The Illusion of Ignorance: Constructing the American Encounter with Mexico, 1877–1920

Abstract

This volume seeks to examine the images of Mexico reflected in United States newspapers, magazines, and published accounts, as well as the unsuccessful efforts by the Mexican government of Porfirio Díaz to change that image. Thus it is “a book not about Mexico but about Americans thinking about Mexico” (p. vi), quoting and examining articles from newspapers and magazines perceived as influential, as well as travel accounts published in book form in the United States. Given its focus on image, it provides little information or context about either country and is based primarily on items that are already well known to scholars of Mexico. Therefore this work will be of more interest to historians of the United States than to those specializing in Mexico or Latin America. Reflecting its chosen focus, the work is inevitably based primarily on previously published materials, save for the initial portion dealing mainly with the mission of John W. Foster as United States minister to Mexico.The volume consists of three separate and loosely connected sections or minibooks, each dealing with a distinct type of account, and each with its own introduction and conclusion. The work does illuminate some lacunae of a well-known history, particularly through its focus on Mexican efforts to influence the US press via unofficial diplomacy to promote and place specific types of articles and interviews reflecting a more positive image of Mexico and its development.The initial section deals with Foster’s mission to Mexico and the Mexican campaign of its sometime diplomatic representative and sometime unofficial agent Manuel María de Zamacona y Murphy. Historians will find this the most valuable part of the volume, partly because it traces the propaganda efforts of Zamacona and partly because it makes the greatest use of primary sources, principally the papers of the US State Department. This section illuminates the uses of unofficial diplomacy and outright propaganda during the early phase of the Díaz regime. In taking a critical view of Foster’s efforts, the author contends that Foster was “consistently outmaneuvered by the Díaz administration” (p. xvi) and concludes that the view of Foster as one of the nation’s initial professional diplomats, as projected in his autobiography, is a distortion to which scholars of Mexico and diplomatic history subscribe. The remaining sections rely heavily on published materials, focusing on leisure travel and reports thereof by Yankees in Mexico, and Mexican participation in various exhibitions in the United States.The overall theme is that the US view of Mexico reflected the Yankees’ view of themselves and their mission in the world more than the realities of Mexico. It exaggerated the importance of the United States and reflected the viewpoint of the United States as not “a colleague of Mexico, but as her savior” (p. 96). Even when interest in Mexico increased, the author contends, Yankees continued to view their southern neigh-bor through a commercial lens as a market for products from the north rather than as a sovereign nation or even a producer of products that might be imported into the United States. When transport and communication made travel possible, Yankees continued to regard Mexico as exotic and appreciated it for its natural beauty, essentially ignoring its people, development, and institutions. As a result the author contends that visitors from the north “preferred not to study Mexico but to escape to what they saw as a primitive and timeless refuge from modern civilization” (p. 149). Consequently, even increasing tourism “did not validate Mexico’s existence as an autonomous viable nation” (p. 175).The very brief section dealing with the Mexican Revolution follows the well-known path of the writings of the day, again focusing on the press and other publications, and the accounts written by such prominent writers as John Reed, who wrote about civil conflict in Mexico until they shifted their attention to reporting on the European War. Through it all, the author sees the citizens and writers of the United States as stubbornly retaining only their own outlook regarding Mexico, ignoring reality to continue perceiving Mexico as “timeless rather than progressive, exotic rather than civilized, and happy rather than hard working” (p. 218).Historians will undoubtedly find the author’s use of the word Americans when referring to citizens of the United States itself culturally insensitive, ignoring the Latin American view that American is a term that applies to all citizens of the American continents.