This sudden possibility o f leisured travel, both at home and abroad, is a trademark, in politics, o f the Porfiriato and, in literature, o f the birth o f m odem ism o. If the first years of the Porfiriato are marked by the internal travel-writing o f Altamirano and Gutiérrez Najera, making ‘el verdadero sueno n a c i o n a l ’ 67 o f travel towards modernity a reality, at least in literary terms, it falls to a younger generation o f writers and politicians to live out that ‘sueno nacional’ abroad, in the United States or Europe, in the late 1890s and first years of the twentieth century. The two most significant travel-chroniclers o f this period are Justo Sierra (1848-1912) and Amado Nervo (1870-1919).6s
Much research could be done on how the literary works of the m odem istas (mainly poetry) relate to their extensive practice o f journalism, including a vast amount of travel-chronicles; and on how, in the 1890s, a growing network o f Latin American travel-chroniclers spread
m odem ism o first within South and Central America, and later in Europe. O f note, are José Martf’s travels in Central and North America, including M exico, between 1875 and 1888, which helped pave the way for the initial development o f the movement in Latin America itself.69 Rubén Dario’s lifelong travels in the Americas and in Europe from the mid-1880s through to 1916, the year o f his death, significantly increased the dissem ination of the movement, particularly in Spain. Dario did not go to M exico until the unfortunate year o f 1910, but by the turn o f the century M exico was able to go to Dario. Nervo and Sierra both met Dario in Europe: Nervo in 1900 in Paris where they were both correspondents for the Universal Exhibition; Sierra in Madrid in 1901 at the Congreso Social y Econom ico Hispanoamericano.70 In fact, Nervo met Sierra properly for the first tim e in France in 1901.71
The fact that travel within Latin America in the last decades o f the nineteenth century was still incredibly difficult on an international level, plus the increasing ease o f transatlantic travel and the attractions o f Europe mentioned earlier in this chapter, made France, Spain and Italy the top destinations for fin-de-siècle Latin American travel-chroniclers. Ironically, in reaching out for Europe, for personal reasons and/or as representatives o f their
67 Rafael Pérez Gay, introduction to Gutiérrez Najera’s Viajes extraordinarios, p. 9.
68 Sierra dreamt o f travel to the United States and to Europe from his childhood onwards (see José Luis Martinez’s introduction to Sierra’s Viajes (in Sierra’s Obras complétas, 1st repr., 14 vols (UNAM, 1977), VI, 7-8)); Nervo ironically claimed on arriving in Paris for the first time, ‘Por fin puedo hablar francés, estoy en mi patria: “jHacfa treinta anos que no la veia!”’ {Cuentos y cronicas, p. 202). All further quotations from Sierra and Nervo’s work are taken from these editions.
69 Data glossed from Ivân A. Schulman and Manuel Pedro Gonzalez’s Marti, Dario y el modernismo, prol. by Cintio Vitier (Madrid: Gredos, 1969), pp. 83-205.
70 See Manuel Durtin, Genio y figura de Amado Nervo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1968), p. 5; and Wilberto Canton, Justo Sierra: heroe bianco de Mexico (SEP, 1967), p. 20, respectively.
71 See Esther Turner Wellman’s Amado Nervo: Mexico's Religious Poet (New York: Instituto de las Espanas en los Estados Unidos, 1936), p. 62. Other Latin-American travel-chroniclers in Europe associated with modernismo are the Peruvian José Santos Chocano, the Franco-Argentinian Paul Groussac, and the Guatemalan Enrique Grimez Carillo whose entire literary out-put is comprised of travel-chronicles (for Grimez Carillo see Anfbal Gonzalez, Journalism, pp. 96-98).
individual nations’ foreign policies, Latin Americans found each other. M odem ism o is the first literary movement to display the characteristics o f Panamerican consciousness.
