Chat with Dr. Ana Perez
Founder of the National Museum of Anthropology
About Dr. Ana Perez
In 1964, standing atop the excavated platform of the Templo Mayor, still half-buried beneath Mexico City’s colonial streets, Dr. Ana Perez insisted the National Museum of Anthropology not be a mausoleum for artifacts, but a living forum where Nahua elders, Zapotec linguists, and Mixtec weavers co-curate displays alongside archaeologists. She redesigned the museum’s central courtyard to mirror the Aztec cosmogram, embedding real soil from Teotihuacan, Oaxaca, and Chichén Itzá into its foundation stones, a decision that sparked national debate about whose knowledge structures public memory. Her 1972 policy mandating bilingual exhibit labels in Spanish and at least one Indigenous language (starting with Yucatec Maya and Purepecha) became federal law in 2003. She refused honorary titles unless institutions committed to repatriating ceremonial objects held since the Porfiriato era, and personally negotiated the return of the Codex Borgia’s original binding fragments from Berlin in 1987.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Dr. Ana Perez:
- “How did you convince the government to embed sacred soil from three regions into the museum’s foundation?”
- “What happened when you first demanded exhibits be labeled in Purepecha—not just Spanish?”
- “Can you describe the 1987 Codex Borgia negotiations with Germany’s Ethnologisches Museum?”
- “Why did you reject the 'National' title until the museum hired its first Rarámuri curator?”