[MSN] Art thieves threaten to erase Mexico's past. Heritage agency says 1, 000 works have been lost and smuggled abroad since 1999.

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Art thieves threaten to erase Mexico's past


Heritage agency says 1,000 works have been lost and smuggled abroad since
1999 

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City
Friday November 24, 2006
The Guardian 


When Father Jorge Villa shut up his workshop for the night in La Compañía
Jesuit church in the southern Mexican city of Oaxaca, he left with a proud
glance at the painting of the Virgin he had meticulously restored. The next
morning, July 27, he opened up again to find nothing but an empty frame
where the Nuestra Señora del Popolo had been.
"The thieves knew what they were taking," said the priest, who trained as a
restorer in Madrid. "It is a particularly fine work."
Despite it being a historic work painted in 1570 on the orders of the Jesuit
general Francis Borgia, the theft of the Popolo caused only a minor stir. In
the last few years the looting of colonial-era religious art from churches
around Mexico has become so common it barely counts as news. The loss of
lesser pieces receives no press attention at all.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History, the government agency
responsible for looking after Mexico's ancient and colonial heritage, has
counted close to 1,000 pieces stolen since 1999. Magdalena Morales, the
official in charge of theft prevention, said most were probably smuggled out
of the country and sold in the United States, Europe or Japan.

The Institute's efforts to stem the haemorrhage include teaching customs
agents to spot pieces of fine art and lobbying for the appointment of a
special prosecutor. At the moment some thefts are reported to Interpol, but
beyond that there is little investigation.

Since 1972 it has been illegal for any colonial art to leave Mexico, even
from private collections. Ms Morales knows of no convictions for stealing or
exporting such works, and can recall only a handful of pieces that have been
recovered.

The institute says that from early next year pictures and descriptions of
stolen pieces will be on the internet so dealers and collectors the world
over can see what they should not be buying.

The website is part of a bigger project to register the millions of pieces
of art housed in the country's 60,000 churches. It is a herculean task,
still far from completion after several years.

"The problem is that there are so, so, so many pieces," said Father José de
Jésus Aguilar, who heads the sacred art department in the Mexican bishop's
conference. The effort is also hampered by the lack of computers and digital
cameras and the deep suspicion with which many priests view the government.
For many it is still associated with 19th-century anti-clerical reforms that
transferred all church property to the state.

Valery Taylor, the owner of a New York gallery that specialises in Spanish
colonial paintings and sculpture, said the database would be enormously
helpful to reputable dealers seeking to check the origins of suspicious
pieces, but will do little to address the ease with which stolen works are
smuggled out of the country. "The Mexicans are corrupt and the United States
doesn't care."

It is hard to imagine how some of the stolen works could have been spirited
away over borders without being noticed. In 2001 a 2.5 metre, 300kg (8ft,
660lb) 16th-century wooden altarpiece of St Francis of Assisi was stolen
from a small town church only a block from the police station. It turned up
in a New Mexico gallery, discovered only after a Mexican scholar saw it for
sale on the internet for $225,000 (£118,000).

In Oaxaca, Father Villa holds out little hope that a similar stroke of luck
will locate the Popolo again. "I think it is gone forever," he said.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/