Viva Mexico
Ben Honeycutt
Anton Rosenthal & Marisela Chávez
Latin American History
6 November 2014
Viva Mexico
At the dawn of 1908, multiple storm fronts churned inside the borders of North America. Uncle Sam’s drunken belly of manifest destiny was set sober up with the call to World War I, while Sam’s neighbor to the south was on the edge of a watershed moment in our civilization’s history. Mexico, long facing horrendous class disparities influenced by the cutthroat imperialism of the United States, was on the border of a revolutionary effort that still hangs among the banners of the world’s history. Viva Mexico, a travel diary by Charles Macomb Flandrau, captures a portrait of Mexico on the edge of this revolutionary action. The account, written from over three years in the early 20th century, is absolutely crucial to our understanding of Mexico before its landmark revolution.[1] Despite the eurocentrism that bleeds into the texts, Viva Mexico is an essential historical document for capturing the disparities in Mexico and giving contemporary historians a first hand document about the conditions leading to Mexico’s revolution.
Much can be inferred from the conditions that swayed Flandrau’s travel to Mexico in the early 1900’s. As discussed in class, non-Mexican citizens owned an incredible amount of Mexico’s land at the onset of the 20th century. Flandrau was no exception, as his brother was an owner of a robust coffee plantation inside Mexico.[2] These circumstances offer clues to Flandrau’s worldview before his journey across the border. As an American writer, it was unlikely that Flandrau would be cultured on the subtle nuances of the class disparities that existed inside Mexico, and this supposition is proven to have merit with an examination of his work. Flandrau, while exposing his own criticisms of American jingoism toward Mexican citizens, is not immune to falling into his own stereotypes on a few occasions throughout his novel.
The author’s own bias is first evidenced with this articulation, “In Mexico, however, complete idleness is rarely a bore.”[3] The author argues that individuals have a lot of free time inside the country and believed that this is a near-universal trait inside Mexico’s society. While Flandrau is never overtly critical of Mexican citizens inside of his analysis, this conclusion works off of a popular stereotype of a supposed “laziness” that existed inside Mexico. This is even more problematic when Flandrau suggests that, “In a small city in the United States or in England even a person of unlimited leisure would have to be doddering or an invalid or a tramp before he would consent to sit two to three hours on a bench in a public square.”[4] While this writing perhaps catered to the stereotypes of an American audience, it creates a troubling framework of the author’s subjectivity in his further writings surrounding the nation. Unfortunately, Flandrau would only double down on popular stereotypes later in the work, suggesting that the lower class only persevered through a day’s work with a drink in hand.[5]
Flandrau’s reliance on damaging stereotypes is in line with Ricardo D. Salvatore’s conclusions in his “North American Travel Narratives”.[6] While Salvatore does credit the North American travel journals as being vital historical documents, he argues that, “North American travel narratives contributed to the collective enterprise of rendering South America apprehensible to the American public. They ordered South American nations and people(s).”[7] This ordering is well present in Flandrau’s writings. Suggesting that the Mexican lower class was inherently lazy and reliant on alcoholic consumption fulfilled two key facets of the American mentality.[8] It firstly supported already well-traveled assumptions about the Mexican lower class, making Flandrau’s work more palatable for his American audience. It next provided support to the notion that the class disparities found in Mexico were at the fault of the lower class. This shielded away any questions about the role American imperialism played about the class divide inside the nation.
Though Flandrau composed his writings on an upper class cloud found on a coffee plantation over the course of three years, the author was diligent on acquainting himself to the customs and cultures of those around him. Later on in the novel, the author looked at the economic conditions of the people and conducted a thorough examination about how the church interacted with working class conditions.[9] This examination comes to light in this passage, “-to appreciate the extreme poverty of the people and to realize that the entire gigantic corporation is kept running chiefly by the hard-earned mites with which they hope to save their souls.”[10] The striking imagery of this passage beautifully illustrates the hypocrisy that lined the divide inside Mexico. The poor, comprising a vast majority of the nation, often gave what little they had to spare to the church, massive conglomerate of elite power inside the country, an act that reinforced the brutal economic situation in the nation.
Flandrau’s focus on the disparity between the church and those fillings its congregation gives his novel a historical resonance that continues on to the present day. Less than a decade later, the same disparity that Flandrau shines a light on throughout Viva Mexico would spark a revolution throughout Mexico’s population. The reality that Flandrau captured these disparities almost a decade before the revolution started gives historians a time capsule to observe the situation inside the country that led the working class to a full-scale rebellion.[11] Though Flandrau’s Americanized lens presents a myriad of problems, the author’s meticulous nature makes it possible for historians to weave through the work and form partial analysis’ over the pre-revolution state inside of Mexico. This demonstrates the importance of this work as a historical document, and illustrates why its significance will extend into our coming generations.
