Mexican authorities have yet to contact U.S. auction house about stolen Hernán Cortés manuscript

Swann Auction Galleries

, a New York-based auction house, told EL UNIVERSAL that, so far, it has not been contacted by legal authorities nor by the U.S. or Mexican government or Mexico’s General Archive (AGN) in connection to the stolen historical document on Hernán Cortés that was going to be sold on September 24.

Alexandra Nelson, marketing chief at Swann Auction Galleries, explained that if the corresponding authorities confirm that the manuscript from 1521 was actually stolen from the AGN’s facilities, it will be returned.

The archive of the Spanish colonizer, which was part of lot 331 of the auction titled “Printed & Manuscript Americana,” was removed from the catalog as soon as they were notified of the circumstances, as confirmed by Nelson.

“When Swann was warned of the situation, we immediately contacted the consignor and removed the lot from the auction” she asserted.

Recommended: 

As of what will happen now, the spokeswoman for the auction house explained that they are willing to cooperate with the investigation and ensure the return of the document to Mexico. Nevertheless, since they have not been contacted by any Mexican authority or institution, they cannot provide more information in this respect.

Marco Palafox, legal director of the AGN, told EL UNIVERSAL they had filed a complaint to Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (FGR) with the objective of recovering the Cortés’s manuscript. “The complaint was presented on September 4. I think the Foreign Affairs Ministry is aware of it.”

The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) also filed a complaint to the FGR “against those who are responsible for the auction” of “ historical documents that, according to the opinion of experts from this Institute, are considered Historical Monuments, according to what is established on the Federal Law on Artistic and Historical Monuments and Archeological Sites,” as it said through a release that does not mention the date when the complaint was filed nor the number of Historical Monuments that are part of the auction comprised of 378 lots.

The paper that was going to be auctioned is a Request for supplies that dates from December 12, 1521, and that was part of the Jesus Hospital Fund 1520-1925 that gathers the most ancient archives preserved by the AGN.

Recommended: 

The document was found at Swann Auction Galleries’ website by a group of researches that warned the INAH and the AGN. “Leaving the AGN with a document is almost impossible; that tells us it must have been someone who can get in and out without being checked; the person that can do it is someone from the AGN,” asserted Michel Robert Oudijk from the UNAM’s Institute of Philological Research.

The stolen document was part of docket 271 exp. 13, and was classified as “Request that, about the provisions brought by Cristóbal de Tapia, was done by Hernando Cortés, general captain and highest justice in New Spain, Pedro de Alvarado, Bernardino Vázquez de Tapia, and Cristóbal Corral, in front of Hernán Sánchez de Aguilar, public scribe and of the council of the Segura de la Frontera villa, Coyoacán, December 12, 1521.”

This manuscript mentions Pedro de Alvarado as the ordinary mayor of the Tenotchtitlán town hall.

The manuscript was part of the Jesus Hospital Fund, which has been widely studied by researcher María del Carmen Martínez Martínez from the University of Valladolid, who photographed the historical document in 2010.

mp