Between Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny: Spanish American Travel Narratives of Jacksonian America

Abstract

Spanish American travel narratives about the United States have been performing a crucial function in reversing the dominant trajectory of “Western” travelers’ routes and gaze. In contrast to the rather critical perspective of later narratives, Spanish American travel texts of the Jacksonian era tended to depict the United States as a likely model for their own countries. The chapter focuses on two Spanish American travelogues about the United States from the 1830s and the way they construct notions of both U.S. and Spanish American national identities: the Mexican politician Lorenzo de Zavala’s Viaje a los Estados Unidos del Norte de América (1834) and the Cuban-based Spanish intellectual Ramón de la Sagra’s Cinco meses en los Estados-Unidos de la América del Norte (1836). Published around the same time as Alexis de Tocqueville’s influential study La dé-mocratie en Amérique (1835), these two works provide different vistas of the United States than the canonical French text, while at the same time they offer critical reflections on Spanish American societies and cultures.