Free Books for Cinco de Mayo

As we celebrate Cinco de Mayo this weekend, we’ve collected a long list of free eBooks about Mexico. These books come from the Internet Archive, and include a treasure trove of 18th, 19th and 20th Century writings about Mexico.

See the country through the eyes of explorers, archeologists, travelers, writers and colonizers in these books. History Channel described the holiday:

[It] commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War (1861-1867) … Cinco de Mayo traditions include parades, mariachi music performances and street festivals in cities and towns across Mexico and the United States.

Free Books About Mexico

Anahuac: or, Mexico and the Mexicans, ancient and modern by Edward Burnett Tylor

Travels of Anna Bishop in Mexico by Anna Rivière Bishop
Incidents of travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (Volume 1) (Volume 2) by John Lloyd Stephens (image embedded above via volume 2)

Border states of Mexico: Sonora, Sinaloa, Chihuahua and Durango. With a general sketch of the republic of Mexico, and Lower California, Coahuila, New Leonand Tamaulipas. A complete description of the best regions for the settler, miner and the advance guard of American civilization by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton

Down that Pan American Highway by Roger Stephens

Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and republican : a historical, geographical, political, statistical and social account (Volume 1) (Volume 2 )

A gringo in manana-land by Harry L. Foster

The Mexican guide by Janvier Thomas Allibone

Through southern Mexico : being an account of the travels of a naturalist by Hans Friedrich Gadow

Face to face with the Mexicans: the domestic life, educational, social and business ways, statesmanship and literature, legendary and general history of the Mexican people, as seen and studied by an American woman during seven years of intercourse with them by Fanny Chambers Gooch Iglehart

Geographical and statistical notes on Mexico by Romero Matías

Days and nights in the tropics by William Richard Harris

Mexico: its geography, its people, and its institutions: with a map, containing the result of the latest explorations of Fremont, Wilkes, and others by Thomas Jefferson Farnham

Folks next door; the log book of a rambler – William Augustus Croffut

Wanderings in Mexico; the spirited chronicle of adventure in Mexican highways and byways by Owen Wallace Gillpatrick