19:46 | Lima, Sep. 27 (ANDINA).
Peruvian President Alan Garcia has urged Yale University to return thousands of artifacts taken from the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu nearly 100 years ago.
The Peruvian leader said late Monday that these relics must return to Peru before the 100th anniversary of American explorer Hiram Bingham’s rediscovery of the world heritage site on July 7, 2011.
"We don’t want a half-Machu Picchu, we don’t want a Machu Picchu piece by piece, we want a Machu Picchu with everything it had on July 7, 1910," said President Garcia, "a hundred years have passed and that’s enough time to return what they took for study."
American explorer Hiram Bingham was a professor at Yale when he re-discovered Machu Picchu in 1911. The Peruvian government had authorized the transport of the items to Yale for examination and scientific study for a period of 18 months, but the agreement was not respected by the university.
"We won't let July 7 slip by because it's a dividing line: either we come together in understanding the integrity of Machu Picchu or we simply have to characterise (the university) as a treasure pillager," said the president.
Peru sued for the return of the items in 2008, and Yale has been embroiled in a legal battle with the South American nation ever since. Peru dropped six of its 17 charges against the university in March, but is still demanding the return of what the country deems its cultural patrimony.
Peru argues that Bingham helped bring 46,332 artifacts from the site back to New Haven between 1911 and 1916. Many of the items are stored at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History.
Bingham is widely credited with bringing Machu Picchu to world attention, but many historians agree that Peruvian Agustin Lizarraga had discovered the 15th century Inca citadel -perched 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) up in the mountains near Cusco- in 1902, nine years before the Yale archaeologist.
(END) EEP
Publicado: 27/9/2010