A 500-year-old receipt for supplies to conquer an empire is returned to Mexico
The document 'outlines the payment of pesos of common gold for expenses in preparation for discovery of the spice lands,' Special Agent Jessica Dittmer, a member of the FBI's Art Crime Team, said in a statement, 'so it really gives a lot of flavor as to the planning and preparation for unchartered territory back then.'
Those 'spice lands' were eastern and southeastern Asia. European explorers sailed west in the hopes of finding a faster route to the region, and instead landed in the Americas.
Advertisement
In 1993, while archivists at the General Archive of the Nation in Mexico were creating microfilms of their collection of documents signed by Cortés, they discovered that 15 pages of the manuscript were missing.
The archive used a distinctive wax numbering system from 1985 to 1986, which helped FBI investigators to authenticate the stolen page, the FBI said. The archivists had noted which numbered pages had been stolen and had recorded the precise rip pattern in the torn pages.
Advertisement
'This 1527 manuscript, signed by Hernán Cortés, captures a pivotal moment when the Pacific routes were opening and New Spain sought to connect the Americas with Asia,' a spokesperson from the Mexican Embassy in Washington said in a statement Thursday.
'Linked to an expedition to the Spice Islands (Maluku Islands, in present-day Indonesia), it is part of the legacy of the Hospital de Jesús, founded by Cortés.' Cortés founded the hospital in 1524.
Investigators said they believed that the archivists' careful accounting would help them find the pages that were still missing.
They said that they had added this missing page to the National Stolen Art File, an FBI database of artworks and cultural artifacts known to be stolen.
Though they did not detail their investigative process, they said that open-source research had revealed that the document was in the United States, though they did not say who had it.
Last year, Mexico asked that the Art Crime Team help to search for this particular page, the FBI said. The New York City Police Department, the U.S. Justice Department, the Mexican government and the FBI's office in Atlanta took part in the investigation, officials said.
The document, dated Feb. 20, 1527, contains a full accounting of the logistical details related to Cortés' journey to what would eventually become the territory of New Spain, which included present-day Mexico and parts of the United States, Central America and the Caribbean, Dittmer said.
New Spain, a colonial territory of the Spanish Empire, was founded in the early 16th century and existed until Mexico declared its independence in 1821.
'Pieces like this are considered protected cultural property and represent valuable moments in Mexico's history, so this is something that the Mexicans have in their archives for the purpose of understanding history better,' Dittmer said in a statement.
Advertisement
Cortés reached the shores of present-day Mexico in 1519, aiming to overthrow the emperor Montezuma in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán, which is now Mexico City.
The Aztecs initially beat back the Spanish invasion, but Cortés made alliances with local groups that opposed the Aztecs and returned in 1521.
His second siege was successful, and he took over the city after burning it to ruins. The Spanish ruler, Charles V, named Cortés the governor of New Spain in 1522.
Cortés and the Spanish settlers brought with them diseases like smallpox, which ripped through the native population. Within five years, disease had killed as many as 15 million Aztecs.
'The United States, for better or for worse, is one of the largest, if not the largest, consumer of art and antiquities,' said Veh Bezdikian, a supervisory special agent with the FBI in New York.
This is the second Cortés document that the FBI has returned to Mexico in recent years. In 2022, the FBI discovered another page of the purchase order signed by Cortés that had made its way to private auction blocks across the United States.
