Mexican Travelers and the "Texas Question," 1821-1836

Abstract

The essay analyzes selected works of Mexican travel writing from 1821 to 1836 and their discussion of the so-called “Texas Question”—the growing Anglo Americanization of the region that would lead to its separation from Mexico in 1836. More than any other textual genre of the nineteenth century, travel accounts were not only thematically concerned with, but also actively participated in practices of national self-formation via (post)colonial discourses and territorial expansion. Even though the “Texas Question” was widely debated among the Mexican elite during the 1820s and early ‘30s, only few members of these groups actually traveled to the region or wrote about it in the context of other journey accounts. Two small and distinct groups of Mexican travel texts from the period address the issue: intellectuals’ travelogues about the United States discussing Texas in the context of U.S. territorial expansion, on the one hand, and journey accounts by military officers and scientists who inspected Texas on behalf of the Mexican government, on the other. After a brief overview of the situation of Texas during the 1820s and early ‘30s, the article provides a comparative reading of the major Mexican travelogues of Texas with regard to how they treat the "Texas Question."