Indigenous and Afro-Mexican peoples have a new room in the National Museum of Anthropology

The National Museum of Anthropology (MNA) took an important step towards the revitalization of its cultural offering by remodeling a new ethnographic room called Identities, Histories and Visions.

This space is the third to open its doors in an effort to update the areas dedicated to indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities. It joins the rooms called Textiles and Parties, enabled last March. The inauguration of the entire first floor of the museum is scheduled for December and promises to be a milestone in the history of this institution.

The new room offers visitors a narrative deep and complexstructured into eight thematic axes, supported by more than 400 carefully selected pieces. This proposal connects the archaeological with the ethnographic, but also highlights the continuity of traditions and the changes that have occurred over more than 500 years.

Each object, a story

Each exhibit tells a story, as the room encourages viewers to immerse themselves in the diversity of cultures that have shaped Mexican identity.

During the previous opening, Antonio Saborit, director of the MNA, recalled the accumulated effort to outline the scope of this renovation and stressed the importance of building a contemporary discourse that reflects the cultural and linguistic variety that defines Mexico.

Anthropologist Donaciano Gutiérrez Gutiérrez, in a guided tour, offered his vision on the historical challenges that these communities have faced. He explained how these populations, Traditionally the object of contempt and racist views, they also continue to fight to reconstruct their history and reclaim their identity in a social context in constant transformation. Indigenous and Afro-descendant populations have faced centuries of marginalization and contempt, but today they claim their place in society with unusual strength..

In interview with The Daythe also curator of the room added that during the coronavirus pandemic “we work on the new ethnography; leaving territorial rooms that contained various indigenous groups, such as the Mayans, to incorporate the Afro-Mexicans.

We are talking about 70 groups that represent 24 million indigenous people and 2 million Afro-Mexicans in the country, in addition to the fact that more than 80 specialists have collaborated in this reconditioning. The INAH has more than 160 museums, but only five are national. The MNA is the largest museum in Mexico, with 45 thousand square meters, where all its history is concentrated.

Diego Prieto Hernández, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), highlighted the hard work carried out in the renovation of the museum and underlined the importance of this new space for the preservation of the country’s cultural diversity.

It is actually the renovation of part of a whole that will culminate in December with the inauguration of the first floor of the MNA, which will allow us to properly celebrate the six decades of life of the museum and the 85 years of the INAH. On the ground floor of the MNA we find ancient Mexico; On the first floor we must find contemporary Mexico.

Donaciano Gutiérrez explained that the Identities, Stories and Visions room captures both the achievements and challenges of indigenous and Afro-descendant communities.

Among the objects on display are vestiges of daily life, ceramic pieces, textiles and work tools. In addition, graphic and documentary representations, such as colonial engravings and contemporary photographs, provide visitors with the opportunity to understand how colonial powers and hegemonic discourses have attempted to shape the identity of these peoples.

stellar piece

The mural Genetics and memory: a memory of miscegenation It is one of the new and stellar pieces. Made with wood, pasta, marble, glass, acrylic, leather and metal, its creator is the Guerrero artist Baltazar Castellano Melo, who narrates the Afro-indigenous diversity of the coasts of Guerrero and Oaxaca through two characters that symbolize the union between both coastal peoples, as well as the connection between indigenous people and Afro-descendants.

The devil present through dance opens the doors of the underworld to admit the ancestors. The center of the work is a liminal space between Mictlán and the world of the living. Afro-indigenous spirituality is present in each of the elementsreads the technical sheet.

The MNA, located on Paseo de la Reforma Avenue and unnumbered Gandhi Causeway, in the first section of Bosque de Chapultepec, can be visited from Tuesday to Sunday from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.