Indebted Itineraries in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

Summary

Travel writers served a fundamental role in the articulation of transitional moments in Mexican history in the nineteenth century. In this talk, I will propose a comparative analysis of debt as enslavement in Lorenzo de Zavala's Viaje a los Estados Unidos de América (1834) and the attempt to translate indigenous slavery for an English-speaking readership in Barbarous Mexico (1910) by American journalist John Kenneth Turner. At stake is an economic relationship that unites Mexico and the United States and reveals the inconsistencies between the language of business and the ambiguities of slavery.