The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, criticized the “arrogant” attitude that the Austrian government had when it was asked to loan the headdress of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma, which is protected in the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna.
During the morning conference this Wednesday, the president recalled when in October 2020, his wife, the historian Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, met with the president of Austria, Alexander Van der Bellen, to make the loan request for the ‘Moctezuma Plume’ ‘, as part of the agenda to commemorate the bicentennial of the Independence of Mexico, in 2021.
“The subject was barely being discussed and they were already saying no“, López Obrador said about the meeting that Gutiérrez Müller had with Van der Bellen and other Austrian officials.
"Se han apropiado de algo que es de los mexicanos", dice @lopezobrador_ sobre el penacho de Moctezuma, y acusa al gobierno austriaco de tener una actitud "arrogante y prepotente" sobre el tema. pic.twitter.com/ahfypJhFDy
— Animal Político (@Pajaropolitico) February 23, 2022
“The issue was not continued because there was that refusal. It is a very arrogant, arrogant attitude and there is no justification for not being able to move (to Mexico). We weren’t even considering (…) that they return it to usit was to be exhibited,” declared the Mexican president.
However, the Museum of Ethnology in Vienna denied the loan of the plume that belonged to Moctezuma II (1466-1520), encouraging that it was “too fragile”, and is made of organic material, any vibration “in the air or the road it would destroy it,” said Gerard van Bussel, curator of the North and Central American collections.
“The truth is they have appropriated something that belongs to the Mexicans as usually happens with everything that has to do with art, culture,” López Obrador declared this day.
Mexico claim
The president pointed out that his administration has launched a campaign for other countries to “return” the historical and cultural heritage “that has been stolen” and that “belongs to Mexico”.
“Not only have they plundered the peoples in terms of their natural resources, their material wealth, but also their cultural, artistic heritage. We are in a campaign to return everything that has been stolen from art and culture that belongs to Mexico. “, said.
Recently, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE) reported that the Embassy of Mexico in the Netherlands held a ceremony in which two Dutch citizens restituted to the Latin American country seventeen archaeological pieces.
Likewise, at the end of January, the Embassy of Mexico in France sent a verbal note to the Foreign Ministry of that country in which it expressed its rejection for the sale of objects of the historical and cultural heritage of the Latin American nation in the auction house Millon from Paris.
Source: MSN Mexico