The Art Crime Team is still looking for other missing pages from Mexico's national archives.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Hours before interviewing Patel and Bondi, Hannity bragged he wouldn't ask about Epstein. He stayed true to his word
Ahead of his dual interviews with Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel, Fox News star Sean Hannity boasted that he would not ask them about their botched handling of the files related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which has sparked a national uproar. 'If I hear that name one more time, my head's going to explode,' Hannity exclaimed on his radio show Thursday afternoon. Indeed, when he got the chance to speak to both Patel and Bondi hours later, Hannity completely sidestepped any questions related to the Epstein case, instead focusing most of his attention on the administration's claims that former President Barack Obama directed a 'treasonous conspiracy' against Donald Trump with the investigation into Russia's 2016 election meddling. Hannity, a Trump confidant who has been dubbed the White House 'shadow chief of staff,' has led the Fox News charge in trumpeting the Trump administration's attempts to distract from the Epstein saga. In a two-page memo last month, the Justice Department concluded that Epstein died by suicide and did not maintain a 'client list' to blackmail prominent figures in his sex crimes, despite Bondi saying months earlier that he had the supposed list on her desk. The memo also found there was 'no basis to revisit the disclosure of those materials.' Amid the furor from the president's MAGA base over the memo, which contradicted many of the conspiracy theories that Patel and other Trump officials had helped stoke for years, Trump ordered his supporters to stop paying attention to Epstein because the files were a Democratic 'hoax.' Fox News would immediately fall in line, largely ignoring the story while devoting much of its on-air coverage to the Trump administration's distraction efforts. This included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard declassifying documents related to the investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election and accusing Obama and other intelligence officials of orchestrating a coup. Following Gabbard's initial claims on July 18, which fact checkers have called misleading, revisionist and false, the network aired 168 segments over the next 10 days centered on her accusations about an Obama-led criminal conspiracy. Since then, the right-wing network has continued to heavily invest in the story, even after Gabbard crashed and burned last week during a softball Fox News interview. During his afternoon radio show on Thursday, Hannity spoke to a caller who wanted to know if Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) would face any repercussions over allegations made by a 'whistleblower' that he leaked classified documents in 2017 to embarrass Trump. The story about Schiff, a vocal Trump critic, has received a lot of play on Fox News – especially after Trump called for right-wing media to cover it during a press conference this week. 'That evidence seems rather incontrovertible to me. But, of course, everyone's innocent until proven guilty,' Hannity said before pivoting to his upcoming interviews with Patel and Bondi. 'You know, the main focus of me having Kash Patel and Pam Bondi on tonight is all of this new information,' Hannity said. 'Now, I know if, you know, the liberal media, etcetera, etcetera, you would probably, you know, 'Oh, tell us about, you know, Jeffrey Epstein.'' Saying he 'head's going to explode' if he hears Epstein's name again, he then pointed to a CNN poll that found Americans don't feel the Epstein case is the top issue in the country before asserting that there isn't anything damning about Trump in the files. 'This was Joe Biden's Justice Department. If there was anything in there, it would have been released. I can promise you that,' he declared, adding that the DOJ has also met with Epstein's partner Ghislaine Maxwell and has asked for grand jury testimony to be released. 'So, let's see what happens.' Late last month, the Wall Street Journal – which is owned by Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch – reported that Trump wrote a 'bawdy' birthday letter to Epstein in 2003 that featured the president allegedly drawing a figure of a naked woman alongside suggestive phrases about his relationship with the disgraced financier. Trump vehemently denied the story as a 'fake thing' and promptly sued the WSJ and Murdoch for $10 billion. The Jounral and other outlets would later report that Bondi informed Trump in May that his name was included in the Epstein filed. The president has also denied those reports, with the White House calling it a 'fake news story.' Additionally, dozens of other public figures were reportedly named in these files, and the president has never been formally accused or charged with a crime in connection with Epstein. Meanwhile, Hannity told the caller that his focus during his conversations with Patel and Bondi would be on whether former Obama intelligence officials were in 'trouble,' what evidence they were compiling in their 'grand conspiracy investigation,' and what Bondi's power was in 'convening a grand jury.' 'That's my focus tonight,' he concluded. 'If you want to tune in and hear about Epstein, I'm going to tune in and find out whether or not we had the most corrupt deep state abuse of power in the history of the country.' True to his word, the pro-Trump host didn't once mention the Epstein case to either the FBI director or attorney general, despite those two being at the heart of the backlash over the administration's refusal to release further documentation about the deceased sex predator. Instead, as he hinted on the radio, Hannity devoted the bulk of his conversation with the pair to the topic of the administration's Russia probe and any further developments, including Patel's discovery of so-called 'burn bags' of classified information about the Obama-era investigation. He also praised Bondi over her role in the administration's federal takeover of the Washington police department, which the president has claimed is to fight a 'crime emergency.' At the same time, despite reports about turmoil between Bondi and Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino over the Epstein fallout, Hannity assured his viewers that everything was running smoothly behind the scenes. 'At the FBI, the director Kash Patel is working around the clock with Dan Bongino and others and other agents. Not only are they dealing with the crime crisis left behind by Joe Biden and unvetted illegals, 12-20 million, but also peeling back the layers of what has been – what we have reported as a deeply politicized, weaponized federal bureaucracy.' Notably, Bondi – who has long been a frequent guest on Fox News airwaves – had been absent from the network for weeks amid the growing backlash over the Epstein memo and her central role in it. However, now that she is leading the president's 'hostile takeover' of the nation's capital, and Fox News has appeared to successfully move past the Epstein saga, it would seem that Bondi is once again welcome back on the conservative cable giant.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
POLITICAL ROUNDUP: Another distraction or was there interference in 2016 election?
