Mexico's National Program of Community Museums: Local Patrimonies in a Multicultural Mexico

Abstract

Since the advent of "new museology" in the 1960s and 1970s there has been a substantial increase in community-based museum initiatives, with cultural workers adopting heritage management practices that approach the museum as a tool for negotiating identity and contesting the imposition of cultural values. One such initiative is Mexico's National Program of Community Museums and Ecomuseums (PNMC), a federal program of community museums that aims to strengthen the relationship between civil society and its patrimony. Using the PNMC as a case study, this paper explores the ways in which global trends in community-based heritage management have been adapted to a particular set of social and historical circumstances. It also examines how community, national, and international groups interact to negotiate a program that works in different ways for the different players involved. While Mexican community museums have been unable to engender the wide-scale community participation that they propose, a program of museums has been instituted that runs largely on the initiative of a devoted network of community cultural activists. Furthermore, as a group of institutions participating in regional, national, and global networks, the museums have extended their reach in an effort to actively negotiate how culture is constructed, managed, and portrayed, not only within the community but beyond.