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1950
A seminary building became the House of the Jaguar in 1950
In 1950 the Bloms bought a neoclassical building on the outskirts of San Cristóbal de las Casas. It was built in 1891 and was first meant to be a seminary. They rebuilt it around the original interior patio and named it Casa Na Bolom, which means House of the Jaguar in a mix of Spanish and Mayan. The name plays on their own name, Blom. An old stone jaguar from a Mayan frieze marks the front door.
Two founders
An archaeologist from Palenque and a photographer of the Lacandon built it
Frans Blom, a Danish archaeologist, was one of the first to excavate Palenque. In the jungle he met Gertrude Duby, a Swiss German journalist who was photographing members of the Lacandon people, the only Maya never conquered or converted by the Spanish. From then on the Lacandon rain forest was the common thread in the work and the life of both.
The long table
Meals ran in three languages, and rooms stayed open for the Lacandon
To pay for their jungle expeditions, the Bloms took in guests who dined at Na Bolom: tourists, local residents and archaeologists. Frans was proud that at any meal there was always conversation in at least three languages. The house grew into a small hotel, and its guests included Henry Kissinger and Diego Rivera. Free rooms were always kept open for Lacandon Maya who came to San Cristóbal for medical reasons.
1975
A tree nursery in the garden has given free trees for the forest since 1975
In the 1970s Trudi Blom became an environmental activist, worried by the destruction of the jungle. In 1975 she enlarged the walled gardens of Na Bolom to include El Vivero, a tree nursery, which still supplies free trees for reforestation in Chiapas. In the late 1980s she formed the Asociación Cultural Na Bolom, whose board manages the house today. The collection also includes 14,000 negatives by the photographer Marcey Jacobson.
Day 1, afternoon
It comes after Santo Domingo Church. Then Real de Guadalupe.
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The words are a retelling of the Wikipedia article Casa Na Bolom, and are shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. They are checked against those articles, and a fact that is not in them is left out.