TAHLEQUAH — In July 2018, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned an indictment against Russian military intelligence officers for their alleged roles in interfering with the 2016 election in the United States. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's 'Most Wanted' site, the individuals indicted should be considered armed and dangerous and an international flight risk. 'The indictment charges 11 defendants, Boris Alekseyevich Antonov, Dmitriy Sergeyevich Badin, Nikolay Yuryevich Kozachek, Aleksey Viktorovich Lukashev, Artem Andreyevich Malyshev, Sergey Aleksandrovich Morgachev, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk, Aleksey Aleksandrovich Potemkin, Ivan Sergeyevich Yermakov, Pavel Vyacheslavovich Yershov, and Viktor Borisovich Netyksho, with a computer hacking conspiracy involving gaining unauthorized access into the computers of U.S. persons and entities involved in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, stealing documents from those computers, and staging releases of the stolen documents to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election,' states the site. Other indictments include aggravated identity theft, false registration of a domain name and conspiracy to commit money laundering, the website notes. 'Two defendants, Aleksandr Vladimirovich Osadchuk and Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, are charged with a separate conspiracy to commit computer crimes, relating to hacking into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of 2016 U.S. elections, such as state boards of elections, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections,' states the site. A federal warrant was issued for each of these defendants when the indictment was returned by the grand jury. This week, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered an investigation into allegations that President Barack Obama's administration made up evidence of interference in the 2016 election This was reported on CNN in an article titled, 'Pam Bondi has a new probe into the handling of 2016 Russian meddling. John Durham already spent four years investigating it,' published Aug. 11. During Trump's first term, Attorney General at the time, Bill Barr, said the government was spying on American citizens. Barr had Durham lead a four-year investigation. 'But Durham's lengthy investigation did not lead to any criminal charges — or allegations of significant wrongdoing — related to the CIA and intelligence community's role in concluding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election and wanted to help Trump win,' states the article. Requests for input on this topic from U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-District 51, U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-District 52, and U.S. Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-District 2, went unanswered for this article by press time. On the Facebook forum Aug. 9, readers were asked what they believe is behind the investigation, and if they thought there was Russian interference. Kevin McFarland believes there was no interference. 'I believe it was a concoction from the Clinton camp to distract from her email scandal,' McFarland said. Susan Feller said all roads lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'This is supported by cold, hard, indisputable facts. What the studies did not find, however, is that Trump personally colluded with the Russians. People around him did,' Feller said. Darrel Ratliff 'absolutely agrees' there was Russian interference. 'But this investigation will come up with whatever they want it to come up with,' Ratliff said. Eric Swanson reminded commenters on the forum that multiple investigations have found that Russia interfered in the 2016 election with the goal of helping Trump's campaign and damaging Clinton's. Swanson said U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's claim about the Obama administration defies common sense. 'If there were evidence of such a conspiracy, why did four investigations fail to uncover it?' Swanson said. 'If the investigation proves that there was a conspiracy, then the perpetrators should be held accountable.' Swanson suspects this probe is an attempt to please Trump by attacking his political opponents, a clear example of the weaponization of the Department of Justice that 'MAGAs love to complain about.' Devin Gordon said this current situation is like a game of Monopoly: Someone gets mad and flips the board, or the winner loses when they acquire everything and the remaining players can't pay their rent. 'The housing market is collapsing, giving investment firms that already own every industry in America an opportunity to move in and buy more real estate for pennies on the dollar, closing the door on homeownership for millions of working Americans,' Gordon said. 'The government is quietly federalizing law enforcement, beginning in D.C., which will undoubtedly spread through the rest of our country.' Gordon said that AI and surveillance are spreading with little to no safeguards or restrictions put in place to protect the public. 'The resources stripped from us for one AI data center is astonishing, and they're popping up everywhere,' Gordon said. 'They sell it under the same old guise of public safety, then watch and laugh at the people as they ignorantly cheer on the things intended to replace and restrict them.' The people in power aren't Republicans or Democrats, they're friends, working on a common interest for themselves and the people who pay their salaries, which isn't U.S. taxpayers, Gordon said. 'They will be long gone, enjoying all they stole from us, while we're broke, fighting among ourselves, arguing about today's topic, unable to pay rent, unable to buy food, unable to afford life while being tracked and surveilled, wishing we'd have flipped the board a while ago,' Gordon said. What you said In a poll on TDP's website, readers were asked: 'Do you believe there was Russian meddling in the 2016 election, and who was behind it?' The answer that got the most votes was, 'Barack Obama and his allies,' with 36.5%; 31.1% answered, 'Putin and Trump and their allies;' 9.5% voted 'Vladimir Putin only;' and 9.5% voted, 'no one; there was no meddling.' Solve the daily Crossword
Boston Globe
2 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Erdogan calls it an anticorruption drive. His rivals call it a political crackdown.
