‘Upon discovering that masks from our ancient people, dating back more than a century, are housed in countries like England, we Chontal people have the arduous and exciting task of continuing to reconstruct our great history, working to rescue, preserve, and share our heritage.’
— Jaime Zárate Escamilla.
Masked histories of pirates and animals
‘Masked Legacies of a Oaxacan Chontal Community’ was initiated as a collaborative study of an underdocumented collection of 19th to 20th century masks from Indigenous communities across Mexico, and acquired by the British Museum from various collectors between the 1970s and 1990s. Among the nearly 300 striking examples are also two affiliated with the Oaxacan Chontal people, a marginalised ethnic group whose culture heritage is rarely if ever represented in museum collections. The first, a heavily worn wooden mask, portrays an eerie face that still bears traces of lined teeth, lips, brows, and eyes, marked just below the excised eyeholes (Am1977,24.20). Drilled perforations on the sides surely once held an attachment cord. The other is shaped like an elongated and fanged animal – which exact zoological identification eludes all those who study it (Am1977,24.4).
Although seemingly less elaborate than others in the collection, it soon became apparent that these masks imbue within deep histories and global connections, and especially as these relate to contemporary ones still being produced and used in the Chontal community of San Pedro Huamelula. During the last week of June, this relatively quiet town transforms into a living stage. The annual festivity of San Pedro, the town Patron Saint, is a multifaceted, community-wide affair involving passionate theatrical performances, formulaic discourses, religious ceremonies, solemn processions, and ritual dances accompanied by traditional Indigenous flute-and-drum music and brass bands. As is typical to such Indigenous festivities, all those episodes are embedded in convivial public and domestic feasts.
Throughout the entire week, several different groups of performers participate in complex and interweaving narratives. All of the active participants are from the community, some very young while others playing the same role for decades, and are customarily instructed by an elder master of ceremonies who is well familiar with the choreography and event sequence. The reenacted performances mostly revolve around conflicts and alliances between the Chontal people and other groups, local and foreign, and most notably all seafaring people.
In particular, one group of masked dancers impersonates pale-faced individuals known in Chontal as pichilinkis, denoting English (and maybe other) pirates who raided and traded along the Pacific coast between the 16th and 18th centuries. The pichilinkis are often conflated with the turcos (the ‘Turks’) or their representatives, and their adversaries in the festivity are the mu´u (or los negros, the ‘black ones’), representing enslaved Africans who were brought to the Pacific coast as early as the 16th century. Other represented groups involve the guapis (or mareños, ‘sea-people’), the cristianos (‘Christians’), the caballeros (‘horsemen’), and the mulyatas (crossed-dressed men portraying women). Another key narrative line involves the ‘princess’, a live crocodile that the guapis introduce to the town to be married with the town’s mayor.
Of those, only the dancers who portray the pichilinkis pirates and the mu´u slaves wear masks. The white-washed features of the British Museum mask allude to these European physiognomies of the former group, although with less details than the contemporary masks. One possible explanation may be that in the century since this was created, Chontal practitioners continued to innovate on the theme.
Pichilinkis dance in front of San Pedro Church, Video by Danny Zborover.
‘So what are these masks? They are masks that belong to the Chontal people, already diluted in history. As it happened, people arrived on our shores, on our lands, and they entered Huamelula. We know this from oral history and from written records. The Pichilinki mask was created to imitate the skin of those who once came as invaders—the ones history tells us about, the ones we now re-enact in the festival through the theatrical performance of the Pichilinkis, who were the pirates. This is why the mask was created.’
— Jaime Zárate Escamilla.
Interestingly, the archaeological record indicates that the earliest known use of masks in Mesoamerica was precisely on the Mexican Pacific coast, dating back almost 4,000 years. Primarily, masking for the Mesoamerican people was not a simple act of festive disguise but was tied to solemn rituals, where selected individuals impersonated and transformed into the represented divine beings. The masks themselves were likely considered alive in such contexts. Even as used today in Indigenous festivities such as in San Pedro Huamelula and throughout Mexico, masks take on highly symbolic, political, and spiritual meanings. The fantastic diversity of faces seen in the Museum’s collection beautifully exemplifies these layered performative roles.
The Pichilinkis and Mu’u are confronting each other on both sides of a rope that represents the boundary of the community. Photo by Danny Zborover.
