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  • Mexico Other Wise: Modern Mexico in the Eyes of Foreign Observers
  • Dina Berger
Mexico Other Wise: Modern Mexico in the Eyes of Foreign Observers. Edited by Jürgen Buchenau. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2005. Pp. xiv, 285. Map. Glossary. Works Cited. $22.95 paper.

It is a challenge to assess anthologies of primary documents for, unlike a scholarly work of original research, they are almost solely designed for classroom use. [End Page 294] Rarely, though, anthologies of primary documents prove to be valuable pedagogical and reference tools (not to mention just enjoyable to read). Jürgen Buchenau's collection succeeds in all of these areas with an array of gazes onto Mexico from the usual (Alexander von Humboldt and John Kenneth Turner) as well as unusual (Clément Bertie-Marriott and B. Travern) suspects. Truly international in flavor, Mexico OtherWise presents readers with imaginaries of Mexico from across the globe, including rare gems from Empress Carlota's Austrian lady-in-waiting to the German immigrant and wife of a hardware store owner in Mexico City (who also happens to be Buchenau's great-grandmother), from the early nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Such diversity in perspective and long durée makes this anthology unique and no doubt valuable as a classroom tool. Students get to "do history" by learning about transformations (e.g., the "Mexican Miracle") and upheavals (e.g, revolution) in Mexican history through the eyes of tourists and immigrants who elucidate the everyday in a way that only outsiders can. Furthermore, because these are first-person accounts from foreign observers, students also learn to think critically about the foreign gaze upon Mexico and the cultural baggage that it entails, namely beliefs about cultural superiority and modernity.

Quite appropriately, Buchenau organizes his collection according to the traditional periodization of modern Mexico: Late Colonial-War of French Intervention (1800-1867), Liberal triumph-Porfiriato (1867-1910), Revolution-Reconstruction (1911-1945), and the Mexican Miracle-Neoliberalism (1946-1999). In each part, Buchenau includes a mix of international voices from observers who, though all Westerners, each have a different stake in Mexico and thus view historical events and transformations distinctly. In "The 'Mexican Miracle' and Its Collapse," for example, Buchenau presents excerpts on modernization and its consequences through industrialization models such as import substituting industrialization (ISI) and neo-liberalism. While the excerpts might be a bit unbalanced—they illustrate more negative than positive views—Buchenau juxtaposes critical accounts with more optimistic ones. Businessman and German immigrant, Franz Böker, who was negatively affected by state-supported industrialization, condemns inept politicians, while British travel writer and New Age activist, Isabella Tree, writes about modernization and its discontents in Chiapas during the Zapatista uprising of the late 1990s. These accounts are posited by the miniscule upside of modernization: British bookstore owner and journalist Irene Nicholson's account of progress as seen in female suffrage, or in stories of survival employed by inhabitants of Mexico's ciudades perdidas as relayed by sociologist Judith Adler Hellman.

Of the most interesting and useful selections in Mexico OtherWise are rarities like the account from Emmanuel Domenech, army chaplain to French invading troops and later Emperor Maximilian's press secretary. Translated from his much larger memoir in French, Domenech's reflection illustrates that the quagmire in which Mexico found itself by the mid-1860s was a product of "domestic, international, political and financial complications" (p. 77). Perhaps most importantly, especially for teaching purposes, is that readers get a sense of the French justification [End Page 295] for "conquering" Mexico and the overall belief that Mexicans were incapable of ruling themselves (a theme that runs throughout the anthology).

Like all pedagogical tools, Mexico OtherWise will probably not satisfy all instructors, who may want to assign specific accounts rather than the entire anthology. Unlike other recent anthologies of primary documents that balance Mexican and non-Mexican voices (e.g., The Mexico Reader [2003]), students may tire of the foreign, Western perspective that naturally tends toward objectification and exoticization and long for voices of the people about whom they study. Nevertheless, Mexico OtherWise proves itself a useful and interesting tool for students, historians, and anyone interested in the...

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