The arrests come at a time of uncertainty about the political future of Turkey and Erdogan, who has dominated the country's politics for more than two decades. He cannot legally run again when his current, third presidential term ends in 2028 but could seek another mandate if parliament were to call early elections, an outcome many analysts expect him to pursue. The arrests began last year but have accelerated since March, when the police arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, citing allegations of corruption, which he denies. Advertisement In the months since, the government has arrested at least 390 people in connection with investigations of alleged corruption in the Istanbul municipal government and other opposition-run cities, according to a New York Times tally based on Turkish media reports. The opposition says those arrested include current and former mayors and other municipal officials as well as representatives of companies that have worked with opposition-run city governments. Although these arrests have not led to any convictions, Erdogan said in a speech last month that government investigators were exposing 'the biggest gang of robbers in the history of the Republic.' Advertisement Opposition leaders have denied the charges and accuse Erdogan's government of weaponizing the judiciary to weaken its opponents and silence critics, some of whom have faced legal action for opposing the arrests. 'My confidence in justice, in the law, in how it is executed and investigated is gone,' said Cem Yigit Uzumoglu, an actor who played Mehmed the Conqueror in the Netflix docudrama 'Rise of Empires: Ottoman.' In an interview, he described how the police had arrested him at his home in the middle of the night in April after he posted support on social media for a boycott of government-linked companies. Prosecutors are now seeking prison sentences up to about seven years on charges that include instigating hatred in society, an accusation he called 'ridiculous.' Erdogan's governing Justice and Development Party fared poorly in nationwide municipal elections last year, largely because of anger over high inflation. Yet his geopolitical position appears strong. The civil war in neighboring Syria ended with a Turkish-friendly administration in Damascus. European countries count on his help to curb migration. And he has a warm relationship with President Donald Trump, whose secretary of state, Marco Rubio, recently ordered American diplomats to limit their comments about how other countries practice democracy. Few Western governments have spoken publicly about the arrests. Imamoglu, a star in the opposition Republican People's Party, had beat candidates backed by Erdogan for mayor of Istanbul three times, and some polls suggested he could beat Erdogan in a presidential race. The mayor's arrest came days before he officially began his presidential campaign and one day after his university suddenly annulled his undergraduate diploma, citing a decades-old irregularity. That alone could keep him from becoming the president, who is required by law to have completed higher education. Advertisement The timing of those events, which followed other cases that could temporarily bar Imamoglu from politics, led his supporters to accuse the government of seeking to knock him out of the running. The Turkish government insists that its prosecutors and courts are independent and has called on citizens to trust the authorities and not prejudge investigations. Interrogation notes and other information shared with Turkish news outlets indicate that investigators are pursuing allegations that include bribery, fraud, improper distribution of municipal contracts and solicitation of favors in exchange for construction permits. The New York Times has not been able to independently verify these details. In his address in July, Erdogan said that the investigations were free of politics and were uncovering great criminality. As this year's arrests have progressed, the government has also taken legal action against critics, using laws that rights groups say restrict freedom of speech. Last month, a student, Doruk Dorucu, tore up his diploma during a university graduation ceremony to protest the annulment of Imamoglu's diploma and what he called undue government interference in Turkish universities. In an interview, Dorucu said that the police arrested him at his home later that night. He said that he has been barred from traveling abroad while being investigated for inciting hatred among the public. 'In terms of oppression, we are in such a bad period,' he said. 'Everyone is afraid that they can be taken from their homes at dawn over one tweet or one joke they made in daily chitchat with friends.' Advertisement This article originally appeared in
