Víctor Hugo Mica just wanted to dance.
On Sunday, this 30-year-old Bolivian man went to a party in honor of Pachamama in the Villa Victoria neighborhood of La Paz. There, he ran into a friend who offered him a beer. “I don’t remember anything anymore”, he told local media. The next thing he remembers is waking up inside a coffin, buried at a construction site in the municipality of Acachachi, about 80 kilometers from the capital.
According to his account, getting out was a struggle: he broke the glass with his hand, badly injured himself, and barely managed to escape. Someone found him wandering around the Ceja area of El Alto and accompanied him to the Special Force to Fight Crime. There, he says, they wouldn’t take his report because he was still under the influence of alcohol. “Come back sober”, they told him.
Víctor maintains that he was buried as a “sullu”, an offering to Pachamama. According to some myths, offering a person would make a construction durable. Who left him there, and why did no one want to listen to him?