ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the associations between patrimonio and hidden treasure in San Miguel Coatlinchán to shed light on the contested quality of patrimonio in Mexico. In Coatlinchán, patrimonio is made up of collective forms of property that, like treasure, are always under threat of being expropriated by others. Indeed, Mexico has a robust system of laws and state practices that produce patrimonio as a key site for state formation, as well as an idiom that sustains collective identities, including the nation, over time. For Tlacuaches, like ancient artifacts and hidden treasure, patrimonio is located in landscape, or even buried underground, connecting the town's contemporary residents to the town's territory and to its past inhabitants. Coatlinchán is part of a region that, although once primarily rural, is increasingly being absorbed by what residents, as well as government officials, refer pejoratively to as the 'urban stain'.
