Mummy’s arm came off when museum mishandled body, Mexican government says

Mexico City – Mexico’s federal archeology agency on Monday accused the conservative-ruled city of Guanajuato of mistreating one of the country’s famous 19th-century mummified bodies.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History, INAH, said that during recent renovations at the museum where mummified bodies are on permanent display, the arm of one of the mummies, well, fell off.

We might think that the complaint has to do with the dignified treatment given to corpses buried around the beginning of 1800 and unearthed from 1860 onwards, because their families could no longer pay the funeral fees.

But in fact, the mummies are displayed in a somewhat macabre way in glass showcases in a museum in Guanajuato, capital of the state of the same name, and have been transported to tourism fairs for decades. Some were shown in the United States in 2009.

What appears to be at the root of the latest dispute is a territorial dispute between INAH, which believes it has jurisdiction over the mummies because it claims they are “national heritage”, and Guanajuato, which considers them a tourist attraction. The state and city are governed by the conservative National Action Party, which the Morena party – which holds power at the federal level – considers its archenemy.

On Monday, the institute said it would demand an accounting of what permits and procedures were followed during the museum’s renovations.

“These events confirm that the way in which the museum’s collection was moved is not correct and that, far from applying adequate corrective and conservation strategies, the actions carried out resulted in damage, not only to this body,” the institute wrote in a statement. . .

It did not say what other pieces of mummy had fallen out, if any.

“It appears that this situation is related to the lack of knowledge about appropriate protocols and the lack of training of the personnel responsible for carrying out these tasks”, he continued.

The Guanajuato city government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

How the bodies met their fate

The preserved corpses were unintentionally mummified when they were buried in crypts in a dry, mineral-rich soil environment in the mining state of Guanajuato. Some still have hair, leathery skin and original clothing.

The institute seemed angry that people from Guanajuato, not the institute’s own staff, are responsible for the approximately 100 mummies. In part because most of them were unearthed before the institute’s founding in 1939, they remain under local control, something that has angered federal authorities in the past.

In 2023, experts at the institute complained that a traveling mummy exhibit could pose a health risk to the public because one of the mummies appeared to have fungal growth.

This is not the first time that the death of a long-dead person has become a national political issue.

In 1989, the Mexican government weathered a wave of criticism after it removed the arm of revolutionary general Álvaro Obregón – severed in battle in 1915 – after it had been displayed in a bottle of formaldehyde on a marble monument for half a century. Visitors said he had become “ugly,” so the arm was incinerated and buried.

In 1838, Antonio López de Santa Anna, who served 11 times as president of Mexico, lost his leg in battle – and buried it with honors. In 1844, an angry mob who accused him of treason dragged his leg through the streets of Mexico City and apparently destroyed it.