Looting Made Legal

In this article, I explore a heritage scandal known as the “sacking of the Frissell,” which occurred in the Indigenous Zapotec town of Mitla in Oaxaca, Mexico. One evening in 2006, it is said, the Frissell Museum’s entire collection of artifacts disappeared. Mitleños were shocked and appalled when it was revealed that the “theft” had been carried out by Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), which claimed rights to the collection as national (Mexican rather than Zapotec or Mitleño) patrimony. This article traces the different understandings of (dis)possession and heritage that circulated around this incident, arguing that INAH’s reported actions reflect a distinctly settler-colonial modality through which Indigenous rights to their own past are erased and silenced. In doing so, it suggests that “looting made legal” not only upholds a nationalist ideology but also creates the conditions for haunting. This article thus engages with and contributes to anthropological literature from critical heritage and settler-colonial studies, as well as ethnographic studies of southern Mexico.