17,878 cultural assets have been repatriated under the Fourth Transformation

Yes. Thank you very much. Good morning. With your permission, President. Today I come with a wonderful team: Undersecretary Marina Núñez, who has carried out important work on living heritage. She will present at the end the innovation workshop of Original, which at one point the President commented on, as part of a comprehensive policy of work with artisans. We have already spoken about Original, about FONA, about the new Museum of Indigenous and Afro-Mexican Peoples, which we invite you to visit, and she will expand on a fundamental topic related to innovation, collective rights through an ethical perspective where there is no intermediation, where credit is given to the artisans, but at the same time they can create with other young designers new pieces that are also very interesting and that will be sold throughout our FONA store network. She will also present Omar Vázquez, Director of INAH, who will begin the presentation to delve into a topic of archaeological heritage, related to this museum we just inaugurated, which we also spoke about very generally, but which I want to specify now with him: the site museum that was closed for 20 years in Teotihuacán and that today opened to the public with more than 90% of pieces never before exhibited. So, I want Omar to tell us more about where these pieces come from, the depth of this exhibition, because beyond the archaeological heritage we have, of course, with the pyramids and everything we can find, it is fundamental to continue the work of vocation, of research, and of putting all that heritage in value in the context of living cultures as well, and that is exactly what this exhibition is about. So today Omar will talk about the museum, and we will also give very important data on the recovery of heritage, of those pieces that, in coordination with other states, with the Foreign Ministry, with other countries, have been recovered as a very important policy of this government, and that many more alliances with other countries are being added to recover many of the pieces that are also part of what is exhibited in many of these spaces. So, Omar, if you will allow me, President, let Omar present the details and the depth of the museum, and we also bring a video. Thank you.

With your permission, President. Good morning to everyone. I am very pleased to greet you and share with you, above all, a program that for the Government of Mexico and by instructions of President Claudia Sheinbaum, we have been working hard on in collaboration with the Secretariat of Culture of the Government of Mexico and also, of course, with the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, to be able to recover, repatriate the memory, the identity of the peoples of Mexico through permanent dialogue with different governments of the world, which has allowed us above all to recover historical pieces, archaeological pieces of the greatest importance for the Mexican nation. Next slide, please.

Well, to tell you that in one year and nine months of the current administration, ten times more cultural objects have been repatriated than during the term of Enrique Peña Nieto. It is a very relevant and very important figure. And in the current administration, we have recovered what in Felipe Calderón's term represented 68% of what he recovered in six years, in his entire term. Next slide, please.

Here is the chart, we can see it. We have 3,700 — here I see it — 3,716 historical and archaeological pieces repatriated. Repatriated. And here are the absolute numbers of Felipe Calderón's period in all his terms: 5,479 pieces, and in Peña Nieto's, 351 archaeological and historical pieces.

And with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 14,162 pieces during six years, which adds up since the transformation began in 2018 to 17,878 archaeological and historical goods, and of course also ethnographic ones. Next slide, please.

Well, the countries from which we mainly recover this cultural legacy are the United States with 3,369 pieces repatriated. Then we would have Italy with 179 pieces, Canada with 133, France with 19, and Spain with seven pieces to date. Next slide, please.

Well, this is to share with you some examples of the most important repatriated pieces recently. Here we have a skull covered with turquoise mosaic that was repatriated from the Netherlands. This, of course, its place of origin is Mesoamerica, from the region of what is now Puebla and Oaxaca. And it is a piece that, although there are still some academic discussions, we have basically identified as a Mixtec piece. It is a male skull of an adult aged 25 to 30. It was exhibited at the Museum of Ethnology in Leiden in the Netherlands.

And it is decorated, as I already said, with turquoise, with shell, with jadeite, with quartz, with a serpent iconography, and dates from the late Postclassic period, from 100 to 1521 AD. It is important that this skull is now exhibited in the town of Tututepec, on the Oaxacan coast. Next slide, please. Another example.

