Deadly Superstitions

10/13/2025

Deadly Superstitions by M.P. Pellicer

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Many believe the practice of human sacrifice was found only in ancient and superstitious civilizations. However this belief is not exactly accurate.

Grete Mostny Head of the Anthropology Section and the Child from El Plomo hill c.1954

This custom of ritually sacrificing humans is described as controversial when in reality it's quite bloodthirsty. In 1989, Patrick Tierney released his book The Highest Altar, where he detailed the history of human sacrifice seen through the lenses of the belief systems of different cultures.

In 1954, a well-preserved Incan child, estimated to be 8 years old, was found on Cerro El Plomo near Santiago, Chile. Examination found the child was killed 500 years before and became known as the Boy of El Plomo. The conditions where he was buried, in a 3-foot deep pit, assured his excellent preservation. It was determined he was a victim of ritual child sacrifice. The cause of death was suffocation due to being buried alive. There was vomit on his lips and clothing indicating he might have been drugged so he would not fight being covered with dirt. He also defecated on himself. His clothing, jewelry and grave goods indicated he held an elevated social status. There were several balls made from animal intestines containing human hair, fingernail clippings and teeth. These items were connected to appeasement of mountain deities to avert natural disasters.

Rodrigo Hernández Príncipe was a 17th-century Spanish chronicler in the Andes who documented local practices, including the sacrifice of a young girl and the identification of a sacred structure called an illahuasi or "house of the sacred stones". His writings provide historical accounts of indigenous traditions and locations in the region.

This ceremony involving ritual human sacrifice is known as capacocha, and children are the ones killed. It's estimated there may be hundreds of Inca children that were left in icy graves at the highest peaks.

A quote written by Hernandez Principe referring to capacocha, described: "... they sent Cauri Paccsa to Chile to be sacrificed, and Munay Carhua to Titicaca..." It's not certain if the Child of Cerro El Plomo is indeed Cauri Paccsa.

Cerro El Plomo near Santiago de Chile

The ritual of capacocha covered four regions for each direction, and each village would send one or two children between the ages of 3 and 15 to be sacrificed. The children traveled on what was known as the royal road or the Inca road, to the capital at Cusco.

The children had to be free of defects, and Incan priests would receive them. They would preside over the sacrifice of animals and the symbolic marriage of boys and girls. The intended victims would spend some time in Cusco before being returned to their homes. The priests and a delegation would take the child in a straight line across difficult terrain to their village. The child would be given a full meal and chicha to make them drunk, before being taken to where they were buried alive.

Present day about 115 Inca sites have been found at over 15,000 feet throughout the Andes; some as high as 23,000 feet. Many of these sacrifices are near trans-mountain roads, and a discovery of a young boy in Mount Aconcagua in 1985, is close to a path which follows the present route of an international highway that links Argentina and Chile.

A Spanish soldier who witnessed sacrifices in 1551, described that: "Many boys and girls were sacrificed in pairs, being buried alive and well dressed and adorned... items that a married Indian would possess."

Non-local material found with the children suggest they were turned over as tribute from across the Inca Empire. This indicates capacocha served not only as a religious function, but reinforced social control and instilled fear of the Inca's authority.

The public display of sacrifice, masked as appeasement of deities, served as social engineering of the populace to assure the loyalty of those conquered by the Inca.

Mapuche woman at the loom, Puerto Dominguez (Lago Budi) c.1932

Tierney's research into human sacrifices found these practices had not been eliminated only gone underground. The reasons for the rituals performed by priests and witches are for deification of the victim, appeasing gods and natural forces using human blood as payment. Blood being the life force.

He wrote, "Blood sacrifice is the oldest and most universal act of piety."

During his research mostly in Chile, Argentina and Peru, Tierney spoke to practitioners of human sacrifice.

Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, who was captured in 1629, by the Mapuche Indians spent 7 months as their prisoner. In 1673, he wrote a chronicle of his experiences, where in one instance he described machi as witches who cure with the aid of demons.

María Luisa Namuncura Aiñiel, a 45-year-old Mapuche Indian known as the "sorceress at Lago Budi" worked among the Lafkenches, a community within the Mapuches. She had the sick brought to her for cures, and performed exorcisms.

Machi Juana was also suspected of sacrificing Jose Luis Painecur in 1960, in Puerto Saavedra, Chile, in a ritual known as nguillatún. This sacrifice occurred on June, 5, after the 1960 earthquake and tsunami in May. The child's throat was slit, then he was dismembered while alive, his still beating heart was ripped out and his intestines were thrown into the sea.

