Squatters take over 500-year-old historical site
Caral – Having survived for 5 000 years, the oldest archaeological site in the Americas is under threat from squatters, claiming the coronavirus pandemic has left them with no other option but to occupy the sacred city.
The situation has become so bad that archaeologist Ruth Shady, who discovered the Caral site in Peru, has been threatened with death if she doesn’t abandon investigating its treasures.
Archaeologists told a team visiting Caral that squatter invasions and destruction began in March when the pandemic forced a nationwide lockdown.
“There are people who come and invade this site, which is state property, and they use it to plant,” said archaeologist Daniel Mayta.
“It’s hugely harmful because they’re destroying 5 000-year-old cultural evidence.”
Caral is situated in the valley of the Supe river about 182km north of the capital, Lima, and 20km from the Pacific Ocean to the west.
Developed between 3 000 and 1 800 BC in an arid desert, Caral is the cradle of civilization in the Americas.
Its people were contemporaries of Pharaonic Egypt and the Mesopotamian civilizations.
It pre-dates the far better known Inca empire by 45 centuries.
None of that mattered to the squatters, though, who took advantage of the minimal police surveillance during 107 days of lockdown to take over 10 hectares of the Chupacigarro archaeological site and plant avocados, fruit trees and lima beans.
“The families don’t want to leave,” said Mayta, 36.
“We explained to them that this site is a [Unesco] World Heritage site and what they’re doing is serious and could see them go to jail.”
Shady says that land traffickers are behind the invasions.
“We’re receiving threats from people who are taking advantage of the pandemic conditions to occupy archaeological sites and invade them to establish huts and till the land with machinery ... they destroy everything they come across,” said Shady.
“One day they called the lawyer who works with us and told him they were going to kill him with me and bury us.” –