Teoberto Maler

His initial interest in Mexico was centered on its colonial architecture, but following the fall of Maximilian's regime in 1867, Maler decided to remain in the country rather than being exiled back to Europe.

This marked the beginning of his lifelong fascination with Mesoamerican culture and history, ultimately leading to his pioneering work documenting Maya ruins.

In the summer of the following year he moved to San Cristóbal de las Casas, and in July set out to visit the ruins of Palenque.

While several accounts of the site had been published by this time, it was still little visited, and Maler needed to employ a team of the local Indios to open a path to the ruin with machetes.

While Maler was there another visitor came to the ruins, Gustave Bernoulli, a Swiss botanist who shared his interest in Maya sites, and had recently made a visit to Tikal.

While the lawyers he hired sorted it out, Maler lived in Paris, where he gave lectures on Mexican antiquities and studied and read everything about Mesoamerica he could find in the city.

[3] Maler became disgusted by the then common practice of 19th century antiquarians and archeologists of removing interesting sculptures from the sites to send to cities in Europe or North America.

In 1910 Maler made a trip to Europe in hopes of finding patrons for publishing more of his reports, but had no success other than to sell some of his photographs to the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris.