Alexander von Humboldt remained a constant referent for travelers venturing to the Americas for most of the nineteenth century, especially for those travelers heading to Mexico. Humboldt had supplied a wealth of information regarding the country: its population, agriculture, topography, mines, industry and commerce, military defense, and economic potential. Yet, despite his encouraging views regarding Mexicoâs future, its independence and post-independence were the most embattled and drawn out processes in the Americas. When Fanny CalderĂłn arrived from the United States in Veracruz, in December of 1839, she was struck by the backwardness and dreary image of the port, âAnything more triste, dĂ©labrĂ© and forlorn, than the whole aspect of things cannot well be imagined.â1 In her eyes, she had landed in âPurgatory,â the land of the vĂłmito (yellow fever): â[T]his place is the most arriĂšre I have yet seen. To me nothing earthly can exceed the exceeding sadness of the aspect of this city and its environs.â2 A once graceful city founded by HernĂĄn CortĂ©s, which became one of the richest mercantile port cities in New Spain during the colonial period, Veracruz had lost its allure, bruised by the suffocating heat and winds, battered by the fires of wars and revolutions. The bare landscape of surrounding red sand hills, stripped of trees, shrubs, and flowers, augments her sense of loss: âAll looks as if the prophet Jeremiah had passed through the city denouncing woe to all the dwellers of thereof. It is enough to make one feel homesick. Such a melancholy, wholly deserted-looking burial ground as we saw!â3 In less than forty years, it seemed that Mexico, the prize possession of the Spanish Crown that Humboldt had emphatically praised, had become a somber wasteland.
Frances CalderĂłn arrived in Mexico in 1839 accompanying her husband, the first Spanish Plenipotentiary Minister, Ăngel CalderĂłn de la Barca. By then, the political map of the Americas had shifted significantly since Humboldtâs visit. When he arrived, the only independent nation was the United States, although by the time he left Mexico in March 1804, the Haitian Revolution had triumphed and Haiti had become the second independent country in the Americas. By 1839, most of the continent had embraced independence and was committed to consolidating its national identity. These political changes deeply influenced travel. In fact, Peter Whitfield argues that travel in the early nineteenth century became a âcultural performanceâ linked to national identity.4 Narratives describing foreign territories became an implicit vehicle to affirm the authorâs own cultural superiority. Europeans already had a long history of travel, so as they embarked on their imperialist expansion, travel narratives became a means to assess foreign lands to legitimize their national quest. However, affirming national pride for travelers from within the Americas, whose countries were still in the process of national consolidation proved more difficult. Political and cultural boundaries were too unstable. Even US travelers throughout the Americas masked their own anxiety about their culture by appraising the regionâs economic potential to highlight the inhabitantsâ inability to exploit such opportunities. But narratives, as Benedict Anderson has shown, have the power to consolidate a sense of unity.5 Hence, as nations affirmed their identity and defined their boundaries, travel and travel narratives in particular became an empowering experience that affirmed both individual and national superiority . My reading of Frances CalderĂłnâs narrative on Mexico highlights this shift in travel writing.