In one version his torso was staked on the beach which the waves claimed eventually, in another version it was cast into the sea from a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Rosa Painecur in old age

Chilevision interviewed a Mapuche Indian who survived the earthquake event, and when asked why this specific child was chosen he said that Jose Luis was an orphan. There is no mention made of the father, and his mother worked in Santiago in order to make some money. Jose's mother Rosa Painecur Antoniancao left him in the care of her father Juan José Painecur. The child's own grandfather handed him over to be sacrificed, even when the child pleaded with him to be saved.

Other machis were sacrificing animals that had survived the cataclysm, but the natives believed this would not be enough. The newspapers of the day described there was violent dancing and drinking of aqua-ardiente before the ritual. The entire community was present when the child was killed.

After the earthquake Rosa returned to Collileufu, Puerto Saavedra and was told by her father the boy had been sacrificed to appease the gods of water. She went to the police, and her father, Marcos Cuminao and machi Juana Namuncura were arrested.

Her testimony as well as interviews and reports done as recently as 2023, persevered the story despite the loss of official judicial records.

It was rumored the judge who presided over the trial of the child's death, feared the machi, which is why the case was not handled as a murder. Five members of the community were accused and arrested for the act. Only Machi Juana was found not guilty. The other four, including the boy's grandfather who had confessed to the crime, then recanted and served only two years.

The judge ruled they "acted without free will, driven by an irresistible natural force of ancestral tradition."

Mapuche from Lafquenche communities in the Lake Budi sector c.1960s

In 1959, Alberto Medina and Francisco Reyes, anthropologists from the University of Chile toured the Lafquenche communities in the area of Lake Budi. At the time the communities were considered very backward, and one of them wrote: "they did not know bread and only ate seaweed, fish and shellfish". Many of them did not speak Spanish either.

In a foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jose Luis Painecur, the researchers in a public exhibition warned that if any unusual natural disaster took place, ancestral ceremonial customs still present in the memory of the inhabitants, including belief in human sacrifice would emerge.

When Medina and Reyes learned of the sacrifice they returned to Puerto Saavedra, and interviewed the detainees in a small jail cell where they were being held.

Cuminao told them he recalled a legend that said when there were great disasters, it was necessary to sacrifice a white and blonde girl. Medina interpreted this to be an albino boy, not necessarily a girl.

Machi Juana said, "the blood of animals calms the spirits", but that afterward she had a vision that required "human sacrifice, like in ancient times and the entire community knows that."

The anthropologists said the machi did not show any emotion concerning her act, only that she planned to preach the need to sacrifice a child to please the gods after misfortune or natural disasters struck again.

The grandfather, who only spoke Spanish said, "I loved my grandson very much. He was my most beloved grandson. How could I not love him if he was the one who took care of my cattle? ...I had raised a little money to send my daughter to Concepción, to work and improve her life... I was not there when they took the child. I don't know what happened! I loved him very much, I loved him very much!"

When asked who took his grandson, he said Paiñan, the one known as "the one-eyed man" because his right eye was missing. Soon after Paiñan was arrested for carrying out the ceremony out on La Mesa Hill on the seashore.

Rosa Painecur stated she did not believe her father, and that he was the one who took the boy to La Mesa Hill. "She was deceived, so much so that she said, 'I couldn't talk to him, I had him imprisoned, I reported him'. She said her pain would never be erased and that forgiveness would continue to be a forbidden word in her soul. 'I didn't forgive them...they all died of old age'.".

Rosa never remarried or had other children.

Tierney honors a victim's grave in Peru with a bottle of champagne c.1989 (Source- SundayMirror)

Patrick Tierney found that like this sacrifice in 1960, children, young virgins and others would be ritually killed to assure narco-traffickers would get their drugs through, businessmen could made successful investment and villagers would be protected from natural disasters. Where once the natives sacrificed to mountain gods, the belief had morphed into asking these gods to protect drug smuggling.

He tracked down one of the "master killers" known as Maximo Coa (an alias), who was a wandering "yatiri" or shaman. His main patrons were the most superstitious of the drug bosses. Tierney found evidence that South American cocaine growers engaged in human sacrifice in order to exert social control over the coca growers who were mostly illiterate, and depended on drug money for sustenance.

Tierney convinced Coa that he needed a sacrifice to lift a curse from a goldmine he owned. He recalled, "Maximo told me how he prepared victims for the sacrificial ceremony. He gets girls high with wine, cocaine and pure alcohol. Then he prays to the mountain gods that the girl be taken on the condition that money, riches and safety were guaranteed."

He met Coa on a mountaintop where he called off the ceremony saying he'd been bought out by an American mining corporation at a large profit to himself.

Aymara Indians sacrifice a llama Bolivia c.2016 (Source-David Mercado/Reuters)

In 1965, Herminia Alave and her infant daughter were sacrificed in Peru near Lake Titicaca. Their remains were dismembered and scattered along the lakeshore. Maximo Coa, confessed to the sacrifice claiming he wished to "pay the devil" in a bid for personal prosperity. He was sentenced to six years in prison, however he continued as a ritual killer through the 1980s with at least seven to twelve victims linked to him.

