This story started 26 years ago. In 1996, Hipólito Tica, a newcomer to Lima, settled in a poor neighborhood on the eastern edge of Peru's capital. There he built a rudimentary adobe house. Four walls and a roof on land he didn't own.
His was not an exceptional case. About half a million people moved to the city at that time looking for an opportunity. But the situation of the newcomers was precarious. For not having, Hipólito did not even have a sink. So he decided to build a latrine.
He picked up a metal bar and began digging in the dirt. Suddenly, the ground collapsed. "I got out of there fast as a spider," explained Tica, who now works as a mechanic, to the Peruvian media. Beneath his feet a hole had just opened about five meters deep and three meters wide.
From outside you could see several packages. Hipólito Tica managed to get hold of a flashlight to illuminate the site and quickly realized that what he had found were funerary bundles. He was scared. Due to the surprise of the discovery and because the land where he lived, located very close to the El Sauce archaeological site, was not his.
Despite fearing that the Peruvian authorities would throw him out of that site, he now explains that he reported his discovery to archaeologists who were excavating Inca ceramics in nearby streets where they were installing water lines. But, according to Hipólito, the investigators did not pay much attention to it.
So he decided not to insist any more and keep everything that happened a secret. She covered the hole with an old door and a rug and covered everything with dirt again. Since then he has lived with his peculiar "neighbors" in the neighborhood of San Juan de Lurigancho. “No one noticed the hole”, he has now explained.
Over time, both Tico and their neighbors obtained the rights to claim the properties they occupied. After years of saving, this mechanic had raised enough money to build himself a proper brick and mortar house. To obtain water and sewage service, he had to request a permit from the Ministry of Culture and the local museum to ensure that they did not damage the archaeological remains.
It was then that the sky opened for Hipólito Tica. He began to learn more and more about the Incas and other early Peruvian civilizations. And he came to the conclusion that, if he built the house correctly, he had to put the foundation on the hole where the bodies were buried.
Some friends advised him to fill the space with cement and forget about it. But the protagonist of this story did just the opposite. He spoke with Julio Abanto, an archaeologist from the Ruricancho Cultural Institute, who was investigating the area, and explained that he had found an Inca-era burial.
Abanto and his team obtained permission from the government for an emergency excavation. When the expert entered the hole with ropes he came across three bundles, each of which contained several bodies of people who lived more than 500 years ago.
One of the skeletons wore a kind of crown, pieces of copper and a silver bracelet, as well as a kind of spoon for coca leaves with the image of a bird pecking at the head of a fish. There were also shells of a type of mollusc highly prized in the region.
Archaeologists are still studying the finds, but Abanto explained to Peruvian media that the remains likely belonged to members of a local elite that had been conquered by the Incas. Fortunately for Hipólito Tica, he will be able to continue building his long-awaited house.
