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In a landmark ceremony on Monday, Switzerland returned several centuries-old mummified bodies to Bolivia, acknowledging that they were acquired without the consent of their traditional owners. The three mummies, comprising two adults and a child, were officially handed over to Bolivian Minister of Culture and Decolonisation, Sabina Orellana Cruz, at the Geneva Ethnographic Museum (MEG).
Carine Ayele Durand, the museum director, emphasized the importance of ethical reparations during the ceremony, which reflects a growing trend among Western institutions to repatriate artefacts and human remains obtained under dubious circumstances. The mummies, positioned in a crouched posture and wrapped in braided vegetal fibre shrouds, were transported in wooden crates bearing a diplomatic seal, though they were not displayed at the event for ethical reasons.
Cruz, speaking to AFP, highlighted the significance of the gesture, equating restitution with decolonization and applauding European countries now returning looted objects and human remains. The MEG, as part of its effort to “decolonise the collections,” had previously informed Bolivia about the mummies and established protocols for their restitution.
Breaking from the traditional museum stance of retaining artefacts, the MEG has committed to facilitating the return of all human remains, funeral relics and sacred objects. Moreover, the museum made a decisive move last year, deciding against exhibiting human remains without the explicit consent of the concerned state or community. Durand criticized the prevalent practice of treating human remains in museums as mere objects, advocating for their re-humanization through biographical studies, lineage retracing and community burials.
The return of these mummies marks only the second instance of the MEG restituting human remains, following a similar return to New Zealand’s Maori community in 2014. The MEG has only received three such restitution requests to date. The mummies, originating from the high-altitude mining town of Coro Coro near La Paz, were mummified following pre-Columbian funeral traditions, a period before Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the late 15th century.
Bolivia’s Minister Cruz identified the mummies as being of Pacajes de origen Aymara, a culture that thrived between 1100 and 1400, known for constructing large chullpas or funerary towers for noble people or families. These structures, often several metres high, have attracted numerous tomb raiders and collectors over the years.
Studies revealed that Gustave Ferriere, the German consul in La Paz, sent the mummified bodies and their shrouds to Geneva’s geographical society in 1893. They were later exported from Bolivia and imported into Switzerland without the consent of their traditional owners or any formal authorization. Federic Ferriere, Gustave’s brother and a vice-president of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, donated them to the city’s archaeological museum in 1895, before being integrated into Geneva’s old ethnographic museum collection in 1901.
With AFP