阿根廷：走在归还文物的最前列

2004年以来，阿根廷已将在国内缉获的近5000件文物归还原主国。前哥伦布时期不同文明的艺术得到更多认可，并且通过了保护考古和古生物遗产的法律，这是促成这项新政策的原因。

艾琳·哈特曼（Irene Hartmann）
驻布宜诺斯艾利斯《号角报》记者

这无疑是一起惊天大案，媒体称之为“世纪盗窃案”。2002年7月，几个人挖了一条30米长的隧道，偷偷潜入位于亚松森的巴拉圭国家美术馆的地下室，盗走了五幅油画。其中之一是创作于16世纪的《圣杰罗尼莫》，价值20万美元，画家姓名不详。窃贼们逃离巴拉圭，越境进入阿根廷。此后不久，这幅画流入了阿根廷东北部波萨达斯的艺术品市场。安全部队在2008年追踪到画作的下落。同年，阿根廷将这件艺术品归还巴拉圭。

《圣杰罗尼莫》的回归并非孤立的个案。2004年以来，阿根廷已将在国内查获的4825件被盗文物（艺术品、考古遗迹和历史文献）归还原主国。在过去10年里，阿根廷成为这一地区归还被盗文物的典范。

阿根廷国家美术馆研究负责人玛丽亚·弗洛伦西亚·加莱西奥（María Florencia Galesio）解释说，之所以执行这项政策，是由于人们越来越认识到前西班牙时期文物的遗产价值。她说：“对于前哥伦布时期的艺术，人们长期以来低估了其美学价值，这些艺术近15年来获得了更多认可，并且因此而受益。”

2004年，布宜诺斯艾利斯美术博物馆开设了前哥伦布时期艺术展厅，向着承认这些昔日文明的遗存迈出了具有决定意义的一步。弗洛伦西亚·加莱西奥说：“这一做法证明了，这些展品不仅具有人种学或考古学上的意义，如今它们所蕴含的审美价值也得到了认可。”

哈内尔案件

这位研究员说：“能得到这种认可，在很大程度上要归功于博物馆。但这种现象不是毫无由来的，与之同时出现的是2003年通过的关于保护考古和古生物遗产的法律。”也正是在这一年，阿根廷批准了旨在打击非法贩运的联合国教科文组织《1970年公约》。

国立人类学和拉丁美洲思想研究所（INAPL）接受重任，负责在国家层面实施这部法律，并规定凡是源自考古或古生物学遗址的物品，其所有者必须将其正式登记注册。

2003年法律的通过与“哈内尔案件”有关。这起案件对公众舆论产生了影响，促使人们的思想和立法进程开始发生变化。21世纪最初的几年里，执法机构“机场安全警队”的警员惊讶地注意到，有大量考古物品进出布宜诺斯艾利斯的埃塞萨国际机场。警方向国立人类学和拉丁美洲思想研究所求助，研究所于是为警员提供了如何识别考古和古生物遗存的培训。2000至2001年，大约有10000件相关物品从阿根廷首都的多家商店里缉获，其中大多数属于古董商内斯托·爱德华多·哈内尔（Néstor Eduardo Janeir）。

阿根廷在过去大约15年里归还的众多文物有着难以估量的市场价值。国际刑警组织—阿根廷联邦警察局负责文化遗产保护工作的联邦警务专员马塞洛·埃尔·海贝（Marcelo El Haibe）解释说：“由于禁止买卖这些物品，考古学家不愿给它们估价。其中很多物品是没有价格的；另一些物品可以根据违法者的销售记录估价，可能价值几百、几千、或是几百万美元。”

事实上，在归还原主国的近5000件物品当中，标上“价格”的仅略多于3%。假如这些物品在黑市上出售，总价值大约可以达到86万美元。难道这还不足以说明问题吗？其实，这个数字远不能反映出出这一系列归还行为的重要性，因为其余97%的市场价值尚未被计算在内。再者，这些物品更重要的象征意义是无论如何都无法通过数字体现出来的。

主要受益者秘鲁

秘鲁是这一地区受到非法贩运影响最严重的国家之一，同时也是邻国阿根廷归还文物的最大受益国，追回了88%的被盗文物。其次是厄瓜多尔，但该国只追回了 9%的被盗文物。2016年，七年前被盗的大约439件厄瓜多尔文物和4150件秘鲁文物被送归原主国。此外阿根廷还向玻利维亚、巴拉圭和西班牙归还了文物。

2007年，有人冒充研究人员进入西班牙国家图书馆，偷走了托勒密（Ptolemy，公元2世纪希腊裔埃及天文学家、数学家和地理学家）绘制的地图。后来，窃贼及两张失窃的地图在阿根廷被找到，地图于同年归还西班牙。

从西班牙地图案件中可以看出，文物贩子通常会利用迷宫般复杂曲折的路线穿越陆上和海上边界。埃尔·海贝说：“就是由于这个原因，受害者在本国报告失窃案，被盗物品却往往在国外出售。这确实给调查人员的工作带来了更多困难。”他估计每年的非法交易额约为65亿美元。

这些行动要取得成功，往往需要多国警察部门通力合作，并借助外部人员的专业知识来确定目标。埃尔·海贝说：“如果涉及到古生物遗存，我们会联合其他机构，例如国立人类学和拉丁美洲思想研究所或是贝尔纳迪诺·里瓦达维亚阿根廷自然科学博物馆。我们的成功源自坚持开展跨学科工作。”

最近一次成功行动是在2019年，成果包括从布宜诺斯艾利斯一家商店里缉获的正在出售的115份历史文献。这些文献可以追溯到1824至1900年，价值10000美元，它们在秘鲁被盗，不久将被送回该国。

拓展阅读：

《图腾柱还乡》，联合国教科文组织《信使》，2001年4月
《阿根廷：一场美学革命》，联合国教科文组织《信使》，1990年8月

援引《1970年公约》归还文物的近期案例。

订阅联合国教科文组织《信使》，阅读发人深省的时事文章，数字版免费。

在社交网络上关注联合国教科文组织《信使》：微博、微信公众号“联合国教科文信使”、Twitter、Facebook、Instagram。

Irene Hartmann
Journalist at the Clarín newspaper, based in Buenos Aires.

