Pequeno Museo del Aerolito de Santa Rosa de Viterbo

According to astrophysicists, a metallic aerolite or meteorite like the one from Santa Rosa is a fragment from the heart of a failed planet that exploded millions of years ago somewhere remote in our Solar System, or even beyond it.

The Aerolite of Santa Rosa de Viterbo is the first piece in the Museo Nacional's collection. In turn, it is the first that the public encounters on the route suggested by the Museum and the only one they are allowed to touch. Always drawn to this celestial body, I began to notice several significant facts about its history (for example, the aerolite fell on Good Friday of 1810, the same year as our Independence from Spain), and during the years 2013 to 2015, through almost detective-like research in museums and libraries, I found an unpublished history and gave shape to a small museum: The Small Museum of the Aerolite of Santa Rosa de Viterbo.

I found documents and images showing that the Meteorite in the Museo Nacional is not complete: an extensive surgery was performed on it in 1906 to extract a 300-pound piece and give it as a gift to an American meteorite hunter named Henry A. Ward. Museum visitors do not notice this enormous missing piece because the meteorite is strategically resting on its cut. Therefore, this project aims to provide images and material for an unknown history that, despite having occurred more than 100 years ago, continues to be relevant and resonates with current events in our country.

The Small Museum has a Department of Detective Inquiries, which has carried out several actions, among others, establishing as minutely as possible what happened to the aerolite since it fell on this planet, and subsequently searching for the scattered fragments of this celestial body in various museums, to trace its original form. Said Department found a machine from the era and, in 2018, carried out the recreation of the cut, which is conceptualized as a reproduction of the crime scene. This process, which is considered the central moment of the history, was documented in photography and video.

The Department of Detective Inquiries gathered all the letters and personal diaries of Henry A. Ward during his journey through Colombian lands. Likewise, it compiled a large number of official documents issued by the national authorities and press articles on the matter. The Small Museum also has a Collection of Famous Fragments (pieces and texts) and a Collection of Scenarios (drawings of episodes from its history and photographs of modes of presentation of aerolites at the beginning of the 20th century). The Small Museum has had the collaboration of scholars on the aerolite such as Professor Fredy Moreno and Dr. Howard Plotkin.

A SWORD OF METEORIC IRON

The latest project of the Small Museum (in progress) arose from a paragraph in the travel diary of Jean Baptiste Boussingault, one of the scientists who found and purchased the meteorite for the Museo Nacional in 1823. It deserves a chapter of its own.

According to this diary, when in 1847 the peasants of the region learned that the scientists had bought the meteorite from the girl who found it in 1810, they rushed to offer them other small specimens they had collected from that same meteoric shower. The scientists bought a dozen of them. Some were sent to Germany for study. The others were used to forge a sword of meteoric iron that was presented as a gift to the Liberator Simón Bolívar, engraved with the following inscription:

“Hierro caído del cielo para la defensa de la libertad” (“Iron fallen from the sky for the defense of freedom”)

The inscription confers on this sword a supernatural character, connecting its matter — celestial, in fact — with the will of God and man's struggle for freedom. It therefore seems to have all the conditions to become a mythical sword.

Apparently, around 1824, the sword mysteriously disappeared from his belongings. It is said that, since then, several defenders of freedom have undertaken its search, guided by diffuse rumors. One of them says that the sword lies hidden in an adobe block located in a well-known garden. But where this garden is, and for what reason it is well known to us, remains a mystery.