From Idols to Antiquity

The founding of the National Museum of Mexico by presidential decree in 1825, just four years after the collapse of colonial rule, represented a symbolic proclamation of cultural independence that early republican governments proved unable to sustain materially. A succession of museum directors struggled to make the museum a reality over the next half century despite nonexistent budgets, lack of space, political disruptions, and foreign invasion. Their uneven success led later generations of observers and historians to dismiss the museum’s early story as one of false starts, in contrast to the spectacular institution building pursued during the late nineteenth century, as modernizing dictator Porfirio Díaz consolidated the liberal nation state. While Porfirian elites mobilized antiquities to create legitimating narratives rooted in the preconquest past, however, their efforts did not come out of nowhere. Miruna Achim’s engaging and well-written study, From Idols to Antiquity, demonstrates that the museum’s early trajectory reveals much about how antiquities came to be defined and valued by Mexican intellectuals in the first place.Achim draws on a wealth of archival and printed sources to reconstruct the National Museum’s trajectory. She does so not through dry, institutional history but rather by following the projects, networks, and strategies of the principal actors who competed to define antiquities in a context where they had multiple meanings. The idea that the nation had a unique connection or material claim to preconquest objects was not widely shared among postindependence elites. Museum directors and their supporters had to make this case, often in uneasy collaboration or outright competition with private collectors, foreign antiquarians, and invading powers who participated in a brisk, illegal trade in preconquest antiquities. At times, the museum seemed to be held together by the sheer force of will of statesmen-scholars like Lucas Alamán and Isidro Icazo. Collaborations with enterprising foreigners like Jean-Frédéric Waldeck, whom Achim vividly portrays as a paranoid explorer camped atop a pyramid at Palenque, often fizzled. Meanwhile, foreign observers self-servingly depicted Mexico as ill-suited to safeguard preconquest artifacts.From Idols to Antiquity depicts the transatlantic networks that formed around preconquest objects from the vantage point of Mexican intellectuals. In doing so, the author makes important contributions to the broader historiography of nineteenth-century Mexico. A brilliant chapter on print culture shows how museum boosters turned to paper technologies, which “contributed to the emergence of Mexican antiquarianism” in the absence of a functional physical museum (18). Achim also introduces Anglophone readers to the underappreciated figure of José Fernando Ramírez, discredited in nationalist narratives for his decision to work with the invading French government headed by Maximilian. Before joining the Hapsburg’s cabinet, Ramírez traveled extensively throughout Europe, where he lost respect for the many fantastical theories that posited external origins for Mexican civilizations. Returning home, he laid the foundations for analyzing preconquest cultures on their own terms, fending off the imperialist condescension of the French scientists who swarmed Mexico even as he collaborated with Maximilian. Achim’s portrait of this period deepens our understanding of the complex political alliances and legacies of the Second Empire.The book also points toward future avenues for research on the role of non-elite actors in the process of defining “antiquity.” As Achim notes, nineteenth-century intellectuals dismissed any links between preconquest antiquities and living Indigenous communities. Yet these communities do appear in revealing glimpses throughout the monograph, not only as laborers on expeditions but also as participants in the race to define and control antiquities. Subsequent studies of the early nineteenth century grounded in local or regional frameworks could fruitfully engage with Achim’s argument that preconquest objects existed within multiple regimes of value.Brimming with fascinating characters and stories, From Idols to Antiquity is an erudite work that should be obligatory reading for scholars of Mexico, antiquities, and museums

Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Context (archaeology) · Independence (probability theory) · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Proclamation · State (computer science) · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Latin American history and culture · Law · Photographic and Visual Arts