Born in Scotland, Fanny CalderĂłnâas she was popularly knownâmade her home first in the United States before moving to Mexico with her diplomat husband. Through her travels, she illustrates the ways in which national identities inform observation, as her multiple belongings shape her portrayal of Mexico. She is not just a US American observing Mexico, nor a Scot nor a Spanish diplomatâs wife, as she has been categorized, but rather all of the above. On the one hand, she espouses the imperialist views of the tropics that Mexico embodied for both the United States and Europe, but, on the other hand, as she makes Mexico her home, she challenges many of those views by focusing on the social and cultural aspects of the country. She is a modern subject, whose observations do not deny national identities but, instead, bring them in contact with each other, often blurring the protective lines of separation. Her own displacements and refashionings within the domestic and international spheres allow her to mobilize different national identities without being confined by them. Thus, she constructs herself as a subject between empires (Spanish, English, and US American) who writes about a newly independent nation (Mexico) struggling to consolidate its own national project between competing imperial claims.6
If Humboldt provided an in-depth and detailed description of Mexicoâs infrastructure before independence, cataloguing its plants and natural riches as well as its people, monuments, and history, Fanny CalderĂłn made a similar kind of assessment regarding Mexican society and culture during post-independence. During the two years she lived in Mexico, she explored and wrote about its men and women, its politicians, the landscape, the habits and customs, religion, social and cultural attitudes, and beliefs of its citizens. Her narrative, Life in Mexico During a Residence of Two Years in That Country, recounts her journey accompanying her husband to Mexico.7 The trip is framed by their visits to Cuba , one of the few remaining Spanish colonial posts in the Americas (where they stopped for twelve days on their way to Mexico, and where they stayed for three months before returning to the United States, as Humboldt had also done). Based on her letters written to family members and friends, in addition to a three-volume private journal, Fanny CalderĂłn spent six months upon her return to the United States compiling and editing her text while awaiting her husbandâs next destination. Published almost simultaneously in the United States and England in 1843 (although it was already circulating in the United States by December 1842) with a brief preface by famed historian William Hickling Prescott, the book comprises fifty-four extensive letters. Each letter has numerous entries, similar to a diary, some spanning several weeks, which together form a unit resembling a chapter. The letters are written to an anonymous but intimate interlocutor to whom Fanny CalderĂłn describes her life in Mexico. But unlike a diary, the text conveys little of her personal life, especially when compared with her husbandâs diary, Diario, which includes glimpses of the CalderĂłnsâ married life, such as disagreements, difference of opinions, and moments of tenderness.8
The epistolary genre tends to allow for a certain amount of inconsistencies, discursiveness, and redundancy that most narratives avoid.9 Fanny CalderĂłn overcomes these inconsistencies by chronologically relaying her trip and editing overt repetitions. Yet, she writes about so many different aspects of Mexican life that at times her narrative seems like a sprawling collage of events. She sets out to record her daily life exploring the public and private spheres of Mexican society, from the bustling street life and the ubiquitous lĂ©peros (beggars) to the intimate homes of the elite, and her trips to the countryside. She writes vividly about bullfights, cockfights, funerals, masked balls, and theater performances she attends. Her adventurous journeys include encounters with bandits and visits to silver mines and haciendas. Her depictions oscillate from the sublime to the picturesque . Fluent in Spanish and privileged as a diplomatâs wife, she has exclusive access to convents and secret religious rituals.10 Aztec ruins and indigenous culture fascinate her. She includes fragments of poems, newspaper clippings, and popular songs and hymns that she ably translates. She delves into historical explanations of Mexicoâs past, chronicles two pronunciamientos (political uprisings), and reports on politicians and intellectuals, appraising their accomplishments.11 She pays special attention to the role of women in society, from their physical appearance, education (or lack thereof), habits, dress, and etiquette to their social activities, both in and outside their homes. If Humboldt covers all the aspects of nature that might be scientifically connected, Fanny CalderĂłn covers the social and cultural life of Mexico connecting it to its landscape.
Like Humboldtâs Personal Narrative, Fanny CalderĂłnâs tone is lively and compelling. Whereas Humboldtâs travel narrative is filled with scientific observations and comparative measurements that anchor his personal adventures within a broad framework that highlights his planetary vision, Fanny CalderĂłn does not embrace a scientific gaze. Instead, hers is an ethnographic gaze of contemporary culture, peppered with ironic and oftentimes unflattering comments, in which she displays her own subjectivity in the process of observation.12 Although Humboldt clearly felt welcomed in Mexico, even envisioning living the last days of his life there, he moves about the country with a privileged gaze that keeps him at a distance from the everyday difficulties of life in Mexico. This is precisely what Fanny CalderĂłnâs narrative offers. Despite her European origins and her privileged political status, as a woman, she engages in everyday life in Mexico in a way that Humboldt could not. An interesting example is the way each approached describing pulque, the popular drink made from fermented juice of the maguey. Humboldt gives numerous explanations regarding its elaboration, consumption, and taxation. His authority, however, regarding its taste is based on othersâ opinions: âThe inhabitants of the country differ very much in their opinions as to the true fetid odor of the pulqueâ; adding comments made by âseveral well informed individuals.â13 Fa...