Editing Guanajuato (city) (section)

==Mummies==
[[File:Las Momias, Guanajuato.jpg|thumb|left|230px|A [[Mummies of Guanajuato]] display]]
[[File:In the Catacombs at Guanajuato. (15688091546).jpg|thumb|Photo of 1897 of the mummies of Guanajuato at 'Old Mexico, 1897,' collected by F. M. White.]]

The city's most famous tourist attraction<ref name="unravels">{{cite news |title= Professor unravels secrets of the Guanajuato mummies |newspaper=US Fed News Service, Including US State News |location=Washington, D.C. |date=August 30, 2007}}</ref> is the [[Mummies of Guanajuato]], which are in their own museum on the side of the municipal cemetery in the Tepetapa neighborhood.<ref name="rincones103"/><ref name="unravels"/><ref name="stampart47">Guanajuato, p. 47</ref> The Mummy Museum contains a collection of specimens that mummified naturally in the adjoining cemetery.<ref name="rincones103"/> Authorities began exhuming bodies in 1870, when a new law required residents to pay a tax for perpetual burial. If survivors didn't pay the tax, they exhumed the body. If the body was mummified, they stored it in a building above ground and people began paying to see them in the late 1800s. The burial tax was abolished in 1958.<ref name="unravels"/> At first, the mummies were displayed in a poorly lit tunnel that visitors entered with a torch or candle. Visitors were allowed to touch the mummies with some even breaking off pieces for souvenirs or to verify the body was real. The modern museum opened in 1970 with proper lighting and ventilation, and the mummies protected behind glass.<ref name="rincones103"/>

The collection contains 111 mummies, mostly women, with some men and about 20 children, but only 59 of these are on display.<ref name="unravels"/><ref name="stampart47"/><ref name="accidental">{{cite journal |date=2010 |title= HISTORY: The Accidental Mummies |journal=Hispanic |volume=22 |issue=7 |page=12 |location=Miami}}</ref> It is considered the largest collection of mummies in the Western Hemisphere.<ref name="accidental"/> Almost all of the people were commoners and came from backgrounds such as miners and farmers.<ref name="unravels"/><ref name="pediatrics">{{cite news |title= Detroit Science Center; The Accidental Mummies of Guanajuato Touring Exhibition to Make World Debut in Detroit |newspaper=Pediatrics Week|location=Atlanta |date=June 27, 2009 |page=97}}</ref> The mummies were disinterred from the municipal cemetery between 1870 and 1958, and were people who died between 1850 and 1950.<ref name="unravels"/> The first of the documented mummies, which has been on display in one form or another since the 1870s, is that of a French doctor named Remigio Leroy. He can be seen at the current museum.<ref name="stampart47"/><ref name="leyendasgto68"/> Of the children in the collection, one can see evidence of a practice where deceased Catholic children were dressed as angels, if girls, or as saints, if boys, to indicate their purity and assured entrance into heaven.<ref name="unravels"/> Several are babies, including one considered the smallest mummy in the world.<ref name="stampart47"/> Two of these small bodies were partially embalmed by taking out internal organs and replacing the cavities with packing material. One was a fetus, which probably miscarried at about 24 weeks, and the other is a newborn male infant. This embalming process may have enhanced the natural mummification process but was not the cause. It is not known why these had been embalmed, nor are their years of death exactly known. There is a mummy of a woman who died in childbirth or miscarriage (a dried placenta is attached to her) but it is not known if she is the mother of either of these mummified children.<ref name="unravels"/>
[[File:Entrace to the museum.jpg|thumb|View of the entrance to the Mummies of Guanajuato Museum. Above is a wall separating it from the cemetery.]]
Although only one out of every 100 bodies interred in the cemetery became naturally mummified, the concentration of this phenomenon has led to theories about how they have come about.<ref name="accidental"/> Some believe that they are the result of people who had been buried alive, after mistakenly declared dead. These people, according to belief, died of desperation and asphyxiation and as a sign of their pain, convert into mummies.<ref name="leyendasgto68">Leyendas, p. 68</ref> More commonly, it is likely the result of Guanajuato's altitude or the abundance of minerals in the soil. However, all of the mummified remains were found in the cemetery's above ground cement crypts, not in underground graves.<ref name="pediatrics"/><ref name="leyendasgto68"/> Researchers believe the phenomenon is due to the warm, dry climate of the area, which dried out the bodies rapidly.<ref name="pediatrics"/>

One of the main reasons for the mummies’ fame in Mexico is the 1972 film ''El Santo contra las momias de Guanajuato'', which featured Mexico's most famous [[lucha libre]] wrestler, [[El Santo]], as well as two others called [[Blue Demon]] and [[Mil Máscaras]]. In this movie, the mummies are reanimated by a wrestler known as “Satán” and El Santo fights to defeat them. It was filmed in the Guanajuato cemetery and has since become a cult classic.<ref name="carnehueso">{{cite news |title= ?Único héroe de carne y hueso?  |url= http://www.elsiglodetorreon.com.mx/noticia/227719.html  |agency=Notimex |newspaper=El Siglo de Torreón |location=Torreon, Mexico |date=July 29, 2006}}</ref>

A mayor of the city, Dr. Eduardo Hicks, initiated the Guanajuato Mummy Research Project in 2007 to increase knowledge and awareness of the specimens. They have since been extensively studied in Mexico and the United States. The study has found evidence of medical conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, extreme anemia lung damage from smoke inhalation and tuberculosis. Some of the research looked into the folklore surrounding a number of the mummies such as the man with a misshapen face thought to have been caused by a mortal blow, a woman who was supposedly hanged by her husband and a woman who is thought to have been buried alive. No scientific evidence has been found to support the last two stories.<ref name="unravels"/> Without records, it is not possible to know exactly when some mummies died. Carbon 14 cannot help because it has a margin of error of 50 years and it is already known that the mummies died between 1850 and 1950.<ref name="unravels"/> In 2009, 36 of the mummies were displayed for the first time outside of Mexico, at the Detroit Science Center in the United States as part of a tour to last until 2012.<ref name="accidental"/> They have been the focus of a National Geographic documentary series called "The Mummy Road Show," which covered 18 of the mummies.<ref name="unravels"/>

{{wide image|360° Panorama Guanajuato Friedhof cemetery cementerio.jpg|1500px|360° panoramic view of the municipal cemetery next to the Museum of Mummies}}