The National Museum of Anthropology in Madrid has 4,426 inventoried human remains. From mummies from Atacama (Chile), to shrunken heads by the Shuar, whom the colonizers baptized as jíbaros. But, founded in 1875 by Dr. Pedro González de Velasco, it also has many European skulls and even the skeleton of the so-called Extremaduran giant, the second tallest man in the history of Spain, 2.35 meters, Agustín Luengo Capilla, who died at 26 years in 1875. Today, almost none of those pieces, with the exception of a head reduced by the Shuar, are already displayed in the Madrid museum after almost two years ago its director, Fernando Sáez, dismantled the Hall of Origins , a kind of time travel.
“We have to move forward, museums cannot remain in the 19th century, they have to have a new way of understanding their collections, especially inherited ones. With respect to human remains, our museum, like many others, was born in a context in which physical and cultural anthropology were not separated and elements of biology were used to explain situations that are cultural. Reasons were made about the size of the brain. It was the beginning of positivist science and it made sense to study human remains, to expose them, but science has followed another path. It seemed to us that we had to take a step,” explains Sáez, who believes that “many times they continue to expose themselves not because it is morbid, but because it is curious. We are in the idea of the old cabinet of curiosities, of exhibiting things that surprise. “We want to go another way, not be a 19th century museum.”
And the step he took with his Jun team was to eliminate the room and publish a letter of commitment on the treatment of human remains in accordance with new international standards. Although the cases are diverse and that letter would not prevent the remains of the giant Agustín from being exposed. “Many of the human remains belong to ancestors of other peoples or cultures or ethnic groups for whom it would not be acceptable for them to be removed from their graves, from Mother Earth, the Pachamama. And we must respect his will. We have not organized return processes because it requires legal and diplomatic processes, but we wanted to listen to you. It has been a long time since we no longer exhibited the Atacama mummies. If your legitimate heirs do not agree, it is against your values, we did not want to persist in not listening to them. After all, it was a position of superiority: we are the owners of the nation. And today many museums with human remains from expeditions of the 19th and 20th centuries adopt the same position in Europe and America. And in Canada or Australia there are even reparation processes.”
But also, he explains, “we have human remains that may come from a legitimate acquisition, such as those of Agustín Luengo Capilla. By dismantling the Hall of Origins we have left space to put it. As we hope to soon implement a new, more coherent permanent exhibition, we will see then. On the other hand, we do expose one of the tzanzas, the shrunken heads of the Shuar, because for them they have already been transformed into objects that have a spiritual force within them. The spirit of the defeated warriors lives in them and their strength is transmitted to the one who defeats them and reduces their head to preserve their strength, it was a rite of admiration." And, another case adds, “in the Canary Islands they have Guanche mummies on display. There is a very large collection in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, they exhibit them, for them it is part of their history.”
Given the extensive casuistry, the new Secretary of State for Culture, Jordi Martí, has just commissioned a report from the General Subdirectorate of State Museums to ensure that the museums that depend on the ministry comply with international protocols on the matter. “We will have it in two months, and based on that we will evaluate the situation and act quickly in case of non-compliance. There is an ethical code approved by ICOM, the International Council of Museums, which is very important, and with the study we are going to see if the museums that have human remains comply with it.”
And Martí remembers that although “it is an issue crossed by colonial issues, not necessarily always, we have to remove it from that logic and that the human remains, wherever they come from, comply with the recommendations. If there are international reports that establish how it should be done, what we have to do is comply with them. From issues of cultural context and dignity, to whether there are direct descendants who may feel represented by those remains and who must authorize their exhibition." And he points out that “the Museum of Anthropology has done the job very well and is surely more advanced, perhaps because it started from a worse situation, because archaeological museums had historically treated indigenous communities with a kind of superiority.”
In that sense, Sáez concludes that it is about “building a new system of relations with other cultures. Museums played a role in legitimizing the status quo, Western superiority. “We can turn the story around.”
