During his state visit to Spanish territory, the President of Colombia, Gustav Petroreferred in the middle of an interview to the treasure of the galleon San José, the dropped to 1,708near Cartagena, after being attacked by a fleet of English ships.
According to Petro, who will meet with him King Felipe VI and with the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sanchezhis government plans to recover the remains of the ship: “The galleon no longer exists, the wood, the clothes no longer exist, but the treasure remains.”
Continue with the plans of Santos government to make a museum with what can be recovered from the seabed Their profits, it seems, would be shared, as happened in the past: “The treasure was gathered in Lima and completed in Colombia, in Lima all the silver and in Colombia all the gold. We don’t know if there are archaeological pieces, they had a bad habit of melting them”.
Although this time with a small one Bolivian indigenous community “Who claims any” of the loot as his own, he told W radio.
Although Colombia would keep what manages to recover: “The Museum Dividends that they come out every year – that’s the only profit that could be made – a portion would go to the community of Bolivia”.
The controversy over the remains of Galleon San Jose — which at the time of disembarkation was carrying a cargo consisting mostly of gold and silver bars and coins — comes to the fore whenever Colombia talks about recovering its remains from the seabed.
And it is nothing more and nothing less than one of history’s greatest treasures, only discovered in 2015, by researchers from the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH) in collaboration with the National Navy and the General Maritime Directorate (DIMAR). Since then, however, it has represented a diplomatic mess that, if left unsolved, could bring more problems than benefits to the land of yellow butterflies.
With a 200-page document when Juan Manuel Santos showed clear intentions to reactivate the tender for the galleon rescue work (2018) of the Bolivian indigenous community qhara qhara claimed rights to the Treasure of San José from the Colombian government and claimed that his ancestors were victims of looting during the war Spanish invasion.
A demand that other nations such as Spain and Peru have joined in the past.
“We ask for the legitimacy of the resources taken from our nation at the time of the Spanish invasion or in the colony for which the galleon is returned,” demanded the natives – one of the 36 indigenous nations of Bolivia– in a letter to then-President Juan Manuel Santos, revealed by Noticias Caracol.
In the letter they say that the plunder of the Spanish crown was carried out in their territory in gold and silver deposits like that Potosí mineswhen his country was part of Viceroyalty of Peru, with the help of African slaves; destroying their ecosystems and massacring their people.
“Tons and tons of precious minerals from the Potosí mountains were transported at the Pacific Ocean to Panama and transported on the backs of mules to Portobelo, Caribbean Sea, where the San José departed towards Cartagena‘ explained Pulzo, author of El Galeón San José and Other Treasures, Nelson Fredy Padilla.
In this sense, the author considers the claim of the indigenous community to be legitimate. As the then President of National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), Armando Valbuena, who strongly supported the Qhara Qhara’s application.