Abstract EN:

This thesis intends to look at the other (Mexico) through a cultural practice (the trip or journey) which gains a specific meaning at a given time, in a stated society (France in the XIXth century). The main characteristic of the travel, as a displacement in space, is the encounter with the other. It's about an experience that goes further than the everyday's life, which involves a further understanding of the well-known world. This brings out narrative writings allowing the translation of an individual experience into a collective knowledge because they are incorporated to the structures and codes from where they are narrated. The cultural history is our perspective. The representations are the decisive factor of the construction of systems for the classification and the perspectives, and, also, the generator of the social world practices. Otherness cannot be understood without taking into accounts the subject that compares and his identity. As a consequence, the observer uses codes and pre established ideas from his own culture, it's a mirror game that highlights the myths, clichés and stereotypes that are involved each time that one wants to talk about « the one that I am not ». The travelling experience creates an effect of strangeness. As Mexico is recreated in the time of the narration, personal experiences in this unknown space alter the observer's sight; His ideas and principles are probated and the traveler does not return unchanged.