Missing Since Attack, Archaeologists Found Alive

Members of an archaeological expedition missing since they were attacked by Indian villagers last week in a remote jungle region were found alive Monday, a government official said.

A source at the Department of Foreign Affairs said the six people had been found and were apparently in good condition, but no further details were available.

Indian marauders bushwhacked the researchers last week as they attempted to rescue a valuable monument from a Mayan site on the Mexico-Guatemala border, archeologists said Monday.

Two members of the 11-man team, including Peter Mathews of the University of Calgary, fled in a canoe in the flood-swollen Usumacinta River and had been missing for several days. Both had been stripped of clothing and shoes. Mathews is a MacArthur “genius” award recipient for his studies of Maya writing. An aide was also missing.

Three other members of the team, all Mexican nationals, were also held by the attackers, who apparently wanted to sell the artifact.

In addition, six Cholo Indians hired to help move the monument were beaten with rifle butts and machetes by the 80 to 100 marauders.

Mathews, 47, has been working in Mexico for four years at a site called El Cayo along the Usumacinta, a broad river that has been called Central America’s Amazon. He was particularly concerned about one valuable artifact his team had discovered at the site and reburied, said University of Texas archeologist Khristaan D. Villela, who talked to Mathews in Palenque last week.

The artifact was a stone altar, about 4 feet in diameter and weighing 1,000 pounds. It has writing on the top, the sides and the three legs and is thus considered quite valuable because of what it can reveal about the history of El Cayo. Because Mathews was afraid it would be stolen and sold to collectors, he decided to ship it to a museum at Frontero Corozal.

According to art historian Merle Green Robertson, now in Palenque, the altar was crated up for shipment.

Robertson said Monday that one of the escaped workers, Martin Arcos Zarago, described the attack. According to Zarago, the group had gotten about five miles upriver when they were attacked and captured.

All were stripped of their clothes and boots. Mathews was robbed of about 5,000 pesos and $900 in cash and was forced to write a check for all the money in his bank account. All were beaten, Robertson said.

The altar is apparently still sitting on the bank of the river.

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