ATLANTA — On August 13, the FBI returned a stolen manuscript signed by Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés to the government of Mexico.
The manuscript, signed on February 20, 1527, outlines the payment of pesos of common gold for expenses related to the discovery of spice lands, providing insight into the planning and preparation for Cortés’ journey to what became New Spain.
Returning the cultural artifact, believed to have been stolen in the 1980s or 1990s, was the result of close collaboration between multiple agencies and the Mexican government.
El Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico’s national archives, originally counted the manuscript among a collection of historical documents hand-signed by Cortés. After microfilming the collection in October 1993, they discovered that 15 pages had gone missing.
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In 2024, the Mexican government requested the FBI Art Crime Team’s help in locating page 28 of the collection.
With meticulous notes from the Mexican national archive, investigators believed they could track the document through traditional detective work.
Open-source research led investigators to believe the missing manuscript was located in the continental United States, eventually narrowing their search.
The investigators worked with FBI Atlanta and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York to find the relevant records and track down the missing artifact.
No one will face prosecution for the document’s theft because investigators determined that the manuscript “changed hands several times over” in the decades since its disappearance.
The FBI Art Crime Team is still determined to locate and return the other missing pages.
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