Well here I am, back in Guanajuato, a UNESCO world heritage site, and home of the Museo de las Momias (the mummy museum). I had tried to go a few months back, but it was a Saturday and the lines were out of control just to buy tickets. As today is a Tuesday, I had better luck and was able to see this unique place. I went in not knowing much about the mummies of Guanajuato, so it was a bit of a surprise to discover that this is all a relatively recent process. Evidently, you cannot be interred forever unless family members continue to pay a tax.
So to make space for new bodies, those that went unclaimed or hadn't paid the tax ended up in a storage building next to a cemetery, which is now the museum. As most bodies in this town were kept in dry, air-tight crypts, the decay was slow and thus mummified these corpses. How this all ended up being a museum is the more intriguing part of the story. And it really just seems to tie in more to the fact that Mexican culture is far more embracing of death as a normal cycle of life than its northern neighbors. The macabre displays are treated with more fascination and reverence than horror.
I have been to many museums showcasing mummies from ancient egyptian times or viewed displays of people who were preserved in the bogs of england, or in lava cavities in Pompeii. For some reason, those exhibits interested me and I did not have a feeling of unease like I did here in Guanajuato. For the historical exhibits I mentioned, there was a feeling that the displays contributed to greater scientific or historical understanding. In Guanajuato, I was viewing bodies whose families simply didn't pay a tax. These are bodies from the 19th and 20th centuries, not ancient periods of time.
The clothes were still visible on many of the bodies. Some were just babies, dressed up as saints because it was believed it would make for easier passage into heaven.
It was absolutely bizarre to see these kinds of things. Based upon the timeline, the child's parents could hypothetically still be alive. Should we go pay a visit to the cemetery to see little Pedro? Oh that's right, he's not there anymore. Do you have 60 pesos, so we can pay him a visit in the museum?
Another section showed the body of a woman lying down with her hands up over her face. It was believed she had been unintentionally buried alive due to a rare medical condition that made her heart appear to stop. Based on the movement of the arms, it was deduced that she was not actually dead, but unfortunately now finds herself in a museum . . . very much dead.
It was all . . . interesting to say the least. The museum ended with a photo op with empty coffins and one with a mummy in it (labeled a replica, but it would not have shocked me if it wasn't). After the photo op was a gift shop featuring skeleton t-shirts, mummy dolls to hang on your rear-view mirror, and other curiosities.
It was different than most museums I have been to in recent memory. I learned more about Mexican culture than I did about the mummies themselves. The other visitors gazed closely at the mummies with a respect and fascination whereas I was more bewildered by the whole thing. I have much to learn about the rest of the world.
