Inauguración del Ferrocarril de Tehuantepec, Salvador Toscano (23-1-1907)

About

A series of films produced by Mexican film director Salvador Toscano showing scenes of the inauguration of the Tehuantepec Railway, opened by President Porfirio Díaz on 23 January 1907.

This railway initially became the best alternative to the Strait of Magellan, the route used to transport cargo from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and vice-versa. When the Panama Canal opened in 1914, at the height of the Mexican Revolution, which started some 4 years prior, the railway's usage plummeted, and the Mexican government would not attempt to rehabilitate it for over a century, until the year of 2019.

These films show various scenes of the inauguration of the railway, including the arrival of ships at the newly inaugurated ports, the railway's gates being opened by Díaz himself, the arrival and transportation of the first shipments of sugar from the American ship USS Arizonan, and views of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and the lives of the local people.

Archive

Wikimedia Commons, in Wikimedia Commons

Licence or status

Public domain, as the Wikimedia Commons states it.

Rights statement

Public domain

Credit

Salvador Toscano Barragán

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