Juan José Santos's book "Museo hechizo" (Metales Pesados, 2025) challenges the perceived neutrality of the Western museum, presenting it as an institution shaped by colonial logics of classification, extraction, and representation. The essay centers on the concept of "lo hechizo"—understood as both artisanal precariousness and disruptive enchantment—and explores small, community-based Latin American museum experiences that operate from precarity, reciprocity, and care. Santos argues that the museum is a space of conflict where voices, narratives, and ways of constructing history are contested, and he proposes thinking of the museum through its minor, situated, and alternative forms in Latin America.
This matters because it offers a critical framework for rethinking museum practice in a postcolonial context, moving beyond abstract denunciation to examine the epistemological foundations of the museum as a historical way of ordering the world. By centering Latin American experiences and the idea of "lo hechizo," Santos provides a nuanced alternative to dominant museum models, emphasizing fragility, cunning, and disruption as productive strategies. The book's opening fable—where objects speak after the museum closes—signals a method that interrupts the naturalized legitimacy of the museum, making it relevant for contemporary debates about decolonization, institutional critique, and the politics of display.