Why Do Tourists Dislike Tiwanaku?

The 4 Scourges of Tiwanaku

• The greedy conquistadors. History has not been kind to this city: after being abandoned and left defenseless, it fell under the yoke of the conquistadors. Eager for gold, they plundered the site's riches without restraint, also moving certain steles and structures to take them away. This is the case with the famous Gate of the Sun. Known to the public, among others thanks to Tintin, this gate is located in the middle of nowhere, fractured in several places. The settlers, too greedy, tried to seize this heavy structure... but changed their minds along the way: a reasonable reaction, as its weight is estimated at 10 tons! However, to ensure their efforts were not in vain, they still took the most beautiful pieces. Today, we can only guess at the hinge doors, probably made of gold, that once adorned its backside.
• Treasure hunters. When it comes to archaeological sites, there is always the potential for treasure: all archaeological sites in Latin America (and beyond) are prey to modern-day Indiana Joneses. Nothing is spared. And while a legend claims that atop the main pyramid of Tiwanaku, a treasure is hidden beneath a giant cross, treasure hunters will dig, and even explode, everything between them and the treasures (here, it happens that they razed a good part of a pyramid...).
• Sunday archaeologists. This is a subject that gets my nerves boiling and heats my blood... but if we look back at the origins of this beautiful discipline called archaeology, we find treasure lovers, just as unscrupulous as the looters. The only difference is that they dug during the day and brought their findings back to their countries, displaying them like hunting trophies. Later, 1970s archaeologists, suffering from a cruel lack of imagination, could not envision the splendor of ancient cities, given the scattered stones that once formed imposing walls. No matter: let's just reconstruct them! And if we run short of stones... we can just fill in with concrete! It looks awful? So what? Now we can finally admire the city, or rather as it was viewed by the theories of the time. Because theories evolve, but archaeological aberrations remain. Tiwanaku is one of those reconstructed sites, and unfortunately, it is not the only one that we have seen marred by archaeologists: Huaca Arco Iris, Raqchi, ... There are numerous examples in this pre-Columbian city. Wherever you look, you can quickly spot aberrations: a staircase leading straight into a wall of the Temple of Kalasasaya, poorly aligned water drainage systems, monoliths displaced from their original locations, walls reconstructed with concrete blocks...
• The careless government. In addition to endorsing an archaeological policy that is devoid of substance (History is not the primary concern of Bolivia, one of the poorest countries in South America), the government makes disheartening decisions. Thus, the main monolith of Tiwanaku, Bennett, was relocated for the first time in 1933, right in the city center of the capital, so everyone could admire it... Nice in theory, but it didn't take long for this stone to suffer from the ravages of modern urban life: pollution, watering plants, bird droppings... quickly degraded the monolith, rendering the glyphs on its back unreadable and erasing all the moldings on its legs, now smooth... Like a book that is doused with water until all the ink runs out, leaving only a blank page. The stele was returned to the site in 2002, but not to its original location: it found itself in the unfinished museum next to the city (Museo Regional Archeologico de Tiahuanaco), and this monolith is far from being the only one. Thus, under the guise of protecting these vestiges of the past, like the Gate of the Star, the monoliths, and eventually, the Gate of the Sun, Tiwanaku is being drained of its interests. These stones, which have survived centuries contemplating the sun and stars, will soon be prisoners behind four walls, and be careful: no photos!

And yet ...

• Tiwanaku: the most mysterious pre-Columbian city in South America
• Tiwanaku: the craziest theories