COATLICUE
ANTECEDENTS
She was found on August 13, 1790, not far from the vicerroyal palace, while removing the soil, preparing it to receive the cobblestones for the Grand Plaza of Mexico City. She was unearthed from there and taken, first, to the fore-said palace, next she was placed in one of its doors; then it was moved again, to place it in the patio of the University.
In this place happened something that the Spaniards, at firse, could not undestand: we, the Indians, having recognized her, went to her.
The Spaniards considered that we did it imitating them, because they found it interesting; aftewards, while realizing that we insisted in visiting her, they forbade us to do it.
Furtively, at unusual hours, we kept on doing it; we took offerings, flames, flowers, incense to her. They knew then that she was an object of veneration for us. They worried about their possesions and the salvation of our souls. They locked her up again, now in the University.
She stayed there until the initial years of the nineteenth century, when Humbolt came to Mexico; consenting to his petition, she was unearthed again, and was again buried when he supposed having studied it.
It stayed under the earth until 1892, year in which on account of the celebration of the IV centennial of the so-called Discovery of America, she came back to light, then to be exhibited in the Mexican Section of the Hispanic-American Exposition in Madrid.
Once it came back, she occupied a place in our National Museum from the door of which it was visible in its fundamental importance.
From there she passed to the place where until now she remains, in our National Museum of Anthropology.
