Half the world: four views of indigenous Mexico

Madrid,

Four hundred pieces from different Mexican collections are part of “Half of the World. Women in Indigenous Mexico”, showing that since last October 31 it can be seen in four other Madrid institutions (the National Archaeological Museum, the Casa de México Foundation in Spain, the Cervantes Institute and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum) and that it was sponsored by the authorities of that country and the Spanish authorities.

Aside from the political background expressed at its inauguration, the project gives us the opportunity to see in Madrid very significant creations and objects of the populations that inhabited Mesoamerica in the pre-Hispanic period. Curated by Karina Romero Blanco, who was director of the Archaeological Museum of Cancún, it seeks to allow us to delve into their customs, their relationship with divinity and nature, their languages or their gastronomy, in addition to delving into the role of women in these societies, in relation to community life and the transmission of knowledge.

It is worth starting the tour of the four sections of this exhibition in the Archaeological Museum, since its assembly can provide context to the rest. It focuses on the human sphere and has pieces that refer precisely to the functions assumed by women of indigenous peoples: the education of children, the care of the elderly, the production of textiles and ceramics, the preparation of food and the transmission of rituals or speeches, roles clearly associated with the course of life cycles and the maintenance of cultural traditions.

Likewise, female participation in political and religious sectors is addressed, a minority but proven among Mayans, Mixtecs and Mexicas as priestesses, shamans, rulers and warriors. Among the Mayans, they organized diplomatic ceremonies and banquets and in specific cases were able to access writing and reading.

Of the pieces exhibited in the Archaeological Museum, a pair of eagle warrior and jaguar warrior from Tehuacán, in Puebla, stand out; small Olmec terra cottas depicting elderly women from the Gulf Coast; the priestess of Palenque, in Chiapas; a Mayan censer holder; or a recent sculptural discovery in Veracruz: that of the young woman from Amajac.

Half the world. Women in indigenous Mexico. National Archaeological Museum

From the human sphere we will move on to the divine, based at the Casa de México Foundation. This section refers to the feminine traces in the thought of these cultures, which generally tended to consider the universe as a dynamic balance between complementary opposites – the feminine and the masculine -, interdependent and both necessary to preserve the cosmic and social order.

The notion of duality was and is deeply embedded in the indigenous worldview, according to which all beings, earthly and divine, are formed by contrary forces and the functioning of the world could not be explained without the balance of life and death, day and night or rain and drought. In this game of counterweights, the feminine would represent the earth, water, fertility, cold or darkness.

For the Nahuas and the Mayans, the body houses emotional forces that must also be kept in balance and is related to divinity through tattoos or various modifications. In this space, representations of Mesoamerican goddesses await us that allude to both creation and destruction, sexuality and purification. Since the 16th century, many of them were redefined as invocations of the Virgin, without detaching themselves from their ancient attributes.

We will see stone and ceramic sculptures of different dimensions, minimal and monumental, along with textiles, basketry and oil paintings dating from the preclassic period to today.

Half the world. Women in indigenous Mexico. House of Mexico Foundation

At the Cervantes Institute, the spotlight is given to textiles, as the result of an ancestral practice that associates personal and collective identity with social, economic and spiritual life and as a predominantly female work then and today.

We will contemplate traditional garments (the huipil, the quechquémitl and the cueitl or tangle), which were made with different materials and techniques in each community; weaving instruments (the spindle or winch, the backstrap loom); and a selection of textiles that collect personal stories, myths and beliefs.

Half the world. Women in indigenous Mexico. Cervantes Institute

Finally, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum the most famous piece awaits us, the Lady Tz’aka’ab Ajaw, called the “Red Queen” of Palenque: a Mayan funerary mask with earflaps, made of malachite, jadeite, limestone and obsidian and dated around 600-900 AD. C. It belonged to the wife of K’ihnich Janaab’ Pakal, “Pakal the Great”, governor of Palenque, originally from a noble family and participating in her husband’s public and diplomatic activities.

The Mayans understood death as a spiritual transit, so burials were accompanied by rituals designed to facilitate the path to the underworld and the conversion of the deceased into a solar entity.

The four exhibitions can be visited until February/March 2026.