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Museo Tuxteco Preserves Olmeca Treasures
Notimex / El Universal Veracruz • Translated by Eduardo Rincón-Gallardo – August 2008
 The Museo Regional Tuxteco, located in the municipality of Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz, is the guardian of some of the best pieces of the “Mother Culture”, the Olmeca Culture; like the Cabeza de Nestepe (Nestepe Head), the smallest of these well-known Pre-Hispanic sculptures.
Located in the Sotavento, a two-hour ride from the city of Veracruz, on the side of El Vigía mountain, the facility is inserted in the daily life of a town of mixed races still preserving the traditions of the culture that gave it its identity.
It holds in its interior over 3,600 years of history, from the Pre-Classic period all the way to Colonial Mexico, guarded also by the largest of the colossal Olmeca Heads.
The facility is a building that dates back to 1880, whose original function was the seat of Santiago Tuxtla’s City Hall. In 1916, at the very middle of the Mexican Revolution it was burnt down and abandoned.
 By 1961 the museum was installed there with the collaboration of its inhabitants, who granted the first pieces. It was totally renovated in 2004, which allowed it to house an increase of over 290 pieces arriving from the zones of Bezoapan, La Joya, Manatí, Matacapan, Tres Zapotes and other nearby sites.
Its contents were also updated to include an exhibit of the cultures of some Meso-American regions, such as, Centro de México (Central Mexico), las Culturas de Occidente (Western Cultures), Oaxaca, Maya, Golfo (from the Gulf of Mexico), Huasteca (from the central Mexico to north-east states), Centro de Veracruz y Sur de Veracruz (Center and south of the Gulf state of Veracruz).
Upon entering the building you can appreciate the feminine clay figurines associated with the cult to fertility; also ceramics typical of Teohtihuacan; pots from the Chupícuaro Culture (western region) and very typical pottery from the Mixteca tradition.
Apart from Maya figurines, Huasteca vessels, monkey-shaped decorative motifs and cut sea-snails associated with Ehecacozcatl [the youth of the wind], which was a recurrent theme for the artisans of the Gulf Cultures.
The “Smiling Faces” representative of the central Veracruz cultures are also found there as well as zoomorphic musical instruments found in the Gulf Coast.
 Among the most important pieces found in the museum are the wooden busts, over six centuries old; jadeite hatchets and bone remains of children from El Manatí, considered a sacred site by the Olmeca.
But the “Mother Culture” extended its contacts and influence well beyond the present state of Veracruz, as demonstrated by the cave paintings dating back 2,500 years and located in Oxtotitlán, in the state of Guerrero.
Experts from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia [INAH, National Institute of Anthropology and History)] are presently working on these Pre-Hispanic vestiges located inside a cave, they are extracting impurities in order to widen our horizon of knowledge on this original culture.
 Such cultural expressions, created between the years 900 and 600 b.c. are now the object of restoration works that started in days past, always striving to find new images that may allow us to probe deeper into its pictographic discourse.
The cleaning duties, consisting in the removal of layers of minerals and impurities, are part of an integral conservation project that since 2002 is being carried out by experts at the archaeological site nested in the low-mountain region of Guerrero.
The works started last June 10 and will conclude in the first weeks of August, including the placement of information cards to better inform visitors.
There are groupings of inscriptions, out of which the “North Grotto” stands out, particularly the 4th panel, occupying 32 sq. ft. displaying bi-chrome (red and black) cave paintings of jaguars and the profile of a face with Olmeca features. Email to a friend
Source: http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/
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