Na Bolom October 31, 2021
Frans Blom must have been tickled pink to discover that his last name means “jaguar” in Maya Tzotzil. He came from Denmark to Mexico in the 1920’s to pursue oil development, only to fall in love with the jungle frontier of Chiapas. On the oilfields of Veracruz and Tabasco, he learned of a deep past buried beneath the roots and vines. Malaria cut his first career short, so he started on another, in archaeology, taking a year-long crash-course at Harvard. This was largely the science of uncovering treasures, of certified acquisition and removal, and Blom employed the methods with gusto, launching one of the earliest expeditions to Palenque and other sites. Today part of his collection is displayed at his home in San Cristobal, Casa de Na Bolom.
Built in the 1890’s as a Catholic seminary that was never to be, Blom and his wife bought the abandoned place in 1950, and for ten years it served as basecamp for Blom’s excavation of the ruins of Moxviquil, located just a mile outside the city. His loot is displayed in a series of small rooms surrounding a courtyard. The courtyard itself is patrolled by two Tzotzil women selling fabrics and jewelry. Theirs is one of the nicer store locations for this type of sales, as everyone who visits La Casa de Na Bolom is curious about the indigenous. Indeed, it is the mission.
This small nest of a neighborhood has some of the finest old pines and cedars in the city, showing the premium placed on preservation. Located on the hilltop bordering lovely Barrio Cerillo and the comparatively unloved Colonia Revolución, the view of this whole valley—the natives called it Jovel—is commanding. It would be even more panoramic but for the high-walled Mormon church-compound planted on the nearby crest of Calle Chiapas de Corzo, overlooking the lampless, rutted streets of La Revolución. Visitors to Na Bolom might be advised not to stroll too far north after-hours, lest they get mugged or baptized.
For about 60 USD, visitors can stay for the night in seminarian quarters, walk the wooded paths past a small schoolhouse and series of experimental cabañas, and dine on garden vegetables from a Vivero-nursery that supplies saplings to the city and beyond. There is a long chapel adjacent to the main courtyard that has been converted into a secular concert chamber, featuring a weathered grand piano; and Blom’s library of anthropology books, in several languages including English, is exquisitely preserved. I would need both a mask and latex gloves, not to mention a security docent, just to handle one of the paperbacks. Precautions aside, the pervasive molds will eventually digest the pages nonetheless.
The real treasure in this library might be the topographic maps with Blom’s notes, as they reveal the location and layout of Moxviquil. Some 1200 hundred years ago, this hillside metropolis served as a hub of activity for settlements throughout the valley. Moxviquil is where one finds the Eye of the Water, the sudden burst of clear water from the earth, and a limestone cave that enters the underworld. With an unobstructed view of the Valley of Jovel, kings and priests oversaw about 20,000 people, their religion and governance, rituals and celebrations, justice and mercy, and, judging from the drawing of a rectangular flat pitch with slanted stone walls, sports.
The small temples of Moxviquil reminded Blom of similar, but much larger, versions in Veracruz and other northern sites, and he came to believe that many of the Maya practices—from ballgames to worship—maintained a continuity with even deeper antiquity, like the Olmec, whose archaeological remains date back over 3000 years. Dynasties and empires rose and fell over thousands of years, during which much of Mesoamerica was densely populated and even urbanized. One millennium ago, Cuidad Real did really exist in this high mountain valley. Somewhere beneath us, it still does.
Clues to this expansive past may be found in the topographic maps of the great Dane, but the legacy of Pancho Bolom remains closely guarded a hundred years later. The docents will not let me enter the library without the proper gloves and attitude, and their muted responses to my queries seem cryptic and evasive. I will have to uncover the secrets of Na Bolom another way. I find a quiet place behind the Vivero, beyond the prying eyes of the Tzotzil ladies in the courtyard, where there is a fresh mound of black dirt, and I begin digging with my naked hands.