The museum that preserves Moctezuma's plume rules out his return to Mexico "at least in 10 years"

An expert restores Moctezuma's plume, in Vienna, in a file image.Cuartoscuro / Cuartoscuro

The "mission" that Andrés Manuel López Obrador foresaw as "almost impossible", that of bringing Moctezuma's plume back to Mexico, will not be able to be fulfilled "at least in the next 10 years", according to Gerard van Bussel, curator of the Austrian museum where the pre-Hispanic piece given by the Aztec emperor to Hernán Cortés in 1519 remains. The headdress of quetzal feathers, gold, silver and bronze is one of the most precious treasures that the president of the Honorary Council of Historical Memory seeks to temporarily recover and Cultural de México, Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, for the patriotic anniversaries of 2021 during her tour of Europe.

But the piece is in a "too fragile" state, the curator reminded the Efe agency, and it would take "a 300-meter plane to compensate" for the vibrations of the transfer.

Any vibration "in the air or on the road would destroy it," Van Bussel asserted.

The authorities and experts of the Vienna World Museum, formerly known Ethnographic Museum, do not dare to move the headdress, not even "if there is an earthquake in Vienna", for fear that it may suffer any damage.

Being able to bring the treasure back to Mexico, which was already claimed in 1991 and 2011 by the authorities of the North American country, was one of the orders that López Obrador made to Gutiérrez Müller, who is also his wife, for his current tour of Europe.

"I recommended [Gutiérrez Müller] to deal with the plume, to insist on the plume, although I told him that it was not an easy mission, that it was like an impossible mission, because the Austrians have completely taken over the plume", López Obrador has reiterated in the morning conference of the Government this Tuesday, after expressing the same the previous day on Twitter.

"We do not yet know what the result will be, now that he returns he will inform us," the Mexican president has warned.

From his meeting in Vienna with the Austrian president, Alexander Van der Bellen, Gutiérrez Müller has left with an agreement signed so that “all Mexicans know about the digitized collection” of the Austrian National Library, as he published on his social networks, but He has yet to mention anything about the negotiations to recover the Aztec emperor's headdress.

"Many of the things that are exhibited in the most important museums in the world were illegally stolen from the countries of origin of the cultures," said López Obrador in the

, and continued: "Many people do not know what it meant the flourishing of Mexican cultures in pre-Hispanic times and we are going to expose it like this.

We are going to try to show all that in [year] 21 ”.

But the treasure will not even be moved to be exhibited, one floor below, in an exhibition about the Aztecs that the museum of the Austrian capital opens this Wednesday.

"I would like to meet the person willing to assume that responsibility", challenged the curator of the North and Central American collections of the Austrian public institution, always in statements to Efe.

The plume was restored between 2010 and 2012 by experts from the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) within the framework of a cooperation project between Mexico and Austria and already then the specialists from both countries agreed that its "fragile state" did not allow the transfer by water, land or air until there is a technology "that can prevent any vibration."

If this danger did not exist, Van Bussel values ​​positively that “countries discuss the return of objects”.

During the visit, Gutiérrez Müller also met with Pope Francis, the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, and the wife of the French President, Brigitte Macron, to request the temporary loan of archaeological pieces to commemorate the patriotic anniversaries of 2021. The Writer and historian has requested two codices that are currently in Italy - the

written between 1540 and 1585 in Nahuatl, Latin and Spanish, and the

or

, which reveals the advances in mathematics and astronomy of the Nahuas - and a series of archaeological pieces to France.