Las Momias de Guanajuato

Gazing at the faces of Guanajuato's famous mummies can make you wonder what kind of expression you'll wear when you face death. Will you be as indignant as this woman, her spectacles smashed crooked, her dark hair a stormy swirl on top of her head, gaping her mouth wide in a silent shout of outrage? Or feebly defiant like this other woman, naked except for a bracelet, who sticks her withered tongue out? Will you lower your face in humble resignation, like this man draped in the dusty rags of what must have been his finest suit? Or fake nonchalance, like this Churchillian burgher, bald and still looking portly even though he's a husk, who seems about to give a speech to dead Rotarians?

That's all a conceit, of course. These desiccated cadavers, citizens of the central Mexico city of Guanajuato from the 19th and 20th centuries, were well dead before the process of mummification gave them their expressions of apparent rage, horror, sadness. They were all cast out of the Panteón Municipal de Santa Paula, the large hilltop cemetery on the outskirts of the city. From the 1860s to 1958, the city levied an annual tax on the graves and crypts there, and if loved ones fell behind on their payments, bodies were removed and unceremoniously dumped into an ossuary below. It was discovered that Guanajuato's hot, dry climate was mummifying a number of the bodies. Over time their presence made the ossuary a tourist attraction. It has been a proper museum since 1969, El Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato. A selection of about sixty particularly striking examples, including a few heartbreaking mummified infants and one tiny fetus, are professionally displayed in cases, dramatically lit from above.

The museum gets visitors from around the world. Mexicans visit in large family groups, from grandparents to toddlers. The kids show no fear or revulsion. Witness this little girl, maybe 7, commandeering her father's phone and taking giggling, vogueing selfies with the mummies grimacing behind her. "The Mexican," Octavio Paz wrote, "is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and his most steadfast love." 

Italians visit the mummies at Palermo's Capuchin catacombs in family groups too, but their attitude is more respectful and, well, grave. Americans simply avoid the face of death as much as they can. Even Ray Bradbury, who made writing about the strange and uncanny his profession, was completely freaked out by his visit to las momias in the 1940s. He wrote that they "so wounded and terrified me, I could hardly wait to flee Mexico. I had nightmares about dying and having to remain in the halls of the dead with those propped and wired bodies."

A bit like Dia de los Muertos calaveras and Catrinas, Guanajuato's mummies are part of Mexican pop culture. In the 1972 movie Las Momias de Guanajuato (aka Santo vs. las Momias), Santo, the popular luchador (masked wrestler), visits Guanajuato. The mummies, played by actors in bad mummy masks, come to life and attack him. It makes no sense and, like all Santo movies, is terrible and wonderful at the same time. Santo starred in some 60 others, in which he defeated Frankenstein, Dracula, head hunters and space aliens, but none was more successful than this one. 

Las Momias begins with panoramic footage of Guanajuato, which hasn't noticeably changed since the movie was made. It's a small city, densely compact, cradled by mountains, with stately old colonial churches standing up out of a confetti of adobe houses – dark red, sky blue, ochre, an occasional purple – that clamber up the steep surrounding slopes. 

Paz wrote that Mexicans celebrate life and death with equal gusto, and Guanajuato seems determined to prove it. Aside from the mummies and cemetery, it is loud and lively. It was founded in the 16th century by colonial Spanish who mined silver and gold in the mountains, and has retained something of a mining town's rough and ready ethos. And the University of Guanajuato adds more than 20,000 students to a city of around 170,000, so there's the typical college town's party-hardiness. Weekends are given over to fiestas and street parties that carry on well into the night. Large, happy crowds led by paid party promoters called estudiantinas snake-dance up and down the narrow stone streets, singing and laughing. Strolling mariachi bands struggle to be heard against thumping echoes of overamped rock, hiphop and EDM roaring out of bars. 

Just a few hours after the streets finally quiet down, window-rattling fireworks explosions greet the dawn. Fireworks are an inevitability in Mexico, fired off on the slimmest pretext. The dawn volley is said to be a continuation of ancient rites of pre-Colonial priests. 

When the sun and everyone else, probably even las momias, are awake, another day of partying can begin. 

John Strausbaugh

Previous
Previous

Depression Lessons #2

Next
Next

Mae Clarke: An Honest Woman