Making new connections, and new masks, in Huamelula and London
Using archival materials, photos, and 3D models of the two Chontal masks, during the summers of 2023 and 2024 SDCELAR curators worked alongside stakeholders in Huamelula to reconstruct their original production, function, and meaning. Two of these collaborators, historian/author Jaime Zárate Escamilla and mask-maker/artist Medardo Gutiérrez García, were invited by SDCELAR to travel to London as community representatives, in order to physically engage with this collection and further explore the curious historical ties between their small coastal village and the then-nascent British Empire. The two Chontal masks were of particular interest to their community, especially since mask-making is a dying tradition in Huamelula and surrounding towns, despite their ubiquitous use in the festivity.
‘While visiting the British Museum’s collection stores, our eyes widened in surprise at the sight of two ancient Chontal artifacts dating back over 100 years. We were intrigued to discover the identity of these two culturally valuable pieces.’
— Jaime Zárate Escamilla.
Jaime Zárate Escamilla and Medardo Gutiérrez García engaging with the BM Chontal masks. Left- interacting with digital 3D models in San Pedro Huamelula, June 2023. Right- closely examining the physical masks at the British Museum stores in London, November 2024. Photos by Danny Zborover.
Accordingly, their first activity at the stores was to inspect the dozens of masks in the collection, in search for additional ones that may pertain to their community or region. Those painted in black immediately drew their attention, as similar masks are made and used in the annual festivity to represented the mu´u, the group representing enslaved Africans who fought the pichilinkis pirates. Unexpected associations were further made with the reptilian-shaped ones from the Oaxacan coast, as akin to comparable masks and ceremonial dances in Huamelula’s annual ritual cycle.
Medardo and Jaime exploring the Museum’s historical mask collection from Mexico. Photos by Danny Zborover.
‘When you showed me the 3D video, my immediate reaction was to focus. I was very attentive to how the image rotates. And at that moment, I’m thinking: if this mask were in my hands, I could tell you if it’s of Chontal origin, if it belongs to my people, to my community, or not. Because I’ve been a carpenter for 30… 35 years, I started at a young age, and I know Chontal wood. It has its own characteristics. When I arrived at this centre, when they showed me the masks, the first thing I did was touch them, feel them, examine them closely, grab the magnifying glass like a researcher—thank you for being so unrestricted with us… Believe me, it’s a mix of emotions that I can’t quite explain. Just touching it and knowing part of its origin, the fact that there was a Chontal mask, transports you immediately.’
— Medardo Gutiérrez García.
Deeply moved and inspired by the collection, Medardo worked feverishly throughout the week-long residency to craft three new masks at the British Museum. These slowly started to take shape from the gulavere (Cordia alba) wood blocks he cut and brought especially for this purpose, along with some of his own carpentry tools (as wood is considered a public resource in Huamelula, a special signed permit by the political authorities was required to remove those from communal lands). At the end of the process, Medardo proudly presented the fruits of his labour: one replica of the animal mask to take back to the community, and two masks of an English pirate and an enslaved African like those used in the contemporary festivity, to add to the British Museum collections. With this generous donation— the first of its kind in any global museum– the Chontal people are further asserting their ethnic self-representation and artistic creativity outside of their communities.
Medardo working with the Chontal masks to create new ones at the Museum’s wood workshop, while Jaime is documenting, narrating, and live-streaming on Facebook. Photo by Danny Zborover.
‘The intention behind taking this replica with us is so that the elders, as well as others interested in Chontal culture, can contribute and share their perspectives. I would like those interested in our culture to join us. I want this project to continue, not to stagnate, but to achieve great things and conduct further research into this unknown part of Mexico.’
— Medardo Gutiérrez García.
The other, equally important goal behind Jaime’s and Medardo’s mission to London was to delve deeper into the historicity of their community’s unique traditions. While still at the British Museum, they were kindly hosted by our colleagues at the Department of Prints and Drawings, where they could study portraits of two notorious English pirates who operated in the Americas Pacific region in the 16th century, Sir Francis Drake and Thomas Cavendish. The pointed hats and even facial features in these representations instantly reminded us of the masks and attire of the pichilinkis pirates in their festivity, and which they possibly inspired four centuries ago. Another 18th century hand-coloured etching depicting the cruel punishment of enslaved Africans on English ships, proved to be remarkably analogous to a theatrical scene they re-enact each year. Those surprising parallels between these visual sources and the live tradition further reinforced the enduring communal memory of such dramatic and traumatic historical encounters.
‘What I was able to see is what the ancestors represented in terms of the image, the masks… Everything is related: the image and what they saw. Today I understand that this was a reality, not fiction. Everything represented in Huamelula is what really happened.’
— Medardo Gutiérrez García.
Jaime and Medardo at the Prints and Drawing Department, with curators Claudia Pereira and Santiago Valencia Parra. Photo by Danny Zborover.
