In a move she called “unusual, really special”, Argentina’s president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner says the country will return more than 4,000 archaeological artefacts that were deemed to be stolen to Peru and Ecuador.
The announcement was made at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Argentina’s national museum of fine arts, on 22 August during a nationally televised ceremony to inaugurate 18 renovated rooms dedicated to 20th-century art. Ambassadors from both Peru and Ecuador were present.
“It is an honour and a pleasure to restore the cultural wealth of countries such as Ecuador and Peru in a world where such wealth has so often been taken away,” said de Kirchner, adding that many “great museums of the world” display stolen objects from Latin America and other regions.
For the moment, there are no details on the origin of the objects or when Argentina plans to return them. Last year, Yale University returned a number of Incan artefacts in its collection to Peru.