Nineteenth-Century Xalapa. A Review of Rachel A. Moore’s <em>Forty Miles from the Sea: Xalapa, the Public Sphere, and the Atlantic World in Nineteenth-Century Mexico</em> (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2011.)

Abstract

If you came to Mexico at almost any time after the death of good King Charles III yet before Don Porfirio Díaz’s untimely departure in 1911, chances are you passed through a lovely mountain city known as Xalapa, spelled with an “x,” but pronounced with an “h,” like the eponymous chile that livens the region’s cuisine.  Today the capital of Veracruz state, Xalapa and its early national history feature in Rachel Moore’s new Forty Miles from the Sea.  This book focuses on the city’s place as entrepot and communications hub, and also reaches outward to shed light on Orizaba, which dominated an alternative coastal-capital route passing to the south.