ABSTRACT This article explores how Mexican politician, Lorenzo de Zavala, engaged with issues of masculinity and nation in his 1834 travelogue, Viaje a los Estados Unidos del Norte de América (Journey to the United States of North America). The first published Mexican travelogue of the United States, this understudied text illuminates the post-independence period in which Latin American intellectuals imagined a hemispheric republican future originating in the Americas. This travelogue engaged with debates about nation-building and the role of male citizens. By conceptualising androcentrism as a symbolic marker, Zavala’s interpretation of the U.S. man informed his notion of an idealised citizenry. This notion was racialized and excluded subaltern populations. Additionally, this text can be interpreted as a precursor to twentieth-century valorisations of multi-ethnic identity discourses. Zavala imagined the emergence of a borderlands population that combined the characteristics of both countries’ citizenries. This travelogue provides greater meaning by contributing to the ongoing, ambivalent textual relationship between Mexico and the United States.