International
Colombia’s crusade to repatriate its archeological heritage
November 5 |
Wearing latex gloves and a white coat, restorer Carla Medina holds part of Colombia’s history in her hands. A growing number of pre-Columbian pieces are returning from abroad in an unorthodox way: President Gustavo Petro himself is bringing them back.
“It’s a great responsibility and a great privilege,” he tells AFP in his laboratory at the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH).
Medina, 41, analyzes a clay vessel repatriated from Italy, which had to be reconstructed from fragments. She is grateful “to have the opportunity to have access to an object that has so many years of history”.
At least 560 pre-Columbian pieces were returned from other countries aboard the presidential plane of leftist Gustavo Petro, in some of the more than 30 trips abroad that he has completed in just over a year in office. International tours criticized by the opposition as dispensable and costly.
Most of the pieces returned from the United States, United Kingdom, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Mexico, among other countries, in a coordinated work between the Foreign Ministry and ICANH.
One of the most recent returns was in October and took place on the diplomatic vessel Gloria, where 12 archeological pieces traveled from Costa Rica to Cartagena.
The recovery is part of a strategy of “efficient use of resources”, said at the time the former vice-minister of Multilateral Affairs, Laura Gil, and is advancing at an accelerated pace compared to the previous government, in which only 18 pieces were repatriated in four years.
For Catalina Ceballos, director of cultural affairs at the Foreign Ministry, it is a way to “start talking about decolonization from another perspective.”
Most of the pieces returned to Colombia were taken out of the country when there was no legal clarity in the world on the traffic of archaeological goods.
Only since 1997 has Colombian law recognized the State as the legitimate owner of national archaeological heritage.
However, the fight against illegal trafficking of these pieces has not been a priority in a country bled by half a century of armed conflict between authorities, guerrillas, paramilitaries and criminal gangs. While the budget suggested by the Presidency for ICANH in 2024 is equivalent to some 2.3 million dollars, that proposed for the defense area and the Police is almost 600 times greater.
Juan Pablo Ospina, coordinator of the anthropology group at ICANH, nevertheless emphasizes that in the current government repatriations have been “successful” because the presidential plane has been “fully available” to bring pieces “properly packed and safeguarded on those trips”.
Recent returns have been made mostly by private collectors on a voluntary basis and require diplomatic work in each country of origin. ICANH is then in charge of the registration, cataloguing, transfer, reception and, in some cases, intervention of the pieces.
As most of the repatriated works are ceramic, the restoration processes are simpler. “Even though they are very old, they can be very well preserved with the passage of time,” says Medina.
The most vulnerable materials are those “of an organic nature,” such as textiles, paper or wood.
The composition of the materials also offers details about how Colombia’s early societies functioned in relation to their territory, says Medina.
For the most part, the Colombian territory was made up of pre-Columbian societies distributed in small chiefdoms.
Ospina assures that what today corresponds to Panama, Venezuela, Colombia and part of northern Ecuador is known as the “intermediate zone” in Latin American archeology, “because what happened there is completely different from what happened in Mesoamerica or in the central Andes,” where great empires were formed.
That is why in Colombia, unlike in Mexico or Peru, it is not common to find palaces, pyramids or large goldsmith traces, with one great exception: the treasure of the Quimbayas. A collection of gold found at the end of the 19th century in a small village in the department of Quindío (west), donated at that time to the Queen of Spain by the Colombian president Carlos Holguín and which today is in the Museum of America in Madrid.
Most of Colombia’s archaeological treasures are ceramic pieces from different periods and cultures, some 6,000 and 7,000 years old, found in the Caribbean, Ospina explains.
“They are very early evidence of ceramics,” he adds.
In other Colombian regions the use of ceramics dates back to approximately 1,000 BC, present mainly in religious and funerary rites.
International
Three Killed, Four Injured in Shooting Near Seattle’s Space Needle
Three people were killed and at least four others, including a young child, were injured in a shooting near Seattle’s iconic Space Needle on Sunday, authorities said.
The shooting occurred during the annual Bite of Seattle food festival, held in one of the city’s busiest tourist areas. Police have arrested one suspect and are searching for a second individual believed to be involved.
