La Jornada: The National Museum of Mexican Railways prepares the celebration of its 40 years

“The railways are the skeleton of the nation, they are part of the construction of its past and its future. Today, with the return of trains to the country, we have the possibility of reflecting on the importance that this transportation had in the formation, not only of Mexican society, but of national democracy itself,” said Teresa Márquez Martínez, director of the National Museum of Mexican Railways.

The facility, located in Puebla, is preparing to celebrate its 40th anniversary in July 2027, while the Center for Railway Documentation and Research (Cedif) will celebrate 30 years of protecting railway memory.

Among the activities that will be carried out on that date are an exhibition on the caricaturist Antonio Helguera (1965-2021), an admirer of locomotives and tracks, and a meeting of specialists who will analyze the importance of this transportation in the past and today.

From August 4 to 16, the venue will hold a special edition of the program summer season, which includes 17 creative workshops for children and young people, as well as a dozen cultural, artistic, recreational and community activities.

In interview with The Day, Teresa Márquez highlighted the importance of railway culture in Mexico, the formation of the museum’s collection and the activities that will be carried out next year for the celebrations.

“The issue of railways is extremely important. It is an example of the participation of society in government decisions. This museum was created to rescue the memory of a transport that was like a ‘skeleton of the nation’. It was through the tracks that this country for the first time connected towns and localities with large cities, which allowed an increase in the migration of the population and the arrival of new cultures and objects to other parts of this country.”

His disappearance changed lives

According to Teresa Márquez, when the privatization of the railway system was carried out, in 1995, during the six-year term of Ernesto Zedillo, the project to preserve historical memory was also born with the help of Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM). The disappearance of this transportation not only involved sources of work, but also lifestyles. Many of the photographs, images, plans and other evidence were kept not by great collectors or researchers, but by the families of the rail workers.

“It sounds a bit dramatic, but it’s the truth. When FNM decided to work with the national museum, a rescue program was proposed. A project was carried out in which interdisciplinary groups of historians, engineers, architects, archaeologists and anthropologists participated to do systematized work that would allow them to identify everything that had historical or artistic value and that needed to be preserved.

“This group was in charge of recovering the material that is kept in the facilities of the facility. The work brigades traveled throughout the country and traveled three times the almost 6 thousand kilometers that the roads covered throughout the territory.” Until the middle of the 20th century, Mexico had trains as its main transportation.

Márquez Martínez explains that it was “the backbone of transportation. Its importance began to fall with the competition of automobiles and commercial aviation, but its commercial importance and transportation of goods remained. It was not easy to eradicate it, because more than a job or trade it was a lifestyle; many of the workers who made a living from this transportation, even after retiring, formed a community that unites them as a family. They do not say: ‘I was a railroad worker or a worker,’ but rather they handle it in the present. They were, they are and they continue to be.”

The Cedif, directed by Román Moreno, is the refuge of more than 200 thousand plans, some 89 thousand photographs and other documents that bear witness to the life history of the people who lived and made the trains.

The importance of this archive is such that in 2016 it was named Memory of the World by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Many of these documents are even consulted today by Navy and Army specialists who are in charge of building the new roads.

“This is a living archive; we have great trust given to us by the railroad community. Many of the objects that came to Cedif come from the hands of families whose parents, uncles or grandparents worked on the tracks and locomotives, either in their construction or in their operation. We are very fortunate that much of the material that was preserved, plans, photos or records, is organized. The Navy and Army specialists consult us very often to have more information to support them in the construction of the new tracks.

“We are digitizing many files, because we also want the public to have easy and quick access. Curiously, the majority of those interested are not researchers, but rather people who are looking for the history of a family member,” said the expert.

Cedif intends to grow and have conditions that guarantee the adequate preservation of railway documentary heritage.

“We want to incorporate 25 thousand boxes of historical archives and 18 thousand 420 technical and operational plans of the National Railways of Mexico in Liquidation, which today is in the custody of the Institute to Return the Stolen to the People. This would consolidate us as the main depository of the railway memory of Mexico and as a world reference in preservation, research and dissemination of the documentary heritage of trains,” concluded Teresa Márquez.