IN STEREO

You could not imagine how many dead we took out. Because they said that back then, they went from here, San Francisco Chico, to crypts: to the Merced, San Francisco, Santa Monica. When we started digging, the bones of the dead looked like wood. People exactly like in the catacombs. Their skulls with teeth, with hair: who were they? They were the Incas, and how many years would it have been? They were men; they were women; they were children. Perhaps they were insignificant. But intact, their little skulls were intact. Imagine, I even fought for that. I said, “We have to at least make a sanctuary here.” Have they paid attention to me? They have not paid attention to me. I went to [the] Heritage [department]; all of Heritage came. They said, “No.”

And of what we were able to seize, there are one, two or three that we took, little skulls that we always dote on. We put them like this in a little urn, and below are two or three drawers, in which are buried their little bones. I have my little skull, I have it in my house. Miraculous, very miraculous. It is very naughty, but it takes care of me, doesn’t it? [If] I lack something and I do not know what I am going to do, let’s say, in the stall? “I am not selling! What I am going to do?” I ask him. They have something to help. It’s just that there are times, say, it doesn’t settle: it makes noise or something, then it gets angry. You have to go and put a good candle, with faith, [and] chew coca together with the skulls. And if you do not do that, no, it will punish you. – Doña Carmen