Abstract
Travel to Mexico became instantly faster, smoother, and cheaper for Americans when workers finally linked US and Mexican rail lines in 1884. Following the opening of the international rail connection, Americans went south of the border in droves and produced a wide array of representations depicting Mexico under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911, a period known as the “Porfiriato”). Travelogues, picture postcards, stereographs, and magic-lantern slides with Mexican themes all circulated heavily in US popular culture during this time. This essay examines the politics of difference in these representations – chiefly travel writing and postcards – arguing that travelers and other observers played a crucial but overlooked role in popularizing the view of Mexico as a logical field for capitalist (and sometimes territorial) expansionism. By positioning Mexican bodies as both desirable and dangerous, I argue, the creators of travel discourse set the stage for contradictory and ambivalent views of Mexico that reverberate in the United States even today.
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