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Viva Mexico
Flandrau was a young rich American with an individual sense of humor, and no prejudices except against Western uniformity. His travel book is more than a ramble among places; it is a journey among the Mexican people. His brother established a coffee plantation in Mexico in 1905, and Charles travelled there with his mother in 1904. The experiences gained from this visit, along with two other visits in subsequent winters, formed the basis for Viva Mexico! which he described as one long, carelessly written but absorbing romance.
Excerpt from Viva Mexico:
It is a queer, strange thing, he confided in me when we parted in Havana harbor, that a man of my age and morals won't be able even to get drunk without the help 0' that and he nodded toward the ladylike little interpreter who had come out to meet him and take charge of him during his stay.
Excerpt from Viva Mexico:
It is a queer, strange thing, he confided in me when we parted in Havana harbor, that a man of my age and morals won't be able even to get drunk without the help 0' that and he nodded toward the ladylike little interpreter who had come out to meet him and take charge of him during his stay.
- GenresTravelNonfiction
305 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1912
3 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Charles Macomb Flandrau
26 booksCharles Macomb Flandrau was an American author and essayist.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 6, 2010
Flandrau visited Mexico--evidently his brother ran a coffee plantation--just before the Revolution of 1911. He had a gift for observation and he captures what it is like to be in Mexico better than anyone else I've read from that period. The usual suspects of the American critique of Mexicans all make an appearance: booze, and lack of ambition, and a sense of honor that does not precisely follow the tenets of the early 20th century U.S. But these items are less prevalent than a lot of Americans or Englishmen (particular Graham Greene's travel book) who wrote about Mexico, and Flandrau's curiousity, especially about the Mexicans themselves usually prevails. He evokes the sights and sounds well, is enchanted by the plaza and charmed by many of the people. The gaffes of Americans living in Mexico were comic to Flandrau, and although often arch, he seems to have more mercy for the Mexicans than his fellow emigres. Politically, he was tone-deaf, though. He writes disparagingly of rebels, and at several points remarks on what a terrific dictator Porfirio Diaz was (he who responded to a telegram about captured rebels: "Matenlos en caliente"; it's a phrase that defies translation but roughly means "Kill them with hot speed"). At about the same time Flandrau lavished praise on the dictator, another American, John Kenneth Turner, was documenting the essential slavery of Indians sent to the Yucatan to harvest henequen.
May 21, 2015
Viva Mexico was published in 1908, after Charles Flandrau had spent three years on his brother's coffee estate in the wilds of Mexico.
He is funny, acerbic and perceptive. He criticizes his fellow American ex pats for continually belittling the Mexicans around them, yet as far as I can see he does the same. He thinks he speaks warmly and respectfully of the Mexicans and their culture, yet most of his writing is critical. It also insightful - but I would have enjoyed it more if he could have spoken about the Mexicans with greater respect.
He is very flamboyant. With each episode he describes his writing gains a greater and greater momentum, until it reaches a crescendo...
The use of gold leaf in decoration is like money. A little is pleasant, merely too much is vulgar; but a positively staggering amount of it seems to justify itself..... The ordinary white and gold drawing-room done by the local upholsterer is atrociously vulgar, but the cathedral of Puebla is not. Gold-polished, glittering, shameless gold - blazes down and up and across at one; from the stone rosettes in the vaulting overhead, from the grilles in front of the chapels, from the railings between which the priests walk to alter and choir, from the onyx pulpit and the barricade of gigantic candle-sticks in front of the alter, from the alter itself - one of those carefully insane eighteenth-century affairs, in which a frankly pagan tiempolito and great lumps of Christian symbolism have become gloriously muddled for all time. Gold flashes in the long straight sun shafts overhead, twinkles in the candle flames, glitters from the censers and the chains of the censers. The back of the priest at the alter is incrusted with gold, and today - for Christmas lingers - all the pillars from capital to base are swathed in the finest of crimson velvet fringed with gold. It isn't vulgar, it isn't even gaudy. It has surpassed all that and has entered into the realm of the bewildering - the flabbergastric.
One nevertheless gets a very good flavour of the culture and the people of the country, for me all the more interesting given its location at the beginning of the 20th century, and from the fact that Flandrau really immerses himself in local life. He is no casual spectator, but seems to relish with enthusiasm the experience of life in Mexico, and interacting with the people around him.