Left: The pichilinkis pirates hanging a mu´u dancer from the mast of their ship during the festivity (photo by Danny Zborover). Right- an analogous depiction from ‘The Abolition of the Slave Trade’, 1792 (1868,0808.6179). © The Trustees of the British Museum.
Additional fascinating insights started to unveil in an exclusive viewing of rare English atlases of the Mexican Pacific coast held at the British Library, which include the earliest known pictorial representation of their “port” town in the 17th century. Some of these depicted details can still be associated with geographical features today, such as the colonial church and the coastal bay where the pirates likely first landed before attacking their community. The final highlight was a visit to the Golden Hinde, the replica of Francis Drake’s galleon on the banks of the Thames, where initial gasps of surprise turned to detailed comparisons with the makeshift pirate ship the Chontal people still build during the Huamelula festivity to re-enact the historical attacks.
Discussing depictions of Huamelula in 17th century English atlases, with British Library curators Tom Harper and Magdalena Peszko, and project collaborator Veronica Pacheco. Photos by Santiago Valencia Parra and Jaime Zárate Escamilla.
Left- Visiting the Golden Hinde, Drake’s ship replica. Right- the Chontal version, built during the annual Huamelula festivity from a makeshift ox cart. Photos by Danny Zborover.
The UK visit culminated in a public event titled ‘Between Wood and Words: Masked Legacies of a Mexican Chontal Community’ held at the British Museum, where the project team further reflected on their findings and experiences in London and Huamelula. Throughout the entire residency, Jaime constantly documented, narrated, interpreted, and posted all activities on his and the community’s social media channels, often broadcasting live on his phone to an engaged Chontal public in Huamelula and around the world. This auto-ethnography further ensured that the project outputs will properly reflect Indigenous perspectives and shape culturally-informed storytelling. His footage was later edited together with that of SDCELAR curators, to produce a blog documenting the visit.
Jaime Zárate Escamilla and Medardo Gutiérrez García visit to the British Museum in November 2024. Video by Danny Zborover and Jaime Zárate Escamilla.
‘…we never gave up on the idea of continuing with what we had planned for our visit to the British Museum: creating masks for a cultural exchange. By leaving two wooden masks made by Medardo and connecting with the world through a live broadcast on the Huamelula page, we kept our fellow townspeople informed about our activities from the moment we arrived until the end of our visit. We want to let you know that everything we posted on the page was received with great interest and appreciation by the people of our town—both in the municipal authorities and in the surrounding communitie —as well as by neighbouring towns and regions, by people from our state of Oaxaca, and even by some Huamelula residents living in Mexico City and abroad. This trip, which began on 22 November and ended on 1 December, was truly a success, both personally and culturally: a magnificent event and an experience that taught us valuable lessons.’
— Jaime Zárate Escamilla.
Telling the story back home
Going beyond the collaborative engagement with the British Museum’s collections, this project was initially conceived to deliver long-lasting impact in the Chontal region. The first of such outputs has been the creation of the local museum named Añima Ijeda— ‘The Heart of the Community’ in Chontal– inaugurated in June 2024 in a historical adobe building donated and conditioned by the Huamelula municipality. The name and the logo were proposed, designed and voted for by the community members, with the logo featuring images of the festivity’s masks. This is the first museum in the Coastal Chontal region, and the second in their ethnic territory.
This is also the first community museum in Mexico created through a network of inter-institutional and international partnership, encompassing the British Museum (SDCELAR team), the Municipality of San Pedro Huamelula (Víctor Hugo Sosa García, Jesús Zárate Raymundo, Carlos Alberto López Ramírez, Nahúm Rey Bende, and Daniel Gutiérrez Peña), Ervin Frissell Archaeological Museum (Luis García Lalo), California State University Los Angeles (Aaron Huey Sonnenschein), Center for the Study and Development of the Indigenous Languages of Oaxaca (Salvador Galindo Llaguno), and Oaxaca’s Secretary of Arts and Cultures (Victor Cata). Curatorial and capacity-building sessions ensued in person and on WhatsApp, along with presentations and mask-making workshops for the local school children. Among the first activities of the museum’s founding members was an in-person meeting with Nicholas Cullinan, the Director of the British Museum, during his trip to Oaxaca to learn more about this and other SDCELAR projects.
Jaime and Medardo meeting with BM’s Director Nicholas Cullinan and Joe Edwards in Oaxaca, November 2024. Nick and Joe are holding miniature pichilinkis masks that Medardo crafted for the occasion. Photo by Danny Zborover.
The Huamelula Community Museum ‘Añima Ijeda’, with the local committee and representatives of the involved institutions, June 2025. Photo by Jaime Zárate Escamilla.
