MEXICO CITY.- A century after B. Traven first entered the Lacandon Jungle, the National Museum of Anthropology is revisiting one of the most fascinating chapters in the life of the famously elusive writer: his transformation in Mexico into an explorer, photographer and chronicler of Indigenous life.

Two exhibitions organized by Mexico’s Ministry of Culture, through the National Institute of Anthropology and History, in collaboration with the B. Traven Estate, bring together photographs, manuscripts, personal objects and archival materials connected to the author’s Mexican years.

The exhibitions mark two milestones from 1926: Traven’s first expedition into the Lacandon Jungle and the success of his novel The Death Ship, one of his best-known works in Germany.

Traven, born in 1882 and still surrounded by mystery decades after his death in 1969, arrived in Mexico in 1925. That journey opened what museum officials describe as a second life for the writer — one shaped not only by literature, but also by the camera, the jungle and his intense encounter with the Indigenous communities of Chiapas.

At the opening, Antonio Saborit García-Peña, director of the National Museum of Anthropology, said the project grew from conversations with Timothy Heyman and Malú Montes de Oca of the B. Traven Estate, who wanted to make better known the author’s photographic work.

Saborit described Traven as a disciplined and serious photographer whose path intersected with Edward Weston and Tina Modotti, two major figures in modern photography in Mexico. Through those encounters, Traven deepened his knowledge of the medium and began to build a visual record that would become central to his understanding of the country.

The first exhibition, Land of Spring: B. Traven in the Lacandon Jungle, is installed in the museum’s Media Luna space. It presents photographs that Traven included in the first German edition of Land of Spring, published in 1928. The images were taken during a scientific expedition through the Lacandon Jungle and the ruins of Palenque, led by archaeologist Enrique Juan Palacios Mendoza between May and August 1926.

For Malú Montes de Oca, Traven’s adoptive daughter, the exhibition reveals the moment when the writer emerged as an explorer, photographer and even an anthropological observer. The National Museum of Anthropology, she said, is an especially fitting place to present this lesser-known side of his work.

Using a Graflex and a Leica, Traven photographed Tzeltal, Tsotsil, Lacandon, Caribbean and Chamula communities in Chiapas. His images show men and women before modest homes, dirt roads and cultivated fields, often dressed in the clothing of their communities. These photographs are not simply travel records. They reflect the contradictions that moved Traven deeply: admiration for the survival of Indigenous languages and ways of life, and indignation at the exploitation endured by those communities over centuries.

The exhibition also includes personal objects lent by the B. Traven Estate, among them the writer’s felt hat, tall leather boots, camera, typewriter, compass and travel suitcase. Together, they help bring the figure of Traven down from legend and into the physical world of travel, observation and work.

The second exhibition, Centennial of The Death Ship, is presented in the museum’s first-floor gallery. It focuses on the novel published in 1926, the same year as Traven’s Lacandon expedition. The book, considered one of the 100 best works written in German between 1924 and 2024, stands at the midpoint of Traven’s 87-year life and marks the beginning of his prolific literary career.

Montes de Oca described The Death Ship as a “novelization” of Traven’s experiences and convictions, carrying lessons from Germany into Mexico and making him a singular figure in the histories of both countries.

Among the objects on view are the original manuscript of The Death Ship, written in pencil in English; more than 60 international editions of the novel; a photographic album donated by Traven himself to the National Museum of Anthropology; and excerpts from the German film Das Totenschiff, directed by Georg Tressler in 1959. A ship model adds a museographic nod to the many editorial and literary interpretations of the work.

The exhibitions also place Traven’s personal archive in dialogue with INAH materials from the 1926 Palenque expedition, including documents, manuscripts and a portrait of Enrique Juan Palacios from the National Archaeology Archive and the National Photo Library.

Seen together, the two exhibitions present a writer who was more than a literary enigma. They show Traven as a man shaped by Mexico, by Indigenous worlds, by political conviction and by the act of looking carefully through a camera. They also recall his deep connection to Chiapas: his final wish was that his ashes be scattered in the Jataté River, a tributary of the Lacantún.

Land of Spring: B. Traven in the Lacandon Jungle and Centennial of The Death Ship remain on view through August 30, 2026, at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Admission is free.