book exerpt #10: disputing the hoax claims

(this material is an exerpt from the book "The Message of the Stones", by Dr. Javier Cabrera)

But twenty-two days later the Lima magazine Mundial published a long article seeking to demonstrate that the engraved stones are falsifications. Thirteen of the seventy-two pages in this issue were devoted to the task (23). The article claims that the engraved stones in my museum are not old, but were carved by two peasants who live in the region of Ocucaje: Basilio Uchuya and Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana. The article reports that a group of reporters from the magazine went to the city of Ica and then to Ocucaje. They asked the lieutenant governor where Basilio and Irma might be found. "We gave him the names we had been given in Ica", say the authors. Later they spoke with Basilio Uchuya’s wife, who told them: "Several days ago my husband and Senora Aparcana were taken away by the PIP (24) to make a statement as to whether the stones are false or real. Whether they carved them or found them. My husband told them that all of the stones he sold to Dr. Cabrera he had carved himself. That he hadn't dug them up. Senora Aparcana said the same thing". In footnote number 2 in the first Chapter of this book, I explained what the word huaquero means: one who secretly digs in search of archeological treasures, an activity severely punishable by law; anyone who is caught, goes to jail. It is easy to picture the situation in which Basilio Uchuya and Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana found themselves, facing the question posed by the police as to whether the stones were real or not. To say they were legitimate meant having to admit they had dug them up, obviously from some archeological site, that is, having to admit that they were huaqueros. It is logical that they should answer that they themselve fabricated the stones. This way they can not only avoid jail, sparing themselves and their numerous family members (the article says that each has eight children), but can also continue to sell the stones, which they could not do if they admitted that the stones were part of the national patrimony.

The article adds that Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana told the reporters that she and Basilio Uchuya carved the stones and that most of those she carved had been sold to Cabrera Darquea, but that for quite some tine she had not sold any to him; the rest were purchased by tourists who came to Ocucaje looking for artifacts. Later, the article stated that Basilio Uchuya told reporters that he also carved stones and sold them to Cabrera Darequea. When Basilio Uchuya was asked asked whether he and Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana also made the stones sold to tourists, which were still on the market in Ica, he responded: "Yes. We made all of them ourselves". Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana, according to the article, showed reporters where she obtained the stones to carve. "The workable stone came from a promontory some 50 meters high, situated about 2 kilometers from her house", the article read. On our arrival at the site we saw two perforations. Each one was about two meters in diameter and one meter deep, more or less. After half an hour with a pickax, Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana was able to make a hole one meter in diameter and some 50 centimeters deep, at which point she said, "Here's one". It was a stone weighing about 500 grams, about the size of a mandarin orange. "This is all?" we asked. "I already told you that they are getting hard to find, she said, wiping the sweat from her brow". Now, my private collection at the museum number 11,000. In the private collections I have seen –even before any recent new acquisitions - there are no less than another 10,000. If we add to this number the specimens that, according to the article, have been sold to tourists and those that still circulate in Ica, as well as those that have left the country - to judge by the declarations of the exporter Marino T. Carcelan, who claims to have exported some 600 stones since 1973 (25) and to judge by a local Ica newspaper article which said in 1973 that it was well-known that many stones had found their way to the U.S. (26) we can estimate that in total 50,000 engraved stones of Ocucaje had been sold. Note in this connection that the place where Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana says she obtained the stone had two small cavities, not counting the one she made in the presence of the reporters. If her statements are correct and she actually carved the immense number of stones she claims to have done, where did she get them? Not, obviously, from these small cavities. I alone possess 11,000 specimens.

To extract merely this quantity would have required a monumental excavation on the order of open pit mines. Moreover, if we remember the size of the stone she extracted after one half hour of work in front of the reporters - the size of a small orange - meanwhile admitting that the stones were scarce, how can she explain not only the fact that there are ll,000 in my collection, but also the fact that most of mine are hundreds and even thousands of times bigger than this rock? The article does not report on where Basiho Uchuya supposedly got his stones. But since Basilto Uchuya and Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana declare themselves, according to the article, to be the sole manufacturers of the Engraved Stones of Ica, we can assume that Basiho Uchuya got his stones from the same outcropping that Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana used. Thus my objection to Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana’s story hold also for Basilio Uchuya's case. And if both of them were getting the stones from the sane place, there is all the more reason to expect that the promontory should have an immense crater, not the two small cavities seen by the reporters.

The article repeats other statements made by Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana and Basilio Uchuya. She states that when she was dedicated full-time to the manufacture of the stones she was producing some 20-25 pieces the size of an orange each week; Basilio Uchuya says that he began to engrave stones ten years ago, and that in the last two years he hadn't made any, and for that reason had not sold any to Cabrera Darquea. I want to respond to these declarations. If what Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana says were true, she would have been producing an average of three stones per day. Since the article says nothing about the rate of production of Basilio Uchuya, I will assume that he worked at about the same speed. So together they were manufacturing six pieces daily. Since they claim to be the makers of all the engraved stones that left Ocucaje, that is, the makers not only of my stones but of those bought by tourists, those that continue to be sold in Ica, those in the hands of other collectors since 1961, and those that have been exported, we can calculate that if each of them made 25,000 stones, they would have needed twenty-three years to complete the task. Basilio Uchuya says he began engraving ten years before the date of the article, that is, in 1965. But he adds that he had ceased his activity two years earlier, which leaves him eight years of work. This is, of course, quite incompatib1e with the twenty-three years needed to make his share of the stones. Twenty-three years before would have been l950, eleven years before, according to the Soldi brothers and Herman Buse, the stones began to appear, another incompatibility. For Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana, who continued to make the stones after Basilio Uchuya quit, twenty-three years of labor would have put her starting date at 1952, also incompatible with the facts of the appearance of the stones.

The incongruities of the declarations given by both individuals are further revealed if we recall that the stones Irma Gutierrez de Aparcana says she made and sold to me were the size of an orange. One trip to my museum makes clear what I have already mentioned: the majority of the engraved stones that I possess are much larger, some hundreds and some thousands of times larger.