The Colombian government repatriated six pre-Columbian pieces that a US citizen returned voluntarilythe Colombian Foreign Ministry reported this Saturday, with which the country has recovered 537 pieces of cultural heritage in the last five months.
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According to a statement from the Colombian Foreign Ministrythe pieces are samples of the creations of cultures belonging to archaeological regions of the Nariño highlands and Cauca medium, which developed in the southwest of the country.
“The set of assets had been acquired by the citizen Barbara Steele who voluntarily returned them in July 2018 to the Consulate in San Francisco,” the Foreign Ministry detailed.
Among the items returned are vessels and other pieces, several of them from the Quillacinga culture, which developed mainly in what is now the department of Nariño, on the border with Ecuador.
The return of the pre-Columbian pieces is the product of binational collaboration reinforced by agreements between Colombia and the United States regarding the “imposition of restrictions on the importation of categories of archaeological and ethnological materials from the Republic of Colombia”.
The pieces were brought to Colombia on the presidential plane that transported President Petro on his recent visit to the United States, which included a meeting with his US counterpart, Joe Biden.
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The returned pieces are added to the 531 that have returned to the country between September 2022 and January 2023, most of them transported in the presidential plane, thanks to the impulse of the Ministry of Foreign Relations, the Presidency of Colombia and Casa Militar. EFE