Costa Rica $500 Dollars
Short Of Reclaiming
Pre-Columbian Art
The price of a
translation is keeping
the Costa Rican
government from
retrieving a collection
of pre-Columbian objects
it claims were stolen by
a private collector now
living in Germany.
In August 2007, Costa
Rica first learned about
Leonardo Patterson's
collection stored in
Spain since 1997. Its
more than 1,700
pre-Columbian pieces
originate from Costa
Rica, Mexico, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Panama,
Ecuador, Bolivia and
Peru.
Costa Rica is seeking
the recovery of 457 of
those objects it says
are part of its national
heritage.
Patterson's collection
is of incalculable
value, said Marlin Calvo,
head of the Cultural
Heritage Protection
department at Costa
Rica's National Museum.
The objects are "very
beautiful, very diverse,
and in very good
condition," said Calvo.
Patterson, a former
Costa Rican diplomat and
renowned art collector,
was questioned and part
of his collection seized
by Munich police in
April this year, after
he took it out of
storage in Spain and had
it shipped to Germany.
Investigators valued the
objects at more than 100
million dollars.
Costa Rica, along with
Mexico and Peru, say
some of the pieces were
stolen and are
attempting to recover
them, even as Patterson
maintains he obtained
them in Europe, legally.
Since May, Costa Rican
authorities have tried,
without success, to
reclaim the pieces.
Their main problem: the
price of a translation.
Germany first requested
Costa Rica send them a
Letter Rogatory, a
formal request to the
German court for
assistance in the
matter. German
authorities demanded the
letter be handled by an
official translator, who
charges a fee of almost
us$500 dollars.
The price was "more than
double what the (Costa
Rican) court had
authorized," Costa Rican
prosecutor Andrea
Murillo said.
The first Letter
Rogatory submitted was
so poorly translated
that officials in Berlin
rejected it, and
demanded a replacement.
National Museum director
Rocio Fernandez said
accounting rules
prevented the museum
from paying for the
translation, and is
pushing his nation's
Supreme Court for help
in expediting the
process.
Under Costa Rican law,
pre-Columbian objects
found after October 6,
1938 are public property
and can therefore be
claimed by the National
Museum, the custodian of
the country's treasures.
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