Gertrude Blom
Encyclopedia
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, social anthropologist, and documentary photographer who spent five decades documenting the Mayan cultures of Chiapas
Chiapas
Chiapas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas is one of the 31 states that, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 118 municipalities and its capital city is Tuxtla Gutierrez. Other important cites in Chiapas include San Cristóbal de las...
, Mexico, particularly the culture of the Lacandon
Lacandon
The Lacandon are one of the Maya peoples who live in the jungles of the Mexican state of Chiapas, near the southern border with Guatemala. Their homeland, the Lacandon Jungle, lies along the Mexican side of the Usumacinta River and its tributaries. The Lacandon are one of the most isolated and...
Maya. She was also a pioneering environmental activist. Her home in San Cristobal de Las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas also known as it's native Tsotsil name, Jovel is a city and municipality located in the Central Highlands region of the Mexican state of Chiapas...
, Chiapas, Casa Na Bolom
Casa Na Bolom
Casa Na Bolom was the home of archeologist Frans Blom and his wife, Gertrude Duby Blom, the documentary photographer, journalist, environmental pioneer, and jungle adverturer...
, has been preserved as a cultural and research center devoted to the protection and preservation of the Lacandon Maya and La Selva Lacandona rain forest.
Documentary photographer
Born in BerneBerne
The city of Bern or Berne is the Bundesstadt of Switzerland, and, with a population of , the fourth most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 43 municipalities, has a population of 349,000. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000...
in the Swiss Alps
Swiss Alps
The Swiss Alps are the portion of the Alps mountain range that lies within Switzerland. Because of their central position within the entire Alpine range, they are also known as the Central Alps....
, Gertrude Duby was a journalist and anti-fascist organizer during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. In 1940, weary of war, she journeyed to Mexico, where, inspired by the writing of French anthropologist Jacques Soustelle
Jacques Soustelle
Jacques Soustelle was an important and early figure of the Free French Forces and an anthropologist specializing in pre-Columbian civilizations. He became vice-director of the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in 1938. He was elected to the Académie française in 1983.- Biography :Jacques Soustelle was...
, she decided to reinvent herself as a jungle explorer. She bought an old camera and taught herself to use it. Then in 1943, she convinced a government official to let her join an expedition in search of the legendary Lacandon Maya.
The only Maya never conquered by the Spanish, the Lacandon had lived free for centuries deep in the Chiapas jungle (La Selva Lacandona). They were rarely photographed and only had sporadic contact with the outside world, mainly with loggers and chicle
Chicle
Manilkara chicle is a tropical evergreen tree native to Mexico and Central America. The tree ranges from Veracruz in Mexico south to Atlántico in Colombia...
workers. Not only did Blom photograph the Lacandon and write a book about her experiences with them, she found in the Lacandon Maya and their jungle home her life's avocation
Avocation
An avocation is an activity that one engages in as a hobby outside one's main occupation. There are many examples of people whose professions were the ways that they made their livings, but for whom their activities outside of their workplaces were their true passions in life...
.
It was on a second expedition to visit the Lacandon that she met Frans Blom
Frans Blom
Frans Blom was a Danish explorer and archaeologist....
, a Danish archeologist and cartographer who was searching for Bonampak
Bonampak
Bonampak is an ancient Maya archaeological site in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The site is approximately south of the larger site of Yaxchilan, under which Bonampak was a dependency, and the border with Guatemala...
, the lost Mayan ruin. They teamed up on several subsequent expeditions and later married.
Casa Na Bolom
Moving to San Cristobal de las CasasSan Cristóbal de las Casas
San Cristóbal de las Casas also known as it's native Tsotsil name, Jovel is a city and municipality located in the Central Highlands region of the Mexican state of Chiapas...
, Chiapas in 1951, the Bloms bought a derelict monastery
Monastery
Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...
which they restored and named Casa Na Bolom
Casa Na Bolom
Casa Na Bolom was the home of archeologist Frans Blom and his wife, Gertrude Duby Blom, the documentary photographer, journalist, environmental pioneer, and jungle adverturer...
. They took in paying guests for meals to finance their trips to the jungle. Eventually, Casa Na Bolom evolved into an inn attracting visitors from all over the world, including archeologists from major American universities and guests as notable as Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
and Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
. Conversation in many different languages flew across the long table in the dining room, and Mrs. Blom became famous for the kitchen she kept.
For the next 12 years, until Frans Blom's death in 1963, the Bloms shared a passion for jungle expeditions in search of Mayan ruins. It was on these trips that Blom took her famous photographs of the Maya. (Harris and Sartor 3) Eventually, Blom also built a permanent camp at Naja, the home of Lacandon spiritual leader, Chan K'in Viejo, who she considered her best friend.
Environmental activism
The systematic deforestation of La Selva Lacandona by loggers, immigrant settlers, and the Mexican government changed the direction of her life yet again. In the 1970s, Blom decided she must speak out, and thus became one of the first environmental activists. She traveled the world, lecturing from first-hand experience about the death of the jungle and showing slide shows of her documentary photographs. In three languages, she wrote hundreds of articles protesting Mexican policies. In 1975 she started El Vivero, a tree nursery that still distributes free trees for reforestationReforestation
Reforestation is the natural or intentional restocking of existing forests and woodlands that have been depleted, usually through deforestation....
. Blom said, "I am hopeless, but I plant trees."
In 1983 a book of her documentary photographs (Gertrude Blom - Bearing Witness) was published by The Center for Documentary Photography, Duke University
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
. It also contains one of her most powerful essays, "The Jungle is Burning, " in which she writes: If mankind continues abusing the planet as we are today, the effects in the near future will be far worse than the devastation that would be caused by any atomic bomb.
In the late 1980s, concerned citizens and friends of Mrs. Blom urged her to create a non-profit organization that would protect Casa Na Bolom after her death. Today, La Asociación Cultural Na Bolom A.C. continues the work of Gertrude Blom with events and programs dedicated to the well-being of La Selva Lacandona and its Mayan residents.
A legend in her lifetime, Gertrude "Trudi" Blom was fearless in the jungle and tireless in her efforts to save it; sparing no one her fiery anger and righteous indignation. It is rumored that Subcommandante Marcos, during the occupation of San Cristobal de las Casas in 1994, sent a fax to Casa Na Bolom stating that no matter what, he would never harm the home of the great lady for us, Dona Gertrudis.
Blom died at age 92. The headline of her obituary in the New York Times read fittingly Long a Chronicler of Mayan Culture but a correction to the obituary added later-- almost as if the inimitable Mrs. Blom was speaking up from beyond the grave-- stated that she was also a horticulturist. This was a fact of which she had been quite proud, having once said of her gardening skills, "It is the only thing I do for which I was educated and hold a university degree."