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Golden Mysteries of the Andes

We Spaniards know a sickness that only gold can cure.

HERNANDO CORTÉS

Sadly, most of the discoveries in the Americas were driven by the lust for gold. Even if many documents justify the Spanish conquest of the land in order to evangelize the natives, these same documents tell us that the real motivation behind their show of force was the hope for rapid riches. So in reality the conquistadors ventured into the Americas in a kind of gold rush.

The ceremony of the Guatavita cacique (chief) at a lake in the heights of Colombia gave origin to the legend of the El Dorado or the Golden Man, and the search for it began when there was no gold left. The explorer and cosmographer López de Velasco writes: “From the provinces that spoke of El Dorado we don’t really know more than what has already been said, only that the discoveries were made around the Marañón River [the source of the Amazon], that the natives from those provinces went to Quito and Peru, and that some also reached the provinces of Río de la Plata. Many treasures have been found, which is common with every new discovery, and even if this one might be true, there is not enough evidence.”

Even with the gold rush for the land of El Dorado, we found no evidence that the expeditions were searching for the actual Guatavita cacique; instead they seemed to be searching for mysterious regions erroneously called “El Dorado” or something synonymous. The explorers of the past were very much like the explorers of today in that all were searching for gold. The search for the treasure of the Tayos by Moricz’s generation is akin to the contemporary search for other treasures related to El Dorado or Paititi.

For the transnational mining companies, the Amazon basins, especially the regions discussed in this book, are still a target for exploitation at the expense of the local ecology. The area of the Tayos Caves is close to what once was the Marañón region, which includes rivers that witnessed the most important expeditions of the gold rush.

Diego de Ordas’s search for El Dorado is not mentioned in documents related to that expedition, but it is included in Martín Fernández de Enciso’s work Summa de Geografía (1539): “Diego de Ordas arrived to the Marañón River with the intent to begin his discoveries there because a couple of days before he met four natives in a canoe who found two emeralds, one as large as a fist; and they said that a few day’s walk up river was a rock consisting of that stone.”

Ordas also heard about a place and a tribe called the Meta, which was supposed to be very rich. When explorers reached this region, they found riches that belonged to the northern territories of what would become the Spanish province called the New Kingdom of Granada (present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama) where emeralds, gold, cotton, and salt were abundant. Higher up the Marañón, Ordas’s expedition caught a native and showed him the golden ring of the governor. After being tortured, the native told them there was more of that brilliant material behind the mountain range that opened up to the left of the river.

On the Ecuadorian coast we find certain similar elements. Coaque Bay, where Pizarro’s ships docked in 1524, was originally called Ccori-Haqque, which means “man of gold.” (The people who worked and valued gold settled along the coast more than in the jungle.) In the Tayos Cave at Coangos, many golden artifacts were found, as well as Spondylus (spiny oysters), which came from the coast. In the Parima region (in today’s Brazil), the Spaniards saw domes of solid gold, silver obelisks, and many other things that years later Alexander von Humboldt, one of the first to describe the subterranean world of South America from Venezuela to Ecuador, would say were mistaken interpretations of mica rocks.

After Humboldt’s travels in the Americas (from 1799 to 1804), Percy Fawcett (1867–1925) was one of the next explorers to venture into this part of the world. I have been fascinated by Fawcett’s Brazilian explorations ever since I read the picturesque book edited and illustrated by his son and called Exploration Fawcett, which was also published as Lost Trails, Lost Cities. Fawcett disappeared in 1925, as many unfortunate souls disappear when they wander in territories with hostile natives. Today many travelers and explorers keep disappearing for those same causes, in addition to the large number who come across illegal farmers who rule the edge of the jungle in the Andes and Amazon. Having traveled through the same countries Fawcett explored for most of his life—Brazil and Bolivia—I have found that the urge to solve the mystery of his disappearance has stayed with me to this day.

Fawcett derived his image as the great explorer of the twentieth century from a nineteenth-century romantic ideal, fostered by the British press, as they attempted to publicize great representative icons of their territorial expansionism. As a favorite of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), Fawcett was selected by the Bolivian government to create a topographic survey of the nation’s borders.

When Fawcett came to South America, he already sensed that his final search was going to be for Atlantis and its lost colonies. A friend, the writer H. Rider Haggard—author of the classic King Solomon’s Mines—had given him a statuette from the Andes, which represented a character that seemed biblical, like a pharaoh; some scholars even identified it as Noah.

At the age of fifty-three, after returning from World War I, Fawcett decided to dedicate his life to finding a citadel with subterranean channels and secret passageways whose existence some natives had confirmed in previous trips of his. He called it the Lost City of Z. Based on this data, he concluded the city could be located close to the Xingu and Araguaia Rivers up in the Roncador Range. So in 1924 Fawcett left from Cuaibá, in the Mato Grosso province, with his son and another young Englishman. The last news we have of him is a letter he sent to his wife on May 29. The mystery of his disappearance was left unsolved. His end started when he headed northeast instead of west, where he had been told there were gigantic cities like those of the Lost City of Z. He took no heed of the advice given by the last persons who saw him alive.

