[CPProt.net] Odyssey of art from Mexican church illustrates the looting of masterworks in rural areas

[MSN CPPnet (Ton Cremers)]

The theft of Saint Francis 

Odyssey of art from Mexican church illustrates the looting of masterworks in
rural areas

Chris Hawley
Republic Mexico City Bureau
Nov. 6, 2005 12:00 AM 

TOCHIMILCO, Mexico - The entire town of Tochimilco turned out to celebrate
when a stolen carving of Saint Francis of Assisi came home from the United
States in September. 

There was live music and dancing. Five pigs were roasted. "Welcome home,
Saint Francis!" was inscribed on a pink-and-blue arch over the entrance to
the Chapel of the Third Order. 

Townspeople crowded into the chapel to gawk at the 400-year-old carving,
which looked glorious after restoration. They joked that Francis was the new
patron saint of migrants, because he had gone to the United States and come
back, safe and sound. 

But long after the music died away, the questions remain about Mexico's most
notorious art heist in at least a decade. How did thieves remove a 660-pound
carving the size of a ping-pong table from a locked church without being
detected? How could U.S. officials have let it into the United States? And
why has no one been arrested? 

"There are a lot of things we don't know and a lot of people who are
escaping justice," said Cándida Sánchez García, president of the group of
parishioners that cares for the chapel. 

The case of Tochimilco's stolen carving is part of a disturbing trend, say
Mexican officials, as bands of art thieves loot rural churches across the
country and sell their colonial art to collectors in the United States,
Europe and Asia. 

In the past five years, about 140 churches have been burglarized in Mexico,
mostly in the rich colonial region of central Mexico, according to the
National Anthropology and History Institute. About 600 pieces of art were
reported stolen in 2004 alone, said Ana Ruigómez, an expert on art theft at
the institute. Nationwide, reports of burglaries are on the rise, as church
members begin to realize the value of their art and take steps to protect
it, she said. Before, most churches failed to report such thefts.

The losses run in the millions of dollars, although it's hard to know
exactly how much because most churches have never had their art appraised.
Most of the art ends up abroad, usually in the United States or Japan,
Ruigómez said.

Mexico isn't the only country with this problem. In 2003, 2,162 thefts from
places of worship were reported to Interpol, with Italy, France, Russia and
Poland the worst-hit countries. But in the Americas, thieves in Mexico lead
the pack raiding parishes, like the one in Tochimilco.


The heist 
The Chapel of the Third Order sits on the edge of Tochimilco, a town of
3,000 where horses are still common transportation and the feed salesman
makes door-to-door deliveries from a truck piled high with bright green
alfalfa. The town is just 40 miles southeast of Mexico City but shielded
from big city life by the Popocatepetl Volcano. 

In 1568, Franciscan friars built a monastery in Tochimilco. Sometime soon
after, an unknown artist chiseled the carving out of a single piece of wood.


The relief shows Jesus giving Saint Francis of Assisi the stigmata, the
wounds that Christ suffered on his hands, feet and abdomen during the
Crucifixion. The carving was a masterpiece of detail, down to the flowery
pattern of gold leaf that decorated the robes of Saint Francis and Brother
Leo, one of his followers. 

But as the centuries passed, the artwork got dusty and stained. Someone
tried to touch it up with thick paint, blotting out the finer details of the
carving. By 2001 it was covered with candle soot, relegated to a side wall
in the small Chapel of the Third Order outside the town's main church. 

"I had seen it, but I never gave any importance to it," said Armando Tapia
Contla, a hardware store owner. "People get accustomed to seeing these
things, and they don't realize their value."

But apparently someone did.

On the night of April 9, 2001, thieves broke into the chapel through a side
door. 

They took down the immense carving, carried it out the door, across a
courtyard and up a flight of steps to the street. Then they disappeared into
the night. Nothing else was taken.

The investigation was botched from the beginning, townspeople say. 

The theft was discovered the next morning, but local police didn't report
the crime to the nearest police station with investigative powers until the
day after that. No one took fingerprints from the church, and it took days
to find a picture of the carving. By then, the artwork may have already been
in the United States. 


The phone call 
In 2002, art dealer John Schaefer of the Peyton Wright Gallery in Santa Fe
received an intriguing telephone call. It was from Salvador Quetzalcoatl, a
Mexican dealer who had sold some small statues through Schaefer's gallery.

