Lawyers on the Inca Trail
Peru threatens to sue Yale over Machu Picchu artifacts
On July 24, 1911, an eight-year-old boy led a 35-year-old Yale University lecturer named Hiram Bingham up a steep path through the Peruvian jungle. Bingham was looking for the city of Vitcos, one of the last Inca strongholds to be sacked by Spanish invaders in 1572.
Instead what he saw were cascading terraces and a clearing bound on two sides by temples, on the third by a view of a snow-capped peak, and on the fourth by the ridge that lent these ruins its name: Machu Picchu.
The boy, who lived with his family among the Inca ruins, could hardly suspect that his kindly service to this ambitious explorer would lead to an international row almost a century later.
This weekend Peru announced it would sue Yale University in order to force the return of 46,000 artefacts it says were taken from the site of Machu Picchu.
It’s the latest chapter in tussle between the university famed for its archaeological collection and the country whose magnificent ruins are the number one tourist destination. The case carries significance because the eventuality of a ruling in favour of Peru would pave the way for other countries such as Greece and Egypt to reclaim their national treasures from the vaults of European and North American museums.
However, everything about the case, even including the actual number of artifacts at stake, is disputed. But things weren’t always like that.
Bingham, the son of famous Hawaiian missionaries and married into money, got all the backing he needed from Peru’s president Augusto Leguía, when starting out on his archaeological expedition. According to the author Christopher Heaney, who is working on a book about the fight over the Machu Picchu treasures, Leguía and the Lima business community backed the explorer with everything from military escorts to free train passages.
However, in 1912 when Bingham returned to Peru, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and with the intention of hauling as much as possible of his discovery back to Yale, the mood in Peru had changed. Only after vehemently lobbying did Bingham manage to get permission to export the artefacts. But with a condition. "The Peruvian Government reserves to itself the right to exact from Yale University and the National Geographic Society of the United States of America the return of the unique specimens and duplicates” read the crucial clause in the congressional resolution.
In 1920 Peru demanded the return of "original and duplicate objects taken from Peru,” citing the 1912 resolution. Months later 47 crates arrived. According to Peruvian experts, these contained “worthless bones and shards of clay which weren’t even found at Machu Picchu.”
There the fight ended for more than eighty years, until a full flung exhibition of the Inca treasures by Yale’s Peabody Museum went on tour in 2003. The exhibition provoked a reaction in Peru, then governed by Alejandro Toledo, the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent.
Toledo, who had been inaugurated at the stunning site of the Inca city, called for the artefacts to be returned. At first the talks took place behind closed doors, but in 2006 things came to a head and Peru threatened to sue.
But Toledo never acted on his threat and after the election of Alan García as president in 2006 and some soul-searching by Yale the two sides drew up a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). It was hailed by Yale as “a model for resolving cultural disputes, balancing respect for Peru's cultural patrimony with the interests of the scholarly community.”
In September of 2007 Peru agreed to the MOU, which gave the country “legal title” to the 5,700 artifacts Yale claims it has in its possession. Closer inspection revealed that the terms were far from favourable for Peru.
According the MOU Peru receives around 370 “museum-quality” artefacts (the number varies between 384, to 369, to 329, depending on who you talk to), to be displayed in a museum, which is still to be finished as well as part (around 15%) of the “research collection”. Yale will also foot the bill for a travelling exhibition and academic exchange. The rest of the artefacts, however, remain in the United States thanks to the “usufructuary rights” that Yale retains for the duration of 99 years.
That's not all. According to Heaney, the MOU makes no mention of the gold smuggled out of Peru which ended up at Yale – the only gold ever found by the Bingham expedition – or of the almost half million dollars (by today’s money) worth of artifacts the explorer bought from Peruvian antique dealers who smuggled the pieces to Yale.
To make matters worse, in April of this year Peruvian officials inspecting the collection at New Haven, claimed that the Machu Picchu artifacts numbered more than 46,000 instead of the 5,700 Yale stated it had. The university insists that the difference comes down to different ways of counting the same collection of artifacts, often broken into many shards.
Meanwhile, the National Geographic Society sided with the Peruvian government, claiming the artifacts were “on loan” to Yale. “We were part of that deal [of 1912], National Geographic was present there. We know what was said and which objects were on loan and which should be returned,” Terry García, the institute’s vice-president said in an interview in June.
Negotiation in September of this year, headed by Peru’s foreign minister Garcia Belaunde seemed to bring a friendly settlement within reach. But in fact Belaunde’s involvement was short-lived and negotiations soon faltered. So now it’s up to the courts.
But while Peru contacts its high profile Washington D.C. attorney, a local news report from late October raises the question whether Peru's government isn't perhaps more interested in scoring easy electoral points than in preserving its cultural heritage.
On October 20 La Republica newspaper revealed how Peru's Economy ministry has cut resources for Machu Picchu so drastically that it and other major archeological sites are having serious trouble paying for maintenance, let alone new museums. The García government, it would seem, has every intention of exploiting the Inca legacy, but little intention of paying for it.
