The Uses of Failure in Mexican Literature and Identity

3. Alexander von Humboldt’s Work on Mexico, Cultural Allegory, and the Limits of Vision

CHAPTER 3 Alexander von Humboldt’s Work on Mexico, Cultural Allegory, and the Limits of Vision Nos une también la comunidad, mucho más profunda, de la emoción cotidiana ante el mismo objeto natural. El choque de la sensibilidad con el mismo mundo labra, engendra un alma común . . . El poeta ve, al reverberar de la luna en la nieve de los volcanes. —ALFONSO REYES (VISIÓN DE ANÁHUAC, 64) [We are also linked by the far deeper community of the daily emotions aroused by the same natural objects.The impact of the same world upon the sensibility engenders a common soul . . . The poet sees, as the moonlight shimmers on the snow of the volcanoes.] (29–30) Man looks aloft, and with uplifted eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies. —OVID, METAMORPHOSES 1 : 85 (DRYDEN TRANSLATION) Why Humboldt? Jokingly dismissing contemporary Freudian literary criticism, Harold Bloom compares it to the Holy Roman Empire: ‘‘not holy, not Roman, nor an Empire; not Freudian, or literary, or criticism’’ (Poetics, 228). One might offer the same litany about Humboldt’s place in this study of the failures of Mexican cultural figures. After all, Humboldt is not Mexican, is known more as a natural scientist than as a cultural figure (although he was both), and is most certainly not a failure. The more serious question is: why include a foreign vision when considering the Mexican imaginary? If we widen the scope of this project to include such ‘‘external’’ visions, we might have to account for all the other famous and influential travelers to Mexico, figures ranging from Thomas Gage in the seventeenth century to Antonin Artaud, Aaron Copland, D. H. Lawrence, Tina Modotti, and Malcolm Lowry in the twentieth. Each went to Mexico, engaged with the culture, contributed in some way to the construction of Mexican cultural identity, and, by extension, helped shape that national imaginary. In response to all of this I suggest that the case of Humboldt—the German scientist, philosopher of science, travel writer—is exceptional if not unique. Humboldt is not only indelibly linked to the formation of independent Latin America but most importantly is also perceived to be so by Latin America itself. Soon after Humboldt published the Essai politique sur le royaume de la Nouvelle Espagne [Political Essay on the Kingdom of New Spain] (1811), a work widely disseminated in both Spain and Spanish America by a proud Bourbon government, the wars of secession began—in part because of Humboldt’s writings.1 As an Enlightenment liberal, Humboldt was discreetly anticolonial in the sense that he advocated self-rule and the Universal Rights of Man. This was apparently missed by the Spanish authorities, who—impressed by his scientific rigor—did not understand that his data pointed an accusing finger at them. It is also a matter of historical record that Humboldt maintained personal friendships with key political figures like Simón Bolívar in South America and Lucas Alamán in Mexico. These founding fathers were both inspired and encouraged by the German savant’s interest in their world and their plight. Bolívar, motivated by Humboldt’s famous 1802 ascent of Mount Chimborazo, in 1821 traveled to Ecuador to recreate Humboldt’s feat, as Mary Louise Pratt has brought to light. In his own account, Bolívar-on-the-Mount writes a Petrarchan story of conversion: intoxicated by the landscape, he finds himself recalling in awe that Humboldt’s scientific mission was to provide a voice for that landscape. Bolívar declares this parallel to his own political mission to provide a voice for the people (Simón Bolívar, 2:106–107). The Mexican historian Enrique Krauze sums up a long-held view: ‘‘Humboldt fue un partero de la conciencia Mexicana . . . En esencia, dio a México su carta de naturalización en la historia occidental’’ [Humboldt was a midwife of Mexican consciousness . . . Essentially, he gave Mexico its naturalization papers into Western history] (‘‘Humboldt,’’ 22). According to this view, before Independence Mexico and indeed all of Latin America had been excluded from history; freedom from Spain brought with it Enlightenment and an entrance to the community of nations. Humboldt was an agent of both. In short, Humboldt allowed Mexico into modernity. Whatever the accuracy of this view might be, Humboldt (or at least his memory) in Latin America has become intertwined with the beginning of the nation. He has become a mythic figure buried deep within the collective psyche, a...