In the February, 1990 issue of Omni magazine, which Tierney was a reporter for, it carried a quote from Maximo Coa: "If a person comprehends, if he's really convinced, and has enough faith to carry out a human sacrifice, only then does good luck really come to him — cars, houses, everything."

The 74-yer-old Aymara Indian recited the explanation without hesitation or remorse. He described cutting his victims' throats, filling a goblet with their blood and presenting it to the patron of the sacrifice. He also offered it to his wife or girlfriend as well. He was proud of having taken so many lives in sacrificial ceremonies.

Children and young llamas were buried together outside the town of Huanchaco, Peru. (Source-REUTERS/Mariana Bazo)

In 2018, evidence was unearthed on Peru's northern coast, that more than 140 children and 200 young llamas were sacrificed on a bluff just a 1,000 feet from the Pacific Ocean. This took place around 1570 A.D. when the Chimu Empire held sway over this stretch of the coastline. This area known as "Las Llamas" came to attention in 2011, when 42 children and 77 llamas were discovered. The remains emerged from nearby coastal dunes close to where a 3,500 year old temple was being excavated.

By the end of 2016, 140 children and 200 llamas were unearthed. The children, both boys and girls, had their faces smeared with red cinnabar pigment, and their chests were cut open, most likely to take out their hearts. The juvenile llamas were treated the same. The children ranged in age from 5 to 14. The llamas were less than 18 months old. It appears they were all killed in a single event. Some of the children had cranial modification indicating they were gathered from different areas conquered by the Chimu. By 2021, archaeologists had unearthed a total of 269 children, 466 llamas and three adults. It is considered the largest mass sacrifice of children to date in the archaeological record.

Partially mummified remains of the woman whose face was mutilated. Notice how the skin around her mouth was pulled upward. (Source-Journal of Anthropological Archaeology c.2021)

There was cataclysmic event that perhaps has lived in people's memory for thousands of years. In ancient times, Chile's Atacama Desert was the scene of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that erased the populace along the coastline.

Zapatero, was an ancient community in northern Chile, dating back 4,000 years. The populace built stone houses atop shell mounds that opened into patios. The dead were buried beneath the floor of the house.

Geological evidence points to a conjoined disaster of an earthquake and tsunami. Testing of these uplifted chunks are dated to about 3,800 years ago (approximately 1,800 B.C.). The disaster that struck the area was of epic proportions. The rupture stretched along the fault systems where the Nazca Plate slid under the South American Plate. The earthquake was estimated at a 9.5 megathrust that shoved "parts of the coastline upward and triggered a tsunami almost a mile high along a stretch of the Chilean coast that extended across the Pacific and New Zealand."

This event was comparable in magnitude to one that was recorded in Valdivia, Chile in 1960. The study suggests the possibility of another earthquake occurring once again off the coast of northern Chile, and the only thing that can be done is to prepare in order to reduce risk.

The people who lived in this area, had no choice but to abandon their homes. The effects of the earthquake, tsunami and an arid desert at their back gave them no choice.

It's unknown if this could explain skeletons and mummies found in the Atacama desert that show evidence of a surge of extreme violence.

The remains of 194 people were examined. They lived between 1000 B.C. and 600 A.D., and the violence was directed at both men and women.

It wasn't just death, but torture that was perpetrated against the victims. "One woman appears to have been tortured; the skin on her face was stretched so much that her 'mouth' was pulled high above its natural position. This was likely an 'intentional act, occurring at the time of death when the skin was still fresh and causing deep agony.'"

Partially mummified remains of a male who had lethal trauma on his face and skull. (Source-Journal of Anthropological Archaeology c.2021)

The Atacama Desert is the driest desert in the world outside Antarctica. Less than 1/2 inch of rain falls there, however people have lived here for approximately 12,000 years. However when the tsunami destroyed lives and houses, even the largesse of the ocean could erase the memory of the devastation.

Researchers examined remains of people discovered in six cemeteries in the Atacama's Azapa Valley. Of 194 adults 21% (40 individuals) had trauma as a result of violence. Over 50% had head trauma, but others were injured in both their head and body.

Surprisingly not all the trauma resulted in death. In over 50% there were signs of healing especially if the individual was younger. One woman had both a healed and unhealed trauma, indicating she had been attacked more than once. It's unknown if this violence came as a result for competition for farming land, food and other resources. Were these slaves that were regularly beaten and attacked?

One male had a projectile stone point embedded in his left lung, others had been mutilated. One man appeared to have intentionally had his leg bones and toes on his left foot fractured.

Sixty-nine were examined for their origins, and 26 were native to the Atacama Desert, but the rest were not. The woman with the mutilated face came from what is now southern Peru.