Arthur Cravan

Salina Cruz, a deadly hole, where nearly every white man died within a year.
Photos by Eden von Dben An exposition by Bastiaan van der Velden

When WWI breaks out, the boxer-poet Arthur Cravan decides to leave France, to avoid draft. First Barcelona, the famous fight with former world champion Jack Johnson, than on a boat to America, together with the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, finally towards Mexico with his wife the poet Mina Loy. Cravan works as a boxing teacher in Mexico City, his last battle against Black Diamond Jim Smith in Vera Cruz is irretrievably lost, and finally he ends up in Salina Cruz, a harbour city on the west coast of Mexico. The couple decides to travel separately to Argentina. Mina Loy, pregnant, arrives in Buenos Aires some time later. Cravan bought a boat to make the trip with a couple of other deserters, he will never arrive in Argentina. The circumstances of his disappearance in fall 1918 remain unclear and will quickly contribute to the creation of a myth. Around 1910 the German biologist Hans Friedrich Gadow (1855-1928) visits Mexico and Salina Cruz, he wrote: Until a few years ago Salina Cruz was justly feared as a deadly hole, where nearly every white man died within a year. The old town, a wretched conglomeration of native huts, of palm-trees and reeds, stood on a narrow neck of low-land between the sea and an evil-smelling lagoon, surrounded by thick brushwood a fever-haunted place. [A kind of] trouble was the water supply, the only available brook, and that intermittent, passing by the cemetery, which contained by far the largest number of white men in the district.1

In the town of Salina Cruz, an English company built around 1905 a harbour, docks and other constructions, to facilitate the railway that transported goods from Vera Cruz to the other side of Mexico, as an alternative for the Panama Canal. During this construction works, the Salina Cruz based photographer Eden von Dben made a series of photos showing the progress of the project.2 These are images of - most probably - the last spot Cravan saw, made some years before the boxer-poet ended up in this frontier town. Since 1989 Bastiaan D. van der Velden is active as a curator, writer, editor and publisher of private press publications and magazines. To be mentioned: Faits dHiver (24 postcards, 1994-2006), LAigle Bleu (19 issues, 1996-2002) and the publications of La Socit Protectrice des Enfants Martyrs (since 2002). Bastiaan van der Velden occupies since 2005 the chair of Rgent de Navigation pigenne in the Collge de Pataphysique. In the journal of the Collge de Pataphysique he published a long text on Cravan in January 2011. In 2010 he organized the exposition Arthur Cravan: Kicker, Schler, Sngerknabe in Muse Pointe Jaune, St. Gallen.
In Mexico live the descendants of Baron Edward von Dben. He used to be a chemist and vice consul for Sweden in Salina Cruz, where he died in l930, leaving his Mexican wife with seven children unprovided for. Sven Tito Achen, Genealogica & heraldica : report of the 14th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Copenhagen, 25-29 August 1980 (Copenhagen: Samfundet for Dansk Genealogi og Personalhistorie : Heraldisk Selskab, 1982) p. 162. E de Dben was in 1911 consul in Salina Cruz, see: Nouvel almanach du corps diplomatique: ancien Almanach de Gotha (C.A. Starke, 1911) p. 1009. Already around 1850 a photographer with the name Cesar von Dben was active in Mexico: Peter E. Palmquist & Thomas R. Kailbourn, Pioneer photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide : a biographical dictionary 1839-1865 (Stanford : Stanford Univ. Press, 2005) p. 217. His photos were published in: Cesar von Dben, Resor uti Guiana, Mexico, Californien, China och Ostindien, foretagna under aren 1843-58 (Stockholm: Tryckt hos I. Marcus 1870-1871). Anoter (presumed) member of this family, Ms. Lotten von Dben, is among the Swedish women photography pioneers, see: Eva Dahlman e.a., 'Darkness and light': the proceedings of the Oslo Symposium 25.-28. August 1994 (Oslo : National Institute for Historical Photography 1995) p. 99.
2

At the Seamens Art Club

Groe Elbstrae 132; 22767 Hamburg info@seamensartclub.com www.seamensartclub.com from June 23th, 2011 opening: June 23th, 2011, 17:00

Do you want to come at another moment? Bastiaan van der Velden will be in Hamburg on the 23th and 24th, please sent an email, and I will be there.

bastiaanvandervelden@hotmail.com

H. Gadow, Through southern Mexico (London: Witherby 1908) p. 175.