Recovered Archaeological Objects Presented in Ecuador

In Ecuador, the Technical Committee of the Fight Against Illicit Trafficking of Goods was founded in 2010 when President Correa (who came to power in 2007) declared it state policy to combat the illegal trafficking of cultural goods. According to the committee, Ecuador is one of the countries most affected by the trafficking of archaeological goods.   Recently over 4,000 trafficked archaeological pieces stolen from Ecuador have been returned to the country and were presented to the press.

It is the single largest recovery of goods the country has seen since the founding The stolen pieces were recovered from three separate collections. The collection Pavesi contained 687 pieces, 667 artifacts were recovered from the Genova Collection, and 3,054 from the Norero Collection. Ninety-five percent of the artifacts recovered are ceramics, while the rest of the pieces are made of shell, metal and bone. Over 4,000 pieces have been determined to be prehispanic in origin, and cultural heritage of Ecuador. Through testing, it was determined that 726 of the artifacts are modern replicas, and 80 were impossible to identify. “We have come together with the arrival of the pieces to Ecuador a few days ago. It has been a very long process. Since 1991 we have been working towards this - that is, about 24 years,” said the cultural minister, Francisco Jose Borja Cevallos in an interview with teleSUR English. The recovery of the pieces is considered fundamental for restoring a sense of national identity under the Citizen's Revolution. As a continuation of these policies, Ecuador will be working to recover goods of historical and cultural importance currently in Argentina and Chile in the next year.

'Recovered Archaeological Pieces Presented in Ecuador',  teleSUR 22 December 2014