The rapidly growing number of community museums in Mexico and throughout Latin America clearly attest to the empowerment of Indigenous groups who successfully appropriated this largely Western institution to suit their cultural sustainability needs. The displays and associated narratives are deeply embedded in multifaceted environments– the natural/constructed, ancestral/contemporary, social/political, tangible/intangible, among others. The immediate communal benefits typically range from the pedagogical to the economic and serve the important function of fortifying collective identities and cultural revitalization. By prioritising traditional knowledge systems, Indigenous community museums thus highlight didactic themes that transcend and often contest monolithic national narratives, touristic discourses, or exclusive academic epistemologies.
In conjunction with the preparations for the 2025 Huamelula festivity, the project team worked closely to co-curate a temporary exhibition with the newly appointed museum committee (Medardo Gutiérrez García, Rosalia Méndez Petriz, and Daniel Espinoza López). The star object was the replica of the animal mask crafted by Medardo at the British Museum, hewn from that rough block of wood that left the community only a few months earlier, and now returned back as a work of art. The mysterious creature drew much excitement from the local and foreign visitors, along with much speculation as to its identification and possible meaning. Additional printed and digital displays featured 3D models of the original Chontal masks in the British Museum, reproductions of the pertinent historical sources from the British Museum and the British Library, the blog documenting Jaime’s and Medardo’s visit to London, and proposed designs for future co-curated displays. An important section in the exhibition was devoted to the Chontal language, as part of ongoing international efforts to document and revitalise this highly endangered cultural heritage. For this purpose, some of the object labels were translated to Coastal Chontal (lajltyaygi) by a bespoke linguistic team from the region.
‘We will all be gone someday, but let’s leave this legacy to the young people, to those who come after us. Just as it was passed on to us, so must we pass it. And this community center—I know that one day it will flourish, and it will safeguard many of the things that are being created today.’
— Medardo Gutiérrez García.
The public engagement during the temporary exhibition of the British Museum and British Library collections, along with the linguistic documentation project, June 2025. Photos by Santiago Valencia Parra and Danny Zborover.
Looking ahead
As intended with all SDCELAR projects, this collaboration initially served to connect and share knowledge with descendant communities and other stakeholders around the British Museum’s Latin American collections. And as is often the case, this is just the beginning. ‘The Heart of the Community’ museum is constantly developing, with more exhibition spaces planned to be opened in the near future. A dedicated website will further promote and add content to the permeant and rotating displays, and help reach other invested stakeholders such as the diaspora Chontal community in the US. At the British Museum, we are already integrating Medardo’s donated masks in our curatorial practices and public tours, for instance to contextualise this millennial Indigenous tradition with the famous turquoise masks in the Mexico Gallery. The ultimate goal is to find new ways to collaborate, co-create, and celebrate the amazing cultural legacies and long-term interactions between the Chontal people, the UK, and the world.
The Chontal masks and others are compared and discussed in a BM Patrons tour of the Mexico Gallery, October 2025. Photo by Rose Taylor.
‘What we are learning today must also be taken back to our town and shared with our people of San Pedro Huamelula, because our town holds an enormous tradition—one that is known worldwide.’
— Medardo Gutiérrez García.
Jaime and Medardo at the entrance of the British Museum. November 2024. Photo by Danny Zborover.
Continue reading
Publications related to women’s and maternal health with Wixárika communities by the author of this exhibition
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2013)
Shame as a barrier to health seeking among indigenous Huichol migrant labourers: An interpretive approach of the “violence continuum” and “authoritative knowledge”
Social Science and Medicine 97 75-81
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2023)
Wixárika Practices of Medical Syncretism: An Ontological Proposal for Health in the Anthropocene
Medical Anthropology Theory 10 (2) 1-26
Gamlin, Jennie B. (2020)
“You see, we women, we can’t talk, we can’t have an opinion…”. The coloniality of gender and childbirth practices in Indigenous Wixárika families
Social Science and Medicine 252, 112912
Jennie Gamlin and David Osrin (2020)
Preventable infant deaths, lone births and lack of registration in Mexican indigenous communities: health care services and the afterlife of colonialism
Ethnicity and Health 25 (7)
Jennie Gamlin and Seth Holmes (2018)
Preventable perinatal deaths in indigenous Wixárika communities: an ethnographic study of pregnancy, childbirth and structural violence BMC
Pregnancy and Childbirth 18 (Article number 243) 2018
Gamlin, Jennie B. and Sarah J Hawkes (2015)
Pregnancy and birth in an Indigenous Huichol community: from structural violence to structural policy responses
Culture, health and sexuality 17 (1)
