Carl Lumholtz y la objetualización de la cultura indígena en la Sierra Madre Occidental

Abstract

The present article analyzes the context during which the expeditions of explorer Carl Lumholtz took place in the Western Sierra Madre between 1890 and 1905, supported by the American Museum of Natural History. This is done within the framework of the political, business and intellectal relations between Mexico and the US during the Porfiriato and the “Museum Era” in the history of anthropology, processes that merge in the indigenous question (“problema del indio”) in Northwestern and West Mexico. The Gran Nayar is taken as a particular example of an emerging historical-cultural region and anthropology laboratory to reflect on the role of ethnographic colectionism as practiced under the asumption of the inevitable dissapareance of indigenous societies in their incorporation as Mexican citizens within the modern Nation-State. I therefore adress the “objectification of indigenous culture”, alongside with the process of land expropiation and national education in Spanish, constructed as an ethnographic collection that is catalogued, preserved and consumed in the museum space.