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Writings and Photos
of
Cristóbal Bonifaz
Neptalí Bonifaz Ascásubi was born in Quito on December 29, 1870. His great-grandfathers, José Xavier Ascásubi, and Juan Salinas, sparked the emancipation of the South American continent on August 10, 1809, by declaring independence from the Spanish yoke.
His grandfather Manuel Ascásubi, the son of José Xavier, became one of the wealthiest men of the Americas upon the liberation of the Real Audiencia de Quito by Antonio José de Sucre in 1822.
Neptalí’s lost his father at age four and at age five lost his ability to speak upon witnessing the assassination of President Gabriel Garcia Moreno on August 6, 1875. He regained his speaking abilities three years later, but he never laughed or cried for the rest of his life.
He studied with the Jesuits in Quito. In 1907, married and with three children, emigrated to Europe where he lived in Paris, London and Nice until 1927 when he returned to Ecuador. In 1931 was elected President of the country, only to be disqualified by a partisan Congress one year later. The disqualification led to a battle in Quito that resulted in the loss of more than one- thousand lives. The event is known in Ecuador as the “La Batalla de Los Cuatro Días”.
He mastered the art of photography first in Quito, and then in Europe, He took thousands of stereo photographs with the most sophisticated equipment available at the time.
The stereo colloidal silver on glass negatives were fabricated and by Guilleminot, Bœspflug et Cie, 22 rue de Châteaudun, Paris, who in turn packaged the glass plate negatives into sealed preservation boxes, labeling each plate indicating the location and date where the photographs were taken.
The glass negatives remained in the original boxes for the next one hundred years.
Between 2009 and 2019, Cristóbal Bonifaz, his grandson, unpacked, individually repackaged, and stored the negatives in archival boxes, preserving the negatives for future generations. He made prints of some of these photographs which are shown in the six books that follow.
Notes:
1 – See: Odio y Sangre La Descalificación Del Sr. Neptalí Bonifaz Ascásubi Y La Batalla de Los Cuatro Días en Quito, by Julio C. Troncoso Fray Jodoco Ricke. -Quito 1958.
2 – For detailed biographies of Neptalí Bonifaz Ascásubi and Cristóbal Bonifaz see “The Curse of Eleuterio Rodriguez-History of a People”, by Cristóbal Bonifaz, Locust Grove Press 2020.