The Alpaca Brought to Mesoamerica from South America

It seems almost ludicruous that John L. Sorenson, in his book “An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon,” on page 295, writes:

“A pre-Spanish figurine from Guatemala looks like a laden cameloid. And on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the middle of the last century, alpaca were reported living wild, A few miles away were the Huave Indians, whose tradition says their ancestors had come anciently from South America, the home of the alpaca and llama.”

Isn’t this the same Sorenson who has written that South America was peopled by those from Mesoamerica, and that Peru held nothing of value to the Book of Mormon? Yet, here he states that Indians living around his narrow neck of land have legends of their ancient ancestors coming from South America and, obviously, bringing with them the alpaca. He also states that a “type of llama definitely lived in North America.”

Now since the llama and alpaca are indigenous to the Andean area of South America, that is, Chile, Peru and Ecuador, shouldn’t this suggest, even to the most cursory student, that if the llama and alpaca showed up north of the Andes, before the time of the Spanish, then they were taken there by emigrants? And to Book of Mormon readers, would that not suggest that these were Hagoth’s emigrants that went northward in his ships?