San Miguel de Allende recovers its archaeological heritage with the collection of Miguel Malo Zozaya

Published May 3rd, 2022

With the objective of celebrating the great contribution that Miguel Malo gave to the History of San Miguel de Allende, the Museo Histórico Casa de Allende of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, together with the Asociación Civil Amigos del Museo, has announced the next inauguration of a room destined for the exhibition of the important archaeological collection gathered in the fifties and sixties guarded by this illustrious San Miguel de Allende native, who for years studied and divulged the regional pre-Hispanic history.

The pieces from Yuriria arrived at the city last March 16, escorted by the National Guard with the objective of safeguarding, investigating, and exhibiting them in a permanent exhibition at the Museo Histórico Casa de Ignacio Allende. A room that will bear the name of Izcuinapan, the same name given by Miguel Malo to the small museum located in his house on Mesones Street from 1967 to 1972, honoring the first indigenous settlement in San Miguel after the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, which in Nahuatl means Water of Dogs.

This project is in charge of Master Gabriela Zepeda, researcher of the INAH Guanajuato Center, Master Alberto Aveleyra, and Archaeologist Hugo Olalde González, with the museography contribution of Master Marco Barrera, will open its doors during the summer of this year. It will show a more extensive work of research on the Mesoamerican peoples who inhabited the region of San Miguel de Allende, today known as the Central Basin of the Laja River.

Don Miguel Malo spent his days searching for archaeological pieces in the area of La Moncada, today Peña de la Cruz, turning his house into a museum.

But it was in 1972 that agents of the federal judicial police showed up at his house to comply with superior orders to seize those archaeological pieces derived from the entry into force of the Federal Law on Monuments and Archaeological, Artistic and Historical Zones, he felt that they were taking away his life and his greatest illusion. And so it was, in May 1972 Miguel Malo died, there are different versions and one of them affirms that, before the insults of the authority, he himself took his own life.

The return of these pieces to San Miguel means recovering its history and giving Don Miguel Malo the recognition he deserves.