Salta: Soldiers, Saints and Sacrifices

Downtime in Salta is great for Dolce Far Niente, but nevertheless gives us the opportunity to add depth of color to our recent travels, as if to illustrate points on the map with historical detail. 
  

The Historical Museum of the North in Salta has the full rogues gallery of protagonists from Nostromo. Here, the blow-by-blow account of Argentine history follows a similar arc to the trials and tribulations of fictional Costaguana and Sulaco, a rousing tale echoing the nationalist uprising across other parts of the world in the C19th, colourful and chaotic, full of uniformed heroes and polychromatic saints.

Plenty of polychromatic saints in Salta's churches, too. Salta is probably our first proper cultural stop since Rio and Buenos Aires, after the wilds of Patagonia and the desert. We did catch a few charmingly provincial churches in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, and Molinos, with their cactus-wood doors and fairground saints. 

Here in Salta you feel the influence of the Spanish crown in the religious architecture and iconography. It's a different register to what I'd seen in Southern Italy, though a similar dedication to graphic and literal depictions of saints and their martyrdom.

We also happen upon a super exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art by children, "Con Su Permesso, Pintores!", which Flo and the Girls absolutely relate to and love. Charming, and a dramatic counterpoint to another exhibit about children just across the central square. 


"Los Ninos de Llullaillaco" were children sacrificed by Incas, their mummified bodies almost perfectly preserved for some 500yrs in the dry, cold air of their Andean tomb, 6700m altitude, where they were buried alive to be reunited with the gods in the sky. It's a tricky one to explain to Jas and Iris, or even to make sense of oneself. But the gold trinkets, clothes and devotional objects they were buried with are dazzling for their immediacy, color and preservation.