Besides the unreliable literary quality o f the publications o f Botas and Costa-Am ic, it should also be noted that the tendency to publish travel-chronicles directly in book form started with their endeavours, and that part of the reason for their failure might lie in the fact that the primary context for the travel-chronicle in M exico has always been as a journalistic practice. Mexican travel-chronicling has retained its role in this forum, and it is here that it has achieved a truly popular appeal. Developing out o f its involvement with journalism, it has also found another popular forum in television.
The most important focus for the travel-chronicle in M exico since the early 1950s has been the magazine México Desconocido. It started life as a weekly supplement to the newspaper
N ovedades (c. 1952/53), written and produced by the M exico City-bom advertising-agent Harry Moller, and probably taking its name from Lumholtz’s Unknown M exico. Moller had been inspired to start making excursions out o f the capital by an exhibition on Humboldt’s travels in M exico. This, in conjunction with the arrival in M exico o f two German-made luxury camper-buses, had given Moller the idea o f starting a travel business, but when this could not be achieved because o f bureaucratic problems, M oller decided to continue making excursions and write about the experience with a view to inspiring other M exico City residents to get out into the countryside.
M oving on from being a w eekly supplement to N ovedades, M éxico D esconocido also became an occasional half-hour television programme on Canal 13 from 1971 to 1980 (approximately). From this an ‘annual’ was published in book form by the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica, Geograffa e Informatica: M éxico d esco n o cid o : un p a is de exploradores. This material w as then reworked as a m agazine, also called México Desconocido, aimed at young people and published by the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales para los Trabajadores del Estado. Owing to the success o f all these enterprises, M oller and his team, finally decided to concentrate their attentions on an independent magazine: the first edition was published in full colour in November 1976. It has been published monthly ever since, reaching a peak print-run in 1995 o f eighty thousand copies per edition.^?
On the basis o f these statistics, the texts of México Desconocido constitute ‘popular’ travel- chronicles. The reasons for the popularity o f M éxico Desconocido may be found in the overall concision o f texts and their conscious aim to facilitate the com m unication of information and ‘sensations’. The tacit in-house style-book recommends the use o f vivid descriptions, amply supported by quality photographic material to provide the sensations - the magazines are currently collector’s items. The news-value o f many o f their subjects
67 México Desconocido has also had an impact on Mexico at a political level: President Luis Echeverria,
prime promoter of Mexican national tourism, used to read it and, when seeking new Mexican tourist sites for promotion, his counsellors sought the advice of the México Desconocido team. (Anecdote reported by one of the founding members of México Desconocido, the photographer Antonio Mercado Rojano. Much o f the information in this section concerning México Desconocido stems from personal interviews with its present editor, Beatriz Quintanar Hinojosa, and with Mercado Rojano, 28 June 1996.)
(submarine discoveries, exploding volcanoes, dinosaur footprints in the Sierra Gorda, etc.) and the clarity o f the supporting historical, anthropological, statistical and scientific documentation of even the most recondite areas of the Republic (often follow ing readers’ suggestions) should provide the information. Added pertinence to the reader com es in their exposure of environmental disasters as well as sites o f exceptional beauty, coupled with a not too oppressive rhetoric o f national pride; and in their retention o f the personal, yet not patronising, guiding narrative (with photographic evidence), linked to their provision o f the necessary practical information for the reader to ‘follow in their footsteps’ and get the most out o f his or her visit. Com m unication is assured by the use o f short sentences, uncom plicated syntax and a very literal use o f language. There is no evidence o f intertextuality.68
The aim o f México Desconocido in all its different forms has been consistently the desire to encourage a Mexican audience, particularly M exico City-based, to get out and get to know its own country. The editorial note in the first edition read thus:
ADVERTENCIA. Mucho del material grâfico y escrito que contiene esta ediciôn, es estrictamente inédite nunca antes, nadie, en ninguna parte, habia dado esta informaciôn, y no figura en textes escolares ni universitaries, ni adn en enciclopedias. Es el producto de muchos anos y centenares de miles de kilômetros recorridos en este pafs, une de los trece mds extensos del planeta.