Assistant Police Chief Tyrone Davis said officers responded to reports of gunfire at about 6:00 p.m. local time (0100 GMT Monday).
“Two individuals were shooting at each other,” Davis said, adding that investigators recovered two firearms at the scene.
Authorities confirmed that three people died as a result of the shooting. The identities of the victims have not yet been released.
Washington Governor Bob Ferguson said members of the State Patrol’s SWAT team had been deployed to assist Seattle police with the investigation.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson described the incident as a “horrific act of violence.”
“Our focus is on those who lost their lives, those fighting to recover, and the families standing beside them,” Wilson said in a statement.
Susan Gregg, a spokesperson for Harborview Medical Center, said the hospital admitted four victims: a young child, a 23-year-old man, a 39-year-old woman and another woman whose age was not immediately known and who required emergency surgery.
According to police, the hospitalized victims are in stable condition.
Witnesses told local television station KIRO that they heard multiple gunshots before crowds fled the festival area.
“At first I thought it was fireworks, and then everyone started running,” witness Nick Bate told the station.
Another witness told AFP that panic spread immediately after the shooting.
“We just started running. I didn’t even look to see where the shooter was. I just kept hearing the gunfire,” the witness said.
International
China Accuses U.S. AI Firms of Using Chinese Models to Train Artificial Intelligence
China on Monday accused U.S. artificial intelligence companies of using Chinese AI models to train their own systems, escalating tensions in the technological rivalry between the world’s two largest economies.
In a statement, China’s Ministry of Commerce said it has evidence that “many U.S. artificial intelligence companies have distilled Chinese models during their research, development and training processes.”
Model distillation is a machine learning technique that transfers knowledge from a larger, more advanced model to a smaller and faster one, allowing it to perform efficiently while requiring fewer computing resources. The approach is widely used across the AI industry.
U.S. officials have previously argued that Chinese firms employ distillation on a large scale to unlawfully replicate proprietary American AI systems. Beijing dismissed those allegations, calling them unfounded.
According to the Chinese ministry, Washington’s accusations “lack both factual and legal basis, apply double standards in practice, and represent a typical act of AI hegemony.”
“China will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its legitimate rights and interests,” the ministry added.
The statement comes days after a senior White House official accused Chinese startup Moonshot AI of secretly copying Anthropic’s most advanced AI model to develop its Kimi K3 system.
Moonshot’s latest model drew significant attention across the U.S. technology sector following its release, reigniting debate over China’s growing competitiveness in artificial intelligence.
Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that Washington could impose sanctions on China as the administration considers restricting or banning foreign-developed open-source AI models, many of which are built using model distillation techniques.
International
Costa Rica Seeks to Expand Extradition Law to Target Organized Crime
Costa Rican President Laura Fernández announced that her administration will submit a constitutional reform bill to Congress on August 3 aimed at expanding the legal grounds for extraditing Costa Rican nationals accused of serious crimes.
Under current legislation, Costa Rican citizens can only be extradited to face prosecution abroad for international drug trafficking and terrorism. The proposed reform would broaden that list to include a wider range of organized crime offenses.
Speaking before the Legislative Assembly while presenting a broader package of public security initiatives, Fernández said the proposal seeks to strengthen the country’s fight against transnational criminal organizations.
“We are going to expand the grounds for extradition to include serious crimes,” the president said.
The initiative would allow the extradition of Costa Rican nationals accused of financing drug trafficking or terrorism, money laundering, human trafficking, migrant smuggling, arms and organ trafficking, contract killings, organized crime-related homicides, cybercrime and cyberterrorism.
“We will not stop in our national crusade against organized crime or in our relentless war against drug trafficking,” Fernández said.
A political ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, Fernández took office in May after campaigning on a promise to adopt a tougher stance against organized crime, which she has linked to the recent rise in violence in Costa Rica, a country long regarded as one of the safest in Latin America.
Costa Rica currently permits the extradition of its own citizens only for international drug trafficking and terrorism, following a 2025 constitutional amendment promoted by former President Rodrigo Chaves, who now serves as the country’s Minister of the Presidency and Finance.
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