This is a carved panel that was repatriated from New York. It is from what we now know as Chiapas in Yaxchilan, of course, of the Maya culture, and dates from the Late Classic period, from 600 to 900 AD. It presents the Jaguar Bird, ruler of Yaxchilan, a central figure of Maya political power in the 7th century, and it is a monument with a high epigraphic value, made up of 24 blocks of glyphs, and where we can observe a scene with a political and propagandistic function, destined to legitimize bonds of subordination and above all of power. Next slide, please.

Well, here we have a sculpture that we were also able to repatriate from New York. This is from the cultures of the central highlands, it is Mexica, and it is made of basalt rock using carving, bas-relief, and also engraving techniques. It represents an adult figure with a stern expression, with an open mouth, circular ears, and a loincloth. It also preserves traces of red pigment in the cranial region and dates from the late Postclassic period, between 100 and 1521. Next slide, please.

And well, we also have here the recovery, of course, of historical heritage, in this case the ceremonial manual of the Province of Santo Evangelio de México, according to the order of the General Chapter of Rome. This document details the religious practices of the Franciscan order in New Spain and was printed in Mexico City in the early 17th century. It was seized by the Argentine Federal Police and its assessment was carried out by specialists from the National Library of Anthropology. So, as you will see, there is above all a recovery of historical and archaeological heritage that has been taking place through diplomatic dialogue in different countries of the world. And we will continue, by instructions of the President, of course, with this effort and determination to recover the memory, the identity, and of course the belonging of the ancient peoples who give us, of course, belonging to contemporary generations.

That is all regarding this topic, and now, if you will allow me, President, to quickly also talk about the great site museum that our Secretary of Culture mentioned. It is a museum that has been recovered, of the three museums we have in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacán, a museum that had not been opened for 20 years. We made an investment of 7 million pesos, above all to have a museography that can somehow imagine the taluds and, of course, the feathered serpents at the site. And we also have collections of the greatest importance in this archaeological site museum, above all 80% of the exhibited collection are archaeological pieces that are in some way unprecedented, that is, they had never been shown before. And to date we have around 25,015 visits since the opening on June 9. Therefore, we have a very important visit, and it has been a very visited and very recognized museum by national and international visitors. Next slide, please.

Well, an example that we consider of the greatest importance is a rubber ball that is 3,500 years old and is being exhibited in this museum. It is from the archaeological site of El Manatí. At this archaeological site located in Veracruz, we had the possibility that through an archaeological rescue we were able to identify around 16 balls like this one, and one of them, which of course received its conservation and care treatment, is now exhibited in the new Museum of Teotihuacan Greatness, which is already set up for the enjoyment of everyone. Next slide, please.

Well, it was the first site museum of the archaeological zone of Teotihuacán, as we already mentioned, and currently it is 950 m² of intervention on two levels, and work was done on architectural restoration, the museographic project, and of course also on the graphics, which are exquisite. Next slide, please.

Well, now we invite you to watch a video of how the museum turned out. We are very proud of this work from the Secretariat of Culture of the Government of Mexico and of course also from the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Thank you very much. With your permission, President.

The ancient Mesoamerican capital of Teotihuacán, the city where men become gods, is today one of the most emblematic meeting points between the past and the present. Unique, distinctive of Mexico, and a reference for the rest of the world regarding the richness of our history.

To dignify the spaces and the enjoyment of nationals and foreigners who visit it, the Government of Mexico, through the Mundial Social project, made an important investment to improve its services and renovate its three museums.

Thus, in what was the first site museum of the archaeological zone, which remained closed for two decades, the architectural infrastructure was modernized and museographic elements were designed in accordance with a new narrative script to show more than 170 pieces, many of them never before exhibited, which are a sample of the magnificence of the Teotihuacan culture and which date from between the first 650 years of our era.

These masterpieces account for the development of Teotihuacán, from village to great metropolis, from the work and specialization achieved by its ancient inhabitants, from the vibrant life of the city, from the commercial exchanges that reached distant latitudes, the neighborhoods that formed it, the worship of its deities, and also from its fall and abandonment.

Temporarily, this museum also shares its renovated walls to show the world nothing more and nothing less than one of the oldest rubber balls in history, from the community of El Manatí in southern Veracruz, testimony that in ancient Mexico ball games were played more than 3,500 years ago.

