The Rightful Owner Of Machu Picchu?

In November, Yale University agreed to return a collection of disputed artifacts to Peru.  The first batch of objects is to arrive in March, nearly 100 years after Yale explorer Hiram Bingham “re-discovered” the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu. 

WNPR reporter Diane Orson and producer Catie Talarski recently traveled to Peru.  In the first of a two-part series, they visit a museum owned by the university that will be home to the repatriated antiquities, and meet a woman who claims she’s the rightful owner of Machu Picchu.

We’re in Cusco, the former capital of the Incan Empire, about 12,000 feet high in the Andes Mountains.  We walk through large wooden doors and enter a courtyard where women dressed in colorful indigenous clothing, are weaving textiles. Nearby, a musician demonstrates ancient Peruvian flutes.

This is the Inka Museum. Our guide greets us. "My name is Roxana Abrill Nunez, and  I work at the Inka Museum of the National University of Cusco". 

She leads us through rooms filled with ceramics, textiles and mummies, and eventually to a replica of the famous Inca palace complex: Machu Picchu. The actual site is a four-hour drive away. "Machu Picchu was built as a Royal Hacienda for Inca Yupanqui Pachacutec during his reign in 1438 to 1471."

When the Spaniards arrived in Peru they conquered Cusco but never found Machu Picchu, which is hidden high in a cloud forest in the Andes mountains. The site was mysteriously abandoned by the Incas during the 1500s, but remained known to local farmers. One of them led Yale University explorer Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu in 1911, and he brought it to the attention of the world. 

Today, Machu Picchu is South America’s top tourist attraction and the pride of modern Peruvians. But our guide Roxana Abrill has a very personal connection to Machu Picchu.

"When Hiram Bingham arrived to Peru, to the lands of Machu Picchu it was a part of a very big farm belonging to my great-grandfather. When Bingham arrived he have found people living in the same ruins of Machu Picchu and those were employees of my great-grandfather."

In Bingham’s book, he describes how Abrill’s great-grandfather Mariano Ferro ordered the residents of Machu Picchu to help the American expedition. In 1944, the Peruvian government expropriated the land where Machu Picchu stands. Abrill says her family was never compensated and she’s waging a legal battle to be paid for the loss.

Her lawyer is Fausto Salinas. "El gobierno peruano usa, disfruta, explota y gana mucho dinero por el uso de Machu Picchu, pero sus verdaderos duenos que son los heredares Abrill, no reciben nada"  (The Peruvian government uses, enjoys, exploits and earns a lot of money from Machu Picchu. But the true owners, the descendants of the Abrill family, get nothing.)

In a 2007 article about the case in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Peruvian government lawyer Elias Carreno says Machu Picchu has officially been property of the state since 1995 and in his words “belongs to all Peruvians”.  

But Roxana Abrill says her battle is over more than money. Its about setting the record straight on Hiram Bingham and the people who lived and worked in and around the so-called Lost City of the Incas.

"In some of his books, he still speaks about these people and after that he says oh it was lost. I can say that that citadel was never lost."

2011 marks the centennial of Hiram Bingham’s re-discovery of Machu Picchu. As Peru honors Bingham for his role in the nation’s history,  Roxana Abrill says she hopes Peru will also honor her ancestors and the part they played in the legacy of Machu Picchu. 

For WNPR, I'm Diane Orson.