Alois Richard Nykl: Present-Day Mexico

This critical edition presents an unpublished travelogue of Czech-American traveller and polyglot Alois Richard Nykl to Mexico in the 1920s. The introductory studies outline Nykl’s life story, the circumstances of the manuscript creation and his unsuccessful efforts to publish it. At the same time, Nykl’s perception of Mexico is set in the wider context of learning about this part of the world as it was available to Czech society during the 19th and 20th centuries. In his own text, Nykl summarizes his impressions of the transformation that Mexico underwent in the first half of the 20th century, between his first stay between 1907 and 1909, and his second stay between 1924 and 1926. It was then that he had the opportunity to observe and compare how the turbulent process of the Mexican Revolution had an impact on society and the landscape. The multi-layered text, supplemented by the author’s photographs and contemporary bibliography, presents the view of a highly educated person with a unique life experience of an ambiguously interpreted historical epoch; and as such it offers a unique source for its study.