A talented young man, he was hired by an atelier in Paris, and later established his own company for exporting clothing to South America.
After a stormy divorce, he moved to Chile in 1860 and Peru in 1863, where, notwithstanding his lack of education, he found employment as professor of French language and history.
After the fall of the Commune, Ber escaped again to Peru in 1871, where he worked again as a teacher and founded a French language magazine, L’étoile du Sud.
[1] In Peru, Ber found himself in competition with French-Austrian explorer Charles Wiener, who had also obtained French official support for his activities.
While still formally working for the French government, Ber obtained financial support from American businessman Henry Meiggs for an archaeological expedition to Tiwanaku, Bolivia, in 1876–1877, against the promise of donating the artifacts he will find, on behalf of Meiggs, to Washington's Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.