The Pueblo Maho cultural association of Lanzarote denounces the "high degree of deterioration of the facilities intended to protect the different aboriginal architectural units excavated in the Zonzamas archaeological site." "It doesn't seem enough for the Island Council that Zonzamas is included in the red list of heritage sites due to its poor condition, but it continues to put in the necessary effort to keep it there," they add.
Pueblo Maho states that "the damage experienced by the structures that partially surround the excavated soils with which they try to protect the indigenous constructions negatively affects the conservation of the stone and mud buildings erected by the aboriginal population. Likewise, this implies the irreparable loss of the different layers of tegue and the archaeological record that remains in the profiles and surfaces that were left exposed without any protection."
In a statement, they recall that "in recent years, this cultural association has witnessed the damage caused by negligence, poor surveillance, bad practices, and the terrible and inadequate framework that encloses the site, since work began intermittently from 2015 and its different layers of earth and geotextile that protected it were removed."
"A dense list of errors and bad practices ranging from spills of oily waste caused by heavy machinery used during certain works in the archaeological site itself, floods caused by rainwater that for days and annually have seeped inside depositing on the original mud layers and that dissolved with the water, the inadequate design of the framework designed to preserve the different architectural elements, profiles and archaeological levels, the natural deterioration and aging experienced by the materials used for the enclosure, the excessive heat and its contrast with colder temperatures, among other causes, have caused multiple and irreparable damage to the historical site and consequently has diminished the right to know of the citizens, the true depositaries of this legacy of their ancestors, they criticize.
In addition, they assure that "this tone of aggression against the common heritage by the Island Council continues to occur today, since the measures adopted are not effective: when the installed alarm sounds, it does not mean that the breaks in the plastic sheets are mended, nor that the suffocating heat that pulverizes the mud is softened, since it only adds noise, nothing effective to the place, as we have verified."
The association criticizes the Cabildo, "it has the unavoidable obligation to conserve and protect the place for collective memory. It also has the duty to investigate its historical potential, to keep the material record safe, to exhibit it publicly providing the necessary information for its understanding by the citizens, and it also has the responsibility to value the place and its history,"
Finally, they state that "far from fulfilling its obligations, it allows and promotes the erasure of the inherited vestiges that do not belong to it - since they are of common property - in the face of a shameful and deniable passivity. With its attitude, it tramples on part of the oldest history we inherit, depriving us of an inalienable right of citizenship.
The current images that we can see of the archaeological zone of Zonzamas are more typical of places of another nature and lacking patrimonial value and not of the enclave still considered as the maximum exponent of the aboriginal history of Lanzarote."
