peoples

Peoples of Mexico and Brazil

	Foreign peoples are exotic. They are new and engaging merely because they are different from us. Naturally, we are intrigued by the exotic, and feel the need to draw attention to customs, dress or jewelry that in some way jars with our common ideas surrounding what is "normal." The trend of travel writers throughout history has tended to establish the peoples of the "distant" and "exotic" lands whom they encountered as different, and therefore, worthy of close attention in their travel writing accounts. In essence, one could see the attention paid to peoples in travel writing accounts as asking the following questions: "Can you believe this?" or "Isn't this strange?"
Mexico (1916)		Brazil (1955-1956)

By 1850, however, the peoples are no longer entirely "new" to the traveler. He or she has access to all the past accounts that outline the character of the native, such as attention to dress, religion, rituals, or economy. How then, does the more modern traveler give his attention to the peoples of different countries when the traditional approach seems somewhat banal or hackneyed?

What we begin to see, through our attention to travelers to Mexico and Brazil from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th, is a turn away from the classic portrayal of "newness," and instead see the attention vary according to the individual travelers personality or his motives for travel. In such instances, we may group the attention that a traveler pays to the people on the basis of his profession or reasons for traveling. The following categories seem appropriate: the scientist or naturalist, the contemporary traveler, and the anthropologist.

The Scientist and Naturalist:

Many of the travelers that we have studied, and especially those traveling to Brazil, were scientists. Scientists and naturalists, such as Louis Agassiz, Konrad Guenther or Theodore Roosevelt, seem to view the people as a mere extension of the natural world, and therefore worthy of very little direct attention in their account of "science." The majority of their accounts, thus, focus more on issues of land and how the natural world fits into their research.

When they do discuss the people, however, the naturalists (Agassiz and Roosevelt) tend to view the natives in a similar way that they evaluate the natural order of things: namely by a classificatory system. Agassiz, writing in 1868, suggests that in "Brazil there is no prejudice against color: once freed, the black can rise as high in society and politics as the white, and has indeed shown himself the equal of the white in natural ability and industry" (Agassiz 383). The type of broad-based statements suggests an encompassing description of the peoples--one in which the individual person is very much absent. Likewise, William Marshall Anderson, writing about Mexico from 1865-1866, tends to group individuals into broad categories.

There were formerly a great many very black people-there are now a great many dark, or deeply colored skins. Where are the blacks? Has the mixture, or miscegenation, worked out, or washed out, the black blood? Has it, on the contrary, soaked in and ground in the red-blood? I see…skins too dark for pure Indian-many lemon colored bipeds with too much hair on the face and lip for Indian, yet the mouth, the eye, the cheek-bone are clearly American and American only. (Anderson 32-33)

"The Tortilla Maker" Diego Rivera, 1926

The very obvious categorization of the people--the attention to racial difference as the only means of difference--seems perhaps fitting for the Confederate American writing at the time of the Civil War. It nonetheless suggests Anderson's tendency to see the people only in physical relation to others. He defines them by exterior characteristics.

The Contemporary Traveler:
While travel writers such as Roosevelt, Agassiz and Anderson tend to view the people with more natural, and therefore biological, identifications, other travel writers, notably Harry A. Franck and Bess Adams Garner, begin to focus more on the people as individuals rather than as part of a mass identification. The turn towards individual recognition mirrors the emergence of the more contemporary idea of a traveler. Franck and Garner traveled because they wanted to, and not for the traditional motives of traveling for economic, religious, or scientific reasons. They wanted to "see the world." Although Garner does suggests the classificatory method of a description of peoples with "After all, Mexico is full of Mexicans," she immediately clarifies her point, not with the biological or "natural" look of the natives, but instead with the fact that the Mexicans "are so kind, so unfailingly polite…[and] when we go to Mexico [we] should be especially careful not to be rude" (Garner 26). Her attention to customs or personality of the Mexicans suggests a turn from the more black-and-white biological descriptions of the scientists.
	Harry A. Franck, however, goes further than Garner with his attention to individual people. He seems to notice people, and more to notice them as individuals, both in appearance and in actions. Consider his description about a Mexican chorus girl that he encounters on the train.
She was about forty, looked it with compound interest, was graced with the form of a Panteon mummy, and a face--but some things are too horrible even to be mentioned in print. Most of the way she wept copiously, apparently at some secret a pocket mirror insisted on repeating to her as often as she drew it out, and regained her spirits only momentarily during the smoking of each of several cigarettes." (117)
Franck can retell this rather unflattering portrait of a Mexican woman, because he offers the reader many other portraits throughout his book. He is not restricted to categorization and therefore, the reader can experience his characterization of an individual woman and just an individual. Peoples become broken down into person in Franck's travel account.

