277 pre-Columbian artifacts were returned by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) returned to Mexican officials during a repatriation ceremony in the Mexican Consulate in Nogales. Two separate investigations of suspected smuggled Mexican artifacts was assigned to Phoenix and Nogales, Arizona to recover the pieces.
The first, and largest, group of 267 items were first confiscated by Customs and Border Patrol in October 2012, from two Mexican citizens who entered the US at the Mariposa Port of Entry in Nogale. Archaeologists were then asked to examine the collection of arrowheads, tools, and small stone carvings, and they were dated as between 1,000 and 5,000 years old. The Mexican Institute for Anthropology and History estimated that the total value of the artefacts was roughly $124,000.
The HSI Phoenix case began Oct. 8, 2013, when special agents were contacted by a representative of the Chandler Historical Society regarding multiple suspected pre-Columbian Chinesco-Western pottery figures with origins as far back as 100 B.C., which were in the possession of the City of Chandler Museum. HSI special agents promptly met with the museum’s director who turned over 10 Shaft Tomb artifacts for further review and investigation. Through an archeological expert analysis, the authenticity of these artifacts was confirmed as being more than 1,500 years old and originating from Mexico.
Once the works return to Mexico, they will join the National Institute of Anthropology and History’s permanent collection of archaeological materials. “This repatriation comes at an opportune moment, as this year we are commemorating the 500th anniversary of the taking of Tenochtitlan, which was a foundational and heartbreaking encounter between the cultural universes of Western Europe and America” says the INAH anthropologist José Luis Perea González. “Mexico’s pre-Hispanic cultures deserve our sincere recognition, as does their resistance and the presence of the contemporary indigenous peoples.”