To scholars of Porfirian Mexico, Porte Crayon is not the most recognisable name. As the pen-name of the US consul-general, David Hunter Strother, it nevertheless struck a chord among American readers for his many contributions to the Harper's publications in the 1850s and 1860s. Strother won his diplomatic appointment under the Hayes administration and served US interests during the formative years of the Porfiriato from 1879 to 1885. This large volume collects the observations that he recorded in his daily journal.
Anyone who has surveyed the extensive number of nineteenth-century travel accounts of Mexico will agree with editor John E. Stealey's assertion that Strother achieved the best of the genre. An accomplished artist and art critic, Strother had a remarkable eye for detail and superior ability to render picturesque scenes in words. His journal entries were written for his own personal edification. But he had hoped to recapture his previous literary fame by publishing a definitive travelogue that would have anticipated and perhaps precluded dozens of hopelessly unoriginal narratives of the high Porfiriato. Strother died before he realised this ambition, but his legacy survives in his Mexican diaries. Stealey's scholarly introduction, prefaces to 34 well-organised chapters, informational footnotes, and biographical and documentary appendixes help make this an invaluable contribution to nineteenth-century Mexican history. Scholars will appreciate the accessibility, affordability and authority of this hefty edition.
Like primary source evidence in general, researchers must search through a bushel of chaff to find a peck of useful data in Strother's diaries. Faithful to retaining the voice of the original author, Stealey left little on the cutting room floor. What remains is a combination of the wondrous and mundane. While the US minister to Mexico, John W. Foster, eclipses Strother as an historical figure, Strother played a significant role in securing US recognition of the Díaz regime and representing the interests of American citizens and émigrés in Mexico. The raw data and notes that he used in his consular despatches do not always appear in his private journal. Instead, the reader comes to understand the demanding work and social obligations of the office. The diary reads like the Who's Who of Porfirian Mexico as high officials in the Mexican government and foreign diplomatic corps flow in and out of the agent's life. Brief encounters lead to ‘off-the-record’ vignettes of Mexican politicians. General Juan N. Méndez was ‘a pure blooded Aztec and Chief of the Pueblanos … [who] had a dark visage with snow white head and beard – stout and imposing mein’, (p. 69) and Manuel González was a ‘short & rather prissy figure’ (p. 315).
The major political events of Porfirio Díaz's first term and the financial problems of the González interregnum (1880–1884) rarely escaped Porte Crayon's attention. His eyewitness accounts of Ulysses S. Grant's visit and the street-level unrest of the Nickel Riots and English Debt Crisis are unsurpassed. His comments capture both the improvisational nature of Gonzalez's fiscal policies and the anger and frustration of the urban masses whom they affected most. In addition, Strother toured the Pachuca silver mines and the sugar plantations of Morelos, as well as interacting with the armed retainers and factory workers of the massive Fábrica de Hercules in Querétaro. His commentary that Mexico's feudal structure prevented it from modernising is insightful. Even a Japanese servant told him ‘labor here was so cheap that they couldn't afford to use machinery’ (p. 225). The consul-general was also keenly aware of the overbearing presence of the United States, at least until the arrival of the new British minister, Sir Spencer St John, who thought ‘Mexico will never amount to much until well salted by Anglo Saxon Blood’ (p. 605).
The longest entries of Strother's diary describe natural landscapes and people and are similar to those found in the best turn-of the-century travel accounts. Indeed, Strother had a flair for the romantic, which places the Virginia gentleman in the company of Mexico City's great chroniclers. Together with his son John, he walked the streets of the capital, revelled in their astonishment at the Day of the Dead toys, and expressed their fascination with the bullfights in Puebla. On his travels outside the city, the diarist rarely took his surroundings for granted and provided vivid and timeless descriptions of his subjects: ‘The women [of Patzcuaro] have a distinctive Costume, a blue woolin [sic] shirt thickly plaited with a red sash & white cotton chemise embroidered around neck and sleeves with red or blue woolen yarn. They weave & embroider rebosas, sashes, serapes & other goods in the town & we saw them at work with their handloom’ (p. 877).
While Strother expressed his love and appreciation for Mexico, his diaries teach us how precarious life was in the capital city. As administrator of the American Cemetery, he attended funerals, and recorded deaths by murder, accident and illness. He witnessed assaults, the aftermath of an attempted suicide, and the horrible deaths of matadors and picadors gored at the bullfights. Moreover, he reported on duels, fist-fights, executions and assassinations. In his pages, cholera and typhus snuffed out children young and old; the stable-mate of his son, John, was there one day and dead the next. Strother's routine encounters with death led to a casual attitude toward the violence, alcoholism, poverty and human suffering all around him.
Porte Crayon's diaries stand alone in providing a continuous stream of useful information at a time when just a few foreign journalists, businessmen and tourists recorded fleeting impressions of their month-long trips. Uniquely, Strother was the right person in the right place at the right time to witness Porfirian Mexico in the making. His strong habits of mind, multilingualism, and cosmopolitan outlook equipped him to record memorable first-hand observations, but never earned him the recognition he deserved. Thankfully, Stealey and Strother's own descendants redress this misfortune.
