The governments of Peru and Bolivia have signed an agreement to work together in the fight against illicit trafficking of cultural property.
At a news conference in Lima, Peruvian Foreign Minister Rafael Roncagliolo said this pact will help both countries to develop a common strategy and plan to face this issue.
The document was signed Tuesday by Peruvian Culture Minister Luis Peirano and his Bolivian counterpart, Pablo Groux, who took the opportunity to return to Peru a mummified toddler seized from antiquities traffickers.
The mummy is at least 700 years old and sits about a foot tall. Its sex is uncertain but archaeologists believe it comes from a pre-Inca culture of coastal Peru, AP reported yesterday.
"This small package," Minister Peirano told reporters, "is just a sample of the sacking, of the violation of our patrimony and all our inheritance."
Police in neighboring Bolivia seized it two years ago as a Bolivian citizen tried to ship it to an address in Compiegne, France, in a cardboard box.
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