Gertrude Blom - Mexico 1970-1993

Mexico 1970-1993

In the early 1970s the direction of Blom's life changed yet again. She had become increasingly disturbed by the systematic deforestation of La Selva Lacandona by loggers, immigrant settlers, the petroleum industry, and the Mexican government. Blom decided she must speak out, and thus became one of the first environmental activists of the twentieth century. On her own, she made lecture tours with slide shows of her documentary photographs, traveling in Mexico, the United States, Germany and Switzerland to raise awareness of the irreparable damage being done to the jungle. She wrote hundreds of articles in three different languages protesting Mexican policies. Blom appeared on Mexican television shows and lobbied Mexican government officials. In 1975, within the grounds of Na Bolom, she started El Vivero, a tree nursery which has distributed thousands of free trees for reforestation. In her essay The Jungle is Burning, Blom 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 1983 Blom oversaw the first published collection of her photographs Gertrude Blom - Bearing Witness, a project sponsored by The Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University. Reina de la Selva, a film of Blom's life in which she appears, was made by Robert Cozens in 1989.

Blom died at age 92. She was buried next to Frans Blom in the municipal cemetery of San Cristobal de Las Casas. In 2011, the remains of Frans and Gertrude Blom were disinterred and transported to the jungle village of Naha, Chiapas where Blom had kept a jungle camp for many years. The Bloms were finally laid to rest according to their wishes, in La Selva Lacandona and near the grave of Chan K'in Viejo, a Lacandon spiritual leader whom Blom considered her best friend.