The French doctor and botanist Aimé Jacques Alexandre Goujaud inherited the nickname of Bonpland from his father and could not do better honor to the name. His contributions to science by observing, collecting and classifying plants made him a legend. This year marks the 250th anniversary of his birth and in Paraguay, where he was confined to live for a decade, they remember him with tributes and conferences promoted by the French Embassy.
French botanist Aimé Bonpland was confined to live in a Paraguayan village for almost ten years, but his sentence made him a legend. It happened on his second trip to America.
Before, Bonpland (La Rochelle, France, August 28, 1973 – Bonpland, Argentina, May 11, 1958) was a student during the French Revolution and at the age of 27 he crossed America from North to South. He traveled for five years with the most famous scientist of the time, the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. They walked and sailed Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico and Cuba. Adventure after adventure.
During that trip he carried out an enormous botanical work. He described and collected some 6,000 species of plants. He returned to Paris, and when Napoleon was overthrown, Bonpland settled in Argentina, where he returned to studying yerba mate, the mother plant of the indigenous Guarani people.
“He learned a lot from the rural and indigenous people who were out there and grew food species, useful species, for example, species with latex. He studied yerba mate a lot and various kinds of yerba ”, he tells RFI in Spanish Fatima MerelesParaguayan biologist, botanist, university professor and explorer.
One night, Paraguayan soldiers invaded his house and took him to the other side of the immense Paraná River, to a formerly Jesuit town called Santa María de Fe. There he was confined for having planted yerba mate, then the most precious treasure of a thriving Paraguay and with twice the territory than now, ruled by an enlightened despot, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia.
“They always called Bonpland karai arandu. He was greatly admired and loved by the people of Santa Maria”, karai arandú is a wise man, in Guaraní the official language in Paraguay along with Spanish, he explains to RFI in Spanish Erma del Puertothe director of the house-museum that they maintain in homage to the Frenchman in Santa María de Fe and that includes a medicinal garden, books and documents.
Simon Bolivar, Humboldt and San Martín asked for their freedom; The French government sent ultimatums but Amado Bonpland spent 10 years with almost no contact with the outside world, although he remained closely connected to the Paraguayan land.
When they let Bonpland out of Santa Maria, the jungle no longer left him. He no longer wanted to return to Paris. After a few months in France, he returned to South America until he settled in Corrientes, just on the other side of the Paraná River, in Argentina. There he married the daughter of a Guarani cacique and lived to be 84 years old without ceasing to cultivate and document plants. Leaving traces that still remain today.
