La Vida es Sagrada (Life is Sacred) is a photographic series that mocks the Latin American art genera known as "Arte del Desaparecido" (Art of the Disappeared by Political Means). These adverse visual comments do not refer to the artists, but to that that the Arte del Desaparecido has degenerated into: an institutionalized dogma, sponsored by the murderers, to control people with fear.

Distorted by opportunistic intellectuals barricaded behind the pain of the victims´ families, the Arte del Desaparecido is romantically stranded in the deads of the past. The desaparecidos are only those killed by the Latin American emblematic dictaduras. Campesinos that are being killed today because opposing mining projects in Perú, for example, are not considered desaparecidos.

The "Arte del Desaparecido" neither addresses the huge population of homeless people that every day live on the verge of disappearing in Colombia. A silent killing caused, either by systematic structural violence (hunger, illness and accidents), or by plain kidnaping and murder performed by the Limpieza Social (social cleansing squads). These deads are not profitable to our local intelligentzia and its counterparts in the cultural hegemonic centers abroad, because they don´t carry any exotic revolucionario appeal.

Like some sort of religion this art worships a metaphysical being, the desaparecido, something between a "ghost" and a "saint" with a missing body. It supposedly "keeps alive" somewhere and even "resurrects". In conclusion, a miraculous "eternal life". Obviously, this kind of ideas created by "Latin American contemporary art" theoreticians, are well paid by some "Latin American research centers", looking for rapidly packed cultural stereotypes to import.

The murderer proudly enjoys some of this Arte del Desaparecido because it instills fear in the population. What are the psycho-social effects caused by the veneration of icons with fragmented bodies, beatings, shuttings and burns; mass produced by battalions of artists in all thinkable positions and colors? The subliminal effects are intimidation, paralysis and identification with the aggressor; same to those caused by the glistening of the crucifix-sword, a method widely used during the Conquest. The unspoken message is: "If you rebel you are going to end just like him" and finally a paralyzing touch of guilt "Look, he died for you."