A little less than a year ago, Enrique Florescano walked in a wheelchair through the corridors of the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, but with an enviable enthusiasm for his latest projects: the republication of one of his books, the request for a text for a diary and even 3D documentation about Quetzalcoatl, the myth that permeates all Mesoamerican cultures. On this paper’s journey, the veteran historian felt right at home as he examined every detail, from the carvings on the sarcophagi of Mayan rulers to the distant origins of giant Olmec heads. The Mexican Pharaonic Museum was literally one of his fields of activity as Director General of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in the 1980s. Professor, writer, editor, cultural manager and above all innovator in historical dissemination beyond the catacombs for academic reasons Florescano passed away this Monday at the age of 85.
The official announcement was made by the current director of the INAH, Diego Prieto, with a message on his Twitter account: “Mexico’s greatest historian of all time, a good friend and a great director of the INAH is leaving”. for the first time in the passion of his life when he was doing something else. He studied law in the late 1950s, when the Universidad Veracruzana opened its first history university. Unfortunately for his father, a high school teacher in Jalapa, the state capital, he gave up practicing law midway through his career. “I defiled myself forever,” he recalled during this museum talk.
It was with great sadness that I learned of the passing of Enrique Florescano. The greatest Mexican historian of all time, a close friend and great director of the INAH and the DEH, is leaving. With a loving hug to Alejandra and her whole family 😢 pic.twitter.com/UjvZ54G62F
— Diego Prieto (@dprieto_) March 6, 2023
From Veracruz he traveled to the capital to do a master’s degree in economic history at the Colegio de México (Colmex). There, a teacher distributes the land’s resources to the students accordingly. And he takes the corn, the first piece of what would become one of his greatest specialties. Florescano is the great food historian and founding legend of Mesoamerica. Loaded with hundreds of sheets of yellow gold paper, it moves again. This time for promotion in a Paris already warming up for the 1968 uprising.
But the young Mexican still didn’t speak much French and rarely left “a room full of papers.” From that period he remembered the time when Alejo Carpentier gave a lecture at his university and in a cafe where his friends said they saw Sartre. His first ears of corn sprouted from this quasi-monastic prison. The dissertation became his first book, Corn Prices and Agricultural Crises in Mexico (1969).
The Florescan formula
Back in his country he teaches at UNAM and Colmex with his wife Alejandra Moreno Toscano, who studies economic geography. It was then that the historian and writer Héctor Aguilar Camín, one of his great friends and renowned students, met him. “He dressed with aristocratic elegance, sported a Luciferian beard, and in each classroom he opened a large window through which one could see the boulevards of French historiography,” wrote Aguilar Camín six years ago in a text entitled Masters of History and Life.
While the Tlatelolco carnage was still hot, Florescano recalled the army firing at Colmex one afternoon. Also join the Walk of Silence, from the University to the Zócalo. His father, the high school teacher, has been arrested. This is how he summarized the legacy of the Mexican year 1968 for his generation: “It was a very strong time. It did a lot to us and that’s why so many of us left like this. With the attempt to transfer the problems of the country to society through the social sciences”.
Some have called this didactic desire to get the Academy out of its dungeons “the Florescan formula”. Since his student days, he has not stopped starting projects and founding magazines. There were more than 100 books in the Ministry of Education. European or American studies translated and edited for 10 pesos. He directed the Mexican magazine Historia, which was a reference in the dissemination of history in Latin America in the 1970s. Nexos, today directed by Aguilar Camín.
Florescano defined perhaps his most important media project as “a magazine open to criticism of contemporary Mexico and different from the Vuelta”. The reference to Octavio Paz’s magazine, founded a year earlier, is not casual. The Mexican Nobel was already the great cultural patriarch with increasingly right-wing positions. Florescano recalled a conversation over dinner at another diplomat’s house, where Paz told him, “You really are communists.” Years later they became friends.
The robbery of the century
With all this baggage, he was appointed director general of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in 1982. As the greatest boss of the ancient Mexican heritage, he must live in the front row of what is popularly known in Mexico as “The Heist of the Century”. In 1985, two young men escaped through the museum’s ventilation shaft and made off with 140 archaeological pieces. The event shocked the country, which had just recovered from yet another peso devaluation. “I was the scapegoat for all of that,” he said, recalling a career-changing episode with resignation.
As head of INAH, he responded to the press and took responsibility. “I couldn’t leave and go to college because journalists followed me.” He came to resign, but not only did he stay in office, but he locked himself in the library and was reunited with Mais. “What I had in my hands were old books that I had already edited into articles, but not so much because my specialty was the history of agriculture.” So he moved from awards to corn myths with his first cultural history book, Mexican Memory above. Then came the myth of Quetzalcoatl, gods and heroes of ancient Mexico, or how to make a god? Creation and Restoration of the Gods in Mesoamerica.
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Source: La Neta Neta
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
