notes and reflections

Some of the bodies are contorted, twisted as though trying to avoid the inevitability of death. Most are naked but a few still have remnants of clothing: a pair of socks, shoes, a gown, one, a French doctor, is nearly completely dressed in leathers.  All are the color of dried plaster of Paris.  All have gaping mouths, open in what appears to be a scream of agony, caused by the shrinkage and retraction of facial skin and muscles.

These are not the carefully preserved and shrouded remains of ancient people but the ghastly, modern earthly remains of some one hundred or more people pulled from their final resting places, strangely mummified by a combination of soil chemicals and dry heat, then put on display in the museum of mummys in Guanajuato, Mexico.  Here rest China Girl, Juan Jaramilto, Doctor LeRoy and others: a drowning victim, a man obviously murdered, the woman in the nightgown, small children, a woman apparently buried alive, possibly a catatonic mistaken for dead.  All victims of a mid-19th century law (since repealed) requiring the payment of a grave tax which, if unpaid by friends or family resulted in the exhumation of the deceased.

This macabre collection of bodies is one of Guanajuato's major tourist attractions, visited by visitors from abroad, gawking families with small children, groups of scouts on holiday, the curious, the insensitive. One passes through the museum wondering how these bodies, if permitted to speak, would respond to the attention.  Perhaps some, the most obscure or the most vain, would welcome the attention, the continuing acknowedgement of their existance. But I would suspect that most would be saddened and outraged that their lives have been reduced to this: to have become mere objects for observation, mere "things" without dignity for the living to profit by.