It was therefore maybe a bit strange that for me the most moving part of the book was his description of an estate owned by a very poor British family - the Trawnbeighs - and their determination to live a life soaked in Victorian mores and rituals, in spite of their poverty, and the degree to which life in Mexico was not suited to this. Every afternoon at tea time the women of the family would dress in tightly laced summer silks, wholly unsuitable to the heat of the climate. Of course we had tea in the garden. There wasn't any garden, but we nevertheless had tea in it....."We love to drink tea in the dingle dangle," Mrs. Trawnbeigh explained"
Their conversation was wholly England-centred, and impervious to the realities of their Mexican life.
I've put you in the north wing, old man; there's always a breeze in the wing," my host declared as he ushered me into a bamboo shed they used apparently for storing corn and iron implements of an agricultural nature. But there was also in the room a recently made-up cot with real sheets, a tin bath tub, hot and cold water in two earthenware jars, and an empty packing case upholstered in oil-cloth. When Trawnbeigh spoke of this last as a "wash-hand-stand," I knew I had indeed strayed from life into the realms of mid-Victorian romance.....The whole inflexibly insular scheme of their existence was more, infinitely more, than a bluff. It was a placid, tenacious clinging to the straw of their ideal in a great, deep sea of poverty, discomfort, and isolation.
Happily for the Trawnbeighs, their son made a good marriage, and their lives took a turn for the infinitely better.
I enjoyed the book, most of all the way that Flandrau lived the life with gusto, he was not just a traveller passing through, rather he was living in Mexico - travelling second class on the trains, staying in cheap Mexican inns with the mule drivers, being god-parent to the children of workers on his brother's estate - all with heart, mind and spirit. But I would have preferred it if he could have curbed his better-than-everyone-else position in life, and seen himself more as just another human being.
He is funny, acerbic and perceptive. He criticizes his fellow American ex pats for continually belittling the Mexicans around them, yet as far as I can see he does the same. He thinks he speaks warmly and respectfully of the Mexicans and their culture, yet most of his writing is critical. It also insightful - but I would have enjoyed it more if he could have spoken about the Mexicans with greater respect.
He is very flamboyant. With each episode he describes his writing gains a greater and greater momentum, until it reaches a crescendo...
The use of gold leaf in decoration is like money. A little is pleasant, merely too much is vulgar; but a positively staggering amount of it seems to justify itself..... The ordinary white and gold drawing-room done by the local upholsterer is atrociously vulgar, but the cathedral of Puebla is not. Gold-polished, glittering, shameless gold - blazes down and up and across at one; from the stone rosettes in the vaulting overhead, from the grilles in front of the chapels, from the railings between which the priests walk to alter and choir, from the onyx pulpit and the barricade of gigantic candle-sticks in front of the alter, from the alter itself - one of those carefully insane eighteenth-century affairs, in which a frankly pagan tiempolito and great lumps of Christian symbolism have become gloriously muddled for all time. Gold flashes in the long straight sun shafts overhead, twinkles in the candle flames, glitters from the censers and the chains of the censers. The back of the priest at the alter is incrusted with gold, and today - for Christmas lingers - all the pillars from capital to base are swathed in the finest of crimson velvet fringed with gold. It isn't vulgar, it isn't even gaudy. It has surpassed all that and has entered into the realm of the bewildering - the flabbergastric.
One nevertheless gets a very good flavour of the culture and the people of the country, for me all the more interesting given its location at the beginning of the 20th century, and from the fact that Flandrau really immerses himself in local life. He is no casual spectator, but seems to relish with enthusiasm the experience of life in Mexico, and interacting with the people around him.
It was therefore maybe a bit strange that for me the most moving part of the book was his description of an estate owned by a very poor British family - the Trawnbeighs - and their determination to live a life soaked in Victorian mores and rituals, in spite of their poverty, and the degree to which life in Mexico was not suited to this. Every afternoon at tea time the women of the family would dress in tightly laced summer silks, wholly unsuitable to the heat of the climate. Of course we had tea in the garden. There wasn't any garden, but we nevertheless had tea in it....."We love to drink tea in the dingle dangle," Mrs. Trawnbeigh explained"
Their conversation was wholly England-centred, and impervious to the realities of their Mexican life.
