A Retired Teacher in Mexico City: The Regional Museum of Cholula

Thursday, August 23, 2018

The Regional Museum of Cholula

Last Saturday, as my trip was drawing to a close, Alejandro and I took a day trip to Cholula, a historic city about two hours from Mexico City. I have known Cholula since 1973 when I spent three months there studying at the University of the Americas. In the intervening forty five years Cholula has changed tremendously. It used to be a sleepy, rural town located some distance from the major city of Puebla. Now, Cholula is a suburb of Puebla with a population of over 100,000 people. You don't know where Cholula ends and Puebla begins. Before there was no tourism infrastructure; now there are hotels, restaurants and a plethora of souvenir shops. On this trip I was surprised to find that there are "virtual" parking meters along the streets... parking meters that you pay via an "app" on your cellular phone. There is also now a high speed tourist train that runs between downtown Puebla and Cholula.

The reason for the boom in tourism is that Cholula has the world's largest pyramid in terms of volume. it is covered with dirt and vegetation, and looks like a large hill rising abruptly from the edge of town. A Spanish colonial church sits atop the pyramid. The town has been declared a "Pueblo Mágico" and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

However, Alejandro and I had not come to Cholula to climb the pyramid. That is something I have done numerous times. In fact when I was a student here, I would sometimes go up to the top with my books, and do my homework reading there. We came to Cholula to visit a new museum which opened just last year. The Regional Museum of Cholula is located at the base of the pyramid.

It is located in an old building that I remember very well from my days as a student there. It had a large sign on it saying "Sanitorio" (Sanitarium). I did not realize at that the time that it was a psychiatric hospital built in 1910 in the final days before the Mexican Revolution.

Surrounding the courtyard of the former hospital are eight rooms devoted to the geography, history and arts of the region.

The pyramid looms over the museum.

The first room deals with the geography of the area... especially the snow-covered volcanos Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl which dominate the landscape.

An oil painting of the two volcanos

An old photograph taken from the top of the pyramid with the peak of "Popo" in the background.

Several rooms deal with Cholula's pre-Hispanic history. The town may very well be the oldest continuously inhabited community in the Americas. The area has been occupied for at least three thousand years. At its peak, when it was a part of the Aztec empire, Cholula was a sacred city that whose temples attracted pilgrims. It was also a major commercial center that was famous for its polychrome pottery.

After the Spanish conquest Cholula declined in importance, although it was still noteworthy for the number of churches. (The Spanish had a penchant for building a church over every site once occupied by a pagan temple.) Several rooms contain religious art from the colonial period.

The museum is beautifully laid out... but let's face it, you can only see so many pieces of old pottery or religious carvings before museum fatigue sets in. However, the museum's last two rooms really perked up my interest level. The special exhibition hall contains a collection of "alebrijes", the colorful, fantastic animal sculptures that have become one of Mexico's most famous forms of popular art. This collection is on loan from the Mexican Museum in San Francisco, California.

There are examples of the large, cardboard "alebrijes" which come from Mexico City.

And there were also the smaller, intricately painted, wooden "alebrijes" that come from several villages in the state of Oaxaca. There were some carvings from the workshop of Jacobo and María Angeles. Some years ago I purchased a rather expensive "alebrije" from their workshop. It's nice to know that I have a "museum quality" piece of Mexican art.