Museo Nacional y museos privados en Guatemala: Patrimonio y patrimonialización. Un siglo de intentos y frustraciones por

Abstract

During the 19 th century most Latin American countries promoted the foundation of national museums (containing their own archeology, anthropology, and ethnology) as a means of fostering state building and laying the foundations for the homogenization of the nation. Such institutions sought to promote the civic education of the citizenry, the recovery of memory and the construction of a common past allowing for the formation of a national identity. The case of Guatemala, however, stands out for its uniqueness and its tendency to go in the opposite direction: to deny the Maya past, not to accept the principle of a homogeneous nation, and to leave the foundation of the first National Musem, in the 19 th century, in the hands of the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País. The construction of archeological museums was later left to private initiative, thereby generating a process of patrimonalization of culture and, at the same time, a privatization of the national patrimony.