Un viaje a Roma bajo la mirada de un “chiquillo”. El diario de uno de los primeros píolatinos mexicanos: Faustino Martínez Sandoval, 1870

This article presents and analyzes the travel diary of Faustino Martínez Sandoval, one of the first young Mexicans sent to Rome in 1870 as part of the piolatino project promoted by José Antonio Plancarte. This initiative, driven by the papacy of Pius IX and implemented in Mexico by Plancarte and Archbishop Pelagio De Labastida, aimed to “Romanize” the Mexican clergy through the formation of seminarians at the Colegio Pío Latinoamericano. The diary—written through the innocent gaze of an adolescent and recovered from the archives of the Archdiocese of Guadalajara—constitutes a privileged source for exploring the logistical, emotional, and cultural dimensions of the journey, as well as the support networks among exiles and Mexican ecclesiastical elites. Through this testimony, the article examines how the beginning of the Romanization project was experienced from the perspective of a chiquillo, a term used by ecclesiastical authorities to refer to these teenagers due to their young age. The document also reveals the logistical details of a journey that became the first trial of the Mexican piolatino project, which ultimately facilitated the sending of sixty Mexican students to Rome between 1870 and 1898 under the guidance of Father José Antonio Plancarte. From a cultural and emotional history perspective, it is argued that this testimony reveals both the tensions inherent in the Catholic reformist project and the experiences of childhoods in transit during the nineteenth century.