The strengths and weaknesses of Flandrau’s account are perhaps highlighted at their best with his observations of Mr. Trawnbeigh. Mr. Trawnbeigh was an English citizen who had moved to Mexico in search of opportunity and prosperity, and Mexico gave him neither.[12] Flandrau dedicates a large section of his book to the dire hardships that had befallen Mr. Trawnbeigh, a story that provides a human struggle against the bleak situation inside Mexico’s society. Despite Trawnbeigh’s undeniable poverty, the man attempted to live as best he could in typical Victorian fashion, a goal that was all but impossible in his economic state.[13] Flandrau’s description of Trawnbeigh presents a sharp contrast to his past reliance on reprehensible stereotypes. This effort to humanize Mr. Trawnbeigh’s economic misfortune did much to provoke the reader’s sentimentality about the state of the Mexican economy. Trawnbeigh was drawn away from England to seek employment across the pond, a desire that would no doubt resonate with Flandrau’s American readers.[14] Trawnbeigh’s poor luck and misery resonated with an audience who could easily envision themselves in the same scenario. Flandrau’s detailed assessment of Trawnbeigh would come to serve as an elaborate example of Mexico’s unforgiving stance toward the middle class, presenting a reality that was challenged the popular idea of Mexico in the American consciousness.
Flandrau’s account on Trawnbeigh offers a prime example of his predominant focus of gender inside the novel, a focus that proves to be rather singular. From Flandrau’s account, Trawnbeigh’s failure to secure gainful employment demonstrated his struggle to fulfill the role expected of his gender. This trait is also apparent in Flandrau’s stereotypes against Mexico’s working class.[15] The laziness he proclaims was evident from the men in the working class highlights that the author is holding Mexico’s men to the standard of the romanticized, capitalist driven American male (apparently overlooking the fact that the U.S. was at the onset of its prohibition movement). Flandrau’s tendency to focus on the men inside Mexico sheds light on his natural inclination to look at the male struggle first, and explains why the majority of Viva Mexico’s are centered on the men inside the country.
Similar to the rest of Viva Mexico, Flandrau’s account of Trawnbeigh is not without its share of problems. In the three years the author spent inside Mexico, the author was no doubt around a myriad of writeable stories that surrounded the human struggle against poverty. It is quite telling that the story that Flandrau chose to write was one about an English citizen who happened to move to Mexico.[16] While the story provides heartbreaking descriptions of poverty inside the nation, the descriptions are applied to a foreigner to the country, rather than the grand majority of Mexican citizens. Upon observing Flandrau’s off-handed stereotypes toward Mexico’s own citizens, it is clear that the author only fully humanized the English visitor to the nation. This national separation again falls in line with Ricardo Salvatore’s analysis, as Flandrau’s account of Trawnbeigh provided a human example of poverty inside Mexico, but still kept Mexican citizens thoroughly otherized to many of the readers of his work.[17] This contradiction, present throughout all of Viva Mexico, demonstrates the labyrinth historians must weave through when conducting their analysis.
Viva Mexico takes a snapshot of a nation on the eve of one of the bloodiest and most significant transitions in the world’s history. Though weakened by Americanized stereotypes and an upper class worldview, Flandrau’s effort to capture his experiences inside of Mexico gives historians a striking image of the economic situation that came to kindle a working class revolution.
[1] Flandrau Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton 1910.
[2] Flandrau Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton 1910. Pg. 77.
[3] Flandrau Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton 1910. Pg. 30.
[4] Flandrau Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton 1910. Pg. 29.
[5] Flandrau Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton 1910. Pg. 45.
[6] Salvatore Ricardo D. "North American Travel Narratives and the Ordering/Othering of South America (c. 1810–1860)." Journal of Historical Sociology 9 no. 1 (1996): 85-110.
[7] Salvatore Ricardo D. "North American Travel Narratives and the Ordering/Othering of South America (c. 1810–1860)." Journal of Historical Sociology 9 no. 1 (1996): 85-110.
[8] Flandrau Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton 1910. Pg. 45
[9] Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton, 1910. Pg. 274
[10] Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton, 1910. Pg. 274
[11] Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton, 1910. Pg. 277
[12] Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton, 1910. Pg. 242
[13] Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton, 1910. Pg. 241
[14] Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton, 1910. Pg. 232
[15] Flandrau Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton 1910. Pg. 45
[16] Flandrau, Charles Macomb. Viva Mexico!. Appleton, 1910. Pg. 232
[17] Salvatore Ricardo D. "North American Travel Narratives and the Ordering/Othering of South America (c. 1810–1860)." Journal of Historical Sociology 9 no. 1 (1996): 85-110.