The smallness of their great maneuvers
The mausoleum of Pachacútec
Following the discovery of underground chambers beneath the Temple of the Three Doors, Thierry Jamin suggested that they might be the mausoleum of Pachacutec. Local officials from the Ministry of Culture and the media are competing to come up with the most creative ways to disparage the work and integrity of Thierry Jamin and his team.
Defamations and falsehoods about the mausoleum of Pachacútec
On February 9, 2013, the local newspaper El diario el Sol del Cusco, front page headline "Jamin unmasked. The resident archaeologist of Machu Picchu explains why they rejected the French request to carry out excavations on the site.”. This local daily, always hostile to Thierry Jamin and his group, then devotes its pages 2 and 3 to discrediting the discoveries made by the Inkarri Institute – Cusco in April 2012. Five articles dedicated to this story!
In a first article titled "Why is the authorization denied to the French archaeologist?" , the newspaper explains that, according to the chronicles of Garcilaso de la Vega and Polo de Ondegardo, the mummy of Pachacútec was discovered by the Spaniards in the 16th century and then brought back to Lima. So, if the mummy was no longer in Machu Picchu, the cavities discovered by the Inkarri Institute – Cusco could not therefore be its tomb. A logic of the most... absurd!
El Diario el Sol del Cusco
February 9, 2013
Thierry Jamin supports the hypothesis that it could be the mausoleum of Pachacuti.
The hypothesis defended by Thierry Jamin and his group is that the cavities discovered in April 2012 thanks to electromagnetic resonances correspond to the Mausoleum that Pachacútec ordered to be built in the mid-15th century to house his burial and that of his lineage, or panaca. The fact that the royal mummy is still there, or that it was discovered in the 16th century by the Spanish conquistadors, then brought back to Lima, does not detract from Thierry Jamin’s theory.
A second article is titled"The end of the looters. The Machu Picchu is a heritage site that no one can threaten," stressed David Ugarte. Its author, the "journalist" Grimaldo Zúniga C. returns to statements made by David Ugarte Vega Centeno, Regional Director of Culture of Cusco. This one first evokes the discovery of Machu Picchu by Hiram Bingham, whom he describes as a huaquero, that is to say, a pillager. Then he talks about Thierry Jamin, his diplomas and his search for the lost city of Païtiti. He then returns to the grave robbers and again establishes a link with Thierry Jamin. "That’s why, says Ugarte, our rejection of their destructive intentions is unequivocal, because no one can simply come to Cusco and declare they want to dismantle the stones to find a sarcophagus. If this happened, the entire building would collapse.” It is obvious that the Peruvian Ministry of Culture cannot give a research permit to a grave robber.
David Ugarte, who is not bothered by his own contradictions, then asks that if Thierry Jamin has discovered something "que lo muestre", "let him show it".
The Regional Director of Culture then engages in violent defamation against Thierry Jamin: "I reaffirm that Thierry Jamin’s only interest is to find hidden treasures, gold and silver, without having the slightest knowledge of the conservation of an important architectural building, etc."
A third article, written by the same «journalist» Grimaldo Zúniga C., published next to the previous one is titled "The French researcher claims to have made diametrically opposed remarks through various channels. » We have never claimed to have discovered the tomb of Pachacutec." In this new article, Zúniga claims that Thierry Jamin has retracted his initial statements regarding the discovery of the possible tomb of Pachacútec. This pseudo journalist seems visibly to confuse claims and hypotheses: "The French explorer Thierry Jamin, he writes, returns to his initial statements published in the magazine Rumbos de Sol y Piedra and now claims never to have claimed to have discovered the tomb of Pachacutec in the Inca city of Machu Picchu, where it is forbidden to conduct excavations to extract very important archaeological remains of which it is still not certain."
