The Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that, hand in hand with the Ministry of Culture and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (Icanh), six pre-Columbian pieces that were in the city of San Francisco, in the United States, returned to Colombia.
The set of goods, according to the Foreign Ministry, had been acquired by the American Barbara Steele, who decided to return the objects voluntarily to the Colombian consulate in San Francisco in 2018.
“The return of the pre-Columbian pieces is part of the framework of binational collaboration reinforced through the ‘Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Colombia and the Government of the United States of America regarding the imposition of restrictions on the importation of categories of archaeological and ethnological materials from the Republic of Colombia’”, said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The six returned pre-Columbian pieces, which belong to the archaeological regions of the Nariño highlands and the middle Cauca, thus joined the 531 artifacts that have returned to the country between September 2022 and January 2023, mostly on the presidential plane.
“The recovery of these artifacts offers a window to understand the capabilities and skills of the native peoples of Colombia with the art of pottery,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva.
Once the artifacts were in the possession of the Colombian consulate in San Francisco, Ambassador Sonia Pereira and her team received virtual training from Icanh to proceed with the correct packaging and transport of the pieces.
The Icanh was also in charge of verifying the authenticity of the pre-Columbian pieces through the expertise of the group of experts of this entity, as well as issuing the certificate with which the artifacts were endorsed as archaeological heritage of the Nation.
“The recovery of these artifacts offers a window to understand the capabilities and skills of the native peoples of Colombia with the art of pottery,” said the Foreign Ministry.
Immediately afterwards, the Ministry of Foreign Relations concluded: “In this way, the government of President Gustavo Petro has managed to respond to the constitutional mandate to protect its cultural assets with an efficient use of resources and with all the care required for these procedures.”
It is worth remembering that this is not the first time that the national government, through the Foreign Ministry, has recovered pre-Columbian pieces that were abroad. Last Saturday, January 21, 180 objects from Italy arrived in Colombia.
According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of the 180 pieces recovered, 149 were voluntarily handed over by a man identified as Vittorio Zampieri in 2007. The objects, according to the Foreign Ministry, remained at the Colombian Embassy in Rome.
“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. This, after a successful judicial process in favor of Colombia that was promoted by the Foreign Ministry and that diplomatic mission,” added the Foreign Ministry.
Although the Ministry of Foreign Relations did not specify what objects they were, it made it clear that they corresponded to the Calima, Tumaco, Nariño, Tayrona, Quimbaya cultures, as well as the archaeological region of Magdalena Medio.
This is how, after diplomatic work between the Colombian, Italian and French authorities, the 180 pieces were brought to Colombia on the presidential plane from Toulouse, in France, where the Colombian head of state was. with Infobae