Quetzalcoatl said he had a large carving that Schaefer might be interested
in. 

Soon afterward, a truck pulled into Santa Fe, and Schaefer got his first
look at the relief. There was no written record of its origin, and Schaefer
doesn't recall asking where it came from. But he knew it was something
special. 

"I immediately realized how important this piece was," he said. "There was
never a doubt in my mind that the piece was authentic."

Schaefer agreed to sell the carving for Quetzalcoatl on consignment. 

He had a Spanish-speaking friend question Quetzalcoatl about the piece and
paid a London-based company called Art Loss Register to check that it was
not on any lists of stolen art. The report came back clean. 

Schaefer said he was unsure whether Quetzalcoatl told the friend where the
carving came from. He declined to put The Arizona Republic in contact with
the friend. 

In the end, Schaefer sent the piece to a local conservator for a two-month
restoration, then put it up for sale. The asking price: $185,000 to
$225,000, Schaefer said. 


The breakthrough 
It was dumb luck that finally rescued Saint Francis.

Back in Mexico, someone saw a picture of the restored piece on the Internet
in early 2004 and notified the National Institute of Anthropology and
History. 

The Mexican government contacted the U.S. Embassy, and soon agents from U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement were at the Peyton Wright Gallery with a
search warrant. They took records, computer files and a picture of
Quetzalcoatl that he had once e-mailed to Schaefer, the gallery owner said.

The agents seized the carving and took it to El Paso, where a Mexican art
expert named Elisa del Carmen Ávila was sent to identify the piece. When
Ávila opened the crate, it was clear that Saint Francis had undergone a
stunning transformation in New Mexico. 

The hidden gold in his robes gleamed again. The paint had been removed and
the exposed wood glowed with life. Using an ultraviolet light, Ávila could
see that two missing fingers and a thumb had been repaired on his right
hand. 

The Mexican historical institute sent the carving to its own workshop for
another year of restoration and finally returned it to Tochimilco on Sept.
23.


Mystery continues 
But the burglary is still unsolved.

Schaefer, the gallery owner, has not been charged with any crime, but he has
lost a few thousand dollars in the cost of the restoration. 

Quetzalcoatl, the Mexican art dealer, has disappeared. When The Republic
tried to call the phone numbers he gave to Schaefer, a recording said they
were disconnected. 

The address that Quetzalcoatl gave the gallery, 1641 Westheimer Road in
Houston, is a former clothing store. When The Republic visited the address
in October, it was empty and appeared to be under renovation. 

Quetzalcoatl's partner, according to Schaefer, was a Mexico City woman named
Claudia Chanfreau. She has not responded to The Republic's e-mails and is
not listed in the Mexico City telephone directory.

Quetzalcoatl seemed to know many art dealers in the Southwest, probably
including Arizona, Schaefer said. The pair could still be peddling art
across the United States, he said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not pursuing them, said Leticia
Zamarripa, an El Paso-based spokeswoman for the agency.

"As far as ICE is concerned, that case is closed," she said. The agency did
not respond to The Republic's request for Quetzalcoatl's photograph.

For Schaefer, the case shows the failures in the way art thefts are
reported.


All the right steps 
"I took all the right steps, I did all the right things, and still we didn't
get the right information," he said. 

There were other failures as well, such as the way the thieves apparently
got the huge carving past U.S. customs.

And there is still the matter of how Saint Francis disappeared from the
church in the first place, in a town where everyone seems to know each other
by name.

To combat the theft problem, some historic Mexican churches are installing
security cameras, considering ways to track their antiquities and beginning
to close their doors to outsiders. 

But in Tochimilco, parishioners say they can't afford a security system.
They've added a few more padlocks to the door, but that's it. 

Many townspeople believe the burglary was an inside job. The chapel was only
open on Sundays, so a casual visitor to the town would have been unlikely to
know about the carving, they say.

Police estimate it must have taken eight to 10 people and a truck to steal
the carving. The chapel is in a deserted corner of the town, but it's less
than a block from the police station. 

In the end, Sánchez said, nobody in town could have imagined that
international art thieves would have wanted that old, dusty carving. 

"Because it's a small town, I guess we were caught off-guard," she said. 

"They have a saying: You never close the well until a child falls in."