Museo Casa Carranza

On the Plaza de la Constitución in Xicotepec, the Pueblo Mágico of Puebla's Sierra Norte, stands the house that holds the final chapter of Venustiano Carranza's life. In May 1920, hounded by the Agua Prieta movement led by Álvaro Obregón and Pablo González, the president left Mexico City by train for Veracruz, where his son-in-law Cándido Aguilar was waiting. The presidential train got no further than Aljibes, and from there his party pressed on through the mountains on horseback. On 20 May General Rodolfo Herrero talked him into spending the night at Tlaxcalantongo, a hamlet of shingle-roofed huts that now belongs to Xicotepec municipality; a little after four in the morning on the 21st, Herrero's men opened fire on the hut and the president was killed.

His body was carried to this house in the town, then called Villa Juárez. The autopsy was done here, a doctor named Sánchez embalmed him, and the body stayed three days, which is why people in Xicotepec say the town was the capital of the Republic for that time. A period photograph kept at Mexico's national photo archive shows the coffin on its way from Villa Juárez to Necaxa, from where it went on to the capital. What happened in the hut was never fully settled: a statement signed by the captured aides spoke of suicide, the embalmer's report was dismissed as sloppy, and a century later an INAH team that examined the president's shirt found far too many bullet holes for that story to hold.

The museum covers Carranza's political career, the Revolution and the years after it with period photographs, and the president's viscera are among the pieces on show. A vividly coloured mural inside brings together Carranza, the 1917 Constitution, railways, peasants and the slogan "Justicia y democracia". The house faces the zócalo, a square about two blocks long known for its flowers and clipped topiary; it is busiest on Sundays, the market day.