Here and There in Mexico

by Townsend, Mary Ashley; Woodward, Ralph Lee

• ISBN13: 9780817310585
• ISBN10: 0817310584
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr

Summary

Mary Ashley Townsend was a novelist, newspaper columnist, and poet laureate of New Orleans who made several trips to Mexico with her daughter Cora during the last two decades of the 19th century. She collected her impressions of many aspects of life in that country-flora, fauna, architecture, people at work and play, fashion, society, food-and wrote about them during a time when few women engaged in solo travel, much less the pursuit of travel writing. Her collected work was still in progress when she died in a train accident in 1901, and was never published. Renowned Latin Americanist Ralph Lee Woodward Jr. discovered Townsend’s manuscript, along with many of the author’s personal papers, in the Special Collections division of Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Library. In addition to annotating the text, he has written a critical introduction to the work that provides excellent background information about the author and places the work in its historical and cultural context. Townsend’s writing provides an unusual feminine perspective on Mexico as she describes the country during the middle years of the Porfirio Diaz dictatorship, a pivotal time in Mexican history. Though Townsend does not delve heavily into politics her observations of people’s lives provide a valuable source for social historians of the period. Here and There in Mexicowill make new contribution to the field of Latin American studies and to the travel literature genre, both as a primary source for historians and as a well-written account of a southern woman’s impressions of Mexico during a crucial period in that country’s development.

Author Biography

Ralph Lee Woodward, Jr., is Neville G. Penrose Professor of Latin American Studies at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth

Table of Contents

Editor's Preface	vii
General Remarks Concerning Mexico	1	(9)
Existing Routes to Mexico by Sea and Land	10	(8)
Down the Mississippi from New Orleans	18	(8)
Across the Gulf to Tampico	26	(10)
Tuxpan to Vera Cruz	36	(13)
Vera Cruz	49	(12)
A Trip to Jalapa	61	(13)
Fort San Juan de Ulua and Departure from Vera Cruz	74	(11)
Cordoba	85	(16)
Orizaba	101	(21)
Scenes around Orizaba	122	(19)
Puebla and Cholula	141	(31)
Mexico City	172	(21)
Bull Fight	193	(21)
Scenes around Mexico City	214	(29)
Mexico City's Major Attractions	243	(21)
Life, Dress, and Customs in the Mexican Capital	264	(19)
Family Life in Mexico	283	(24)
Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Chapultepec Castle, and More	307	(20)
Index	327