A guaca means more than a tomb in a household or a buried number of material things; it refers to a sacred site in nature, a buried altar full of messages and intentions, an unattainable treasure. It’s a divine, living, and undefined entity that is born, grows, has agency, and produces changes both in space and time. This Indigenous practice was one of the first words adopted by Spanish colonizers in the Americas and since then uncountable guacas were unburied, killed, dismembered, and sold to dealers to be displayed in museums and private collections far away from their places of origin, leaving voids and holes in the memory of their cultural biospheres. 

Convoking the dynamic of a minga, a collective gathering of energies to undergo a task, to close her contribution Altar XR, Diana Rico, a multidisciplinary art practitioner with decades long work with various Indigenous communities of Abya Yala, proposes Guaca XR, the practice of burying an altar as a form of collectively creating an extended reality for what originated during Rising from the Ashes. This guaca offers this material/immaterial memory to the earth to remain there, resting, feeding the roots of the trees, sending messages to underground waters, and communicating with the world below through the mycelium, influencing the surrounding atmosphere. 

Making a guaca means being the keeper of its secrets, feeding her with thoughts, visiting her to wonder if she is still there. Burying a guaca is an act of faith, in an effort to the preservation and renewal of the stories and values of present time, reflecting current hopes and struggles. It signifies a commitment to memory, a way of ensuring that the past remains alive, mediating relationships within communities, fostering connections and continuity. If the bundle is found in the future, the altar will be displayed again as a storyteller of the intentions and messages that gave birth to its myth to be remembered.