M odem ism o is simultaneously the first Latin-American movement to exercise its influence over Spanish culture. The developm ent o f Spanish m odem ism o and the boom in the production o f Spanish travel-writing at the turn o f the century must be, at least in part, related to Latin Americans’ presence in, and texts on, Spain. M iguel de Unamuno, José Ortega y Gasset, Pio Baroja, Em ilia Pardo Bazan, Giro Bayo, Azorin and others were all aware of, and involved in, the growing Latin American literary presence in Spain. Dario’s
Espafia contemporanea is in fact considered part o f the writing of the Spanish Generation o f 98; a ‘manifiesto estético e ideologico del M odemismo espanol’ .72
Justo Sierra was not a full-time modemista writer but the fact that much o f his writing was contemporaneous with m odem ism o (1884-1921)73 meant that certain similarities were inevitable. More important as a politician and a pedagogue than as a creative writer, he really carried on the work o f Ignacio Altamirano. In his politics he developed Altamirano’s nascent positivism into full-blown ciencia. In his travel-chronicles he updated and extended Altamirano’s repertoire: they are mostly external rather than internal, but instead o f letting aesthetics blur his politics like som e o f the m odem istas, he blended the two in the highly readable series of articles published as En tierra yankee: notas a todo vapor (1897-1898), and EnlaEuropalatina (1901-1903, posthumously collected for publication in book form). In his series o f chronicles on the United States Sierra displays the sources o f his knowledge o f the country in his passing references to other Mexican travel-chroniclers, such as Lorenzo de Zavala and Justo Sierra O’Reilly, his father; and to the travel-writing of other well-known authors such as Chateaubriand, José Maria Heredia, the Cuban Romantic poet, and John Tyndall, the popular Irish natural historian. 74 In particular, in his reference to his father’s chronicle written in 1848 (pp. 153-54), Justo Sierra at once confirms the existence o f a tradition (something which is handed down from father to son) and rejects this tradition as being too cumbersome (there is, in fact, a fifty year gap between accounts, enough for three generations’ worth o f tradition...).75 In his struggle to see for him self he tries to forget all these previous accounts, yet they inevitably cloud his vision with their increasing pessimism about North American society and politics. On leaving the States
72 Ramôn F. Lloréns Garcfa, Los libras de viajes de Miguel de Unamuno (Alicante: Caja de Ahorros Provincial de Alicante, 1991), p. 27.
73 Dates given in Pacheco's Antologia del modernismo. I, p. viii.
74 José Luis Martinez also suspects that Sierra had read Prieto’s Viaje a los Estados Unidos (in his introduction to Sierra’s Viajes, p. 5).
75 Sierra O ’Reilly also travelled in the footsteps of Zavala, whose work he edited in 1846 (see p. 28, footnote 46). Despite Justo Sierra’s reservations, the tradition also continues up to the present day: the politician and writer Héctor Pérez Martinez edited Sierra O’Reilly’s diary in 1938 {Diario de nuestro viaje a
los Estados Unidos: la pretendida anexidn de Yucatan, Biblioteca Histôrica Mexicana de Obras Inéditas, 12
(Antigua Libreria Robredo / Porrùa, 1938)); and Silvia Molina, Pérez Martinez’s daughter, re-edited Pérez Martinez’s own travel-chronicle, written in 1939-40, in 1994 ( ‘En los caminos de Campeche’, in Obras
complétas, 5 vols (Gobiemo del Estado de Campeche / Corunda, 1994), V: Periodismo, 233-85). This in
turn affects Molina’s own travel-writing {Campeche, imagen de eternidad, Cuademo de Viaje (CNCA, 1996).
Sierra writes: ‘Todos estos pesim ism os [acerca de la democracia estadounidense] me vienen de los libres que he leido sobre la sociedad americana, son “librescos”; yo no vi bien, entrevi un gran pueblo... y adquiri una con viccion , que la libertad es un aire respirable’ (p. 192).
