By Paola Velasco
On May 2, the archaeological project Izcuinapan was presented at the Casa de Allende Museum to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of prominent collector Miguel Malo Zozaya, who started accumulating pieces in 1955. The event inaugurated his private collection, which he held for years, maintaining and preserving key pieces of the pre-Hispanic identity of the area where San Miguel de Allende is located today.
The research project was led by Gabriela Zepeda García Moreno, Alberto Aveleyra Talamantes, and archeologist Hugo Olalde. The project included the museographic contribution of Marco Barrera Bassols, who will open the doors of this exhibition in the summer of 2022.
The event lasted all day, with a morning press conference for local, state, and national media. A tribute to Malo was held in the afternoon in the presence of the national INAH Director, archaeologist Diego Prieto; Olga Adriana Hernández Flores, Director of Casa INAH Guanajuato; César Arias de la Canal, President of Friends of the Museum A.C.; Alberto Aveleyra, researcher of the Izcuinapan project; and Patricia Guerra Vallejo, Director of the Casa de Allende Museum. More than 150 people attended the tribute.
Olga Adriana Hernández spoke of the importance of recognizing San Miguel’s prehispanic past alongside its colonial past and its major role in the War of Independence. She stated that she will give her full support to this project, which is of special interest to the INAH of Guanajuato.
César Arias commented: “This is an act of poetic justice 50 years after the death of Miguel Malo, as all his investigative work and compilation were long silenced. What better tribute than the Izcuinapan project to highlight his entire collection. This is a part of San Miguel de Allende’s heritage. Also, I want to say that the Friends of the Museum (Amigos del Museo) are very happy because two elements have come together: a recognition of an extraordinary Sanmiguelense; and the permanent exhibition of his collection at the Allende Museum, together with a permanent research project.”
Alberto Aveleyra, researcher for the project, commented, “For me it is an honor to share with you that since March 15 we have received almost 2,000 pieces from Yuriria, Gto. Of these, 90% are from the Miguel Malo Zozaya collection, which began in 1955, when Malo discovered the archaeological importance of the Cañada de la Virgen area. These are the origins of the modern archeology of San Miguel, a chapter that cannot be understood without the work and writings of Don Miguel Malo. Before being a Spanish foundation, San Miguel was a Franciscan indigenous foundation. The Malo Zozaya collection connects us with the ancestral past of the native peoples of the region, and has been the archaeological ambassador of San Miguel de Allende since the founding of the National Museum of Anthropology and History in Mexico City, when the archaeological Piña Chan requested 35 pieces for display.
Aveleyra continued, “In 1965, Malo organized the first exhibition of his collection at the Nigromante Cultural Center, today Bellas Artes. In those days, there were INAH pre-Hispanic art salons. That was the first time the archaeological wealth of San Miguel was revealed. In 1967, Malo founded the Izcuinapan Archeology Museum in his house, at Mesones 81, and exhibited there until his death. This research project decolonizes the history of San Miguel and presents us with a surprising universe of San Miguel in the times of the Cañada de the Virgin.”
Who was Miguel Malo Zozaya?
Born on December 22, 1906 into a San Miguel family, he graduated from the University of Guanajuato as a professor of Pharmacy, an activity he carried out throughout his life as a service to the community. He also taught basic education and at the Instituto Allende. He was the founding director of the Ignacio Ramirez El Nigromante Cultural Center, a position he held from 1962 until his death in 1972. He was a member of several institutions for human and historical studies, such as the Mexican Culture Seminar. Passionate about Mesoamerican civilization from a very young age, he dedicated his life and his economic resources to the appreciation and defense of this historical heritage. He strove to have San Miguel recognized for its pre-Hispanic past.
Malo’s exquisite pre-Hispanic collection
Thanks to the Museo Histórico de Casa de Allende and Amigos del Museo, as well as technical support from INAH, this extraordinary archaeological collection has returned to San Miguel de Allende. At the museum it will be protected, studied, and permanently exhibited in a room bearing the name of Izcuinapan. This was the first indigenous settlement in San Miguel after the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century. In Nahuatl, it means the place where dogs drink water.
Malo collected his pre-Hispanic pieces during the years prior to the Federal Law on Monuments and Archaeological, Artistic and Historical Zones of 1972. During this period, collectors played an important role in the conservation of Mexico’s archaeological heritage. Malo focused his fieldwork on the region of San Miguel de Allende, whose archaeological richness was barely known. He directed his activity towards scientific research. Besides publishing, he engaged in dialogue with historians of the stature of Romano Piña Chan, Roberto García Moll, Breatiz Braniff, Richard McNeish, and anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.
In 1964, the Museum of Anthropology and History of Mexico City requested some pieces for its collection, extracted mainly from the Aguaespinoza, Tierra Blanca, Cruz del Palmar, and Cañada de la Virgen Archaeological Zone. The pieces included materials such as ceramics, obsidian, shell and blue-green stone. It is worth mentioning that the name of Cañada de la Virgen came about some 40 years ago, after the discovery of a geode in the shape of a Virgin.
After Malo’s death, most of this collection was removed from San Miguel to be protected and restored by the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Initially, the collection was kept in the regional museum of Guanajuato Alhóndiga de Granaditas. Later, part of it was placed in the Cañada de la Virgen Archaeological Zone, some was sent to the Augustinian ex-convent museum of San Pedro in Yuriria, and a part went to the Teotihuacán Archaeological Zone for restoration. The remainder was dispersed in different precincts of the Institute. Only part of the collection remained in the hands of Malo’s widow, Magdalena Luna Polo. She handed that over to INAH before she died, with the request that the pieces not leave San Miguel and that they be exhibited permanently in the newly opened Museo Casa de Allende. This is how that part of the collection was created. When the museum was restructured in 2010, on the occasion of the Bicentennial of Independence, the exhibition was dismantled, based on a new museographic script.
Today, the Casa de Allende Museum and the Friends of the Museum association celebrate the return of the Miguel Malo Zozaya collection to San Miguel de Allende. The Izcuinapan regional archeology room will open its doors to research work on the Mesoamerican peoples who inhabited the region of San Miguel de Allende, today known as the Central basin of the Laja River.
