''Six Months in Mexico'' is a book by

Nellie Bly Elizabeth Cochran Seaman (born Elizabeth Jane Cochran; May 5, 1864 – January 27, 1922), better known by her pen name Nellie Bly, was an American journalist, industrialist, inventor, and charity worker who was widely known for her record-breaki ...

that she wrote after her travels through

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

in about 1885. She took the initiative to work as a foreign correspondent at the age of 21. At that point she had been writing for the newspaper ''The Dispatch'', but had become dissatisfied with having to write for the women's pages. In the book she describes the lives and customs of the people of Mexico and the poverty of the common people. She was struck by the widespread addiction to playing the

lottery A lottery is a form of gambling that involves the drawing of numbers at random for a prize. Some governments outlaw lotteries, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of ...

, noting that people would even

pawn Pawn most often refers to: * Pawn (chess), the weakest and most numerous piece in the game * Pawnbroker or pawnshop, a business that provides loans by taking personal property as collateral Pawn may also refer to: Places * Pawn, Oregon, an his ...

their clothes in order to buy tickets. She also described courtship, wedding ceremonies, the popularity of

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

smoking, the legend of the maguey plant from which

pulque Pulque (; nci, metoctli), or octli, is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented sap of the maguey (agave) plant. It is traditional in central Mexico, where it has been produced for millennia. It has the color of milk, a rather viscous c ...

and

mezcal Mezcal (, ), sometimes spelled mescal, is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from any type of agave. The word ''mezcal'' comes from Nahuatl , which means "oven-cooked agave", from and .What is MezcalElmezcal.org Traditionally the word " ...

were made, and the habits of the soldiers, including an early mention of their

marijuana Cannabis, also known as marijuana among other names, is a psychoactive drug from the cannabis plant. Native to Central or South Asia, the cannabis plant has been used as a drug for both recreational and entheogenic purposes and in various tra ...

use:''Six Months in Mexico''
by Nellie Bly (1864-1922) New York: American Publishers Corporation, 1888, page 158 Bly returned to the United States after her reporting on the imprisonment of a journalist by dictator

Porfirio Díaz José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori ( or ; ; 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915), known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of 31 years, from 28 November 1876 to 6 Decem ...

put her in danger of imprisonment herself. Bly later wrote a second travel book, '' Around the World in 72 Days'', telling the story of her circumnavigation of the globe by ship and train.

References

External links

''Six Months in Mexico''
at the

Hathi Trust HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...

digital library * {{librivox book , title=Six Months in Mexico, author=Bly 1888 non-fiction books 1880s in Mexico Books about Mexico American travel books 1885 in Mexico