Tehuantepec-Concesion de la Sere, 1869 / Tenhuantepec La Sere Grant, 1869

[Mexico or New York, 1869. Good.. Large broadsheet, approximately 23x18.5 inches. Folded, with three-inch separation along horizontal fold from edge. Small, contemporary ink stamp in upper corner. A few small chips and short tears at edges. Scattered staining, even tanning. An unrecorded bilingual broadsheet announcement of a railroad grant to construct a line across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from Coatzecoalcos on the Gulf of Mexico to the port of La Ventosa on the Pacific Ocean, issued to Simon Stevens and Don Emilio La Sère by the Juarez government during the late 1860s. Simon Stevens was the nephew of abolitionist and prominent Republican Thaddeus Stevens, and he attempted to enlist the favor of Washington politicians up to and including President Grant for the effort at a time when the Transcontinental Railroad was nearing completion and American enthusiasm for railroad building was at a fever pitch. Nevertheless, the transisthmian project, as with several others of the era, was a failure, and the Tehuantepec Railway Company folded after a decade of frustration. A railroad actually was completed in late 1890s, but it was rendered obsolete by the Panama Canal; the line was reconstituted as a passenger route in 2023.

The present large broadsheet prints in English and Spanish the lengthy decree by Mexican President Benito Juarez which granted the concession and laid out the objectives, permissions, and restrictions put upon the nascent railroad company. The piece was clearly intended as an instrument to advertise the endeavor and to attract investment, and was clearly used as a promotional tool by company president Simon Stevens himself, with his personal small ink stamp in an upper corner. A very interesting, dual-language promotional for an unsuccessful trans-Mexican railroad project; not in OCLC.