Mueso Nacional de Antropología Heist
Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology is the largest, most visited, and arguably the most significant museum in the country. It houses the world’s largest collection of ancient Mexican art and artifacts. So when a huge number of those artifacts go missing, it causes a stir.
Christmas Eve, 1985
On December 24, 1985, there were eight guards working at the museum. EIGHT. That number may not seem consequential but this museum is absolutely massive, when you read online about it, it’s recommended you set aside 2-3 hours to see only the highlights of what the collection has to offer. There are countless rooms, each one filled with incredible treasures and artifacts. So you have to trust me when I say eight security guards is so insufficient. There was also no electronic security system at the time.
That night, two men shimmied into the museum through an air conditioning duct into a projection room in the basement of the Maya section. It took them 30 minutes to clear out 124 precious artifacts from three rooms and leave the same way they had come in, never once seeing a security guard.
All the pieces they took were incredibly important and valuable, with some of the most famous including the jade funerary mask of a Mayan ruler, gold items found at the Cenote of Sacrifice, an Aztec obsidian vase in the shape of a monkey, and gold jewelry.
After the heist occurred, the museum, frankly the country of Mexico was embarrassed. “Mortified officials insisted that only foreigners could have committed such a crime against the nation” (Miller, 1989). After making this accusation they had to admit that there were only eight guards and no security system. It was also alleged that the guards had been drunk on shift and not doing rounds as they were supposed to do when glasses with alcohol residue and cookies were found in the museum.
After the theft, many Mexican people thought that the stolen items would appear on the international market. However, experts in the field countered this argument saying that many of the stolen artifacts were way too recognizable and famous to be sold easily. This lead to the fear that maybe the thieves would destroy the stolen items once they found out they couldn’t sell them. The police, for their part, noted that because the thieves only stole the most high-quality, valuable, portable items in the museum they were likely professionals and who knows who they were hired by or what they planned to do with the loot.
June, 1989
The case really didn’t have many developments or updates from the police for a while and Mexico mourned the loss of some of its most important cultural treasures. Then on June 11, 1989, Carlos Perches Treviño was arrested in his home in Satelite, a suburb of Mexico City and 111 of the stolen items were recovered. An arrest warrant was also issued for Ramón Sardina García who was apprehended shortly thereafter. These are the two thieves. Police had learned about them when Perches tried to trade some of the artifacts for cocaine and one of the drug traffickers turned him in.
Upon interviewing them, the police learned that this heist had been planned for six months. The two had visited the museum over 50 times, taking pictures and examining the display cases, hallways, rooms, layouts, and security guard movements. Originally the heist was supposed to take place on New Year’s Day but when they learned about repairs being done on one of the air conditioning ducts it was moved up to Christmas Eve.
So, on the night of December 24, the two men celebrated with their families as normal and then met up at Perches’ house to change into all-black clothes. They carried out the heist and packed all the stolen goods in a canvas suitcase which Perches then hid on top of his closet for the next year. After a year, he tried to sell some of the artifacts for drugs, which ultimately led to his arrest a few years after that.
Unfortunately, only 111 of the 124 stolen items were recovered. It’s unknown where the other items are now. However, it’s still a victory to have these items back. Mexican author Gaston Garcia Cantu said, “it is very important for Mexico to recover the past. We have been stripped of so much of our territory, our resources, our forests. We have been plundered. It is difficult to explain to an outsider what this means” (Miller, 1989).
Now they’re all back on display at the impressive Mueso Nacional de Antropología for everyone to enjoy. The museum has also beefed up security with more guards, a security system, and even protective cases for certain things to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Works Cited
Miller, Marjorie. “Museum’s Priceless Pre-Columbian Artifacts Recovered: Mexico Miracle: Stolen Art Found”. LA Times. 1989. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-06-15-mn-2466-story.html
Yates, Donna. “Mueso Nacional de Antropología Theft”. Trafficking Culture. 2012. https://traffickingculture.org/encyclopedia/case-studies/museo-nacional-de-antropologia-theft/