The circular Tizoc stone, which is almost a yard thick and three yards wide, was another of the Aztec monuments discovered beneath the Zócalo in 1790, and it was prominently displayed at the museum. Some scholars called it the gladiator stone because they believed warriors battled each other on top of it, with the loser becoming a sacrificial victim. The stone actually commemorates and glorifies battles waged under the rule of Tizoc, the seventh emperor of the Aztecs, who ruled from 1481 to 1486.
Boban wanted to make a serious study of Mexico’s prehistory and began educating himself in all aspects of the country’s ancient past. He assiduously read most of the Spanish authors who chronicled the discovery and conquest, including the historian Francisco de Gómara and the Franciscan ethnographers Bernardino de Sahagún and Juan de Torquemada. He also consulted later writers like the Jesuit scholar Francisco Javier Clavigero, the Mexican astronomer Antonio León y Gama, and the historian and collector José Ramírez (HSA B2044, Box V). He refers to all of them in his writings and in the catalogs he prepared for his own collections and those of others. He began to learn Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, which was still spoken by most of the native people of Mexico City and its environs. Boban’s fascination with the history and artifacts of ancient Mexican civilizations melded seamlessly with burgeoning interest in the native cultural history expressed by increasing numbers of Europeans, North Americans, and Mexicans by mid-century.
In the nineteenth century, Paris was known not only for the luxurious lifestyle of many of its richer inhabitants, but also for its sophisticated intellectual climate that had grown out of the Enlightenment. The city’s inhabitants were aflame with interest in the world and its myriad cultures. Boban would refer to his own “natural Parisian curiosity” when describing his enthusiasm for the history and archeology of Mexico. His travels through California, where he first studied the ways of native peoples and learned Spanish, facilitated his investigations, as did his later study of Nahuatl. His early efforts to educate himself about Mexico’s past sparked, in turn, a desire to learn even more.
It is likely that his father, René Victor, oversaw the management of the cardboard factory for the first few years—the time during which he remained in Mexico City. This allowed Eugène the freedom to travel the country collecting pre-Columbian artifacts from surface finds and later carrying out excavations with the help of native laborers. In the 1850s and 1860s there still was evidence of many centuries of the pre-Columbian and colonial past all around Mexico City. To this day it is difficult to dig anywhere in Mexico without finding remnants of its ancient inhabitants. A profusion of obsidian blades, spindle whorls, and potsherds can still be gathered from the surface or just below.
While Boban was educating himself about Mexico’s past and gathering a collection of archeological materials, the War of Reform raged throughout the country. The Catholic Church was the principal financial backer of the conservatives battling Benito Juárez’s liberals. To defray some of the costs of the civil war, the clergy sold off gold and silver ornaments, candelabra, and gems, hoping that their side would win and the Church would be able to retain its extensive holdings of land, buildings, and treasure. Many years later Boban recounted a story told to him by “an old Israelite jeweler from Bordeaux” who had lived in Mexico for thirty years.2 The jeweler said that he had participated in the removal of precious stones and pearls from numerous churches at the request of the clergy and had replaced them with imitation jewels that he had brought from Europe. He added that this was done without the government’s knowledge (HSA: B2253, Box XIV). Boban would not have been involved in activities to support the Church’s political ambitions. He became a Mason while in Mexico, a decidedly anti-Catholic fraternity, which actively supported the Liberal Party. It is possible however, that he may have profited from the sales in light of later events.
Notwithstanding the efforts of the Church and its supporters, however, the liberals won the day in 1861. Eugène Boban only rarely mentions events and activities occurring during the War of Reform years. In his later recollections of life in the capital, all was idyllic in his rose-colored memory, as he hunted and excavated, befriending native peoples and learning their language to record their history.
In 1856 Ignacio Comonfort, then president of Mexico, instituted the Lerdo Law, which restricted the privileges of the Church, declared all citizens equal, and brought about the confiscation of the Mexican Catholic Church properties. Benito Juárez, who had resisted American incursions into Mexico and was dedicated to reforming the country’s treatment of its indigenous population, was finally elected president in 1861. He proved to be extremely fair-minded with his military opponents but was rather less charitable with the clergy. The Church represented the most powerful opponent to the liberal cause. After the protracted wars to gain independence from Spain, it was the Church that retained much of the property, money, and power that had once belonged to the Spanish crown. Juárez was intent on stripping it of its riches and, even more important, its power once and for all.
One of Juárez’s first acts as president was to demolish many of the earliest colonial structures in Mexico City, principally convents and monasteries, particularly those in the neighborhood where Boban lived. As one author noted, the reformists appeared to confuse ideology with architecture. Perhaps the destruction of monuments to colonial power represented a form of retribution. The Spanish conquerors had destroyed the temples and idols of the indigenous people, and now in the mid-nineteenth century, the president of Mexico, a Zapotec Indian, laid siege to the Christian temples that had been built atop the Aztec structures.
In addition to exiling five bishops who had sided with the conservatives, Juárez forbade priests and nuns from wearing vestments outside their churches. He sought to limit the Church’s power by restricting clerical privileges, in particular the authority of the Church courts. This move was exceedingly unpopular with the clergy.
The Lerdo Law called for the expropriation of numerous Church properties, but little had taken place during the War of Reform. Eventually, under Juárez, countless churches, monasteries, and convents were torn down, and their contents sold to the highest bidders. These actions put Juárez’s government on a collision path with the traditional ruling classes of Mexico—the Spanish monarchists and the Catholic clergy—both intent on protecting their wealth and power.
Guillermo Tovar de Teresa, the Mexican historian, published in 1992 a two-volume chronicle of the destruction of Mexico’s religious and colonial properties that began in 1861 and went on for several years. It is a grim record of the country’s lost patrimony, including countless sixteenth- and seventeenth-century edifices. One of the incidents Tovar describes is the dismantling of the main altar in the church of Tlatelolco. The Spaniards began construction in 1536. The sacred edifice was filled with superb paintings, most of which were taken down and used as firewood. A few of the paintings were saved and taken for protection to the Academia San Carlos, the first art academy and museum in the Americas, for protection.
The great church and monastery of San Francisco, just around the corner from Boban’s factory and antiquities shop, was entirely dismantled, its art and gilded choir removed to make room for the stabling of cavalry horses. The monastery was eventually torn down (Tovar 1992: vol. II, 27).
The convent and monastery of the church of Santo Domingo, some three blocks from the cathedral in the Zócalo, were also demolished, revealing numerous burials of priests and nuns in the process. Their corpses appeared to be mummified because of the conditions in which they had been interred.
All told, more than forty religious structures in Mexico City—nearly half of the eighty-four the Spanish had built to promote Catholic worship in the city—were razed. As a result, some of the most important colonial buildings in the capital simply disappeared. The demolition experts worked overtime, employing axes, picks, and ropes to pull down altars and walls, while gathering up relics, paintings, crucifixes, and statues of saints. The objects retrieved amidst the destruction were sold, purportedly to help finance the government and further reforms, but the financial aspects of the project were largely a hoax. As Tovar notes, “The