India in the Memoirs of the 19th-Century Mexican Traveler Ignacio Martínez

Abstract

This is the first study ever on the chapter devoted to India included in the memoirs of the travel around the globe made in the nineteenth century by the Mexican physician and general Ignacio Martínez (1844-1891). Published in two versions, a short one called Viaje universal (1886) and a longer one called Alrededor del mundo (1888?), Martínez’s memoirs are one of the earliest recorded documents of a Mexican traveler in Asia during the independent period. Unlike twentieth-century Mexican intellectual circles, which perceived India as a source of literary, philosophical, and spiritual inspiration, the image displayed in Martínez’s account is framed in the ideals of material progress, rational objectivity, and anticlericalism. As I argue, these values guided Martínez’s recourse to European Orientalist motifs, but also produced a horizontal appreciation of India in light of his Mexican circumstances. This resulted in an ambivalent representation that fluctuates between appraisal of Indian material merits and deep aversion to its religious life.