Our New Anahuac

Peru foreign minister defends lawsuit against Yale

From AP

LIMA, Peru – Peru sued Yale University over thousands of Inca artifacts excavated by a U.S. scholar because the university “never made a serious effort to negotiate” the return of the items, Peru’s foreign minister says.

“The government of Peru authorized that the pieces leave the country on loan. Thus, Yale has no right to demand certain things in order to return” objects it does not own, Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde told Lima-based RRP radio late Wednesday.

In a suit filed Dec. 5 in Washington, the South American nation is demanding the Ivy League university return what it says are more than 40,000 artifacts taken by famed scholar Hiram Bingham III between 1911 and 1915.

Responding to the lawsuit, Yale said Tuesday it was disappointed that Peru decided not to honor a 2007 agreement that would have returned many of the artifacts.

The university says the deal would have returned all “museum quality objects” after Peru builds a jointly financed museum that meets “standard technical requirements for security and preservation.”

Garcia Belaunde said that Peru already possesses museums that meet international standards for preserving the pieces. He also called “unacceptable” terms that would have let Yale keep thousands of fragments of artifacts as research materials “for 99 more years.”

Peru is demanding that all the pieces be returned immediately and that Yale pay monetary damages on several counts for fraudulently holding the relics for decades. It says the monetary damages will be proven at trial and that each count “far exceeds $75,000.”