The battle of the Alamo and Mexico’s subsequent loss of Texas, which Santa Anna had signed away in 1836 in exchange for his own liberty, initiated a particularly intense period of conflict. Mexico declared war on the United States when it admitted Texas to the union in 1845. In retaliation, the United States declared war on Mexico in 1846 and invaded the country in 1847. Santa Anna, who had been living in Cuba after his loss of Texas, “tendered his services to the Mexican government for an end to his exile; at the same time, he offered the United States most of Mexico’s territories north of the Rio Grande in exchange for a payment of 30 million and Washington’s aid in recovering the presidency” (Kandell 1988: 322).
Santa Anna lost Mexico City to the invading American general, Zachary Taylor. Despite having the much larger army at his disposal, he surrendered to US troops, once again, in 1848. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, forced Mexico to cede the territories of California and New Mexico and most of the American Southwest. The inept but politically savvy Santa Anna went into exile again, only to be called back to the Mexican presidency in 1853 for an eleventh term.
At this point, Benito Juárez, a Zapotec Indian lawyer who had been elected governor of Oaxaca, went into exile in the United States to protest the corruption of Santa Anna’s government. In 1855 Santa Anna resigned his office for the last time, and Juárez returned from New Orleans to become one of the leaders of the Liberal Party. The years that followed, known as the War of Reform, saw constant, bloody battles between liberals and conservatives, resulting in anarchy throughout the country. As the journalist and author Jonathan Kandell notes, “In the capital itself, during the early 1850s, troops were out of control and pillaged shops and houses at will” (1988: 323). Finally, in January 1861, more than fifty years after Mexico had begun to shake off the yoke of Spanish colonialism, Juárez, the country’s first native Mexican leader, took office as president.
Boban’s early years in Mexico must have been terrifying at times, since they spanned the War of Reform between 1858 and 1861. Pitched battles occurred regularly between armies supporting the Liberal cause, who sought to overthrow the economic and political power of the Catholic Church, and the conservative forces who supported the clergy. The situation bore similarities to what he had experienced in his youth in Paris—times of political upheaval, danger, and bloodshed.
In numerous drafts of his unpublished memoirs, Boban wrote that he lived and worked in Mexico City for two decades, sometimes saying that it was a quarter-century, which would mean he had arrived in the country sometime in the 1840s or early 1850s, since he returned to France in 1869. In addition to changing his age with some regularity, he seems to have exaggerated the amount of time he spent in Mexico. His own writings attest that he went to California in 1853, traveling throughout the region for four years. This itinerary fits perfectly with the visa issued in Mexico City in April 1857. This means that, in reality, he spent some sixteen years away from Paris, including four years in California and twelve years in Mexico. It could be said, however, that he lived in Mexico during two decades, i.e., in the 1850s and 1860s.
Boban’s later notes indicate that his father, René Victor, lived in Mexico with him, although it is not known when he arrived. He may have preceded his son or accompanied him from California; however, there is no visa in his name in the Archivo General de la Nación. What is known is that by 1862, René Victor was back in Paris, since he is listed as a witness on the birth certificate of his granddaughter, Jeanne Laurence, the child of his eldest daughter, Rose Louise, and her husband Andre Martial Backès.1 One of Eugène’s younger sisters, Marie, had had a daughter out of wedlock two years earlier, and was living apart from her mother at the time. It may be that this event had some influence on the senior Boban’s decision to return to Paris, since it appears that by this time both Marie and her younger sister Julie were living by themselves, some distance from the family apartment.
In Mexico City, however, according to a directory of businesses in the capital in 1865, Eugène Boban owned a fábrica de cajas de cartón—a factory that manufactured cardboard boxes. René Victor’s profession as gainier, making sheaths and chests or boxes out of leather and other luxury materials, seems to have been translated in the New World into the newer medium of cardboard, which is listed as a commercial product in England in 1858 (Simmonds 1858). The factory was located on a block-long street named Callejón del Espíritu Santo (Alleyway of the Holy Spirit) in a fashionable Mexico City neighborhood that was an important shopping district. This was one of several public roads and passageways named after the church that had formerly occupied the site. This address was where Boban had established an antiquities shop as well.
A traveler’s guide to Mexico published in 1858 vividly described the many attractions of this section of the city, which seems to have been home to many French expatriates.
The streets are so straight that many of them frame vistas to far away trees in the countryside and the mountains of the broad valley … along the streets are beautiful houses brightly-painted … elegant Mexican ladies depart in the morning to the churches to fulfill their devotions. … The Indian sellers in their blue wool garments, the water carriers with their own original outfits, the ranchers with their harnessed and saddled horses … all contribute to a pleasant aspect of novelty. In the shops on Plateros street [a few blocks from Boban’s shop] stores of luxury goods and the latest French fashions are displayed in beautiful glass cases to tempt the appetite of the elegant ladies. They also admire the French dressmaker shops for their remarkable good taste. Hairdressers are found on the same street … which also are French owned. (Arróniz 1991: 40–41)
Within blocks of the cardboard factory were French doctors, pharmacists, educators, photographers, booksellers, and other French-owned businesses catering to the expatriate community. At Callejón del Espíritu Santo no. 2 there was a hardware store owned by F. A. Lohse and sons, who sold sewing machines; Henri Escabasse sold French clothing at the corner of Espíritu Santo and Tercera Calle de Plateros; a Mr. Linet sold tin and iron beds at Callejón del Espírito Santo no. 14; and the Delanoes’ shop (also known as Maison Delanoe Frères) sold paper, writing material, and blank books at the corner of Refugio and Calle del Espíritu Santo (Maillefert 1992: 225–29). The French enclave was not far from the fashionable Alameda Park and just three blocks from the Zócalo.
Almost as soon as he arrived in Mexico City, Boban began to study Mexican history and archeology and to acquire artifacts through surface collecting, as indicated in his unpublished memoirs and the record he jotted down in his field notes. These endeavors were facilitated by his ability to speak Spanish, which he learned in California and on his travels south. Early on he seems to have visited the Museo Nacional, which was then housed in the Real y Pontificia Universidad. There he admired the exhibits and examined the artifact types, comparing them with the objects he himself was collecting.
Figure 4.2 Aztec Calendar or Sun Stone on the western wall of Mexico City’s cathedral, ca. 1860 (courtesy of Hispanic Society of America, New York).
Many fanciful ideas about pre-Columbian Mexico were passed around for the consumption of tourists in the nineteenth century. Some of them seem to have originated with the staff of the museum itself. Frances Calderón de la Barca provides a dramatic description of what she learned during her first visit to the Museo Nacional.
We are told that five thousand priests chanted night and day in the Great Temple, to the honour and in the service of the monstrous idols who were anointed thrice a day with the most precious perfumes. … We afterwards saw the Stone of Sacrifices [the Tizoc stone], now in the courtyard of the university, with a hollow in the middle, in which the victim was laid, while six priests, dressed in