MEXICO CITY.- The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) is pleased by the nomination to receive the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities 2010, as the Jury of the Award in Oviedo, Spain announced.

Alfonso de Maria y Campos, general director of the Institute, declared that the fact of had been mentioned among finalists to be awarded with this important prize is “an acknowledgement to the scientific and academic labor of the specialists of INAH that work in the areas of archaeology, anthropology, history, linguistics, ethnology, museology, paleontology, conservation, restoration, publishing, journalism and communication”.

De Maria y Campos thanked in the name of INAH academic community the mention and expressed it is an honor to share it with institutions and personages that have contributed so much to the communication and culture world, such as The New York Times; journalists Tom Wolfe and Bob Woodward; physician and philosopher Diego Gracia, designer Shigeru Miyamoto, sociologists Alain Touraine and Zygmunt Bauman, the radio from Canary Islands Ecca and the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann.

According to European media, the members of the jury said it was a difficult choice to make “due to the concurrency of candidatures of high level and power. De Maria expressed that “this stimulates INAH to keep working on research, conservation and divulgation of the Mexicans’ cultural heritage”.

INAH, created in 1939, is the Mexican State organism in charge of guarding more than 10,000 archaeological sites, 176 of them open to public, 116 museums and 2 tertiary education schools; it conducts archaeological research in hundreds of cenotes and shipwrecks, Indigenous communities, archaeological sites: INAH has presented 31 tangible and intangible cultural goods proposals to the UNESCO Heritage List that have been approved; it has elaborated a catalogue with 115,000 historical monuments, among other substantial work.

To divulgate this vast heritage, INAH has developed a broad communication program that includes a vast catalogue of national and international exhibitions, as well as editorial, journalistic, radio and audiovisual production that have positioned the Institute in the cultural sphere worldwide.