The Anthropologist:

Finally, however, what emerges by the 1950s, is again another type of travel writing. David Maybury-Lewis, an anthropologist who travels to Brazil, turns his attention to a more sincere and complete categorization of the people. Although he states in his forward that the account "is an account of our experiences…not an essay in anthropology," his background in anthropology cannot be separated from his conclusions in the book. Thus, as an anthropologist, his attention to the Sherente tribe in Brazil, seems to fuse both the classification system of the sciences (as anthropology is in many respects a scientific discipline) with the more personal observations of travelers like Franck and Garner. Moreover, he likewise admits himself as a foreigner to the Sherente. Upon his arrival:

The crowd waited, fascinated and determinedly aloof, empty-eyed as samba dancers at the height of carnival. So the Sherente received us-passively. They showed little interest as we unloaded our gear. I brought a ninety-pound sack of salt clumsily up the bank, trying to give an impression of muscular agility which I felt sure was belied by my performance. Still nobody moved." (37)

Maybury-Lewis' understanding, here, of his own status as a foreigner suggests a move from a complete reliance on the tradition focus of travel writers on the quick stereotypes based on biological or religious ideas about the peoples, and a turn more to the understanding of the peoples customs as a way of better understanding the differences between different peoples.

Same Old, Same Old:
While travel writers seem to be shifting their attention away from the conventional methods of description of people, we would be remiss to assume that the convention of "newness"--of the foreign nature of peoples--would not make appearances in the texts. Travel writers still write about what the native wear, or what they eat, or their customs as somewhat foreign. Franck, for example, even with his attention to individual people still seems fascinated by the Mexican dress.
Mexico is strikingly faithful to its native dress…First and foremost comes the enormous hat, commonly of thick felt with decorative tape, the crown at least a foot high, the brim surely three feet in diameter even when turned up sufficient to hold a half gallon of water. That of the peon is straw; he too wears the skintight trousers, and goes barefoot but for a flat leather sandal held by a thong between the big toe and the rest. In details and colors every dress was as varied and individual as the shades of complexion. (13)
The complex and sincere attention, here, to the dress of the natives demonstrates his familiarity with the conventional modes of description. He understands that his readers want to know what is different or "fascinating" about the natives. Likewise, authors, such as Wallace Gillpatrick, who writes of Mexico in 1912, seem to use traditional descriptions. Gillpatrick often relies on the "easy" approach of descriptions to avoid painstaking portraits of the people. To Gillpatrick, the people of Mexico are "decent and friendly" (132), but they also command more of the author's written attention, than Roosevelt for instance. Gillpatrick returns continually to descriptions, and defines them in a similar method to Anderson's categorization-using a journalistic approach.

Sources:

Agassiz, Professor and Mrs. A Journey in Brazil. 1868. University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co., Cambridge. Boston,
1868.

Anderson, William Marshall. An American in Maximilian's Mexico 1865-1866. Ed. Ramon Eduardo Ruiz. San Marino: The Huntington Library, 1959.

Franck, Harry A. Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras: Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond. New York: The Century, 1916.

Garner, Bess Adams. Mexico: Notes in the Margin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937.

Gillpatrick, Wallace. The Man Who Likes Mexico. New York, NY: The Century Company, 1912.

Kozar, Richard. Theodore Roosevelt and the Exploration of the Amazon Basin. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2001.

Maybury-Lewis, David. The Savage and the Innocent. Beacon Press, Boston: 1956.

Images From:
(Mexico, 1916) Franck, Harry A. Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras: Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond. New York: The Century, 1916.

(Brazil, 1955-56) Maybury-Lewis, David. The Savage and the Innocent. Beacon Press, Boston: 1956.

(Men On Mule) Garner, Bess Adams. Mexico: Notes in the Margin. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937.

("The Tortilla Maker") http://www.mamalee.com/galleryluis.html

(brazilians) http://www.brunias.com/southamerica.html#brazilv

(Mexican) Franck, Harry A. Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras: Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond. New York: The Century, 1916.