Mexico lost the last game to recover part of its treasury. Christie’s House of Commons has celebrated this week in Paris the sale of 33 prehistoric art pieces since the Mexican Gobierno powder was made by detainees in the complaints and denunciations presented. In total, the subast, which surpassed Christie’s expectations, 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. A housing fund in Europe offers pieces of Mexican art that are not eaten or sold in the country. The Gobierno protest, trying to detain the sale, called for diplomatic relations. But, finally, these pieces are sold to private collectors and disappear. In this case, the protagonist is the puja Quetzalcóatl, serpiente emplumada. A collection of sculptures, vases, mascaras, plates and figures of Aztec, Mayan, Tolteca, Totonaca, Teotihuacan and mixed cultures, Provenances from cities like Veracruz, Nayarit, Guerrero, Guanajuato, Colima, Chiapas and Chiapas. La Mayoría han sido tallados en piedra o elaborados con barro. Its final prices are from 4,750 ha to 500,000 euros (from 115,000 to 12 million pesos).
The joya of the crown of the subasta has a statue of Cihuateotl, the diocese of the women that mueren in the part, found in the archeological zone of El Zapotal, in Veracruz. The figure of 87 centimeters pertains to the total culture during the classical period (600-1000 dc). The piece belongs to a private Belgian collection and has been used on two occasions in Brussels museums, in 1977 and 1992. It was sold for 12 million pounds, although it was sold by Debbie for what Christie’s buscaban in its initial valuation, which costs 900,000 euros (22 million pesos).
The second most valued piece in the sub is also the most controversial. It was made of a 15-centimeter teotihuacana powder mask that was sold for 437,500 euros (10.6 million pounds). Había is exhibited in two previous occasions: in 2012 in the Museo Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac, in Paris, and in 2018 in the Palazzo Loredan, in Venice. Christie’s case published the piece as one of the most important of the collection, pero the director of the INAH, Diego Prieto, la ha tachado de falsa. “It is a contemporary invoice, it is possible to make a few decades. Ni la reclamaríamos, no es antigua. Probably the hizo some mana expert mexican, pero fecha no muy lejana ”, dijo Prieto in a row of press. Sondeverbod, Christie maintains that the masquerade belongs to Pierre Matisse, hijo minor of the French artist Henri Matisse.
The INAH also considers falsities a mascara and a cuenca with a figure of a talcum powder attributed to the Xochipala culture, in Guerrero. Total fueron sales per 100,000 euros (2.4 million pesos). Prieto considers a delict that hagan passes his works as ancient pieces, but to make sure that he has no doubt that the rest of the figures of the sub-city belong to Mexico, should be removed by force to be exploited and so can not be commercialized.
The Mexican island is meridian in respect: the patrimonial estates are inalienable, indescribable and inexhaustible and are the export of archaeological pieces or of particular relevance. For that reason. INAH has filed a lawsuit against the Mexican tax authorities for taking legal action against the commercialization of these pieces of Christie’s, a loophole in which the External Relations Secretariat is also involved.
Without embargo, France, one of the most expensive houses in this type of complaint and with the fact that there is no bilateral agreement on respect, these transactions exist as a private commercial exchange in which it is not involved. For its part, the housing association defended its sale process: “The objects sold during the sale of Quetzalcóatl were made of transparent and legal forms. The results [recaudados] refuerzan our posture that there is a strong demand for a legitimate market for prehospital art ”.
Mexico has since taken a couple of years a cruise to recover the historic heritage that is found in private collections around the world. Without embarrassment, however, it can always accredit coma, when and who sacrificed these treasures of the country, some of them probably including before the year of 1972, in which elaboration participated the tax hearing Alejandro Gertz Manero.