Museo del Valle de Tehuacán

The Tehuacán Valley is one of the key places for understanding how maize was domesticated, and this INAH-run museum tells that roughly 7,000-year story with objects found in the region. It fills part of the former Carmelite convent of El Carmen, now the El Carmen Cultural Complex, which also holds the Mineralogy Museum, the public library and municipal offices.

The convent was founded in 1747 under Fray José de la Concepción, when the Carmelites' hospice was raised to a full convent, with construction paid for by the landowner Juan del Moral. Under the Reform Laws the friars were expelled in 1857 and much of the contents was looted. A maize museum opened here in 1967 under the architect and archaeologist Miguel Messmaher, later taking its present name, and an old orchard was revived as a botanical garden. The earthquake of 28 August 1973 badly damaged the building; after restoration in 2002 and 2003 a new exhibition was installed. The town council has asked for the building back and occupies the upper floors, so the museum now works with less space.

The core of the collection comes from the excavations of the American archaeologist Richard S. MacNeish in the Cañada de Tehuacán, above all the Coxcatlán and El Texcal caves, finished around 1960. They yielded very early maize cobs and specimens of teosinte, maize's wild relative, now shown in a gallery of their own.

The visit continues through an introductory archaeology room with pre-Hispanic pieces from the Tehuacán valleys and pottery from nearby areas, grinding stones worn down by years of making nixtamal dough, xantiles (clay figures of gods and warriors typical of the region), figurines and vessels from the Cañada. Standouts are wooden masks covered in turquoise, jade and shell mosaic and chimalli shields from the Santa Ana Teloxtoc area, dated to the 15th century, plus a mural of Centéotl, the maize deity, made from dried kernels.