McGill-Queen’s University Press
Bernard de Colmont’s contributions to society are many. Although he’s better known as the founder of Club 55, a famous beach resort in Saint-Tropez, this worldly gentleman had other interests. Back in the early part of the 20th century, he explored the Yucatán Peninsula. What’s recounted in the graphic novel In The Land of the Lacandón is the search for the last survivors of the Mayan empire! Just how he survived is not as exciting as Indiana Jones but in what he makes fascinating is in how he paved the way for future explorers to learn about the culture hesitant in greeting him.
Without this amateur archaeologist’s film footage, this world may have disappeared. When he presented his findings at home, the people who attended his lectures responded with applause. Although the result afterwards had the attitude of traditional colonials wanting to take over, without this “discovery,” these people might disappear altogether. Thankfully, because of him and later on, historians Richard Ivan Jobs and Steven Van Wolputte put together an informative work that budding anthropologists can read to witness this world like it is new.