Miguel Olmos Aguilera

Miguel Olmos Aguilera earned his PhD in Ethnology and Social Anthropology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), and a DEA in Anthropology and History of Religions from the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE-PSL). He also holds degrees in Ethnology, Ethnomusicology, and Physical Anthropology from UNAM.

Since 1988, he has been a professor and researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte in Tijuana (Baja California). He has also worked as a researcher at the Instituto Nacional Indigenista, El Colegio de México (Center for Linguistic and Literary Studies), and taught at the National School of Music (UNAM) and at the National Institute of Anthropology and History (ENAH), where he taught “Music Theory for Ethnomusicologists.”

He has conducted fieldwork among Indigenous peoples in northwestern Mexico and the southern United States. He headed the Department of Cultural Studies from 2009 to 2013. Since 1998, he has been a member of the National System of Researchers. He has published several books and numerous articles on the colonial history of music in northwestern Mexico. In 2012, he directed and produced the documentary Pueblos indígenas en Riesgo (INALI-CDI-COLEF), and in 2016 Tradición transición en la música indígena contemporánea (El COLEF-CONACYT).

He has participated in over 30 international conferences in Mexico, the United States, Cuba, Guatemala, and Poland. In 1995, he received the Fray Bernardino de Sahagún National Anthropology Award, which honors the best undergraduate thesis in the fields of ethnomusicology, ethnology, and social anthropology. He has taught at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, the Institute of Art and Archaeology (Sorbonne Université), the University of Rennes, Toulouse, Sorbonne Nouvelle.

The project

Title: Colonial Art as an Instrument of Evangelization and Resistance: A Comparative Study of Jesuit and Franciscan Missions in Northwestern Mexico (17th–19th Centuries).

"From the 17th to the 19th century, northwestern Mexico was the site of an intense evangelization process led by the Jesuit and Franciscan orders. In this context, missionary art—architecture, painting, sculpture, and furnishings—became a central tool for catechesis, but also a space for cultural negotiation between evangelizers and Indigenous peoples.

However, historiographical gaps remain regarding the aesthetic, functional, and symbolic differences between the artistic expressions promoted by the two orders, as well as the role of art in processes of resistance and cultural appropriation by Indigenous communities.

This project aims to analyze the formal, symbolic, and functional characteristics of musical, pictorial, and literary art produced in Jesuit and Franciscan missions in northwestern Mexico, identifying their similarities, differences, and their role in the processes of evangelization and cultural resistance."

Hosting institution: Institut d'Arts et d'Archéologie, Sorbonne Université

Selective Bibliography

• El Chivo Encantado. Estética del Arte indígena en el Noroeste de México, FORCA-COLEF, 2011
• El viejo el venado y el coyote. Estética y cosmogonía, COLEF, 2017
• Etnomusicología y Globalización, COLEF 2020