SAE Magazine

Here in the districts of Saladaoblanco, Isnos, and San Agustin, the topography is uneven; valleys, hill plateaus, and mountainous clusters come together to form its exotic and varied landscape. It is here, south of Huila, in this strategically important natural passage from the foothills of the Colombian Massif to the Amazon, that an advanced culture evolved, existed, and disappeared, and a collection of huge carved stone statues scattered in amongst the jungle are all that are left of it.

Rosiverio Lopes Ibarra. Click to enlarge

“Anyone can make an interpretation of what happened here or what these figures represent,” explains my guide, Rosiverio Lopes Ibarra. “There are no accounts, no literature or folklore that exists that can help us understand the Agustinian culture any better. Therefore any studies carried out will be vague and all assumptions based upon similar artistic forms from other regions in the Americas.”

You’d think that Rosiverio would find it increasingly frustrating to guide people around this site on a daily basis, given that they are arriving in larger quantities month after month as word gets around that it is now safe to visit the region that was formerly a leftist FARC guerrilla stronghold. But he remains soft spoken, informative, and collected in the face of my barrage of questions regarding the demise of these people – the kind of calm and unwavering tolerance that you would expect from a father of 18 children.

“Was it disease, war, or the Spanish that wiped these people out?” I ask.

He smiles, his eyes sparkling despite 36 years of guiding here: “If it was war, then there has to be a victor; here we have no sign of that. The Spanish arrived after the demise of the Agustinians and were largely confined to grave-robbing, but most likely, there was a climactic alteration and this affected the populous greatly. At the time we estimate the culture to have disappeared, the corresponding event in Europe was a mini Ice Age.”

Grave-robbers have strafed the area. First the Spanish – who in their search for El Dorado kidnapped a shaman’s son and demanded a ransom, leading the local people to ransack the burial mounds – and later subsequent mercenaries from the Antioquia region.

These grave-robbers knew little of the traditions of the people of the area and suspected that each figurine and statue contained a similar gold likeness within the stone carving.

One can imagine the desecration that took place as they split some of the statues in two in a fruitless search for the elusive – or rather, non-existent – gold in the interior of the stone.    

Photo by the Author
Click on image to enlarge

It is not only the topography that offers contradictions in this area around San Agustin. The interpretations of the conventional or symbolic art of these zoomorphic and anthropomorphic sculptures are pivotal to our understanding of the Agustinian culture.  

Rosiverio points out a carving that resembles a gorilla. Of course gorillas are not known to have inhabited this continent, so it must be something else, right? Not in his opinion. To Rosiverio this image proves the migration of people via the Magellan Straits, and the exchange of ideas, religious beliefs, and traditions.

Put in context through carbon dating, the Agustinian culture is thought to have disappeared around the same time as the decline of the Mayan Empire.  

Photo by the Author.
Click on image to enlarge

Another important-looking statue can only be a representation of a god of war, wearing a necklace with a skull and bordered by two sinister-looking club-brandishing guards.

Obviously he is male – his phallus is strapped down, and his jaguar smile and eagle eyes stare through me. There is a power evident in the ideology of these sculptures. They evoke a time past, one of greater mortality, faith, and mystery. As I kneel to take a photograph, taking full advantage of the balmy afternoon sunlight, a wind picks up, waving the branches of the fiery cachingo tree. Rosiverio pauses for a moment as if gauging me for his next tale.

“Some people here believe that when the wind blows this way it represents the proximity of the Turumama. She is a corpulent and ample-breasted spirit who looks for men lost alone in the forest here. After seducing him, she sticks a breast into the victim’s mouth to drown him.”

Fortunately, Turumama does not make herself apparent. Rosiverio claims to never have seen her. 

Taking into account the quantity and variety of the archaeological relics recovered here – sculptures, sarcophagi, monoliths, tombs, artificial mounds, a vast number of ceramics, and numerous works of gold – it can be agreed and deduced that here was a village that acquired a high grade of cultural development, evident in a social structure that produced great sculptors, artisans, farmers, and above all, cultivated a complex religious cult.

In studying the impressive artistry of these statues it is hard to believe that many of these pieces were recovered from farmhouses and arable land from the surrounding region where they were being used as flooring and door lintels, amongst other things. Luckily now, as you wind through the jungle environment of the Bosque de las Estatuas (Forest of Statues), you can appreciate the statues as they would have looked when they were created – now preserved by the local authorities and once again revered. Here in the forest they sit in ample space, carefully protected and set against a backdrop of gnarled root clusters and dank closeness of the jungle.

I feel comforted as I retreat from San Agustin. There is something reassuring in the fact that we have yet to master and qualify the ruins here. The unknown can offer us a certain humility and respect for these forbears who disappeared so mysteriously. I suspect Rosiverio knows this too, in his quiet and contemplative manner, as he continues to search for answers that may never come. 

WHERE TO STAY:

Finca El Maco

San Agustin

Tel: +57 8 837 34 37

www.elmaco.ch

Incredible food and atmosphere and only moments from the park entrance.

Dorms from US$12 and doubles from US$16 per person.