Arturo Jimenez Borja

Arturo Jiménez Borja was a Peruvian physician, ethnologist, painter, and writer. He was born on July 21, 1908, in Tacna, Peru, and was a first order descendant of the last indigenous curaca in Tacna, Toribio Ara. He attained the title of doctor-surgeon in 1943 at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, heading the departments of Therapeutics and Endocrinology at the Faculty of Medicine, San Fernando. He devoted his studies to indigenous clothing, masks, and musical instruments and achieved the restoration of ancient monuments in areas such as Puruchuco, Pachacamac, and Paramonga, building a museum in each of them. He was director of the museum site of Pachacamac (1956) and Director of the National Museum. He donated his collection of musical instruments from Peru to the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. His collection of masks from all over Peru, the most comprehensive and most valuable, admired by friends and strangers, can now be seen very well maintained, in the Museum of Arts and Traditions of the Riva Aguero Institute at the Catholic Pontifical University in Peru. He was murdered on January 13, 2000, in Lima.