Amateur sleuths trace stolen Cortés papers to America

IN SEPTEMBER, a New York auction house had a rare treasure up for sale – a five-centuries-old letter revealing political intrigue involving Hernán Cortés, the famed leader of the Spanish force that colonised what is modern-day Mexico.

The 1521 document, offered by Swann Galleries, was expected to fetch from $20 000 (about R280 000) to $30 000. That is, until a plucky group of academics in Mexico and Spain helped thwart the sale.

Searching online catalogues of global auction houses and mining one of the researchers’ personal trove of photos of Spanish colonial documents, they traced its provenance to the National Archive of Mexico (AGN).

An image of that 1521 letter captured by a Mormon genealogy project would play a supporting role.

The amateur detectives unearthed nine additional Cortés-linked papers put on the block from 2017 to last year in New York and Los Angeles by auction houses – including the British firms Bonhams and Christie’s – that were confirmed to be missing from AGN, officials at the Mexico City archive said.

“It’s scandalous,” said one of the gumshoes, María Isabel Grañén Porrúa, a prominent Mexican cultural figure and a scholar of 16th-century Spanish colonial books. “We are very worried, not just by this theft, but also about all the other robberies and looting of national heritage.”

The names of the buyers and sellers of the Cortés documents were never disclosed publicly.

Swann Galleries, which handled a half-dozen Cortés papers, denied wrongdoing. Christie’s, which put two out for bid, said it vetted the provenance of all items it put up for auction. Bonhams, another London firm, auctioned one; it declined to comment. | Reuters