This is not a diary that will be of any great help to historians, but it does reveal a very personal side of Matías Romero: it is a humorless, factual account of a ten-year period in his life. The diary begins on October 29, 1855, when Romero left Oaxaca for Mexico City and ends January 28, 1865, after he had been the Mexican minister plenipotentiary in Washington for a year.
From Romero’s daily accounts, it would escape the reader that not only was the author living in a revolutionary era, but that he was, furthermore, near the center of events. All that he records of his life in Mexico City in 1856, for example, is his daily routine: he got up, bathed, ate, studied, did his job, kept his accounts, bought a hat or a pair of shoes, and went to mass. In 1858 he fled from the capital with the Juárez group and finally arrived in Washington in 1859 as secretary of the Mexican legation. The change in locale did not greatly affect his habits as a diarist, for although he wrote extended descriptions of those parts of the United States which he visited, he had little to say about his contacts with important men on the American political scene. One is simply told that on this date he had a long conversation with Seward.
June to October of 1863 he spent in San Luis Potosí, which was then the headquarters of the Juárez government. During these months he was in constant touch with the prominent men in the government, and yet he made little reference to the bitter personal quarrels among them. Although Romero wanted to stay in Mexico and fight with Díaz against the intervention, he was much too valuable to the government as its representative in Washington and he was sent back to the United States in the fall. Here he renewed his contacts with Plumb, McDougall, and others who were working for American aid to the Juárez government.
Emma Cosío Villegas has written a fourteen page introduction and has done a good job of editing the manuscript. It is, however, unfortunate that there is no index. In many ways a complete index would be impossible (arising, bathing, breakfasting would be the major portion) but it would have been most helpful had there been an index at least to the major personages.
