Alfredo Chavero was a Mexicanarchaeologist, politician, poet, and dramatist. "Perhaps Chavero's most enduring claim to remembrance rests...on completion and extension of Ramírez's plans to republish major native histories and his editorship of pictorial documents."
Biography
He has made many investigations relative to Mexican antiquities, and written Historia Antigua de Mexico, also several works on Aztec archaeology, especially on ancient monuments. While making excavations in the pyramids of Cholula, he discovered some idols that are now in the National Museum of Mexico. He became a member of the Mexican Congress in 1869, and supported Presidents Benito Juárez, Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, Manuel González, and Porfirio Díaz in succession, notwithstanding their different policies. On 25 June 1879, the government of Diaz ordered the execution of nine citizens of Veracruz who were suspected of conspiracy. This act was severely criticised, and great indignation was shown against Mier y Terán, who had executed the order, and against Diaz. Chavero, then grand master of a masonic lodge, and expelled Mier y Terán from the brotherhood, and suspended Diaz from his masonic rights. This action gave Chavero great popularity. In congress Chavero also made a strong speech against Mier and Diaz, but afterward became one of his adherents. Chavero was elected senator in 1886, and was professor in the mining and law schools of Mexico. He is the author of the dramas “La Reina Xochitl” and “La tempestad de un beso,” “Quetzalcoatl,” “Los amores de Alarcón,” “La hermana de los Ávilas,” “El mundo de ahora,” and others. His books relative to Father Sahagún and to the Sun Stone are often referred to. Chavero was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1881. When the Mexican government proposed the Law of Monuments, which passed overwhelmingly in the Mexican Congress, Chavero opposed the provision banned the export of Mexican artifacts, which in his view "hindered the flow of artifacts to museums abroad and thus obstructed the cause of science." At the 1902 International Congress of Americanists in New York, Chavero gave some credit to the French project headed by the Duke of Loubat for major discoveries at Monte Albán. This public declaration before Americanist luminaries, such as Eduard Seler and Franz Boas was interrupted by Leopoldo Batres, inspector national monuments, Chavero's rival who had excavated at Monte Albán, who strenuously objected to Chavero's assertion, since the work was paid for by the Mexican government. He donated the Chavero Codex of Huexotzingo to the National Museum of Mexico in 1906.
Works
A selected list of Chavero's writings of ethnohistorical interest is published in the Handbook of Middle American Indians.
Discurso pronunciado en los funerales del C. Benito Juarez presidente de los Estados-Unidos Mexicanos.
