Donna Yates to visit Sanctuary of Copacabana, site of Bolivia’s most infamous church robbery

13 Aug 2013

For the past month Donna Yates has been in La Paz, Bolivia, conducting preliminary research into the looting of Andean churches and the trafficking of cultural property from these often-remote buildings. In 2013 alone there have been six major church robberies in Bolivia. Most troubling to Bolivians was the April 2013 robbery of the silver and gold embellishments of the Virgin of Copacabana; Bolivia’s most sacred icon.

Donna will arrive in Copacabana on Friday to view the locations of both the 2013 theft and a church theft from a Copacabana chapel that occurred in 2011. On Monday she will visit the city of Potosí to view the churches of San Martín, robbed in 2002 of twelve Colonial oil paintings, and Nuestra Señora de la Merced, robbed in March 2013 of four silver pieces, two gold pieces, and twenty pieces of jewellery.

Donna urges anyone in Bolivia with an interest in these matters to get in touch.

Donna with a community leader at Tiwanaku, Bolivia. This UNESCO World Heritage Site’s Conquest-era church was robbed of cultural objects in 2006 and 2011.