Tour the Mummy Museum in Guanajuato, Mexico HeyItsRaymonds - YouTube
go to original October 25, 2015

The Mummies of Guanajuato are a number of naturally mummified bodies interred during a cholera outbreak around Guanajuato, Mexico in 1833. The mummies were discovered in a cemetery in Guanajuato, making the city one of the biggest tourist attractions in Mexico.

The bodies appear to have been disinterred between 1865 and 1958. During that time, a local tax was imposed requiring relatives to pay a fee to keep their relatives interred. If the relatives were unable or unwilling to pay the tax, the bodies were disinterred. Ninety percent of the remains were disinterred because their relatives did not pay the tax. Of these, only two percent had been naturally mummified.

The mummified bodies were stored in a building and in the 1900s began attracting tourists. Cemetery workers began charging people a few pesos to enter the building where bones and mummies were stored. This place was turned into a museum called El Museo de las Momias ("The Mummies' Museum").

A law prohibiting disinterring was passed in 1958, but this museum still exhibits the original mummies.

Photo: Carly Lutzmann

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