It says something about Guanajauto, although I’m not certain precisely what, that its prime tourist attraction is a positively gruesome display of mummies.

What distinguishes the Guanajuato mummies from your standard issue Egyptian mummies is that they weren’t intentionally mummified. Also, that they’re just out there hanging around, not wrapped up and hidden in sarcophagi. Like the good mummies.

There are two origin stories about the mummies, and they may both be correct. They share in common that the cemetary (panteón) started charging families annual fees, and when families couldn’t pay, or there was no family, the bodies were disinterred. To everyone’s surprise, what they found wasn’t a pile of bones, but fully mummified corpses.

In one version, the bodies were buried in above ground crypts. When they were disinterred, the dry, warm mountain air turned out to have created the perfect conditions for natural mummification. In the other version they were buried in the ground, as god intended, and the dry soil led to their mummification. A variant on this version is that many of the corpses were buried as a result of a cholera epidemic, and were buried in such haste that no one bothered with the salts that are usually used to speed decomposition and absorption.

Whatever the specifics, the result was over 100 mummies, and it’s axiomatic that any number of mummies over, say, none, is a tourist attraction. The Guanajuato mummies have been on display since 1894.

And How Does That Make You Feel?

What’s disturbing about the mummies isn’t that they’re corpses. It’s that they’re displayed as objects, not people. Of course, when they were first disinterred the panteón knew who they were. Each deadbeat had a name. Over the years, with the lax handling and the absence of give-a-fuck, their names have been lost. They’re just archetypes now: El Ahogado (The Drowned Man), La China (The Chinese Lady), La Bruja (The Witch).

Thankfully, not everyone is OK with the current state of affairs. Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History has undertaken an effort to identify the remains and, when it’s possible to locate living descendants, return them to their families. Just the effort is already more dignity than they’ve been afforded since death.

It also warrants pointing out that El Museo is hardly alone in this sort of reassessment. Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum, which features medical curiosities, is undertaking a critical reassessment of how it displays and contextualizes exhibits featuring human remains. Cue howls about the Woke Police.

In the meantime, the display at El Museo De Las Momias has more in common with pornography than anthropology. It’s a form of objectification that makes the viewer complicit in the act.

Trigger Warning

There’s a reason I used a photo of a mural outside the Museo for the featured image on this post, rather than an objectively more arresting photo of one of the actual mummies. Because, people, these are corpses. With hair and teeth and clothes. And eyes. *shudder* And truly horrifying expressions. They are disturbing. There is no shame in bailing. No one will know. So do not scroll any further if this is a thing you don’t want to see.

For the rest of you, fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.

Nothing

To

See

Here

I’d

Scroll

Back

Up

If

I

Were

You…

Still Here? Good.

The few, the brave, the foolish. Welcome, my band of brothers. To something you can never unsee. This is on you.

And… Nothing more needs to be said.

That’s never really true, is it.

I had originally written clever captions for each of the photos. There was some pretty good stuff there. Knee slappers, if you will. But I’ve deleted them. They made me feel… dirty. And not in the good way.

It felt like I was just heaping one more indignity on folks who didn’t deserve it. It felt like… a feeling. And you all know how ambivalent I am about having feelings. So if funny captions make feelings, no funny captions. Sorry. You’ll have to write your own.