Problem: Illicit trafficking of cultural art and antiquities robs communities of their heritage and sometimes, their very identity.

Grassroots Solution: Reclaiming lost patrimony: Cristina Bubba Zamora and the Coroma community in Bolivia fight and win legal precedents to return to them illegally trafficked textiles. 

In many Andean communities, weavings are the highest form of cultural expression: artistic, religious, spiritual they form elements of people’s very identity. Some dating back over 600 years are appreciated for their quality and design. The technical perfection of the weavings, their symbols and colors have made them famous and valuable to museums and collectors in the international art and antiquities market.

But they are more than valuable art objects to the local people, who believe that the spirits of their ancestors live in these sacred weavings and guide them in all aspects of their communities’ lives.

Faced with a high demand by dealers for these textiles, and continued suffering from widespread poverty in Bolivia, a virtual pillage occurred over decades, robbing communities throughout the Andes of their oldest, most precious weavings.

In 1970, UNESCO approved an International Treaty Governing Cultural Property, prohibiting international trade of cultural objects. Many countries signed the Treaty, and a more recent international law, the Unidroit Convention, provides for enforcement of that Treaty.

But the illegal trade did not stop. In l988, while studying the impact of textiles on the lives of the villagers in a rural Bolivian community called Coroma, social psychologist Cristina Bubba Zamora received a postcard from Dr. John Murra, an ethnologist at Cornell University: it was an invitation to an exhibition in San Francisco of ethnic art, with a photo of one of the missing weavings from Coroma on sale for $14,000. Stunned and outraged, she and Coroma elders boarded a plane, alerted US customs officials and the Bolivian embassy, and succeeded in getting an embargo of 1,000 items in the gallery. After months of negotiations and threats of lawsuits based on the international Treaty, 43 ancient weavings were returned to Coroma.

To give teeth to enforcement, Ms. Bubba worked to get the US and Bolivia to approve a bilateral agreement to stop illegal trafficking of all protected cultural objects, art and antiquities protected by Bolivian law. Other countries followed suit. As a result, in Bolivia alone, over 500 cultural objects have been stopped at borders, thwarting dealers’ recent attempts to sell them abroad. In Canada, a textile dealer was convicted of criminal charges of illegal trade and sent to prison a groundbreaking legal precedent enforcing the law.

Now is the time for the rest of the countries who signed the UNESCO Treaty to take similar concrete actions, following the legal precedent set in Canada, to stop the illegal trafficking of cultural goods, Ms. Bubba urges. The laws are in place: it is up to local pressure on customs agents and officials to enforce them.

For more information, contact:

Cristina Bubba, Directora
Fundacion Qipi
Victor Sanjines #2948 3rd Floor
Casilla 14066
La Paz, Bolivia
Tel: 5912-412272
E-mail: qipi_bubba@mail.megalink.com

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