Product details
- ISBN 9780228024767
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 20 May 2025
- Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
- Publication City/Country: CA
- Product Form: Paperback
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In the mid-1930s the amateur French ethnographer and filmmaker Bernard de Colmont ventured into the mountainous state of Chiapas to study the Lacandón people and broadcast their way of life to a curious European public. Considered a "lost tribe," the Lacandón were thought to be the closest living relatives of the ancient Maya.
De Colmont became a celebrity explorer whose adventures generated considerable attention. The Lacandón themselves, however, were silenced in his tale. Nearly a century later, Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte have taken up this story in all its complexity, creating a graphic history from de Colmont's narratives and images in the form of a heroic adventure comic. An essay contextualizing and historicizing the tale follows, as does an evocative, reflective poem by Tsotsil writer Manuel Bolom Pale, which offers an Indigenous perspective on the encounter. A captivating experiment in form, the book puts an immersive new spin on studying the past.
In the Land of the Lacandón illuminates de Colmont's expedition against the backdrop of late imperialism on the eve of the Second World War in Europe. It investigates the history of exploration, science, and media, revealing how these narratives represented and constructed Indigenous Peoples for the public – and how such representations continue to resonate.
Richard Ivan Jobs is professor of European history at Pacific University.
Steven Van Wolputte is professor of anthropology at KU Leuven.
Manuel Bolom Pale is a translator, researcher, and Tsotsil poet from Huixtán, Chiapas, Mexico.
