In search of the “City of silver hills”: Tegucigalpa in Travel Literature

Abstract

The field of literary research in our country there are certain approaches to travel books, it is of great interest to expand this line of work in order to increase knowledge about publications, authors, literary styles and linkage with the historical context. In this sense, Frank Vincent’s In and out of Central America and other sketches and studies of travel (1890) and Harry Franck’s Mexico and Central America A geographical reader (1927), offer a multitude of descriptions and narrations of his travels in Central America. Vincent and Franck were struck by the city of Tegucigalpa. This is one of the centers of the confluence of colonial history with the vicissitudes of a growing city by the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, and of course it is still building its own legacy. The objective of this study is to highlight the main urban, social and cultural landscape features presented in these two traveling books in order to offer a physical and visual portrait of Tegucigalpa, as an invaluable contribution, are the photographs offered by their authors. The thematic development is based on the notes of Ana María Pellitero and Luis Albuquerque García. The use of Hermeneutics made it possible to analyze the text as a whole. The results found lead us to investigate the architecture inherited from the Spanish colony, the urban spaces that are part of the public and private life of the inhabitants of the city, added to the social and political outlines as part of the cultural landscape.