New Orleans: Gateway to the Americas
Minatitlan, 1852 |
During the 1850s Minatitlan was a village of 460 located on the Coatzacoalcos River in eastern Mexico. As the farthest inland point that could be reached by ships from the Gulf of Mexico, Minatitlan was to be the place where the Tehuantepec Railroad would begin its course across the isthmus to the Pacific Ocean. This panel displays a lithograph made by Sareny & Major from a drawing by J. Mller. It originally appeared as part of a survey report prepared for the Tehuantepec Railroad Company of New Orleans.The Tehuantepec Railroad was one of several New Orleans-based schemes to gain political or economic control over regions within Latin American during the 1850s. Though similarly unsuccessful in the end, the railroad venture at least was not accompanied by the open conflict and bloodshed surrounding the careers of men such as William Walker in Nicaragua and Narcisso Lopez in Cuba.
[J. J. Williams, The Isthmus of Tehuantepec (New York, 1852)]