Aguirre, Porfirio

Porfirio Aguirre (1889–1951?) was a Mexican archaeologist, professor, and polyglot best known for his discovery of the iconic Máscara de Malinaltepec and his translations from Nahuatl and German to Spanish. Aguirre was born into a family of artists in Copanatoyac, Guerrero, and was educated in Mexico City at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria and the Academia de San Carlos, where he forged a lifelong friendship with Diego Rivera. Aguirre then joined the first generation of students trained at the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Historia y Etnografía (today called the Museo Nacional de Antropología), where he served as an archaeologist and professor until 1934. This was a period in which individuals and institutions were fiercely vying for power in Mexico’s emerging world of professional archaeology, and with weak legal frameworks and hierarchies of authority in flux, Aguirre, like many of his generation, experienced these rivalries firsthand. In 1910, for instance, while still a student at the Museo Nacional, Aguirre undertook an independent excavation at Tenancingo, in the state of México, that was subsequently sponsored by the Museo. However, shortly after its enthusiastic announcement in the Mexican press, the excavation was shut down by Leopoldo Batres, director of the Inspección de Monumentos Arqueológicos, for not having attained permits from his office; the objects already excavated were confiscated by the Inspección from the Museo.

An even more public and prolonged confrontation began in 1921 when in the mountains of Guerrero, outside of Malinaltepec, Aguirre unearthed a funerary mask covered in stone and shell mosaic. An employee of the Dirección de Antropología (formerly the Inspección de Monumentos Arqueológicos) questioned the authenticity of the mask, which the Museo fiercely defended. The debate devolved into a battle between Ramón Mena, Aguirre’s supervisor and head of the Department of Archaeology at the Museo, and Manuel Gamio, head of the Dirección and a former classmate of Aguirre’s. Mena went on to accuse Gamio of falsifying and inappropriately restoring unrelated artifacts, and when Mena had those objects removed from display at the Museo, Gamio responded by accusing Mena of damaging archaeological materials that belonged to the nation. Despite such rivalries between his colleagues, Aguirre continued to advance in his career, largely under the direction of Mena, taking on teaching, museum assistant, and field inspection duties, and publishing papers on archaeological sites in Guerrero and Guanajuato.

In 1930, Alfonso Caso—a fast-rising star in Mexican archaeology trained by Gamio—was named head of the Department of Archaeology and formally passed “custodianship” of its materials to Aguirre for inventory in 1930 and 1931. Then, in 1932, a particularly brutal professional conflict began when Mena accused Caso of falsifying jewels excavated at Monte Albán’s Tomb 7, to which Caso responded with a fierce but calculated response that would eventually result in disgrace and dismissal for Mena, on the grounds of damaging national patrimony. In the thick of this discord, Aguirre was named Honorary Professor of Mexican [Nahuatl] Language by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1932, and in 1933, the same year that his translation from German to Spanish of Walter Krickeberg’s Los Totonaca was published, he was named First Archaeologist at the Museo Nacional. 1933 was also the year that Caso began his brief tenure as the Museo’s director (1933–1934), and when he accused Aguirre of stealing objects from its collections. Aguirre was fired in early 1934, and while Caso kept the case out of criminal court, allegedly to protect the image of the Museo, he received assurances that Aguirre would never work in a government post again. Aguirre did continue to use his training for private commissions, including, according to Guillermo Echániz, collaborations on a number of codex facsimiles produced by the Librería Anticuaria Echániz, as well as rubbings, tracings, and drawings of pre-Hispanic objects that Echániz hoped to sell in Mexico and abroad. Aguirre’s final publications were several translations from Nahuatl to Spanish in Vargas Rea’s Colección Amatlacuilotl (1950-1951).

Aguirre died at the age of 62, and the circumstances of his death and the place of his burial are unknown. His granddaughter, Dr. Marina Aguirre, is working to recuperate her grandfather’s legacy, and was a key collaborator in the 2021 exhibition and symposium at the Museo Nacional de Antropología celebrating the centenary of his discovery of the Máscara de Malinaltepec.