Stealing the past: light cast on the underground trade of pre-Hispanic treasures.

The Mixtec Indian with the misshapen head lived in the mountains of southern Mexico at the end of the first millennium A.D. When he died as a teenager, his peculiar skull was engraved with pictures and symbols and used to decorate a tomb of a Mixtec nobleman.

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There it lay for 1,000 years, until it was dug up by grave robbers and later sold to an American art dealer named Frank Stegmeier.

Stegmeier smuggled the skull to Seattle, a court was told, and put it up for sale on the black market. But he slipped up when he tried to peddle it for US$160,000 to an undercover U.S. Customs agent who posed as a rich art collector. A court sentenced the dealer to 41 months in prison as part of a plea agreement, and the decorated cranium was returned to Mexico.

But thousands of other relics smuggled out of Latin America in recent years remain in the hands of private collectors in the United States and Europe. Despite international agreements to preserve national patrimonies, the illicit trade in pre-Columbian antiquities has been steadily increasing, according to scientists and art experts.

Now, an organization that represents museums in 140 countries has unsheathed a weapon last used in a worldwide push to find some of the objects of Mesopotamian art looted from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad after the city fell to U.S. forces. The International Council of Museums has drawn up a "red list" of the types of Latin American objects most at risk.

"We have to act now. Latin American countries are being dispossessed of their heritage at a shocking speed," said Manus Brinkman, the secretary-general of the group. The list, which was distributed widely to art dealers, auction houses, customs agents and police forces all over the world, contains descriptions and photos of 25 types of pre-Columbian and colonial artifacts that are systematically looted and are in great demand on the international antiquities market. The items include jade figurines of gods made by Mexico's ancient Olmec people and decorated Maya altar stones from Central America's Caribbean coast.

ENDANGERED SPECIES 

Like endangered species of animals, the listed types of antiquities are becoming more and more scarce. When they are looted and sold abroad, scholars lose valuable clues to the past, which hinders the understanding of ancient cultures.

Archaeologists, for example, have found only four serpentine masks made by the people of Teotihuacan in central Mexico between the 2nd and 6th centuries A.D. But the scientists believe that hundreds more have been dug up by looters and sold to private collectors outside Mexico. Thought to portray gods and noblemen, the masks could give scholars invaluable information about Teotihuacan society if they were recovered.

"This trade literally steals history," Brinkman said.

It is the council's third "red list," with the color red emphasizing the antiquities' endangered state. The first list described relics from Africa. The second was the list of artifacts looted in Iraq. There are many factors that conspire against Mexico and other nations trying to retrieve their heritage, said Pedro Sanchez, director of Mexico's registry of monuments and archaeological sites.

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A 1970 UNESCO treaty, which Mexico signed, makes it illegal to take pre-Columbian antiquities out of their native lands. But any artifact removed from the country of origin prior to that date can be lawfully owned and resold.

European and American collectors sometimes claim falsely that they owned an antiquity before 1970, Sanchez said, and it can be hard to prove they are lying. Some Customs agents are often poorly trained to search for historical artifacts and are more concerned with finding drugs or people trying to cross borders illegally, Sanchez said. In addition, officials at ports and borders are often tricked by smugglers who put genuine pre-Columbian pieces in containers full of replicas, he said. Latin American nations also struggle to protect the multitude of sites where relics can be found.

GANGS AND OPPORTUNISTS

On some occasions, artifacts have been stolen straight out of museums. For example, last year in Panama, a major museum was robbed at night and lost several priceless items including a unique gold pendant of an eagle made by indigenous Central Americans in the 11th century.

However, on most occasions relics are robbed from tombs that have not been excavated.

In Mexico, home to several of the hemisphere's greatest pre-Hispanic civilizations, the government has declared more than 34,000 official archaeological zones, and the number increases every year with the discoveries of new sites. With a faltering economy and problems of violent crime, it is difficult for Mexico to dedicate resources to protect all of these zones.

"Unfortunately, protecting our heritage is not always at the top of the government's priorities," said Sanchez.

The archaeological zones are sometimes looted by organized gangs, Sanchez said. On several sites, police have found remains of sophisticated encampments and evidence thieves have worked with heavy equipment. "There are some organized crime elements with access to a lot of resources involved," Sanchez said.

But often the grave robbers are opportunistic amateurs who live in impoverished farming communities near the sites. A pre-Columbian relic that brings a price of 1,500 pesos is worth a month's wage to many poor farmers.

Guadalupe Chaparro, a Mexico City-based art collector, has bought nearly 100 pieces of pre-Hispanic art from people who live near ancient tombs and monuments. "It's always easy to find a seller," she said. "You just ask around a village and people direct you to someone who has some pieces in their house."

Chaparro said she usually pays between 500 and 2,000 pesos for antiquities that would otherwise fetch thousands of dollars in U.S. art auctions. Often, she said, she barters for an artifact, giving the seller a camera or a personal stereo.

A Mexico City art dealer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he goes regularly to villages around archaeological sites and buys pieces of pre-Hispanic art. He then sells these artifacts for up to 10 times the price to art collectors in Mexico City

KEEP IT IN MEXICO

While Mexican law prohibits looting from archaeological zones, it allows collectors to keep pre-Columbian art as long they register it with the government. Some 1,500 registered Mexican collectors own nearly 1 million pieces of pre-Columbian art among them. "The law is a bit contradictory," Sanchez said. "But it allows us to know where all the pieces are."

The Mexican tradition of collecting pre-Columbian antiquities goes back to artists from the revolutionary period like Diego Rivera, the muralist. Rivera, who collected thousands of artifacts, claimed he amassed them to keep them out of the hands of foreigners. Many Mexicans share Rivera's nationalistic sentiment about pre-Columbian art. "It is our heritage and it should be within our borders," said Maya Castillo, an official at Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute.

Castillo would like to see an international campaign to return all the antiquities taken out of the country before the UNESCO treaty was signed three decades ago. Among the antiquities are many priceless pieces, including the feather crown of the Aztec emperor Montezuma, which now sits in a Vienna museum. But any such request would likely meet a fierce resistance from the collectors and museum curators who display these objects.

Stacy Goodman, the head of the pre-Columbian division at Sotheby's auction house, which recently put 100 pre-Hispanic artifacts on sale in New York, argued that if historical pieces are scattered around the world, they can be seen by more people.

Sotheby's, she said, stringently checks all the items it sells to make sure they have been purchased and transported across borders legally. "I feel that there is a place for ancient art to be in other countries," Goodman said. "One has to be mindful of how one can share."

Ioan Grillo is a correspondent in Mexico for the Houston Chronicle.