La intenciôn: aportar al lector conocim ientos y sugestiones para su recreo y para acrecentar su amer al pais. Sea usted bienvenido a las maravillas de su propia patria.69
In the first years o f the existence o f México Desconocido the magazine, it focused more on ‘green’, ‘ethnic’ and educational tourism: hiking, camping, indigenous communities, off- the-beaten-track places. Presently, catering to a much wider audience, it selects places o f cultural and natural interest which are more accessible to a car-driving public, although without sacrificing its environmentally and anthropologically-friendly (considerate tourist) approach. Keeping abreast o f the times, M éxico Desconocido now has its own website, ‘a content-rich and visually appealing archive o f some o f its most popular issues’ ,7o and, most recently, Harry Moller, his son Carlos and others have started to market videos under the generic title Imdgenes Desconocidas.
In the wake o f México D esconocido there are now a number o f publications which seek to promote travel in M exico: there are those with a specifically cultural bias such as the historical review M éxico en e l Tiempo (published by the same company as México Desconocido, Editorial Jilgiiero) 3.ndi Arqueologia Mexicana (published by the Instituto Nacional de Arqueologia e Historia) which includes an excellent ‘guia de viajeros’ at the
68México Desconocido's texts correspond clearly to the tenets o f popular literature suggested in Anthony
Easthope’s Literary into Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 89. Nevertheless the magazine occasionally also publishes texts by popular authors and reputed academics, such as Marfa Luisa Puga and José Iturriaga de la Puente respectively, thus backing up on the quality o f this prose without losing its popular appeal.
69 México Desconocido, 1 (November 1976), 5.
end o f each editionJi Many o f the more tourist-orientated publications are bilingual, aiming at a national and international market; however, GeoMundo, published by Editorial T elevisa, frequently concentrates on locations within M exico for a specifically national readership.
T elevision ’s involvem ent in the popularisation o f travel (and its narration) in M exico is clear from M éxico Desconocido"s tim e on the air and T e lev isa ’s sponsorship o f
GeoMundo; however, few programmes have offered as balanced and committed a vision of M ex ico as M éxico D esconocido. Canal 13, inspired by the production o f México Desconocido as a television programme, produced its own travel programme: Rolando A ndo, in 1994-1995, which w as then taken up by the Instituto Politécnico N acional’s Canal Once, under the title M ochilaalhom bro. The format o f these extremely successful programmes is still based on the narration o f a travel diary, rather than any more fragmentary documentary style: the personal guide is still more effective in M exico than the anonymous compendium approach. M ochila a l hombro uses its narrator/mentor to teach a younger budget-traveller audience how to explore M exico and concentrates alm ost exclu sively on the beauties o f M exico’s colonial architecture, thus promoting cultural tourism over purely leisure tourism. Nevertheless, it lacks any real critical consciousness, or concern for the environment and ethnic diversity of M exico.72
* * * * *
71 In 1990 the literary review Textual (supplement to El Nacional) also published a special edition on world travel-writing ( ‘Viajes: el tiempo de mundo finito’. Textual, 18 (October 1990)). This edition included texts by Matsuo Basho, Gerardo Deniz, Eduardo Vâzquez Martin, Paul Theroux, Fabio Mordbito, V.S. Naipaul, Albert Camus, Jaime Moreno Villarreal, David Martin de Campo, Elsa Cross, Conrado Tostado, Fernando Femdndez, José Luis Rivas, Pablo Piccato, Aurelio Major, Jostle Ramfrez and Antonio Deltoro.
72 The information concerning Mochila al hombro largely stems from a personal interview with Magdalena Acosta Urquidi, Head of Foreign Program Acquisitions at Canal 11 (28 June 1996). For Rolando Ando see Florence Toussaint,‘Viajes a través de la camarade TV ’, Proceso, 19 February 1996, p. 65.