By Steve Neavling
The FBI has returned a manuscript page signed nearly 500 years ago by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés to Mexico’s national archives, decades after it was stolen.
“This is an original manuscript page that was actually signed by Hernán Cortés on February 20, 1527,” Special Agent Jessica Dittmer, a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team, said in a news release.
By then, Cortés had conquered the Aztec empire in 1521, two years after arriving in present-day Mexico.
Archivists discovered in 1993 that 15 pages of the manuscript were missing, likely stolen between 1985 and 1993. Mexico asked the FBI for help last year, and investigators traced the page to the United States, though the agency did not say who had it. No charges will be filed because it had changed hands many times.
The New York Police Department, Justice Department and Mexican government assisted in the investigation. It’s the second Cortés document the FBI has returned to Mexico in as many years.
“Pieces like this are considered protected cultural property and represent valuable moments in Mexico’s history, so this is something that the Mexicans have in their archives for the purpose of understanding history better,” Dittmer said.
