Dialogues Between Travelers. Intertextuality in the Travel Diary of José Fernando Ramírez During the Second Mexican Empire

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the dialogism and intertextuality in the travel diary written by José Fernando Ramírez (Mexico, Chihuahua, 1804-Germany, Bonn, 1871) during his visit to Yucatán in 1865 as part of Empress Charlotte’s entourage. We describe in what sense the allusions and quotations from travel books by prominent explorers, such as Alexander von Humboldt, John L. Stephens and Frédéric Waldeck, were part of a transatlantic dialogue between a nascent Mexican scientific community and a hegemonic scientific discourse on Mexico and Yucatán in the political and epistemological framework of the Second Mexican Empire (1864-1867).