Battle of the Body

Through the learned encampments of Santiago last week, a cold war of science raged with white-hot fury. Rival scholars at the National Historical Museum, the Museum of Natural History and the anthropological department of the University of Chile maneuvered fiercely for possession of a newfound, well-refrigerated human body that all seemed to think at least 400 years old.

The action opened with a burst of scholarly enterprise in February when two grizzled Andean muleteers came down from the mountains near Santiago to report that they had a "mummy" to sell. They had come upon it, they said, while rooting about in a rock-walled enclosure atop 17,712-ft. El Plomo, where one of them had found some silver objects years ago. The mule drivers offered the body to the Museum of Natural History, but demanded 80,000 pesos ($728) for their find. And all that the government gives the museum each year for purchase and preservation of specimens is 35,000 pesos.

Out of Pocket. But two young students of Professor Richard P. Schaedel, Yale-bred anthropologist at the University of Chile, hurried over and heard the mule drivers' story. Fired with enthusiasm, they offered everything in their pockets plus the rest of their month's salaries--45,000 pesos in all--for the body. The mule drivers agreed, and led the students up to the point, 9,800 ft. high, where they had reburied their find. The body, well preserved and wrapped in cloth, looked old indeed, and the students rushed it by pickup truck to Santiago. There the students took it to the university's institute of anatomy, where it was put in a freezer along with other cadavers.

While the anthropologists paused to congratulate themselves on their work, Dr. Humberto Fuenzalida decided that the body rightfully belonged in his Museum of Natural History. He took it from the freezer forthwith and carried it off to his collection of stuffed pumas and condors--a coup of science roughly comparable to a band of West Point cadets kidnaping the Navy goat on the eve of the service academies' annual football game. As soon as the students heard of the ab duction, they called in the press to claim credit for a find that "may change our knowledge of the history of the Incas in Chile." When skeptical newsmen demanded to see the "mummy," the students led a caravan of cars crosstown to the Museum of Natural History.

Out of Sorts. Santiago newspapers, whooping up the story, dubbed the find "The Indian Princess" (it was later found to be a boy). They quoted experts who said the body must be put back in cold storage. A physician jumped in, asserting that the correct procedure was to put the body in the sun so that it could dry up. Dr. Fuenzalida replied curtly: "I know how to do it," and popped the cadaver into a box lined with black paper.

There it remained at week's end. The students, injured in pride and empty of pocket, prepared to climb El Plomo in search of more buried treasure. But Dr. Fuenzalida had no chance to relax among his stuffed animals. At the other end of town, the director of the National Historical Museum plunged into the row, loudly proclaiming: "That mummy, or whatever it is, should be in this museum and nowhere else! The law says that everything pertaining to Chilean man belongs here." The battle of the body, it seemed, was not yet over.

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