I believe Percy Fawcett walked past the borders of some Xingu tribes, who are known for their aggressiveness. He had run out of gifts with which to negotiate. After weeks being short of supplies in the midst of the wild, his expedition team, which included his teenage son, Jack, and a friend of his called Raleigh Rimell, failed to return to the civilized world.

In 1930 the American explorer George Miller Dyott was sent by a news agency to find Fawcett, dead or alive. He never found solid evidence of Fawcett’s whereabouts or what really happened to him and his companions on their last expedition through the Mato Grosso. Yet there is no doubt that his expedition, and his disappearance, influenced the historical studies of the South American continent.

Perhaps Fawcett decided to stay in his final abode, where he transcended to a sort of mortal continuity, and survives in a parallel and subterranean world. Some believe Fawcett is alive in a subterranean kingdom, and that this place, known as Z, is part of an intricate tunnel system that begins under the Amazon jungle and connects to other equally mysterious settlements in the premountain and mountain ranges of the Andes. Brazilian authors believe Fawcett dwells inside the Roncador Range, where he enjoys the company of other important individuals from the past who also disappeared throughout the centuries.

My hypothesis is that the sources the English explorer heard and saw were a reflection of the legend of El Dorado or Paititi, but this time in a subterranean setting. As echoes of ancient true legends, the rumor of the Golden Lost Civilization was all along related to the Conquest of the Americas, and it lured in more modern explorers such as Fawcett and Moricz himself.

Maybe what Fawcett was searching for was discovered half a century later by Gene Savoy (1927–2007). This American explorer, journalist, and mystic from Washington State started exploring the Peruvian Andes in the 1950s, focusing on the central area of the Andes, and later ventured into the area now called Chachapoyas. In this region Savoy found cities that had been covered by undergrowth, like the Gran Pajaten, the Gran Vilaya, and Kuelap. These ruins were a part of a culture different from that of the Incas and pre-Incas. The Chachapoyas culture came from the east; it seems that they had crossed the Orinoco River and settled in the area. They had light skin, and some of their mummies even had reddish hair. Their tombs were elevated, they used clay sarcophagi, and they left behind a series of ideographic writings. Many of those symbols described the large vessels they used to cross unknown oceans, and what we believe was the Atlantic Ocean. This culture also built gigantic walls and structures throughout the mountains before the arrival of the Spaniards, whom they fought in bloody wars. The mystery behind them could explain why Fawcett felt drawn to explore the South American jungles. Fawcett had been searching for Atlantis and other lost cultures when he came upon this advanced civilization, and he intuited that they must have spread throughout America.

But what makes Fawcett stand out, and what connects him to us and to other explorers of the invisible, is that he had studied theosophy. Indeed his brother, Edward Douglas Fawcett, had helped the founder of this movement, H. P. Blavatsky, to write her masterpiece, The Secret Doctrine.

Juan Moricz had the same kind of intuition that Fawcett had. Like Fawcett, Moricz studied nineteenth-century metaphysics and occultism, which made him question the usual views of human origins. This pattern undoubtedly also affected Gene Savoy’s explorations. None of these three explorers has so far been taken seriously by ethnography or anthropological sciences. Fawcett could never prove he was in a region that had been colonized by the descendants of Atlantis, just as Moricz could never prove the geological and linguistic anomalies in the Morona-Santiago region came from a cross between South American natives and the Magyars (Hungarians), as he believed. The same thing happened with Savoy, who believed the Chachapoyas could have been descended from the fleet of the Queen of Sheba, from the mythical kingdom of Ophir.

Gold was the element that linked these explorations. For centuries this factor has been one of the most primal forces that has fueled the interest behind the explorations. Moricz’s epic saga, be it true or false, was driven by it.

At first, Savoy was searching for powers of rejuvenation, or for the power to stop time and space, which, he believed, originated in the temples, in the pyramid structures, or in the high peaks or hills that were synchronized with the power of the sun. Solar energy paired with stone and gold—a phenomenon that may have been the myth turned into reality by the pre-Incas and the Incas.

The sudden death of Savoy’s son Jamil (1959–62) at a young age drowned him in desperation, which led him to get involved in a study that linked the Essenes with the New World; a civilization that also came from the Middle East, and which connected to King Solomon’s mines and the kingdom of Ophir.

Phoenicians and Greeks built advanced vessels that were able to sail to the American coasts. They also had tools that today are considered state of the art, even if the antiquity of artifacts such as the Antikythera mechanism, found in the Aegean Sea, has not been proven yet.