I've put you in the north wing, old man; there's always a breeze in the wing," my host declared as he ushered me into a bamboo shed they used apparently for storing corn and iron implements of an agricultural nature. But there was also in the room a recently made-up cot with real sheets, a tin bath tub, hot and cold water in two earthenware jars, and an empty packing case upholstered in oil-cloth. When Trawnbeigh spoke of this last as a "wash-hand-stand," I knew I had indeed strayed from life into the realms of mid-Victorian romance.....The whole inflexibly insular scheme of their existence was more, infinitely more, than a bluff. It was a placid, tenacious clinging to the straw of their ideal in a great, deep sea of poverty, discomfort, and isolation.
Happily for the Trawnbeighs, their son made a good marriage, and their lives took a turn for the infinitely better.
I enjoyed the book, most of all the way that Flandrau lived the life with gusto, he was not just a traveller passing through, rather he was living in Mexico - travelling second class on the trains, staying in cheap Mexican inns with the mule drivers, being god-parent to the children of workers on his brother's estate - all with heart, mind and spirit. But I would have preferred it if he could have curbed his better-than-everyone-else position in life, and seen himself more as just another human being.
January 1, 2019
Written in 1908 by a young, privileged man living for 3 years on his brother's coffee plantation in rural, mountainous Mexico. Flandrau's observations on Mexicans and life in Mexico were mostly right on and vivid. I love that he had a true appreciation of the land and the people, and saw through the other expats living in Mexico at the time who removed themselves from true Mexico and lived there on an entirely different level than the locals. This is a contemporary issue as well. There was a section toward the end of the book that was a bit draggy for me, but for the most part I loved visiting 1908 Mexico through his eyes.
May 12, 2022
This was the third book I requested from the editor of ELAND Press for writing an article in their latest newsletter, and I wasn’t disappointed. I can now understand why some consider it one of the best travel books.
The author was a wealthy American with a unique sense of humor and few prejudices except Western uniformity. The book is a journey among the Mexican people and starts in 1904 with a visit to his brother’s coffee plantation in Jalapa, Mexico, with his mother. His three visits were the basis for this profile of rural Mexicans and expatriate gringos, which many apply today.
The author had a life-long fascination with Mexico, “Superficially, Mexico is a prolonged romance. For even its brutal realities—of which there are many—are the realities of an intensely pictorial people among surroundings that, to Northern eyes, are never quite commonplace….” He admitted, “I have written about a very little corner of a very great place.”
He was committed to exposing the many misperceptions about Mexicans, which he describes here. “They’re the laziest people in the world, and although they seem to treat you politely, they are all treacherous and dishonest. Their politeness is merely on the surface; it doesn’t come from the heart...Mexican politeness, which - except for the fact that there is much more of it - is like our own, an outward ‘polish’ and nothing else.”
This doesn’t mean he wasn’t critical, “Mexicans are peculiarly ignorant of the principles of sanitation, and careless even when informed. Typhus, typhoid, and smallpox are prevalent in the City of Mexico all year-round, although either through indifference or a reluctance to admit it, cases are not reported in the newspapers until the frequency of funerals begins to cause a universal gloom….”
He also wrote about political life under Mexican president Porfirio Diaz in this passage about the brutal response to a local strike. The strike was at Orizaba at a jute mill which, according to the British manager, the Government sent down a regiment from Mexico City which “…in an impromptu sort of way, six hundred strikers were immediately shot, and that the next morning thirty-four were formally, elaborately, and officially executed, thus, ending the labor dispute and, according to the author,’…also ended your illusions as to the freedom of the Mexican press.”
The author also loved Mexico for tending to his solitude, as he was not a man to enter the public arena. His mother, who died on December 5th, 1911, was the only person he loved with any degree of passion,
Fellow author Nicholas Shakespeare fills out the author’s profile in the Epilogue he wrote in 1990. “Drink and solitude transformed him into a petulant, neurotic snob. ‘Mr. Lindsay,’ he told the pianist at a neighbor’s soirée, ‘if you play any more Bach, I’ll put poison in your coffee.” As for literature, his later books were, well, companionable, but unfocused, watery stuff, compared to what had gone before.”
The author’s demise came on March 28th, 1938. “I’m sorry I drank all that port wine,” he told Dr. Ogden through the oxygen tent. He spent the last years in his mother’s footsteps, traveling through Europe, to the countries where she had taken him as an eight-year-old, watching the light fade over the belfries, scribbling plots for stories that never came, and settling for half the year in the French town of Bizy, the original home of his Huguenot ancestors.
