Statue of the goddess Cihuateotl auctioned at Christie's for 12 million pesos.
Mexico has lost the last fight to recover part of its treasures.
The auction house Christie's held this week in Paris the sale of 33 pieces of pre-Hispanic art without the Mexican government being able to do anything to stop it despite the claims and complaints filed.
In total, the auction, which has exceeded Christie's expectations, has raised three million dollars (2.53 million euros, 61 million pesos).
Among the figures sold are three that the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) considers false.
The story is not new.
An auction house in Europe offers pieces of Mexican art that is not known how or when they left the country.
The government protests, tries to stop the sale, appeals to diplomatic relations.
But eventually those pieces are sold to private collectors and disappear.
In this case, the protagonist is the puja
Quetzalcóatl, a feathered serpent
.
A collection composed of sculptures, vessels, masks, plates and figures from the Aztec, Mayan, Toltec, Totonac, Teotihuacan and Mixtec cultures, from states such as Veracruz, Nayarit, Guerrero, Guanajuato, Colima, Chiapas and the State of Mexico.
Most have been carved in stone or made with clay.
Their final prices have ranged from 4,750 to 500,000 euros (from 115,000 to more than 12 million pesos).
The jewel in the auction's crown was a statue of Cihuateotl, the goddess of women who die in childbirth, found in the archaeological zone of El Zapotal, in Veracruz.
The 87-centimeter figure belonged to the Totonac culture in the classical period (600-1000 AD).
The piece belonged to a private Belgian collection and had been exhibited twice in museums in Brussels, in 1977 and 1992. It has been sold for 12 million pesos, although it has remained below what Christie's were looking for in their initial valuation. which amounted to 900,000 euros (about 22 million pesos).
The second most valued piece in the auction is also the most controversial.
It is a 15-centimeter Teotihuacan stone mask that has been sold for 437,500 euros (10.6 million pesos).
It had been exhibited on two previous occasions: in 2012 at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum, in Paris, and in 2018 at the Palazzo Loredan, in Venice.
Christie's house has publicized the piece as one of the most important in the collection, but the director of INAH, Diego Prieto, has called it a fake.
“It is contemporary in style, possibly from a few decades ago.
Nor would we claim it, it is not old.
It was probably done by an expert Mexican hand, but not too far away, ”Prieto said at a press conference.
However, Christie's maintains that the mask belonged to Pierre Matisse, the youngest son of French artist Henri Matisse.
The INAH also considers false a mask and a bowl with a figure of a frog carved in stone attributed to the Xochipala culture, in Guerrero.
In total they were sold for 100,000 euros (about 2.4 million pesos).
Prieto considers it a crime for them to pass off these works as antique pieces, but above all he assures that there is no doubt that the rest of the figures in the auction belong to the people of Mexico, they must have been plundered and therefore cannot be marketed.
Mexican law is perfect in this regard: patrimonial assets are inalienable, imprescriptible and unattachable and it is a crime to export archaeological pieces or pieces of particular relevance.
For that reason.
The INAH filed a complaint with the Mexican prosecutor's office to take legal action against the commercialization of these Christie's pieces, a fight in which the Ministry of Foreign Relations was also involved.
However, France, one of the hard bones in this type of claims and with which there is no bilateral agreement in this regard, understands these transactions as a private commercial exchange in which it does not get involved.
For its part, the auction house has defended its sale process: “The objects sold in the sale of Quetzalcóatl were offered in a transparent and legal way.
The results [collected] reinforce our position that there is a strong demand for a legitimate market for pre-Hispanic art ”.
Mexico has been on a crusade for a couple of years to recover the historical heritage found in private collections around the world.
However, it is against him that he cannot always prove how, when and who took those treasures out of the country, some of them probably even before the 1972 law, in whose preparation the now prosecutor Alejandro Gertz Manero participated.