americans developed an intense curiosity about Mexico, its people, and its opportunities for business and pleasure. Indeed, so many Americans visited Mexico during the Porfiriato (the long dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, 1876–1911) that observers on both sides of the border called the hordes of tourists and business speculators a “foreign invasion,” an apt phrase for a historical moment when the United States was expanding its territory and influence.

Americans in the Treasure House examines travel to Mexico during the Porfiriato, concentrating on the role of travelers in shaping ideas of Mexico as a logical place for Americans to extend their economic and cultural influence in the hemisphere. Analyzing a wealth of evidence ranging from travelogues and literary representations to picture postcards and snapshots, Jason Ruiz demonstrates that American travelers constructed Mexico as a nation at the cusp of modernity, but one requiring foreign intervention to reach its full potential. He shows how they rationalized this supposed need for intervention in a variety of ways, including by representing Mexico as a nation that deviated too dramatically from American ideals of progress, whiteness, and sexual self-control to become a modern “sister republic” on its own. Most importantly, Ruiz relates the rapid rise in travel and travel discourse to complex questions about national identity, state power, and economic relations across the U.S.–Mexico border.

This compelling work delves into the personal narratives of Hiaki (Yaqui) individuals who endured the tumultuous period from 1900 to 1930, when they faced systematic attacks, conscription, deportation, and enslavement under Mexican government policies. Presented in both the original Hiaki language and English translation, these accounts offer an unparalleled glimpse into the lives of those who resisted and survived the era’s harsh realities. The narratives describe military engagements, the struggles of refugee life, forced labor, and the resilience of families under extreme duress. This work provides a unique and unvarnished account of the impacts of Mexican colonialism and aggression on individuals and families, completely from the Hiaki perspective.

Au Te Waate / We Remember It is not just a historical account but a linguistic treasure, preserving the naturally produced speech of five Hiaki speakers from a previous era. Transcriptions of interviews recorded by author Maria Fernanda Leyva with family members and friends provide invaluable insights into the Hiaki language. The interviews document and preserve the narrative styles, vocabulary, and grammatical constructions of the time.

This work also serves as a crucial resource for scholars of linguistics and history alike, capturing dialect variation and illustrating the linguistic evolution of the Hiaki community. Additionally, for Hiaki people studying their own language, this book stands as a rich repository of cultural and linguistic heritage, meticulously maintained through side-by-side translations and contextual historical introductions.

The narratives in this book are anchored by the experiences of five Hiaki speakers, whose stories of displacement, survival, and resistance provide a deeply personal perspective on the broader historical events of the Porfirio Díaz dictatorship and the early years of the Mexican Revolution. Au Te Waate / We Remember It stands as an important record, preserving these critical voices for future generations and offering profound insights into the resilience of the Hiaki people.

 

American historians preoccupied with the stirring events of the Mexican Revolution and the years following tend to neglect the basic causes of the conflict. John Kenneth Turner—a crusading California newspaperman—presents these causes with brilliance and passion in Barbarous Mexico, his exposé of the Díaz regime. Published serially beginning in the fall of 1909, his articles received scores of favorable reviews. The Rochester Times wrote: "The abolitionists in our own ante bellum days did not formulate an indictment as repulsive as that brought against Mexico by this impassioned writer." A British periodical called Turner "an American humanitarian who deserves the thanks of civilisation." Mexican President Francisco I. Madero himself said that Barbarous Mexico contributed greatly to the success of the Revolution.

Despite its fame early in the twentieth century, Barbarous Mexico was out of print for close to sixty years. The present edition, with an introductory biographical essay on Turner by Sinclair Snow and photographs of the principal characters involved, not only reemphasizes the causes of the Mexican Revolution, but provides both lay reader and scholar with a vivid and exciting account of life in Mexico under Porfirio Díaz.

The embodiment of a myth—Benito Juarez
 
Like many capitals the city of Mexico is a place of monuments-large monuments, small, ancient monuments, and new, representational monuments, and allegorical monuments—each bearing a message from the past. Among them is the Hemiciclo. It stands in a spacious, old, beautiful park, the Alameda Central, where the young and old of the city still promenade on Sundays and holidays as people do in the plazas throughout the country and, indeed, as people do in many parts of the world. Amid green trees and a great variety of flowers and shrubs and flanked by a semicircle of twelve doric columns of white Carrara marble stands the central pedestal of the Hemiciclo supporting the statues of three figures. One statue represents a former president of the republic, Benito Juarez, who appears solemn and grim as a Roman proconsul administering justice. Juarez the Lawgiver is seated, and surrounding him are two allegorical figures, also of marble, one representing Glory, who is placing a crown on Juarez’s head, and the other, the Republic, who stands behind, resting her sword on the ground to signify the end of a gigantic struggle. The letters of the pedestal read: “Al Benemerito Benito Juarez. La Patria.” Many years have passed since 1910, when the Mexican government built and dedicated the Hemiciclo after a design by the architect Guillermo Heredia.
 
Like many other such monuments it is the embodiment of a myth. In life Juarez offered little to the mythologizers-he was never able to boast a military career, he often impressed people as reserved or even impassive. he stood a little over five feet; with small hands and feet and dark staring eyes, a coppery complexion that helped disguise a large scar across his face, of Zapotec Indian parentage, he was no striking figure. He did, however, lead Mexican liberals in the I 850s and 1860s in their titanic struggle against formidable opposition, both foreign and domestic, and in the years since his death his worshipers have gathered at the Hemiciclo, at his tomb, or in many other places in Mexico sacred to his memory, usually on anniversaries of his birth or death. For them Juarez is, in agreement with the golden inscription on the central pedestal of the Hemiciclo, “Benemerito de la Patria” or even “Benemerito de las Americas.”
 
Development of a Juarez myth has had all the classic characteristics of myths and mythmaking, especially the subjective view or image of a reality, whether it be of an historical figure, as in the case of Juarez, an event, an institution, or even a geographical region. Image or meaning ascribed to what is assumed to be a reality constitutes one of the main elements of myth and when manipulated to promote a cause assumes a reality of its own. The apotheosis of Juarez projected a subjective view or image of the historical reality. In all myths, to be sure, the assumed reality is a feature useful to an individual or a group.