The long history of transatlantic movement in the Spanish-speaking world has had a significant impact on present-day concepts of Mexico and the implications of representing Mexico and Latin America more generally in Spain, Europe, and throughout the world. In addition to analyzing texts that have received little to no critical attention, this book examines the connections between contemporary travel, including the local dynamics of encounters and the global circulation of information, and the significant influence of the history of exchange between Spain and Mexico in the construction of existing ideas of place. To frame the analysis of contemporary travel writing, author Jane Hanley examines key moments in the history of Mexican-Spanish relations, including the origins of narratives regarding Spaniards' sense of Mexico's similarity to and difference from Spain. This history underpins the discussion of the role of Spanish travelers in their encounters with Mexican peoples and places and their reflection on their own role as communicators of cultural meaning and participants in the tourist economy with its impact—both negative and positive—on places.

This book is a detailed study of salient examples of Mexican travel writing from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While scholars have often explored the close relationship between European or North American travel writing and the discourse of imperialism, little has been written on how postcolonial subjects might relate to the genre. This study first traces the development of a travel-writing tradition based closely on European imperialist models in mid-nineteenth-century Mexico. It then goes on to analyse how the narrative techniques of postmodernism and the political agenda of postcolonialism might combine to help challenge the genre's imperialist tendencies in late twentieth-century works of travel writing, focusing in particular on works by writers Juan Villoro, Héctor Perea and Fernando Solana Olivares.

Growing up in a half-white, half-brown town and family in South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest struggled with her cultural identity. Upon turning thirty, she ventured to her mother's native Mexico to do some root-searching and stumbled upon a social movement that shook the nation to its core. Mexican Enough chronicles her adventures rumbling with luchadores (professional wrestlers), marching with rebel teachers in Oaxaca, investigating the murder of a prominent gay activist, and sneaking into a prison to meet with indigenous resistance fighters. She also visits families of the undocumented workers she befriended back home. Travel mates include a Polish thief, a Border Patrol agent, and a sultry dominatrix. Part memoir, part journalistic reportage, Mexican Enough illuminates how we cast off our identity in our youth, only to strive to find it again as adults -- and the lessons to be learned along the way.

Lawrence J. Taylor and Maeve Hickey explore the road between Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico talking to street urchins, mariachi bands, ranchers, cowboys, and waitresses about life along the road.

This book takes a new approach to travel writing about Latin America by examining ‘domestic’ journey narratives that have been produced by travellers from the continent itself and largely in Spanish. Historically, travel writing about Latin America has been written primarily from the perspective of the foreign, often European, traveller. As such, and following the large influx of military, scientific, and leisure travellers in the region since its colonisation, much of this foreign travel writing has depicted the continent in predominantly exoticist and/or imperialist terms. Lindsay explores how Latin American travellers have conceived and constructed narratives about travel at home and considers how such texts (many of them available in English translation or with subtitles) function to counter or corroborate long-standing myths about the continent. Through a series of regionally- and thematically-oriented case studies that engage with key issues, themes and debates in both Latin American and travel studies, Lindsay provides the first sustained interdisciplinary study of contemporary domestic travel narratives about the region and will also comprise an important intervention into methodological debates about travel and travel writing.

How colonial mapping traditions were combined with practices of nineteenth-century visual culture in the first maps of independent Mexico, particularly in those created by the respected cartographer Antonio Garc&ía Cubas.

Behind the facade of sombreros and tequila, tourist traps and holiday resorts, there lies a very different Mexico. In Sliced Iguana, Isabella Tree finds a town controlled by arm-wrestling matriarchs and party-mad transvestites and in war-torn Chiapas she discovers shamans worshipping Mayan gods inside Catholic churches and conducting exorcisms with the aid of Pepsi. This is a story of Mexico like no other, capturing the essence of its psyche and illuminating the struggles and hopes of a people and a country on the cusp of change.

Tony Cohan’s On Mexican Time, his chronicle of discovering a new life in the small Mexican mountain town of San Miguel de Allende, has beguiled readers and become a travel classic. Now, in Mexican Days, point of arrival becomes point of departure as—faced with the invasion of the town by tourists and an entire Hollywood movie crew, a magazine editor’s irresistible invitation, and his own incurable wanderlust—Cohan undertakes a richer, wider exploration of the country he has settled in. Told with the intimate, sensuous insight and broad sweep that captivated readers of On Mexican Time, Mexican Days is set against a changing world as Cohan encounters surprise and adventure in a Mexico both old and new: among the misty mountains and coastal Caribbean towns of Veracruz; the ruins and resorts of Yucatán; the stirring indigenous world of Chiapas; the markets and galleries of Oaxaca; the teeming labyrinth of Mexico City; the remote Sierra Gorda mountains; the haunted city of Guanajuato; and the evocative Mayan ruins of Palenque. Along the way he encounters expatriates and artists, shady operatives and surrealists, and figures from his past. More than an immensely pleasurable and entertaining travel narrative by one of the most vivid, compelling travel voices to emerge in recent years, Mexican Days is both a celebration of the joys and revelations to be found in this inexhaustibly interesting country and a searching investigation of the Mexican landscape and the grip it is coming to have in the North American imagination.

Since publishing A Woman’s World in 1995, Travelers’ Tales has been the recognized leader in women’s travel literature, and with the launch of the annual series The Best Travel Writing in 2004, the obvious next step was an annual collection of the best women’s travel writing of the year. This title is the seventh in an annual series—The Best Women’s Travel Writing—that presents inspiring and uplifting adventures from women who have traveled to the ends of the earth to discover new places, peoples, and facets of themselves. The common threads are a woman’s perspective and compelling storytelling to make the reader laugh, weep, wish she were there, or be glad she wasn’t. In The Best Women's Travel Writing 2011, readers Have lunch with a mobster in Japan and drinks with an IRA member in Ireland Learn the secrets of flamenco in Spain and the magic of samba in Brazil Deliver a trophy for best testicles in a small town in rural Serbia Fall in love while riding a camel through the Syrian Desert Ski a first descent of over 5,000 feet in Northern India Discover the joy of getting naked in South Korea Leave it all behind to slop pigs on a farm in Ecuador...and much more.

Over the past 35 years, hundreds of thousands of readers have agreed: This is the classic guide to "living, traveling, and taking things as they come" in Mexico. Now in its updated 14th edition, The People's Guide to Mexico still offers the ideal combination of basic travel information, entertaining stories, and friendly guidance about everything from driving in Mexico City to hanging a hammock to bartering at the local mercado. Features include: • Advice on planning your trip, where to go, and how to get around once you're there • Practical tips to help you stay healthy and safe, deal with red tape, change money, send email, letters and packages, use the telephone, do laundry, order food, speak like a local, and more • Well-informed insight into Mexican culture, and hints for enjoying traditional fiestas and celebrations • The most complete information available on Mexican Internet resources, book and map reviews, and other info sources for travelers