[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2229375315.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe culture ministry of Mexico has called on eBay to remove sale listings for 195 pre-Colombian artifacts, claiming they were obtained by way of \u201cillicit extraction\u201d and that they should be returned to their country of origin.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs reported by The Art Newspaper<\/em>, the case was made public when Mexico\u2019s secretary of culture, Claudia Curiel de Icaza, wrote in a posting on X that the Orlando, Florida\u2013based enterprise Coins Artifacts was selling objects deemed part of Mexico\u2019s cultural heritage by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). In a letter sent to eBay, Curiel de Icaza demanded that the company \u201cimmediately suspend the sale and return the items to the Mexican government,\u201d adding that the export of such objects has been illegal since 1827.<\/p>\n \n\tINAH\u2019s legal department \u201cfiled a complaint with the office of Mexico\u2019s Attorney General and notified its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Interpol and US authorities including Homeland Security Investigations in an effort to halt the sale,\u201d according to TAN<\/em>. But a confidentiality policy related to the complaint means there\u2019s no way to know which 195 objects, among thousands for sale via Coins Artifacts, are the subject of the claim.<\/p>\n \n\tWhen contacted by the Art Newspaper<\/em>, the administrator of Coins Artifacts gave his name as Tom but declined to offer his surname, and said he was unaware of the Mexican government\u2019s statement. He later told the publication that the sales were legal and that he had purchased the objects from the New York gallery Arte Primitivo. Prior to that they had been in a private collection in Nevada and once owned by David Harner of Arkansas in the 1950s and \u201960s, the seller told TAN.<\/em><\/p>\n \n\tHe further claimed that \u201cthe Mexican government is trying to intimidate and shame people on social media into returning items they have no legal right to repatriate.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tAn eBay spokesperson told TAN<\/em> the company is investigating the listings and will take action if they cannot be legally sold.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s far from the first time the Mexican government has attempted to block the sale of an artifact. In recent years, the country\u2019s culture ministry has habitually called out sellers or auction houses offering such materials on social media. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/mexican-culture-ministry-ebay-sales-1234778263\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2229375315.jpg?w=1024″] The culture ministry of Mexico has called on eBay to remove sale listings for 195 pre-Colombian artifacts, claiming they were obtained by way of \u201cillicit extraction\u201d and that they should be returned to their country of origin. As reported by The Art Newspaper, the case was made public when Mexico\u2019s secretary of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1837779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1837779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1837779\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1837779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1837779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1837779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}