On Wednesday afternoon, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador published a letter addressed to “all public servants of the federal government” to condemn any person or, as he emphasized, against any public servant who contributed to the abduction, illicit traffic and trade in cultural and artistic heritage which, by law, is the property of the nation.
The president pointed out that “anyone who damages, neglects, steals or sells any national asset and allows, as has happened recently, for example, that private auction houses in Mexico and abroad auction off our heritage” and said that an action against of the State policy for the conservation of the Mexican heritage “is not only a crime but an act of dishonesty.”
Therefore, López Obrador announced that he will shortly publish a decree where he will reiterate the legal regulations that are violated when acting “dishonestly”, to the detriment of the country’s artistic, architectural and documentary assets.
Any federal employee who fails to comply with these norms will be punished based on the law and who will be publicly singled out for engaging in these illegal or immoral practices that have allowed private business with the assets of all Mexicans. “
He assured that “most of the objects or documents that are trafficked out of the country were stolen by national and foreign individuals, as well as by public servants, forgetting that these are not theirs but those of the entire nation.”
The presidential letter to the body of officials was shared through the official accounts on social networks of the secretariat of culture Federal, Alejandra Frausto Guerrero, who has brandished as one of the flags of her administration the defense and recovery of archaeological pieces that have historically been trafficked and put on sale abroad.
Last week, the Senate of the Republic approved the adhesion of our country to the Unidroit Agreement, an agreement to which several countries in the world subscribe for the recovery of illicit trafficked assets, a tool that, it is hoped, will be useful to facilitate the recovery of pieces of the that, with constancy, there is speculation in bids organized by houses such as Christie’s, Sotheby’s, Sadde, Cornette de Saint Cyr and Millon, among others, which hide behind local laws to specify the sale of lots belonging to different cultures that occupied the now Mexican territory.
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Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx