LEÓN DIGUET, THE MAN WHO PORTRAYED THE LAST GUAYCURA

 

About 10 years ago, while strolling around the beautiful port of Loreto, I decided to enter the municipal presidency building. Something that immediately caught my attention was a portrait that was on one of the walls after passing through the main door. It was an enlargement of a photograph taken 116 years ago by a Frenchman named León Diguet, in which the face of an elderly woman appeared. The caption of the photograph read as follows: "In August 1892, León Diguet took a photograph of María Ignacia Melina (from Loreto), who was said to be 85 years old and one of the last four living Guaycuras. Her father had been half Guaycura, and her mother was a pure-blooded Guaycura". The portrait impressed me greatly, but even more so, I became curious about who Mr. Diguet was, and what brought him to these lands from his distant France.

León Diguet was born on July 25, 1859, in the French city of Le Havre. He completed his professional studies as a chemical engineer in his home country. At the age of 30, he was hired by the Rothschild company to work for the mining company "El Boleo," which was located on the Baja California Peninsula in a place called Santa Rosalía. He worked for this company for 3 years, and during his free time and vacations, he decided to venture into the Baja California Peninsula and conduct research on anthropology, geology, zoology, botany, and archeology. He had the great fortune of having a photographic equipment with which he captured hundreds of landscapes and characters from our peninsula and immortalized them in several of the books he wrote.

After his contract with the mining company ended, he decided to dedicate himself to the new passion he had recently discovered, that of an explorer and naturalist, and spent the following years collecting specimens of plants, bones, and animals for the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. On the "aviada.blogspot" website, we find the following reference about his later works: "The recognized importance of these collections led the French Ministry of Public Instruction and the Museum of Natural History of Paris (after the Musée de l'Homme) to sponsor Diguet in six subsequent "scientific expeditions" to Baja California, Jalisco, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí, Puebla, Oaxaca, and Michoacán between 1893 and 1914. Diguet made many publications, including fifteen in Baja California and ten in the Sierra del Nayar, which cover a wide range of topics as diverse as his collections".

Diguet dedicated the rest of his life to conducting a series of research and exploration works in Mexico, which are described as follows on the Wikipedia portal: "As a naturalist in Mexico, he amassed an eclectic collection of insects, cacti, orchids, minerals, crustaceans, and other specimens. He conducted archaeological studies in the Mixtec-Zapotec region and in Ixtlán del Río, as well as pioneering investigations of burials and rock art in central and southern Baja California. He also conducted historical research on cochineal, studied the Huichol language, analyzed different types of agave, and investigated the properties of jojoba. On his travels, he took many photographs of the country, and the negatives were later housed at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. The genus Diguetia bears his name, and his name is also associated with numerous zoological and botanical species, two examples being Sceloporus digueti (synonym Sceloporus orcutti, granitic spiny lizard) and Ferrocactus diguetii (a barrel cactus species). He developed this vast body of work during the last 12 years of his existence. Jesus Jauregui in his book "Diguet's Anthropology on the West of Mexico" comments on the following prizes and awards that Diguet received for his important contributions to world culture: "Since 1896, he was a member of the Société des Américanistes de Paris and was part of its Council from 1909. In 1905, he received the Ducros-Aubert Prize from the Société de Géographie. In 1906, he was promoted to Knight of the Legion of Honor in his capacity as an explorer; that year he was awarded the Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire Medal by the Société National de Acclimatation, and in 1907, he was awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Diguet presented successful museum and photographic exhibitions with materials that became part of the collections of the Musée d'Histoire Naturelle and the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadero (later Musée de l'Homme)."

Some of the books he published were: "23 phot. Du Mexique (Etats de Jalisco et Sinaloa) en 1892 par Léon Diguet, donateur en 1893". "Note sur la pictographie de la Basse-Californie". L'Anthropologie 6: 160-175. 1895. "Rapport sur une mission scientifique dans la Basse-Californie". Nouvelle Archives des Missions Scientifiques et Littéraires 9: 1-53. 1899. "La sierra du Nayarit et ses indigénes", 1899. "Les cactacées utiles du Mexique", published posthumously by André Guillaumin in 1928. "Fotografias del Nayar y de California, 1893-1900". Mexico: Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos de la Embajada de Francia en México: Instituto Nacional Indigenista, 1991. (Léon Diguet, Jean A Meyer).

On August 31, 1926, this great researcher passed away in the city of Paris, France, and with him, one of the great epics of ethnographic research in Baja California comes to a close, which was documented in the vast work of this exceptional person.

Bibliography consulted:

• Diguet's anthropology on western Mexico - Jesús Jáuregui