This unspontaneous, stifled vision o f the United States is contrasted by Sierra’s description o f his train journey in M exico itself before reaching the border with United States - some o f the best pages in the history o f the genre. Seem ingly unfettered by the well-established tradition o f travel-chronicling in M exico - probably because he was not really intending to write about travel in M exico on this trip, and had not read up on the subject - Sierra makes succinct descriptions of the Mexican landscape and takes verbal snapshots o f passing faces, advised by a very economical use o f modemista literary innovation (Ta pi el de las montanas [...] se tigrea con frecuencia con las sombras rapidas de las nubes’ (p. 17)), conscious of the subjectivity o f his vision and o f the literary metamorphosis to which writing subjects reality. Sierra’s personal voice and political consciousness com e through w ell in the follow ing reflections on the desert regions o f Zacatecas:
Seguimos a todo escape hacia las regiones inhabitadas, seguimos bajo un cielo color de plata viva, por un suelo que se levanta hacia nosotros, se disuelve en âtomos infinitos y nos envuelve y nos engulle en su silencioso huracdn de polvo. [...] Las cercas de piedras blancas, colocadas prehistoricamente, parecen mâs bien denunciar un antiguo “paraje” chichimeca, que una aldehuela en nuestro siglo. Pero nuestro siglo està ahi présente en forma de telégrafo, cuyas altisimas cruces grises, unidas por las fibras metâlicas, parece que huyen a grandes zancadas kilométricas hasta el conffn del desierto; nuestro siglo va y viene con el tren de vapor... Alguna vez en esta triste tierra que jamâs ha bebido agua, el agua vendrâ del pozo, de la presa, del oasis, y con sôlo eso podrâ una naciôn acampar cômodamente en estas soledades y abonar con su guano estos pâramos... Lo triste y lo encantador en nuestro pafs, son estos contrastes de civilizaciôn refinada y de incultura absoluta, de climas que se atropellan en una escalinata de montanas, de ciudades y soledades, de desiertos muertos de sed que se puedan contemplar paladeando un vaso de limonada frfa y deliciosa. (p. 21)
Sierra’s style is halfway between the baroque flourishes o f romanticism and the succinct imagery and verbal innovation o f modernismo. His analysis o f M exico is a realistic blend o f history and modernity which puts his aesthetic vision o f landscape and lifestyle at the service o f his politics. The trip to the United States, by taking Sierra far beyond the borders o f M exico, helps him to further refine this sym bolic im age o f M exico, through contrast and absence. The distillation o f the essence o f M exico is further amplified through the em otional register o f Sierra’s search for him self - his ‘“yo” casi perdido’ - finally relocated on reentering M exico (pp. 191-93).
In Europe Sierra is ostensibly happier, less inhibited by the writings o f other M exican travel-chroniclers. Although somewhat disappointed by France and Spain, he appears to feel at home on the ancient roads o f cultural pilgrimage through Italy, paying homage to the historical investigations of Ernest Renan and the Italian travel-writing o f Castelar, Goethe, Taine and others. But even here he frequently protests that he ‘cannot see’ the monuments he has waited so long to visit. What disturbs his vision in Europe is not so much travel- writing, but the ubiquitous presence o f the Baedecker guidebook and its carrier, the tourist:
‘El rojo Baedecker a un tiempo util y odioso; toda la Italia artistica me parecio enferma de escarlatina...’ (p. 261). The presence o f tourists disturbs Sierra mainly because he does not want to be classed as a tourist himself, albeit as a cultural one. Of course, Sierra twists the issue, pointing out that most o f the tourists are North American and the trip which was supposed to place aesthetics above politics becom es entangled in his vision o f North American society. His disappointment in Europe is thus largely a transference o f his disappointed, or at best ambivalent, reaction to the United States.
Amado N ervo’s travel-chronicles from Europe (collected in El éxodo y las flo r e s d el camino (1902), plus the posthumously collected articles covering the period 1900-1913) are a classic example o f modemista overseas travel writing. Nervo - a full-time journalist and diplomat - is an astute and critical observer of him self and others. In line with Gutiérrez Najera, he keeps his travel-chronicles brief, informative, well-written and witty. Their style is taken from the more accessible range o f his poetics, using mainly simple constructions and vocabulary, with rather less whim sy and preciosity than Gutiérrez Najera. He also provides more dialogue and anecdote in exchange for Gutiérrez Najera’s interior monologue and literary speculation, plus more direct political criticism.
N erv o ’s stock o f intertextual references to his French id ols and his H ispanic contemporaries are what further define his texts as pertaining to the modemista movement - like most movements it was more of a club or a literary network than a particular style and subject matter, although the poetry was admittedly more homogeneous than the peripheral
c h r o n ic le s .7 6 However, what is notable about the intertext to Nervo’s chronicles is the absence o f references to previous generations of Mexican travel-chroniclers in Europe - the texts of Ocampo, Payno and others. Like Sierra, Nervo seems to have preferred to avoid references to the ‘tradition’ in order to get a fresher view.
