Six Months In Mexico

This is an account of Nellie Bly's travels through Mexico in 1885. The book was originally a series of individual articles that she submitted to the Pittsburgh Dispatch newspaper for publication. In them she described the conditions of the people and the political system she found in Mexico. Her narratives focused mostly on the impoverished and disadvantaged in a country whose government was extremely corrupt. Bly was perhaps what we now term a feminist, striving for the empowerment and independence of women. She certainly pioneered the field of investigative reporting. Nevertheless, Bly's journalistic objectivity is often tainted by an uninformed, 19th-century, "gringo" world view. Bly's travels in Mexico ended abruptly after the Dispatch published an article she wrote exposing that government's ill treatment of another journalist who criticized the regime of President Porfirio Diaz. Bly's Mexico articles were later published in book form in 1888. (Summary by James K. White)