On July 24, 1911, an eight-year-old boy led a 35-year-old Yale University lecturer named Hiram Bingham up a steep path through the Peruvian jungle. Bingham was looking for the city of Vitcos, one of the last Inca strongholds to be sacked by Spanish invaders in 1572.
Instead what he saw were cascading terraces and a clearing bound on two sides by temples, on the third by a view of a snow-capped peak, and on the fourth by the ridge that lent these ruins its name: Machu Picchu.
The boy, who lived with his family among the Inca ruins, could hardly suspect that his kindly service to this ambitious explorer would lead to an international row almost a century later.
This weekend Peru announced it would sue Yale University in order to force the return of 46,000 artefacts it says were taken from the site of Machu Picchu.
It’s the latest chapter in tussle between the university famed for its archaeological collection and the country whose magnificent ruins are the number one tourist destination. The case carries significance because the eventuality of a ruling in favour of Peru would pave the way for other countries such as Greece and Egypt to reclaim their national treasures from the vaults of European and North American museums.
However, everything about the case, even including the actual number of artifacts at stake, is disputed. But things weren’t always like that.
Bingham, the son of famous Hawaiian missionaries and married into money, got all the backing he needed from Peru’s president Augusto Leguía, when starting out on his archaeological expedition. According to the author Christopher Heaney, who is working on a book about the fight over the Machu Picchu treasures, Leguía and the Lima business community backed the explorer with everything from military escorts to free train passages.
However, in 1912 when Bingham returned to Peru, sponsored by the National Geographic Society and with the intention of hauling as much as possible of his discovery back to Yale, the mood in Peru had changed. Only after vehemently lobbying did Bingham manage to get permission to export the artefacts. But with a condition. "The Peruvian Government reserves to itself the right to exact from Yale University and the National Geographic Society of the United States of America the return of the unique specimens and duplicates” read the crucial clause in the congressional resolution.
In 1920 Peru demanded the return of "original and duplicate objects taken from Peru,” citing the 1912 resolution. Months later 47 crates arrived. According to Peruvian experts, these contained “worthless bones and shards of clay which weren’t even found at Machu Picchu.”
There the fight ended for more than eighty years, until a full flung exhibition of the Inca treasures by Yale’s Peabody Museum went on tour in 2003. The exhibition provoked a reaction in Peru, then governed by Alejandro Toledo, the first Peruvian president of indigenous descent.Toledo, who had been inaugurated at the stunning site of the Inca city, called for the artefacts to be returned. At first the talks took place behind closed doors, but in 2006 things came to a head and Peru threatened to sue.
But Toledo never acted on his threat and after the election of Alan García as president in 2006 and some soul-searching by Yale the two sides drew up a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). It was hailed by Yale as “a model for resolving cultural disputes, balancing respect for Peru's cultural patrimony with the interests of the scholarly community.”
In September of 2007 Peru agreed to the MOU, which gave the country “legal title” to the 5,700 artifacts Yale claims it has in its possession. Closer inspection revealed that the terms were far from favourable for Peru.
According the MOU Peru receives around 370 “museum-quality” artefacts (the number varies between 384, to 369, to 329, depending on who you talk to), to be displayed in a museum, which is still to be finished as well as part (around 15%) of the “research collection”. Yale will also foot the bill for a travelling exhibition and academic exchange. The rest of the artefacts, however, remain in the United States thanks to the “usufructuary rights” that Yale retains for the duration of 99 years.
That's not all. According to Heaney, the MOU makes no mention of the gold smuggled out of Peru which ended up at Yale – the only gold ever found by the Bingham expedition – or of the almost half million dollars (by today’s money) worth of artifacts the explorer bought from Peruvian antique dealers who smuggled the pieces to Yale.
To make matters worse, in April of this year Peruvian officials inspecting the collection at New Haven, claimed that the Machu Picchu artifacts numbered more than 46,000 instead of the 5,700 Yale stated it had. The university insists that the difference comes down to different ways of counting the same collection of artifacts, often broken into many shards.
Meanwhile, the National Geographic Society sided with the Peruvian government, claiming the artifacts were “on loan” to Yale. “We were part of that deal [of 1912], National Geographic was present there. We know what was said and which objects were on loan and which should be returned,” Terry García, the institute’s vice-president said in an interview in June.
Negotiation in September of this year, headed by Peru’s foreign minister Garcia Belaunde seemed to bring a friendly settlement within reach. But in fact Belaunde’s involvement was short-lived and negotiations soon faltered. So now it’s up to the courts.
But while Peru contacts its high profile Washington D.C. attorney, a local news report from late October raises the question whether Peru's government isn't perhaps more interested in scoring easy electoral points than in preserving its cultural heritage.
On October 20 La Republica newspaper revealed how Peru's Economy ministry has cut resources for Machu Picchu so drastically that it and other major archeological sites are having serious trouble paying for maintenance, let alone new museums. The García government, it would seem, has every intention of exploiting the Inca legacy, but little intention of paying for it.
posted by PIT @ 11:26 AM
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