The press called it “the heist of the century”. The theft was spectacular, no doubt. In July 2002, some individuals dug a thirty-metre-long tunnel to enter the basement of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Asunción, Paraguay. Five paintings were stolen, including San Jerónimo, an anonymous sixteenth-century painting valued at $200,000. The burglars escaped and crossed the border into Argentina. Soon after, the painting was put up for sale in Posadas, in the country’s northeast. But security forces tracked it down in 2008, and Argentina returned the artwork to Paraguay that same year.

The story of the return of San Jerónimo is not an isolated case. Since 2004, Argentina has returned 4,825 pieces of stolen heritage – works of art, archaeological remains, and historical documents – seized on its soil, to their countries of origin. Over the last decade, the country has become a regional example in the restitution of stolen goods.

María Florencia Galesio, director of research at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Argentina, explains that this policy is the result of a growing awareness of the heritage value of objects from pre-Hispanic cultures. “Pre-Columbian art, whose aesthetic value has been under-estimated for a long time, has benefited from greater recognition in the last fifteen years,” she says.

The opening in 2004 of a pre-Columbian art gallery at the fine arts museum in Buenos Aires was a decisive step towards the recognition of these vestiges of past civilizations. “It is proof of the aesthetic value that we now give to the exhibits, beyond their ethnological or archaeological dimension,” Florencia Galesio adds.

“This valorization owes a lot to museological institutions, but the phenomenon did not come out of nowhere – it accompanied the adoption of the law on the protection of archaeological and palaeontological heritage in 2003,” the researcher says. It was also the year that Argentina ratified  the UNESCO 1970 Convention to fight illicit trafficking.

The new legislation entrusts the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano (INAPL, the National Institute of Latin American Anthropology and Thought) with the implementation of the law at the national level, and obliges owners of objects originating from archaeological or palaeontological sites to officially register these objects.

The adoption of the 2003 law is related to the “Janeir case”, which had an impact on public opinion and helped mentalities and legislation to evolve. In the early 2000s, agents of the law enforcement agency, Policía de Seguridad Aeroportuaria (Airport Security Police), were surprised to notice a large number of archaeological objects passing through the Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires. They turned to the INAPL, which trained officers to identify archaeological and palaeontological vestiges. Between 2000 and 2001, around 10,000 objects were seized from various shops in the Argentinian capital. Most of them belonged to Néstor Eduardo Janeir, an antique dealer. 

It is difficult to assess the market value of goods returned by Argentina over the last fifteen years or so. “As the purchase and sale of these objects is prohibited, archaeologists are reluctant to evaluate them. For many pieces, we have no price; for others we make estimates based on the sales publications of the offenders. It could be a few hundred, thousands, or millions of dollars,” explains Marcelo El Haibe, the federal police commissioner in charge of Cultural Heritage Protection, INTERPOL-Argentine Federal Police.

In fact, just over three per cent of the almost 5,000 objects repatriated to their countries of origin have a “price” attached to them. They would be worth about $860,000 in total if these pieces had been sold on the black market. Is that not enough? But this figure far from represents the importance of these restitutions, which would require calculating the sales value of the remaining ninety-seven per cent – a number that would, in any case, not reflect the much more significant symbolic value of the objects in question.

Peru, one of the countries most affected by trafficking in the region, tops the list of states to benefit from the restitution of objects by its Argentinian neighbour – with eighty-eight per cent of stolen goods recovered. It is followed by Ecuador, which has had only nine per cent of its goods returned. In 2016, 439 objects of Ecuadorian heritage and 4,150 pieces of Peruvian heritage, seized seven years earlier, were returned to their countries of origin. Restitutions were also made to Bolivia, Paraguay, and Spain.

Maps designed by Ptolemy – the second-century Egyptian astronomer, mathematician and geographer of Greek descent – were stolen from the Biblioteca Nacional de España (the National Library of Spain) in 2007 by a man posing as a researcher. Two of the stolen maps were found in Argentina, where the thief resided. They were returned to Spain the same year.

As in the case of the Spanish maps, it is common for antiquities traffickers to use labyrinthine routes across borders and oceans. “This is why victims report these incidents in their own countries, while the stolen objects are generally sold in other countries – which does not make the work of investigators any easier,” says El Haibe, who estimates that the illegal trade is worth around  $6.5 billion a year.

To be successful, these operations often require the collaboration of police services of different countries, but also the use of outside expertise to identify objects. “We work side by side with other organizations, such as the INAPL, or the Bernardino Rivadavia Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences, if it is a question of palaeontological pieces. Our success is the result of our commitment to this interdisciplinary work,” El Haibe says.

The most recent successful operation was in 2019. It involved the recovery of 115 documents – written between 1824 and 1900, and valued at $10,000 – which were on sale at a shop in Buenos Aires. They will soon be returned to Peru, from where they were stolen.