Children of Llullaillaco and Natgeo

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On August 27, 2009, the National Geographic Channel put on TV a documentary film about the inca mummies of Llullaillaco. The so-called "mummy-children", currently kept and shown at the Museum of High Mountain Archeology in Salta City, Province of Salta, Argentina, were found in said Province in 2001. Both their bodies and attire were astonishingly preserved by the frozen environment of the heights of the Llullaillaco Vulcano. In advance, Natgeo publicized the emission of that documentary intensively, and launched a contest by which the participant who provided the most creative justification to be chosen would win a visit to Salta and the museum. With the justifications of an ancient culture, the three mummified children were also chosen, centuries ago, for a sacrifice that would probably make of them the intermediaries between their people and the gods. Sacrificed for the first time in their childhood, they were sacrificed again when the Spanish conquerors subjugated their people, and the culture of which they were icons themselves was muted and replaced by that of the invaders, as much as or even more cruel as regards discretionality to dispose of human life. And they are being sacrificed once again now, taken away from their elevated resting place, subject to exhibitions and autopsies. At the time the mummies were discovered, based on the fragmented information that was available by then, I wrote a poem of which I quote a few passages below. I sent this poem to Natgeo some weeks before the emission of their documentary. Also, I circulated it through different Internet fora, including that of Natgeo itself. The full text of the poem, in Spanish, was posted  by my friend Queima on 08-28-2009 at his site "¡Es la gente, estúpido!"

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Ritual death (Mummies of Llullaillaco)
A poem by Roberto Imperatore, 2001. Extracts.
See full text in Spanish at "¡Es la gente, estúpido!"

(. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .)

"Because children speak / the tongue of the gods
'cause their souls are pure
and neither their bodies are polluted
they were made the messegers
of their people's pleas."

(. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .)
"Not even the traces / of those people remain.
Only remote sons of the sons / of the sons of their sons
who are treated like pariah."

"What happened in the end
with the dead children / of Llullaillaco:
they are barely objects, jewells for exhibition 
materials of study / for white men.
Their bodies can be handed, humiliated, 
desecrated, rented."

"If their sacrifice has always been unnecessary, / now,
with their people deleted from the face of Earth
it is twice as in vain."

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