Post-Revolutionary Mexico: Xochimilco, Teotihuacan, El Toreo, Album of 96 Photographs & Ephemera, 1931 to 1939

Post-Revolutionary Mexico Photo Album Tourism and Leisure

Photograph

Mexico travel album documenting archaeology, bullfighting, urban leisure, regional performance, religious architecture, and roadside travel from 1931 to 1939, during the first major expansion of tourism under the postrevolutionary government. The photographs follow visitors through Mexico City and its surrounding attractions, presenting Teotihuacan, Xochimilco, public markets, tropical landscapes, and the bullring as components of a modern national itinerary. Mexican authorities during the 1930s institutionalized tourism within government policy and used historic centers, architecture, cultural traditions, and natural scenery to shape an internationally recognizable image of the country.

Photo album containing 96 items, including 71 silver gelatin photographs, 21 postcards, and 4 pieces of printed Mexican ephemera including tickets and menus, most photographs approximately 2.5" x 3.5", mounted in an album measuring approximately 8.5" x 11", Mexico, 1931 to 1939. The photographs show bullfights before crowded stands at El Toreo; visitors standing among the monumental architecture of Teotihuacan; canal boats and waterside excursions at Xochimilco; church entrances, plazas, street markets, gardens, rural roads, thatched buildings, tropical vegetation, animal displays, and a roadside sign reading “Tropic of Cancer.” Other scenes record costumed performers, vendors working beside public buildings, groups traveling by automobile, social outings, and companions posed at archaeological and scenic destinations. Printed material includes tickets for the 1939 season at “Plaza de Toros El Toreo,” a color “Aguas de Lourdes” restaurant menu advertising “Un ‘Seltzer’ alcalino natural,” newspaper clippings, and postcards extending the private snapshots through commercially produced views of Mexican landscapes and monuments. An inscription on the front pastedown dated “Xmas 1931” establishes the beginning of the chronology, while the El Toreo tickets extend the record through 1939.

Tourism became an instrument of economic policy and national image making after the Mexican Revolution, translating archaeological sites, colonial architecture, regional customs, food, and public spectacle into destinations for domestic and foreign visitors. Government tourism promotion of the period used bullfighting as a recognizable emblem of Mexico, including official travel posters issued between 1930 and 1950, while preservation programs increasingly linked historic buildings and urban centers to the visitor economy. Pages and photos exhibit rippling but no apparent staining, some minor wear consistent with age; several photographs remain securely mounted while others show lifting or losses. Overall in good condition. A sustained record of how postrevolutionary Mexico presented archaeology, spectacle, landscape, and regional culture as the foundations of a modern tourist nation.

Item #23679

Price: $550.00