My life in South America - Michel ARTIGUE

I embark with my husband Michel, for Peru, on the ship Chile on 7 July 1849.

Since the Panama Canal was not operational until 1914, the passage was forced by Cape Horn and the "land of fire" to berth at the port of Lima, El Callao.

It is the maritime gateway to Peru, the fourth largest economic power in South America, and is the most important port infrastructure on the South Pacific coast.

The port of El Callao was founded in 1537, two years after Lima, and immediately became Pascal Riviale (historian, specialist in cultural history in Peru), who said that "it is in the mid-nineteenth century that we observe the real development of emigration to Peru. While economic activities had hitherto remained relatively restricted and had attracted only a small number of merchants and adventurers, the large inflows of money generated by the export of guano from 1830-40 and then nitrates, will lead to major upheavals in the economy and Peruvian society .... This strong economic dynamics will in the space of a few decades motivate an important immigration , especially of Europeans coming to offer their services or seek fortune. "

It is in this context that Michel as a merchant wished to emigrate to Peru. He was the trigger for the research done by Mr. Pascal Riviale on archeology in Peru.
Indeed, it is following the discovery in 1984, of a letter, when Pascal Riviale proceeded to the inventory of the amérindiennes collections of the Museum of Natural History of Toulouse, that goes back its interest in the history of the " pre-Columbian archeology. He then questioned the motives that prompted a merchant, such as Michel Artigue, to take the initiative and the trouble of enjoying a stay in France to hand over to a museum in his native region a series of antiquities of the Peru, of which he was otherwise unlikely to do anything. Today we can see the collection of Michel Artigue at the Museum of Natural History in Toulouse.

Then he returned to Peru, where he settled in the south of the country. In 1861 he appears in a notarial act drawn up in this city: he is given power to represent the commercial house "Devès frères"; he is then presented as being 36 years old and single! In fact, we lived and did business on our own. This shows my woman liberated and independent side .....
In 1866 he appears in a census of the foreigners of the department of Moquegua: he lives at Tacna, at 355 Calle Industria; he is 40, declares 16 years of residence in this city; he settled there in 1849, he says he is a tradesman and a widower!
In another notarial act drawn up at Tacna on July 6, 1866, he said he was married. Finally, in a last notarial act drawn up in Lima on 22 July 1870, he said he was single.
He is also a founding member of the French Society of Charity of Tacna and Arica founded on 1 October 1866.
At the end of 1869, Michael, then 44 years old, died probably carried away by the yellow fever that raged in the country.
That year I called my nephew Peter. He embarked in Bordeaux on December 13, 1869 on the "Magellann" to Arica, near Tacna, to help me settle my affairs before I left for Arizona.

On July 25, 1866) he was initiated to Freemason Frederic in the lodge n ° 566 of Tacna "Constancia y Concordia, founded on November 15, 1862.

It is not mentioned in a table of the members of the lodge dated 1870 because he dies at the end of 1869.

This lodge still exists but has moved to Surquillo area of Lima.

During this twenty years of Michel's tribulations in Peru, I had an important trade in Mexico. More precisely in Acapulco, or Acapulco de Juárez port city of the State of Guerrero, Mexico.
It is located on the coastline of the Pacific Ocean, 400 km south of Mexico City, in a semi-circular, almost closed, deep bay, where ease of access and safe mooring allows boats to remain along rocks that border the coast. The city is built on a narrow strip of land (less than a kilometer), between the coast and the mountains of the Sierra Madre del Sur that encircle the bay.
Acapulco has a mild tropical climate and the most stable of the American continent, with an average annual temperature of 28 ° C.
It is there that I settle and, as is the custom in this country, I used to trade in goods and goods: grain, haberdashery, groceries, liqueurs, even fashion coming from Paris ...
I was very successful and I made a lot of money ...
When Michel died and asked my nephew Pierre to settle my affairs, I decided to settle in Tucson, Arizona, following migrants attracted by the American West and its gold mines. Read more .....