[Archport] Bolivia Wants a Look at Recovered Spanish Treasure

[Alexandre Monteiro <no.arame@gmail.com>]

Latin American Herald Times, 22/10/09

Bolivia Wants a Look at Recovered Spanish Treasure

LA PAZ – The Bolivian government confirmed Wednesday that it has begun diplomatic efforts vis-a-vis the United States to have an expert examine the Spanish colonial treasure salvaged from the ocean bottom in 2007 by a U.S. firm to see if it came from Bolivian silver mines and, if that proves to be the case, to reclaim it.

The head of cataloguing at the Ministry of Cultures, Lupe Meneses, told Efe that diplomatic efforts are being undertaken in Washington to have an expert in Bolivian numismatics examine the booty consisting of some 500,000 silver and gold coins.

The $500 million treasure is already at the center of a legal battle between the Spanish government and Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., which recovered the coins in May 2007.

In a June 3 report, federal Magistrate Mark Pizzo said Spain had demonstrated that the source of the treasure Odyssey salvaged from Atlantic waters in May 2007 was the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish navy frigate destroyed in battle in 1804.

Pizzo concluded the wreck and its contents were subject to the principle of sovereign immunity and that the loot should be handed over to Madrid.

The Mercedes sank in action against a British fleet on Oct. 5, 1804, off the coast of southern Portugal, and Spain claims not only the vessel and cargo, but a right to preserve the gravesite of more than 250 Spanish sailors and citizens who went down with the frigate.

Odyssey, however, contends that Pizzo ignored “clear and convincing evidence of the commercial nature of the Mercedes’ mission at the time of her demise,” a factor the firm “believes legally nullifies the claim to sovereign immunity of that vessel.”

“The majority of the coins aboard the Mercedes were merchant-owned, commercial cargo being shipped as freight for a fee and were never owned by Spain,” Odyssey maintains, and the U.S. courts have yet to definitively rule on the matter.

Meneses said Wednesday that if it proves that the treasure consists of coins minted in the Bolivian city of Potosi, home of the Cerro Rico mines that were the means of support for the Spanish crown, Bolivia also has the right to claim the treasure as part of its national patrimony.

She said Bolivia would enter into a dispute with the United States, Spain and Peru to recover the treasure, even if the U.S. courts ruled that it belongs to Spain because it was aboard one of that country’s vessels when it went to the ocean bottom.

Bolivia believes that its position would find support from a U.N. convention regarding the restitution of national wealth to its place of origin. EFE

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