Casa Na Bolom - History

History

A Danish archeologist who had taught at Tulane, Frans Blom was one of the first to excavate Palenque, a Mayan city about 150 km east of San Cristóbal de las Casas. It was in the jungle that Frans Blom met his wife, Gertrude Duby, a Swiss German journalist who had fought in the resistance of WWII and had come to Chiapas to begin a new life. Working on behalf of the Mexican government, Trudi Duby was photographing the legendary Lacandon Maya, the only Maya never conquered or converted by the Spanish. From then on, La Selva Lacandona rain forest was the common denominator in the professional and personal lives of Frans and Trudi Blom.

In 1950 with a small inheritance from Frans' mother, the Bloms purchased a monastery in ruin on the outskirts of San Cristobal de las Casas. They rebuilt it around the original interior patio and named their new home Casa Na Bolom, which means House of the Jaguar in Spanish and Mayan. From the beginning, Frans Blom's dream was that Casa Na Bolom would function as a cultural, social, and academic center. His personal library with its exceptional collection of books on Mayan culture was open to the public. His Mayan artifacts were on display, as were the documentary photographs of Trudi Blom. In order to raise funds for their jungle expeditions, they took in guests who dined at the great long table of the Casa Na Bolom dining room. These guests at breakfast and dinner included tourists, local residents, and archeologists working in the area, and Frans was proud that at any meal there was always conversation in at least three languages. Casa Na Bolom evolved into a small hotel, attracting guests as notable as Henry Kissinger and Diego Rivera. However, free rooms were always kept open for Lacandon Maya who came to San Cristobal for medical reasons.

In the 1970s Trudi Blom became an environmental activist, gravely concerned about the destruction of the jungle she loved. In 1975 she expanded Casa Na Bolom's beautiful walled gardens to include El Vivero, a tree nursery, which today still supplies free trees for reforestation in Chiapas.

While Casa Na Bolom was the dream of Frans Blom, the day-to-day responsibility of running it fell to Trudi Blom. For forty years, she struggled financially and emotionally; spending too much time fundraising, writing articles,and managing employees, many of whom were young volunteers from around the world, and not enough time in the jungle she loved. In the late 1980s, encouraged by concerned Chiapas citizens who valued her work and who wanted to protect the future of Casa Na Bolom, Trudi formed the Asociación Cultural Na Bolom A.C., whose Board of Directors manages Na Bolom today.

Na Bolom is still open to the public as a museum, hotel and restaurant. Volunteers continue to run the house and maintain their work (money from guests goes towards various community projects in the jungle.