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Canada, Peru jointly move to halt auction of Peruvian artefacts

Lima says both sides worked together to stop the auction that would've sold 20 pieces from the Andean country's pre-Hispanic Chancay culture.

This handout picture released by Peru shows a bracelet from the pre-Hispanic Chancay culture offered in a virtual auction by a Canadian company.

Officials in Peru and Canada have moved jointly to stop the virtual auction of 20 ancient pieces from Peru's pre-Hispanic Chancay culture, the Foreign Ministry in Lima announced.

It said on Saturday that Peru's embassy in Canada and the Consulate General in Toronto had taken the action together.

Waddington's, a Toronto-based Canadian auction company, had obtained the pieces through a web portal called The Saleroom, the statement said.

The planned sale came to the attention of Peru's Culture Ministry.

Among the archeological objects was a necklace made of seeds.

The pre-Incan Chancay culture developed in the valleys of Peru's central coast between the years 1200 and 1470.

The Foreign Ministry in Lima has been working to recover cultural assets taken from the country.

Both Peru and Canada are signatories of the 1970 Unesco convention that promotes the fight against illicit traffic in cultural artefacts.

Rescuing historical heritage

Several Latin American countries have been working in recent years to restore their ancient artefacts.

Last week, the embassies of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Peru in France denounced an auction that would sell many pre-Columbian artefacts and demanded the items to be returned.

The Mexican government has put a huge effort trying to rescue its historical heritage taken from the country, with almost 10,000 goods have been recovered since 2018, according to authorities.

In March this year, Mexico received 43 items from Italian authorities while in December the Netherlands returned 223 pre-Hispanic artefacts to Mexico.

SOURCE: TRTWorld and agencies