Shakespeare uses this as a precautionary tale, “…a warning of what can happen to a writer who loses his vocation, who chooses to be a spectator of humanity rather than one of its species. He had long ago forgotten Mexico and his brother’s Finca, empty except for bandits who came to sit in his chair on the windy sala, listening to phonographs.”
Geoffrey Smith of “Country Life” assessed the author as follows, “His impressions are deep, sympathetic and judicious. In addition, he is a marvelous writer with something of Mark Twain’s high spirit and Henry James’s suavity.”
The Author:
Flandrau was born in 1871 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He went to Massachusetts for college, graduating from Harvard University. He was a member of The Lampoon and the Hasty Pudding Club. He taught English literature at Harvard and tutored overseas.
His books include Prejudices and Loguacites, and Sophomores Abroad. Financially independent, in 1924, he divided his time between Majorca, Spain, and his family home in St. Paul. He also lived in Paris and Normandy, France. Larry Haeg’s biographer ranks Flandrau with great writers from St. Paul, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis. But he notes that Flandrau seemed to pull back from the career and lived a very private life.
Product details
• Publisher : Eland Publishing; 2nd edition (May 1, 2018)
• Language : English
• Paperback : 164 pages
• ISBN-10 : 1906011133
• ISBN-13 : 978-1906011130
• Item Weight : 7.8 ounces
• Dimensions : 5.43 x 0.55 x 8.5 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #3,027,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
o #1,111 in General Mexico Travel Guides
o #3,170 in Mexico History
o #7,638 in Travel Writing Reference
• Customer Reviews:
4.5 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
The Reviewer
Mark Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. He’s worked with groups like CARE and MAP International, Food for the Hungry, Make-A-Wish International, and was the CEO of Hagar USA.
His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association. According to the Midwest Review, it “…is more than just another travel memoir. It is an engaged and engaging story of one man’s physical and spiritual journey of self-discovery.”
His articles have been published in Ragazine and WorldView Magazines, Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Quail BELL. At the same time, the Solas Literary Award recognized two essays, including a Bronze award, in this year’s “Best Travel Writing” Travel Adventure category. Two of his essays were winners at the Arizona Authors Association Literary Competition, and another was recently published in ELAND Press’s newsletter. He’s a contributing writer for “Revue Magazine” and the “Literary Traveler.” His column, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why,” is part of the Arizona Authors Association newsletter. He's working on his next book, Moritz Thomsen, The Best American Writer No One’s Heard Of. He produces a documentary on indigenous rights and out-migration from Guatemala, “Trouble in the Highlands.” His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com.
The author was a wealthy American with a unique sense of humor and few prejudices except Western uniformity. The book is a journey among the Mexican people and starts in 1904 with a visit to his brother’s coffee plantation in Jalapa, Mexico, with his mother. His three visits were the basis for this profile of rural Mexicans and expatriate gringos, which many apply today.
The author had a life-long fascination with Mexico, “Superficially, Mexico is a prolonged romance. For even its brutal realities—of which there are many—are the realities of an intensely pictorial people among surroundings that, to Northern eyes, are never quite commonplace….” He admitted, “I have written about a very little corner of a very great place.”
He was committed to exposing the many misperceptions about Mexicans, which he describes here. “They’re the laziest people in the world, and although they seem to treat you politely, they are all treacherous and dishonest. Their politeness is merely on the surface; it doesn’t come from the heart...Mexican politeness, which - except for the fact that there is much more of it - is like our own, an outward ‘polish’ and nothing else.”
This doesn’t mean he wasn’t critical, “Mexicans are peculiarly ignorant of the principles of sanitation, and careless even when informed. Typhus, typhoid, and smallpox are prevalent in the City of Mexico all year-round, although either through indifference or a reluctance to admit it, cases are not reported in the newspapers until the frequency of funerals begins to cause a universal gloom….”
He also wrote about political life under Mexican president Porfirio Diaz in this passage about the brutal response to a local strike. The strike was at Orizaba at a jute mill which, according to the British manager, the Government sent down a regiment from Mexico City which “…in an impromptu sort of way, six hundred strikers were immediately shot, and that the next morning thirty-four were formally, elaborately, and officially executed, thus, ending the labor dispute and, according to the author,’…also ended your illusions as to the freedom of the Mexican press.”