When 'journalists' take the hypothesis of the mausoleum of Pachacútec as an affirmation
The article, deliberately directed against Thierry Jamin, presents the French researcher in a negative manner. Jamin never claimed to the media that his group had discovered the tomb of Pachacútec. He has always specified that this was a hypothesis. And that only the opening of the cavities and the study of the archaeological material they contain will be able to confirm it or not. In search of sensationalism, some pseudo-journalists, as we can see, are ready for all the amalgams. The "nationalist" side is also never very far...
A fourth article published by El diario el Sol del Cusco, on 9 February 2013, is a letter from the Peruvian historian Marianna Mould de Pease addressed to the daily newspaper El Comercio a few days earlier, in reaction to the publication of the article published on 19 January previous. This letter is not really directed against Thierry Jamin and his team. The Peruvian historian returns to the creation in 1905 of the Institute of History of Peru, today National Academy of History, and cites the chroniclers Garcilaso de la Vega and Polo de Ondegardo about royal mummies. This letter is however published by the newspaper El Sol del Cusco as an element «to charge» against Jamin.
A "archaeologist" from Machu Picchu with questionable professional ethics
The fifth and last article published this February 9 in the newspaper El diario el Sol del Cusco was written by the archaeologist Piedad Champi Monterroso, one of the leaders of the National Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu. Under the title "The submitted file does not meet archaeological standards. Jamin’s report is riddled with technical inaccuracies.", this is a long text in which the Peruvian archaeologist tries to dismantle the project of Thierry Jamin and his group by taking up the arguments put forward in his technical report N° 189, of July 2012. By the way, Madame Champi in turn engages in a series of defamations in full, which Internet users will be judged: “We, as specialized professionals, like many of our colleagues, are ready to protect, conserve and preserve through scientific research based on objective and non-subjective evidence, unlike the project of the NGO Inkarri, which only demonstrates the conviction to support adventurers, excuse me for the term: looters, treasure hunters."
Archaeologists and other researchers will be able to appreciate the professional ethics of Madame Champi...
During the investigative program Cuarto Poder broadcast on Sunday, February 10, 2013 on the television channel ATV, partly devoted that day to the Machu Picchu case, Madame Piedad Champi shows herself completely unable to interpret the results and analyses, however clear, companies in charge of carrying out the electromagnetic resonances at Machu Picchu a few months earlier. The use of geo-radars in the field of archaeological research is nevertheless widespread throughout the world, in Europe, in Mexico, in Egypt and in many other countries. We are surprised that this "great" archaeologist misunderstands these non-destructive techniques of modern archaeology.
February 10, 2012 - Cuarto Poder program - 14 minutes 50 seconds (in Spanish)
On February 14, 2013, the newspaper El Diario el Sol del Cusco continued its smear campaign against Thierry Jamin and his group. Publishing three photos of Machu Picchu and the entrance discovered by David Crespy on its front page, accompanied by the headline "The Frenchman seeks to exert pressure through the media. The Cusco Regional Directorate of Culture maintains that the request for excavations at Machu Picchu is not serious,"the local newspaper again devoted three columns on page 3 to Thierry Jamin and his research project at Machu Picchu. The headline alone summarizes the content of the article written by journalist Grimaldo Zúniga C., who seems to have a decidedly strange understanding of his profession: "A French treasure hunter has been refused permission to excavate Machu Picchu. The Ministry of Culture rejected his request."
In this new article, Thierry Jamin is again presented as a vulgar treasure hunter and his team as a group of amateurs: "The explanations of the treasure hunter and his collaborators regarding the project were baseless... He added that the main interest of Thierry Jamin lay in finding a treasure in a vast funerary cavern which would contain a considerable quantity of gold and silver. For all these reasons, the authorization was refused because Machu Picchu cannot be subject to excavations or dismantling of its walls under the pretext that someone is eager to find gold and silver there.”
Voilà l’idée du journalisme selon Monsieur Grimaldo Zúniga. Les professionnels du métier apprécieront.
El Diario el Sol del Cusco
February 14, 2013
A few weeks later, some media will publish more factual articles.