Epidemic of Grave Robbing

Plundering pre-Columbian art

Deep in Guatemala's Peten rain forest, five men dig into a curious mound in the earth. They suspect that an ancient tomb lies somewhere beneath it, and before long, their hunch is confirmed. Just below the surface, they uncover a huge limestone slab, or stela, inscribed with Mayan symbols. A little deeper they find the tomb, filled with jade and alabaster jewelry, brilliantly colored ceramic platters and other priceless antiquities created by Mayan craftsmen long before Columbus reached the shores of the New World.

When such ancient treasures are discovered in Guatemala and many other Latin American nations, they legally become part of the national heritage and cannot be taken from the country without official sanction. But to the stealthy diggers in the Guatemalan jungle, the law means less than a Mayan glyph. They are members of one of Latin America's oldest and least honorable professions--grave robbers and clandestine treasure hunters.

Finding their newly discovered stela too heavy to cart away intact, the thieves cut it into six pieces with chain saws. Then, along with the rest of their booty, they load the chunks onto burros and head for the border. Within days their contraband enters the flourishing black market in pre-Columbian antiquities, to be bought by rich collectors in the U.S., Western Europe or Japan.

Plundering of ancient objects has flourished since the days of the conquistadors, who shipped to Spain almost all the gold artifacts that came within their grasp, often melting them down beforehand. But lately the thieves have become more sophisticated and nearly uncontrollable.

Every year thousands of pre-Hispanic objects--Mayan stelae, Aztec jewelry, Incan pottery, Olmec figurines--are smuggled out of Mexico, Central America and the Andean nations of South America. The illicit trade easily reaches millions of dollars annually and involves characters so bizarre they might have stepped out of an old Humphrey Bogart film: shrewd peasants, soldiers of fortune, venal archaeologists, dealers, diplomats and collectors who are ready to pay--or do--almost anything to satisfy their greed.

Because the value of pre-Columbian art spirals upward faster than California real estate, even the largest treasures are not safe. Last month a quarter-ton stone figure of an ancient priest chewing coca, known as El Coquero and dating back some 3,000 years, vanished from its site in San Agustin in southwest Colombia. Ecuadorian officials are trying to retrieve an entire 11,000-item collection of Andean treasures that somehow managed to turn up in Milan and Turin, where they were being put up for sale.

Sometimes the thefts are implicitly sanctioned. In Colombia, a group of guaqueros, as grave robbers are called there, has applied for and received official recognition as a labor union. Another veteran Colombian guaquero is so proud of his career that he has published his memoirs. His calling is not without risk. Earlier this year Arhuaco Indians hacked to death two robbers who had pillaged a temple site in Colombia's Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.

Some art patrons and dealers defend the illegal trade. They contend that it has in fact preserved ancient objects that might otherwise be neglected or lost by countries too impoverished to take proper care of them.

But the grave robbers damage antiquities and also trample on important archaeological clues, such as ash, seeds and bone fragments, that can reveal much about ancient civilizations. U.S. Archaeologist Emil Peterson tells how he and his team of diggers from Quito's Central Bank museum would spend weeks at a site, painstakingly excavating only a few inches at a time in order to preserve all possible traces. Then one morning they would find that thieves had come by in the night and obliterated most of the evidence. Eventually, barbed wire had to be installed and guards posted.

To curtail assaults on their history, Latin American governments have passed stiff new laws against smuggling, stepped up customs inspections and exerted pressure on other governments to cooperate in the fight against the thefts. The U.S., for its part, has made it illegal to import any pre-Columbian object without the approval of its country of origin, and customs officials have become more vigilant.

Museums and prominent art dealers, too, are more careful about acquiring pre-Columbian art. As a result, several stolen treasures have been quietly returned from the U.S. Among them: a rose-colored panel dominated by the Mayan sun god, taken from a temple in the Mexican state of Campeche, and part of an ancient staircase from Tamarindito in Guatemala.

Still, the policing job is enormous. Mexico alone contains at least 11,000 archaeological sites. Says one official: "The whole Mexican army wouldn't be enough to guard all of them." Peru must try to protect the remains of diverse cultures spanning more than 3,000 years. Even when guards and inspections are used, some officials concede that bribery often eases the way for thefts. Yet another complication is a thriving trade in bogus pre-Columbian pieces. Often using the same techniques as their ancestors, the forgers are so skilled that even experts can have trouble distinguishing the fakes.

Despite the formidable obstacles in their way, many Latin American governments now seem determined to save what remains of their ancient national heritage. Explains Silvio Mutal, a Lima-based U.N. official who has been helping in the struggle to preserve Andean culture: "We are dealing with the birthright of whole races. It is vital that these artifacts stay in their countries of origin so that the descendants of their makers can see and learn from their past." sb

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