The repatriated pre-Columbian pieces belong to the Calima, Tumaco, Nariño, Tairona, Quimbaya peoples and the Magdalena Medio archaeological region.
Another 180 Colombian archaeological heritage items, recovered by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Colombian Embassy in Rome, Italy, returned to the country thanks to the Presidency of the Republic, which brought them on the presidential plane on the Toulouse-Bogotá route on last Saturday.
The pieces were received at the Military Transport Air Command (CATAM) by officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH).
This return of heritage assets from Italy to Colombia is in addition to the three carried out between September and December 2022, and was led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Vice Ministry of Multilateral Affairs) and the Colombian Ambassador to Italy, Ligia Quessep; with the collaboration of the Embassy of Colombia in France and the Presidency of the Republic.
The return implied rigorous diplomatic work between the Colombian, Italian and French authorities.
“The Government of President Gustavo Petro maintains its decision to return, with an efficient use of resources, the cultural heritage that has been recovered by the diplomatic missions of Colombia,” said the Vice Minister of Multilateral Affairs, Laura Gil.
The packaging and transport was in charge of the Colombian Embassy in Rome, which obtained the collaboration of the Italian authorities to comply with the requirements demanded by the ICANH for the handling and shipment of the pre-Columbian pieces from Rome to Toulouse and from Toulouse to Colombia. .
This operation also required the accompaniment of the Colombian Embassy in France and the collaboration of the authorities, so that the departure of the archaeological assets from the Toulouse airport occurred without inconvenience.
After two resupply stops in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain) and Belem (Brazil), the heritage pieces arrived in Bogotá.
The pieces
The repatriated objects belong to the Calima, Tumaco, Nariño, Tairona, Quimbaya peoples and the Magdalena Medio archaeological region, and were the object of illicit trafficking and are part of the memory and identity of the nation.
149 pieces were handed over voluntarily by Vittorio Zampieri in 2007, and thanks to the cooperation of the Italian authorities, especially the Carabinieri (Italian gendarmerie corps), it was possible to seize 29 pre-Columbian pieces confiscated in 2014 and returned to the Embassy in Rome, after a successful judicial process in favor of Colombia, which was promoted by the Foreign Ministry and that diplomatic mission.
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Also, thanks to the Carabinieri, the delivery, in 2022, of a confiscated archaeological asset in the Italian province of Pordenone was achieved.
This is the fourth return of cultural property made in the administration of President Petro, after the return, last September, of the 274 elements that were in the Colombian Embassy in the United States.
In addition, 76 pieces that arrived on November 14 from Paris from the Colombian Embassies in France, the Netherlands and Switzerland have returned to the country; and two more that were at the Colombian Embassy in the United Kingdom and that were brought at the end of that month by Vice Minister Laura Gil, who was there for a multilateral meeting.
For the official, “these events honor the shared commitment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ICANH to facilitate the return of cultural property and its appropriation by citizens through research and dissemination.”
The returned pieces will be exhibited at the Palacio de San Carlos (headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) starting next week.