Although ostensibly chronicling life in Paris, or elsewhere in Europe, Nervo keeps his eye out for the relevance o f his observations to life in M exico primarily, and to Latin America in more general terms. Aware that comparisons with home are inevitable in external travel- chronicles ÇSaliendo de M éxico todo es Cuautitlân. ! Saliendo de Paris, todo es M éxico. I
Para no hacer comparaciones, mejor quedarse en Cuautitlân’ (p. 90)), he resolves to use them to Latin American advantage. He points out the errors o f Latin Americans’ view s on Europe, and also signals the developm ents in Europe which could be o f use in Latin America.
Even before setting foot in Europe Nervo dedicated a number of articles to the great Latin American inferiority complex: ‘Los franceses valen infinitamente mas que nosotros, porque a nosotros, a todos los latinos que no som os franceses, se nos ha ocurrido que valen mucho: porque hablan mucho, porque declaman mucho, porque dogmatizan mucho, pero con elegancia’; and, ‘Odio mi idioma y lo revuelco, a semejanza de mis companeros, con
76 These chronicles cannot, however, simply be dismissed as not part of modemista literary practice. Recent reappraisals of the value of modemista chronicles may be found in Gonzdlez’s Journalism
un ccdô delicioso. Odio las costumbres de mi pais, y pinto en mis escritos las de pueblos que no he visto'T? This m ight be just sour grapes at not having managed to travel to Europe yet, but even after travelling in Europe, N ervo’s attitude is still happily flippant. Paris might be the home o f his literary idols, but his view o f Latin American idolisation of everything French is still scathing.
The ‘good things’ he has to point out about Europe are its technological advances and its marketing o f itself. It should not come as a surprise that modem ism o is inherently bound up with travel-chronicles when the novelty o f new modes o f travel, the increasing speed, and the fantasy o f flight are all part o f the fascination with modernity. Nervo wrote about cars, speculated about planes, and marvelled at the facilities o f train stations. These developments in infrastructure which made mass tourism a viable activity for Europeans were one o f the things that Nervo singled out for application in M exico, along with all the marketing and opportunism that goes with them;
<^Por qué en M éxico no se explotan nuestros admirables paisajes? Aqui hasta en la cumbre de la mas alta montana hay un suntuoso hotel. Y todo, merced a un habil plan, rinde cuantiosas utilidades. ^Que se quiere pasar el Rin? Medio franco. ^Que se quiere entrar al castillo? Un franco. ^Que se sube a la cdmara obscura? Medio franco. ^Que se vuelve a pasar el Rin para tomar el tren? Medio franco. Y luego las taijetas postales ilustradas y el no menos prôspero comercio de recuerdos del Rhein fall, marfiles, maderas, piedras de los Alpes, fotografias, abanicos..., cuanto hay en el mundo.
Los funiculares (que son aquf de lo mâs atrevido del orbe) dejan un dineral, un dineral los hoteles, todo un dineral. jCuânto no dana entre nosotros un funicular a las cumbres del Popocatépetl, del Iztaccfhuatl, del Orizaba; cuânto una empresa de vaporcitos de recreo en Chapala y en Pâtzcuaro, ahora que es tal la afluencia de excursionistas! ( ‘Las caidas del Rin: nuestros maravillosos paisajes mexicanos’, p. 233)
lu retrospect, Nervo sounds like an extremely dangerous visionary. No doubt there is som e irony in his recommendations - he attempts to be a ‘cultural pilgrim’ and a ‘traveller’ in his own travels rather than a tourist - but he is still a lot more positive in his view o f the applications o f tourism than Sierra.
The European experience also helps Nervo reevaluate the question o f exoticism. If earlier texts by Altamirano and Gutiérrez Najera had struggled to create an image o f M exico that was at once civilised and exotic, the equal o f France, with a little more besides in terms of nature and climate, Nervo, who has experienced Europe for him self, has the freedom to state: ‘Los mexicanos, por nuestra parte, gozamos del privilegio de un alto exotismo. En general, se nos toma por todo menos por latinoamericanos’ (p. 224); and again ‘ Chez nous
es un pais fantastico que todo latinoamericano lleva en el bolsillo para uso inmediato’ (p. 286). Europe turns out to be less civilised than it might seem from a distance, and the exoticism o f Latin America the fantastic result o f cultural ignorance. Nervo makes fun of transatlantic cultural m isconceptions, revelling in his newfound role as the interesting stranger with a carte blanche for uncivilised behaviour. It is with this ribald challenge to the Old World that Latin American culture enters the twentieth century.
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