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Peru backs away from Machu Picchu pact
May/June 2008
by Bruce Fellman

A tentative agreement between Yale and Peru over material from the ancient Inca site Machu Picchu appears to have fallen apart. Last September, negotiators had viewed the collection and agreed on a “memorandum of understanding” to the effect that about 350 museum-quality objects would to be returned quickly to Peru, while the vast majority of material could remain at Yale for study purposes for up to 99 years. But in April, the government instead called on Yale to return the entire collection.

The Peruvian government’s change of heart was announced publicly after a review, conducted in early March by researchers from Peru’s National Institute of Culture, of the Machu Picchu material (collected by Yale historian Hiram Bingham III '98 in 1912 and held by the Peabody Museum of Natural History for nearly 100 years). The team examined the contents of hundreds of boxes and museum shelves, holding artifacts ranging from ceramics to skeletal remains, and then compared the material with an inventory prepared by Yale.

Yale’s inventory, posted online in early March, includes photographs showing that many of its entries contain numerous fragments, such as sherds belonging to a single pot. Due to the difficulty of counting such material, says Yale’s general counsel and lead negotiator Dorothy Robinson, Yale had never attached specific numbers to the collection. But on April 14, the Peruvian government issued a statement suggesting that it had not known the collection’s size. Peru’s researchers, said Hernan Garrido Lecca, minister of health and lead negotiator, “determined that the amount, believed at first to be over 4,000 pieces of pottery, jewelry, and bones, is actually ten times this "The official Peruvian number is now “46,332 relics.”

The change in Peru’s position comes amid opposition in that country to the memorandum of understanding. In a February 23 op-ed in the New York Times, Eliane Karp-Toledo, former first lady of Peru and a vocal critic, said that the memorandum should be “discarded” and renegotiated “based on the recognition of Peru’s sovereign right to all that was taken from Machu Picchu.” Her viewpoint was echoed in an open letter from 23 academics in Peru and other countries, who called for repatriation of Yale’s and other U.S. collections; and in a proclamation by government officials of Cuzco, challenging the memorandum’s constitutionality.

At press time, Yale was weighing its options. “It would appear that the Peruvians are seeking to change the terms of the discussion,” Robinson wrote in an e-mail to the alumni magazine. “Clearly this is a shift, and we have at this point not yet responded.”  

Readers respond
Rights vs. right

With reference to the Machu Picchu relics, one is always reluctant to intrude in a dispute between others which will hopefully settle, but this is one instance where some historical perspective may be relevant.

When I attended Yale College, my family lived in Peru. In my junior year I wrote a paper on the Incas for George Kubler’s extraordinary History of Latin American Art course. I sought to see some of the thousands of Peruvian huacos that Bingham had brought to Yale from Macchu Picchu, but I was told they were packed away in basements throughout the university and not available for students (much less the public) to see. I was also told those objects were rarely exhibited. I protested loudly to the Yale administration then that those objects, which formed an important part of the cultural patrimony of Peru, belonged where they had come from, and not in New Haven basements.

Fast forward 37 years, and little has changed. While Yale argues about contract rights, I believe this dispute is not about “rights,” but about “right.” Those objects have been in New Haven for almost a century, most of it spent in basements, because they were taken in an era when many in Northern Europe and the United States thought it not only proper, but at times even their burden, to take other cultures' heritage and put it in private collections, universities, museums, and basements many thousands of miles away from its rightful, usually-swarthier heirs. I personally believe it morally inconsistent for Yale now to disavow that time and way of thinking, yet seek to retain its fruits.

As to the alleged “safety” issue, respectfully, Peru is perfectly capable of protecting its heirlooms, as many of its beautiful museums demonstrate.

Carlos Loumiet '73, '78JD

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