The Phoenicians could be descendants of one of the cultures that sailed from America to the Middle East. Civilizations such as the Pelasgians, the Etruscans, and the Egyptians could be descendants of a very ancient tribe from the Andes and the Amazon. On Puná Island we found ancient settlements we could link to deities from the Middle East, such as Atum Baal.

There were several commercial routes from the Middle East to the Americas. Even if Columbus learned about these routes, few people knew they reached the Cape Verde Islands and the coast of Brazil.

The Manoa kingdom was located in the middle of what today is Brazil, where precious metals were as important as healing and hallucinogenic plants.

What today is the Gulf of Aqaba, where the Red Sea is located, used to be another route that sailed toward the Indian Ocean to cross the Pacific, and it arrived at what today are the Peruvian-Ecuadorian coasts, or equatorial America.

These commercial routes led to genetic crossings, and the techniques from the East were transported along with art and science. People settled, and the West mixed with the East.

However, it was the gold routes that moved the ancient world, and other worlds that were even more ancient.

The Bible mentions the gold of Ophir and Parvaim or Purvaim. Some read it as Paruaim, and it refers to the Peruvian coast that goes from Piura to the north of Chile: Arica.

Other scholars, such as Hector Burgos Stone, believe Ophir coincided with what was called the Golden Province in the Manta region, which today is Ecuador. Here even today we find the ancient mines that existed before the Incan and pre-Incan exploitations.

TREASURE IN THE MOUNTAINS

But the search for gold does not end with El Dorado and the land explored by Fawcett and Savoy. The Tayos are not the only places in this region said to hold vast amounts of treasure. The stories of the treasure of Atahualpa and the hunt for the Llanganates treasure also reflect glimmers of golden treasure. Andrés Fernández Salvador Zaldumbide believes the treasure is in a cave that has a dry stream. He believes everything is there, just as the treasure hunter Bartholomew Blane believed before him. Blane used to say that not even one thousand men could move the treasure from its location. These are not only solid gold pieces, it is said; some pieces have inlaid emeralds. The treasure came from Peru, where there are no emeralds, but these gems can be found in the eastern part of Ecuador, on the coast, and on the northwest side of the Napo River. Andrés Fernández Salvador Zaldumbide recalls:

In the 1950s I was about 12.5 to 18.5 miles from the Llanganates Parks, which had the perimeter of three or four soccer fields. This part of the mountain range is rich in marcasite, a mineral rich in iron oxide. The fascinating thing is that in Llanganates life continues in the dark, because plants grow with little light. History connects Huayna Capac with the Kingdom of Quito and the area called Pacaritambo, which is undoubtedly connected to or has the linguistic root of Paucartampu or Paucartambo. The cave is not far away, between Limón and Méndez. Let’s throw a guess and say about 31 miles from the Coangos cave.

I remember Moricz wanted me to go with him and visit the Crespi museum. I wasn’t surprised when he showed us a piece he considered to be really valuable, and it turned out to be a golden advertising figurine of the Michelin Man. In my opinion, the treasure of the Tayos is not related at all to the treasure in Llanganates.

Andrés Fernández Salvador Zaldumbide admits there is a synchronicity in the search for Atahualpa’s treasure that interweaves with the Tayos Cave; especially the search and discovery of Moricz and his meeting with Jaramillo that same week. Andrés heard about the story when he was visiting an old German friend, Alfredo Moebius, who told him Jaramillo’s story.

Andrés said Moricz was a con man who didn’t discover Cumbaratza, an ancient mine Moricz exploited in the 1980s, because he kept silent for years at a time, and Moricz ended up self-destructing. Moricz and his lawyer lost the mine and unleashed a controversy still running to this day. Andrés also told me that the same week he met Moricz, Jaramillo called him on the phone to ask for his help to return to the cave he had been shown as a child. Jaramillo had a real fear of returning and to go into the place he said he needed grenades, machine guns, gas masks, etc. Later on Jaramillo met Stanley Hall, and the story repeated another circle when the Scottish explorer renewed his hopes of finding the exact site of the elusive metal library.

WHEN ATAHUALPA WAS THE KING OF THE INCAS

The “lost treasure” could have been Atahualpa’s golden ticket, but one of his generals hid the gold in the Llanganates range, around the same time as Pizarro killed Atahualpa, the king of the Incas. The Llanganates are a dangerous and wild mountain range between the high peaks of the Andes and the Amazon. No one can live there. The land is swampy and deserted, and an eerie feeling penetrates the area (see plate 7). Atahualpa, the lord of the Incas, ruled both countries, Peru and Ecuador. Atahualpa’s great grandfather had prophesized that white bearded men would come one day to destroy the Incan Empire.

The chronicles say that one night with a narrow crescent moon was unusually bright, and three rings appeared around it. The first ring was the color of blood, the second was blackish green, and the third one was an almost translucent gray.

