A trove of ancient Mexican artifacts brought to Seattle decades ago is finally going home.
In January 2022, Homeland Security Investigations received a tip that a Seattle resident was in possession of 36 ancient artifacts originating from Chiapas, Mexico, a spokesperson for the agency’s Seattle office told CNN. The resident, whose family member originally held these items, volunteered to return them, the spokesperson said.
Now, those artifacts are one step closer to their homeland.
At a repatriation event Wednesday, Homeland Security Investigations special agents presented the artifacts at the Consulate of Mexico in Seattle and officially turned them over to Mexican government officials, CNN affiliate KING 5 reported.
The exact age of the items and figurines in the collection was hard to determine, according to Homeland Security Investigations, but officials said they are believed to be thousands of years old.
“These things–they were Mexican before Mexico was Mexico,” Head Consul of Mexico in Seattle Héctor Iván Godoy Priske said during the repatriation ceremony, according to KING 5.
Special Agent Robert Hammer similarly noted, “These things have been passed along from family to family; these things have obviously been on the earth for almost 2,000 years.”
“They’ve changed hands several times,” Hammer said. “Sometimes good citizens come forward and say, ‘We’ve come into these things and we’re not supposed to have these things and we’d like to make it right.’”
Since 2007, Homeland Security Investigations has repatriated over 20,000 objects – including historic items, fossils and art – to more than 40 countries and institutions worldwide.
Wednesday’s event is one of many repatriation efforts happening across the country. In March, the FBI returned looted artifacts found in a Massachusetts attic to Japan. More recently, CNN reported the Cleveland Museum of Art will return a stone statue to Libya.
The artifacts’ return may reveal answers about Mexico’s history, Godoy Priske said, as well as shed light on how these objects ended up in Seattle.
“I think there was more of a laissez-faire attitude towards archeological pieces in the early 1900s, which meant that many of these very valuable pieces … left Mexico and came into the hands of private individuals,” the consul said.
This isn’t the first time the artifacts have made headlines: An article from a local newspaper, The Sunday News Tribune, in 1960 pictured the items under the headline, “2 Lakewood Explorers Find Artifacts On Mexican Trip,” KING 5 reported. The article said Tacoma explorer Arnold Snell brought the items from the “remote Chiapas province in Mexico.”
“We now recognize that there was an incredible degree of violence that was enacted on our indigenous population through the process of the conquistadors,” Godoy Priske said. “There was a high degree of willful destruction of Mesoamerican artifacts during Mexico’s history, being able to recover these artifacts begins to heal that gap.”
The Consulate of Mexico in Seattle said Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History will determine the future of the artifacts, but given their “historical significance,” it’s likely they will be placed in a museum.
