Guanajuato, Mexico has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1988, thanks to its colonial Spanish architecture, silver mining history and sites related to the Mexican Revolution. Its baroque churches, narrow cobbled streets, and candy-coloured houses are postcard-perfect, but central Mexico’s biggest tourist attraction is darker and more terrifying. An underground museum of 100 mummies.
Flabby-jawed men, leathery infants, and other corpses have fascinated curious travelers for more than a century. Visitors first paid a few pesos to see the mummies in the basement cellars. Since 1969 they have been on display under the eerie spotlight of the Las Momias Museum.
These 19th- and 20th-century naturally preserved corpses (not bandaged or embalmed here) are the main source of income for the city, about an hour’s drive west of San Miguel de Allende, A source of local pride. “The mummies of Guanajuato provide the municipality with the greatest economic income, minus property taxes,” says Mexican anthropologist Juan Manuel Arguerez San Milan. “Their importance cannot be overemphasized.”
Mummies are also controversial. Travelers from other cultures have a hard time understanding why one of Mexico’s most beautiful cities has macabre human remains on display. Some scholars believe the bodies were poorly stored and mislabeled. Earlier this year, plans for an ornate new Momias Museum were scrapped after academics and UNESCO representatives hesitated to place it above a proposed downtown shopping mall.
All of this has drawn renewed attention to these fragile remains. By the way. An exhibition of finely crafted mummified photographs by local artist Michael James Wright will headline Guanajuato’s esteemed annual Festival Internacional Cervantino from October 13-30. “These projects can dignify the dead and turn them into educational rather than sideshow,” says Wright.
Here, we uncover how the mummies and their museum came about, and why they continue to draw crowds to Guanajuato.
How mummies and myths were born
Despite Guanajuato’s spectacular historic city center, the Mummies Museum on the outskirts of town is often the first place tourists visit. A Mexican heading to Guanajuato joked, “I’m going to see my aunties.” People line up for hours to enter the museum. chalamuskaa local cinnamon sugar candy shaped like a mummy.
Mexican tourists tend to receive corpses on display with interest and respect, but not with disgust. After all, this is the birthplace of Diaz de los Muertos. “But for travelers from other parts of the world, I have to contextualize the museum,” says Dante Rodriguez Zavala, a native of Guanajuato and guide for Mexico Street Food Tours. . “For Mexicans, this is neither strange nor weird. We find comfort in death. We bring food to our loved ones on the Day of the Dead, we invite mariachis to the cemetery.”
Around Guanajuato, ghostly whispers of momia’s origins can be heard. Some were buried alive, some died from cholera outbreaks, all preserved for their mineral-rich soil. “Additionally, to get people interested in seeing mummies, cemetery workers started talking about hangings, desperados, and witches,” says Quinnipac University Imaging, which studies mummies extensively. Professor Emeritus Gerald Conlogue said.
(Learn why the world’s oldest mummy is in Chile and not Egypt.)
The truth is simpler and shows Mexico’s factual attitude to death. Like many public cemeteries, Pantheon Santa Paula, circa 1861, had a policy in which families paid an annual burial tax to bury the remains of their loved ones in above-ground graves and niches. In 1865, cemetery workers began removing the bodies of people whose relatives could not afford the fees or who had no living relatives.
Upon opening the tomb, the workers expected dusty bones. Instead, many corpses were found with skin, hair and even tongues remaining. A warm, dry environment proved ideal for preserving human remains. “Like Santa Paula, when the sun hits your niche all day, your body dehydrates quickly,” says Carmen Lerma Gomez, a forensic anthropologist Maria Del Her, who works on the INAH study.
A spooky tourist attraction appears
Rumors spread about these miraculous mummies, and gravediggers propped them up along the walls of underground crypts. Some still wore their burial robes, high-buttoned shoes, or tags showing their names and dates of death. They quickly became the curiosity and money-maker of cemetery workers.
“For a small fee, the attendant will let the visitor into the ‘chamber of terror,'” he opined. national geographic A travel article in a July 1916 magazine.
Over the years, tourists have swiped mummies’ name tags as mementos and stolen identities from most of the bodies. rice field. La Bruja (witch), another corpse known as El Ahogado (The Drowned Man).
They have become the city’s cultural ambassadors, both real attractions and imaginary muses.Momius fought with a mask and a cloak Luchador (Mexican wrestler) Two 1970s horror films haunting a troubled American couple in Ray Bradbury’s 1955 short story next in lineA new streaming series, Pinch Momius (Damn Mummy)will debut in Mexico next year.
what to do with mummies
An INAH investigation began in February, fueling complaints about a proposed new museum and allegations of mistreatment of mummies. Critics took issue with city officials taking the vulnerable body to conventions out of town and displaying it in one of Guanajuato’s underground tunnels during a car rally.
For the INAH project, the Saint Millant team has identified mummies by examining death certificates, church documents, and newspapers from the 19th and 20th centuries. Forensic methods (X-rays, DNA analysis of hair, teeth, or skin) can even link a corpse to what is now Guanajuaton.
“They should be treated like human bodies,” says San Milan. This meant that if the hitherto unknown mummy turned out to be someone’s great-great-grandfather and his descendants objected to having it displayed, it would be reburied “immediately and without issue”. He says he means
(See how Mexico uses papier-mâché to celebrate Day of the Dead.)
INAH scholars and other experts hope the new research will improve the way mummies are displayed and give them a new appreciation as cultural relics. Updating museum air conditioning and storing bodies horizontally instead of vertically could also help with preservation.
“They are ordinary people who are a treasure trove of information about the times in which they lived,” says Conlogue. “They walked the streets and went to the old market. They shouldn’t be a weird show.”
Susannah Rigg contributed research for this article.
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