The author also loved Mexico for tending to his solitude, as he was not a man to enter the public arena. His mother, who died on December 5th, 1911, was the only person he loved with any degree of passion,
Fellow author Nicholas Shakespeare fills out the author’s profile in the Epilogue he wrote in 1990. “Drink and solitude transformed him into a petulant, neurotic snob. ‘Mr. Lindsay,’ he told the pianist at a neighbor’s soirée, ‘if you play any more Bach, I’ll put poison in your coffee.” As for literature, his later books were, well, companionable, but unfocused, watery stuff, compared to what had gone before.”
The author’s demise came on March 28th, 1938. “I’m sorry I drank all that port wine,” he told Dr. Ogden through the oxygen tent. He spent the last years in his mother’s footsteps, traveling through Europe, to the countries where she had taken him as an eight-year-old, watching the light fade over the belfries, scribbling plots for stories that never came, and settling for half the year in the French town of Bizy, the original home of his Huguenot ancestors.
Shakespeare uses this as a precautionary tale, “…a warning of what can happen to a writer who loses his vocation, who chooses to be a spectator of humanity rather than one of its species. He had long ago forgotten Mexico and his brother’s Finca, empty except for bandits who came to sit in his chair on the windy sala, listening to phonographs.”
Geoffrey Smith of “Country Life” assessed the author as follows, “His impressions are deep, sympathetic and judicious. In addition, he is a marvelous writer with something of Mark Twain’s high spirit and Henry James’s suavity.”
The Author:
Flandrau was born in 1871 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He went to Massachusetts for college, graduating from Harvard University. He was a member of The Lampoon and the Hasty Pudding Club. He taught English literature at Harvard and tutored overseas.
His books include Prejudices and Loguacites, and Sophomores Abroad. Financially independent, in 1924, he divided his time between Majorca, Spain, and his family home in St. Paul. He also lived in Paris and Normandy, France. Larry Haeg’s biographer ranks Flandrau with great writers from St. Paul, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis. But he notes that Flandrau seemed to pull back from the career and lived a very private life.
Product details
• Publisher : Eland Publishing; 2nd edition (May 1, 2018)
• Language : English
• Paperback : 164 pages
• ISBN-10 : 1906011133
• ISBN-13 : 978-1906011130
• Item Weight : 7.8 ounces
• Dimensions : 5.43 x 0.55 x 8.5 inches
• Best Sellers Rank: #3,027,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
o #1,111 in General Mexico Travel Guides
o #3,170 in Mexico History
o #7,638 in Travel Writing Reference
• Customer Reviews:
4.5 out of 5 stars 8 ratings
The Reviewer
Mark Walker was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala and spent over forty years helping disadvantaged people in the developing world. He’s worked with groups like CARE and MAP International, Food for the Hungry, Make-A-Wish International, and was the CEO of Hagar USA.
His book, Different Latitudes: My Life in the Peace Corps and Beyond, was recognized by the Arizona Literary Association. According to the Midwest Review, it “…is more than just another travel memoir. It is an engaged and engaging story of one man’s physical and spiritual journey of self-discovery.”
His articles have been published in Ragazine and WorldView Magazines, Literary Yard, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Quail BELL. At the same time, the Solas Literary Award recognized two essays, including a Bronze award, in this year’s “Best Travel Writing” Travel Adventure category. Two of his essays were winners at the Arizona Authors Association Literary Competition, and another was recently published in ELAND Press’s newsletter. He’s a contributing writer for “Revue Magazine” and the “Literary Traveler.” His column, “The Million Mile Walker Review: What We’re Reading and Why,” is part of the Arizona Authors Association newsletter. He's working on his next book, Moritz Thomsen, The Best American Writer No One’s Heard Of. He produces a documentary on indigenous rights and out-migration from Guatemala, “Trouble in the Highlands.” His wife and three children were born in Guatemala. You can learn more at www.MillionMileWalker.com.
May 3, 2020
This was quite good. I was initially put off because I thought it was coming off racist and classist, but after I got into it, I didn't think so any more. His writing is very clever. I have just ordered another one of his books.
Read
December 19, 2022Mooi boek met veel rake observaties en aardige zingevingen
Read
December 30, 2013Started reading this on the plane at the start of my trip to Mexico. So far I love it!
Finished this book on the plane. A great way to get excited about my trip to Mexico City, over 100 years after this travel guide was written.
Finished this book on the plane. A great way to get excited about my trip to Mexico City, over 100 years after this travel guide was written.
August 1, 2013
A look at Mexico, both urban and rural in and around 1908 from a generally sympathetic american observer. Enough from me. Nicks review covers it all very well indeed.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews