Donna Yates meets with Members of Bolivia’s Congress

21 Jun 2013

Donna Yates met with a delegation from Bolivia’s Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional in Edinburgh yesterday. The Senators and Deputies, who are on an official visit to the UK, were touring Scotland and were keen to hear about  Donna’s previous and upcoming fieldwork in their country. A big ‘Thank You’ the Bolivian Embassy and the Bolivia Information Forum for organising the event and to the representatives for some brilliant and beneficial exchange.

Says Donna:

We had a wonderful talk about Bolivian cultural heritage, Indigenous languages (both Bolivian AND Scottish), and the illicit traffic in Bolivian cultural property. The senators and congresspeople were all keenly aware of the issue and were interested to see that international work was being done on the subject.

We talked a lot about church theft, especially in light of the devastating recent robbery of the gold and silver accents of the Virgin of Copacabana, Bolivia’s most sacred shrine. We discussed the UK market for such pieces and, in particular, the return of two paintings seized in London in 2011 that had been stolen from the church at the village of San Andrés de Machaca. In a Bolivia that has redefined itself around ideas of heritage and culture inclusivity, we agreed that more work needed to be done to understand looting and antiquities trafficking so as to safeguard Bolivia’s future.

On the eve of Machaq Mara, the solstice and Aymara New Year, I am delighted that the delegation from the Asamblea Legislativa Plurinacional took the time to talk about the Trafficking Culture project. I hope to keep them informed of the preliminary and final results of our work.