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Barrio del Cerrillo in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico — The Southeast (North America)
 

Frans Blom and Gertrude Duby

 
 
Frans Blom and Gertrude Duby Marker image. Click for full size.
Photographed By J. Makali Bruton, November 29, 2017
1. Frans Blom and Gertrude Duby Marker
Inscription.
Frans Blom y Gertrude Duby
1893 – 1963 y 1901 - 1993
Decidieron residir en esta ciudad. En 1950 adquirieron esta casa del siglo XIX; crearon un museo y el Centro de Estudios Na Balom. Frans formó una biblioteca especializada en temas mayas y dejó una magistral obra antropológica. En 1954 recibió el Premio Chiapas. Gertrude hizo un importante registro fotográfico de la selva chiapaneca

English translation:
Frans Blom and Gertrude Duby
1893 - 1963 and 1901 - 1993
After deciding to reside in this city, in 1950 they acquired this house from the 19th century. They created a museum and the Na Balom Study Center. Frans formed a library that specialized in Mayan topics and left behind a superb body of anthropological work. In 1954 he received the Chiapas Prize. Gertrude made an important photographic record of the Chiapas jungle.

 
Erected 2010 by Coordinación Ejecutiva del Bicentenario y del Centenario del Gobierno del Estado de Chiapas.
 
Topics. This historical marker is listed in these topic lists: Anthropology & ArchaeologyEducationNative Americans. A significant historical year for this entry is 1893.
 
Location. 16° 44.497′ N, 92° 37.8′ W. Marker is in Barrio
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del Cerrillo, Chiapas, in San Cristóbal de las Casas. Marker is on Avenida Vicente Guerrero just north of Calle Comitán, on the right when traveling north. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: Avenida Vicente Guerrero 33, Barrio del Cerrillo CHIS 29220, Mexico. Touch for directions.
 
Other nearby markers. At least 8 other markers are within walking distance of this marker. Hotel Misión Grand (approx. 0.8 kilometers away); The House of the Congress of Chiapas (approx. 0.8 kilometers away); María Adelina Flores Morales (approx. 0.8 kilometers away); Miguel Francisco Utrilla Trujillo (approx. 0.9 kilometers away); The History of San Cristóbal de las Casas (approx. one kilometer away); Hotel Ciudad Real (approx. one kilometer away); The Mazariegos House (approx. one kilometer away); José Eduardo Flores Ruíz (approx. one kilometer away).
 
Also see . . .
1. Frans Blom (at Wikipedia). Frans Blom (Frants Ferdinand Blom; August 9, 1893, Copenhagen – June 23, 1963, San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico) was a Danish explorer and archaeologist. Frans Blom was born in 1893 in Copenhagen, Denmark to a middle-class family of antique merchants. He was restless and started travelling, eventually reaching Mexico in 1919, where he found work in the oil industry as a paymaster. Travelling to remote locations in the Mexican jungle, he became interested in the Maya ruins which he encountered where he was working. He started drawing and documenting
Frans Blom and Gertrude Duby Marker image. Click for full size.
Photographed By J. Makali Bruton, November 29, 2017
2. Frans Blom and Gertrude Duby Marker
The marker is to the left of the entryway to the Na Balom Museum.
these ruins. After he showed his work to the Mexican National Museum of Anthropology, it financed some of his expeditions. He met Sylvanus G. Morley, who brought him to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Here he took a master's degree in Archeology. He taught at Tulane University in New Orleans and during his tenure, he undertook several expeditions to Mesoamerica. In 1923 his studies at Palenque documented a number of features neglected by earlier researchers. In 1924 Blom excavated the Maya archaeological site of Uaxactun in Guatemala. From his explorations around the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, he wrote some of the first scholarly reports of a number of sites of the Olmec civilization. In 1926 he was made head of Tulane's newly established Department of Middle American Research. In 1932 he was married to the American Mary Thomas, but six years later they were divorced. Blom acquired an alcohol habit which later forced him to retire from the university. Blom moved to Mexico, where he met the Swiss photographer Gertrude “Trudi” Duby (1901–1993), whom he married. In 1950, the Bloms bought a large house in San Cristóbal de las Casas. This house was dubbed Casa Na Bolom - na meaning "house" in the Lacandon Maya language, and bolom (or b'alum in some Mayan languages) means "jaguar", and is also a pun on Blom's name (since "Bolom" or similar variations
Frans Blom early in his career image. Click for full size.
Photographed By Oscar Jones, 1922
3. Frans Blom early in his career
was still a fairly common Maya family name, some of the Maya assumed it to be Blom's name.) The Bloms turned the house into a cultural and scientific center with rooms for visitors, with Gertrude continuing the enterprise for decades after Frans’ death. The house today functions as a museum. The Bloms continued undertaking expeditions for the Mexican government. Blom died in 1963, at age 70.
(Submitted on December 8, 2017, by J. Makali Bruton of Accra, Ghana.) 

2. Gertrude "Trudi" Blom (at Wikipedia). Gertrude "Trudi" Duby Blom (born Gertrude Elisabeth Lörtscher; July 7, 1901 – December 23, 1993) was a Swiss journalist, social anthropologist, and documentary photographer who spent five decades chronicling the Mayan cultures of Chiapas, Mexico, particularly the culture of the Lacandon Maya. In later life, she also became an environmental activist. Blom's former home Casa Na Bolom is a research and cultural center devoted to the protection and preservation of the Lacandon Maya and La Selva Lacandona rain forest. (Submitted on December 8, 2017, by J. Makali Bruton of Accra, Ghana.) 
 
 
Credits. This page was last revised on January 24, 2023. It was originally submitted on December 8, 2017, by J. Makali Bruton of Accra, Ghana. This page has been viewed 405 times since then and 17 times this year. Photos:   1, 2, 3. submitted on December 8, 2017, by J. Makali Bruton of Accra, Ghana.

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Mar. 29, 2024