On his deathbed, Atahualpa’s father, Huayna Capac, told his son to bury his heart in Quito and the rest of his body in Cusco, the heart of the empire. Before his death, he received the prophecy that the empire would fall after the twelfth king.

When Pizarro disembarked in the Ecuadorian coast, Huayna Capac had already died from measles. It is believed this endemic plague came to the colonies from Central America, which was devastated from the conquest in Mexico, or it could have been spread between the Spaniards and natives.

Huayna Capac’s complaints were such that his moans rose to the skies, making the birds fall dead on the ground. In Quito they cried for a whole full moon. His body was escorted to Cusco by many chiefs, and the paths were lined by men and women who cried in sorrow, mourning his death. Thousands of wives, assistants, and servants agreed to kill themselves in order to be buried with him.

If the sun god called him in death, the Inca chief could return to Earth. When he came back to life, he could need his earthly possessions. So all the treasure the monarch had accumulated throughout his life would be buried with him, waiting for his return.

Huayna Capac had many sons from different women, but Atahualpa was his favorite, and he fought next to his father in many battles to the north. Before his death, he gave the northern province and its capital, Quito, to his son, while the real heir, his firstborn Huascar (Atahualpa’s half brother) would rule the south. This is how the Incan Empire was first divided into north and south. Huascar was more merciful than his brother, who was tough and vengeful.

Since the insurrection continued growing in the north, Huascar sent Atoc, his best general, with forty thousand men to suppress the uprisings. Near Ambato, west of the Llanganates, Atoc was captured and executed. With his skull, which still had pieces of dry skin and hair, they improvised a golden goblet from which they drank his blood and the fermented drink chicha morada. They had made a sort of gourd, and through the teeth they stuck the golden straw or bombilla, to drink.

Atahualpa left another half brother in Quito, Ruminyahui, while he left to celebrate his recent victories in the thermal baths of what today is Cajarmarca. Atahualpa went to Quito, knowing Pizarro’s men had already disembarked—almost two hundred troops with horses—and even though the Incas had been established as a megaempire for less than a century, they felt invincible.

The Inca army made camp in Cajamarca with over eighty thousand men. This meant they had an advantage of four hundred to one. The messengers from both sides came and went. When the invaders reached Atahualpa’s baths, he was gone, and they sent an emissary to agree on a meeting point: Cajamarca.

So Atahualpa went with over six thousand warriors into the city of Cajamarca, which seemed to be deserted. His assistants asked for those who wanted to parlay, when a man wearing black (a priest) stepped into the light to meet them. He had a black book with a golden cross on its cover in his hands. With the help of an interpreter, he started talking to the Incas about the Christian religion. Atahualpa took the Bible, glanced at it, and threw it on the floor. The screams of the priest went above the battle, and it is said that Pizarro screamed, “Let’s charge, for Santiago [St. James]!”

The massacre lasted two hours; the streets in the center of Cajamarca were bathed in blood. Spanish swords were sharper than Incan axes. The surprising thing is that not one Spaniard was left dead in the field of the ambush. That same afternoon Atahualpa was taken to the Temple of the Sun, Cajamarca, one of the temples next to his palace. He was still allowed to run his empire from one of the rooms that had been turned into a guarded cell, letting him maintain some privileges of an absolute monarch.

Atahualpa knew and saw that the Spaniards were hungry, and that they went crazy when talking of gold and silver, so he told Pizarro he would fill one of the halls of the temple with treasures in exchange for his freedom. Pizarro made him sign a contract. Atahualpa also sent a messenger to his men and commanded them to maintain their rearguard position. In the meantime, the chasquis, royal runners or messengers who used to travel the main roads of the Inca emprire, started spreading the news to the chiefs of the empire in other regions, and they had to make sure they collected the best pieces of gold. This was Atahualpa’s error: he told the Spaniards of the existence of other, richer temples like the ones in Cusco or Pachacamac on the northwest coast.

It didn’t take long for Pizarro to send his stepbrother Hernando to Pachacamac and another group of men to Cusco. There they captured and destroyed Korikancha, which would be dismantled to become what today is the Dominican Temple of Santo Domingo. By May 1533, the invaders had collected over 1.3 million pesos in gold (the equivalent of $300 million). For over four months, thousands and thousands of artifacts and handicrafts made of solid gold were melted in the improvised campfires in Cajamarca.

Two years later in Spain, King Charles V would order that even the pieces of art that had been taken as presents from the invading expedition were to be melted and turned into ingots in the reserves of Seville, Segovia, and Toledo.

Between the destructive hordes of Pizarro and the king’s furnaces, no golden artifact survived, with the exception of the golden frieze that was supposedly in Korikancha. Today it can be found in a museum in Madrid.