A living space that is memory of the sacred and a window into the enigmatic and seductive Teotihuacan thought, the Museum of Teotihuacan Greatness.

Marina, with your permission, President. Good morning to everyone. Thank you very much for your attention. I am going to quickly present something that was very natural to arise from a program like Original, which all of you know. It is a program for the care of female and male artisans that emerged in the Fourth Transformation and that also put on the table for the first time various topics. One was commercial exploitation, another was the use of indigenous iconography and of the peoples of the various original peoples by brands that did not form part even of the national environment, and also about collective rights that are now governed by a law. From this arose the need, from the artisan communities themselves, to form a collaboration program, a program that would allow the artisans themselves and those who do not belong to the artisan communities to make collaborations with them in a fair, ethical way, and above all something we insist on a lot: respecting a basic line for this type of collaboration and perhaps for any commercial collaboration that has to do with equality, seeing the other as an equal, because then commercial results arise that have nothing to do with benefit to the indigenous peoples. And so Taller Original was born. Taller Original is a space that was integrated to form a system of training, of accompaniment, of laboratories that we do with artisans. The artisans were the ones who asked us to introduce them to textile innovation, and from that request we made collaborations with different universities, with designers, with people who work on pattern-making, metrics, measurements, color, with all those knowledge that design professionals usually have. Laboratories were created to form the first collection, which is the one that will be presented this year and will be presented at Original in November on a runway. In these laboratories, 41 master artisans participated, from which 21 pieces were selected. We understand a laboratory as a space where designers and artisans share knowledge. From that knowledge, experiments are conducted, specific collaboration models are formed, and the intervention of each of them begins. We formed a pattern-making library that we created in these laboratories, and from that pattern-making all the production processes of the pieces began. The pieces were intervened in every sense, not just intervention on a finished piece, but also in the design of the piece itself with the artisans. The artisans are learning pattern-making, they are learning other ways to show what they already do, and they are also accessing other demands from different markets. The results of this collection are 21 pieces of different kinds: there are basic pieces, for example, executive pieces, there are more relaxed pieces for the beach, for example, this type of things that we are presenting. This is not the final model, this is an example. Can we show the next one, please?

These are a pair of sets, each of them was intervened and made by the artisans themselves. And here the interesting thing is that the pieces we are going to show, as I told you, in November, which is when the collection comes out. The interesting thing is that all these pieces are going to be sold in the FONA stores, and the payment and the model we are creating from this collaboration is what we are offering the market and what we are showing to make good collaborations with designers and artisans. That is, not only are they paid for the labor, which is what was usually done, plus a payment that was sometimes negotiated, but there are payments that have to do with specific pay scales that consider the working time of the artisans themselves, the technique as well, and also all the indirect expenses that the artisan declares. That is taught in the trainings themselves and has to do with a percentage as well, which is almost a royalty on the sale price when the piece is put on the market. The artisan then receives the resource for having made the piece and also receives an extraordinary payment as a royalty for their design right over the piece that is sold. So, from November we are launching this Taller Original collection. We are going to present it at Original in November, which begins on November 12 at the Los Pinos Cultural Complex, and we will be informing you about this new project that is practically closed. Thank you very much.

Well, nothing, President. We already have a house. If you can hear me, tell us how the whole story went, Carla, if you like. Of course. Before we met her, we lived in a shop on Bertis and Arcos de Belén. We lived in a shop, my family and I. We didn't say this for fear that the borough might remove us. So we always said we lived in a house when it really wasn't true. So one good day God put her in my path, and it was when you asked me, you asked me if I needed anything, and I told you my situation, I showed you photos of where we lived, where we bathed and so on, and you told us that you would be able to help us, and that was real, you helped us.

Thank you very much. Likewise, President, we have nothing else to thank you for than that you listened to us at that moment and that you allowed us to support ourselves in that aspect. And indeed, I mean, all I wanted was for them to help me, to listen to me, and for me to pay for my house for my children with my work, right? So today I am more at peace because my children and I are already sleeping in another place, we are fine, we are no longer vulnerable, and thanks to God we are fine because of you, truly, and I have a way to thank you.