Susan Toomey Frost is a collector, an independent scholar, lecturer and philanthropist. She is an authority on the historic postcards of Mexico and Guatemala.
Her latest book “Witness to War: Mexico in the Photographs of Walter Elias Hadsell” lays out the first hand documentation of the United States invasion of Mexico in 1914.
Hadsell was a skilled photographer who used his cameras to record a critical period of foreign investment in Mexico’s mining industry and, in the process, captured scenes of everyday life in the streets and markets of other cities in Mexico. Hadsell acquired the Kodak franchise for Veracruz—Mexico’s most important port since colonial times. He documented the damage done in Mexico City during a ten-day uprising in 1913 that led to the assassination of Mexican president Francisco Madero.
The United States has invaded Mexico at least 10 times but some historians prefer to classify many of these as military interventions and downplay their significance. And they might include the Veracruz Action in that.
However, the photographs by Hadsell should set the record straight. What the U.S. did in 1914 was a blood-soaked invasion and brutal occupation which seemed to serve no military objective than to humiliate Mexico and to interfere with the Mexican Revolution.
This history might have been lost if not for the scholarly pursuits of Susan Toomey Frost.
“Witness to War: Mexico in the Photographs of Walter Elias Hadsell” is published by Trinity University Press.
There is an exhibition of Hadsell’s photographs at the Texas State University’s Wittliff Collection which was donated by Frost. The exhibition runs thru July 7th.
