Peru Tries to Recover Gold From Yale's Ivory Tower

Toledo -- because of his Indian heritage but also on behalf of all Peruvians -- has made it a priority to recover the objects. After several years of settlement talks collapsed, Peruvian Ambassador Eduardo Ferrero charged last week that Yale has "not acted in accordance with the principles of good faith," and he threatened a lawsuit. The university, meanwhile, asserted that Peru had "broken off negotiations . . . instead of working out the framework for a stable and long-term resolution."

This story is thick with Yalies on both sides. Gilbert M. Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society, is a Yale graduate. The biggest blow to Yale's case came last week when the society -- which co-sponsored with Yale two of Bingham's expeditions -- concluded the artifacts belong to Peru and called for their return.

Gregory Craig, the Williams & Connolly partner who is representing Peru, graduated from Yale Law School -- and his grandfather, Paul Bestor, Yale Class of 1910, was quartermaster on one of Bingham's expeditions.

Bingham, an obscure 35-year-old adjunct professor until that July morning in 1911, was at the beginning of a great public career that would make Indiana Jones jealous: explorer, World War I aviator, author, governor of Connecticut, U.S. senator. In the Senate, the Connecticut Republican was censured for secretly putting a lobbyist on his payroll. But his reputation survived. He lived at 1818 R St. NW and died in 1956.

He may have cut a Hollywood-perfect image as an explorer, with exploits seemingly ripped from a script, but he was no tomb raider. The irony at the bottom of this ruckus is that 95 years ago, Bingham, Yale, National Geographic and Peru appeared to recognize the inherently unequal and morally fraught relationship between bankrolled explorers and bankrupt peoples.

They tried to do something about it: Laws were passed, words were inked, in hopes that 95 years later there wouldn't be a dispute over who owned what. That didn't work out so well.

Even though this case comes amid a rising tide of seemingly similar disputes and settlements -- the Metropolitan Museum of Art last month agreed to return looted works to Italy in exchange for loaned art, while the British Museum holds on to the Elgin Marbles -- its documentary record makes it unique.

Seated in a wing chair in his spacious office on Embassy Row, Ferrero allows a little passion to slip between the lines of his diplo-speak. Referring to Bingham, he wags a forefinger in the air: "I say 'rediscoverer' not 'discoverer' because Machu Picchu was already known by people" in the area, he says. Dating to the 15th century, and abandoned sometime in the 16th, the city was an elaborate vacation retreat for Incan nobility. Its discovery enhanced modern understanding of a sophisticated civilization that existed long before Spanish invaders overran the territory.

"Yale and the National Geographic gave an important contribution to put this information for the knowledge of Peru and the world," Ferrero acknowledges. But now, "there is a legal obligation and a moral obligation of Yale University to give back all these objects."

The ambassador leafs through pages of records -- photocopies of Peruvian decrees passed in 1912 and 1914 to regulate Bingham's expeditions, letters on Yale stationery from Bingham to Gilbert H. Grosvenor, then-president of National Geographic.

He reads aloud from a Bingham letter dated Nov. 28, 1916: "Now they" -- the artifacts from the third expedition -- "do not belong to us, but to the Peruvian government, who allowed us to take them out of the country on condition that they be returned in eighteen months."

It is unclear why Yale is clinging to the collection. Officials would not answer questions about the case. In statements, the university contends that under an 1852 law it is not obligated to return material collected on the first two expeditions. But Peru cites a 1912 decree in which it "reserves its right to request" return of any artifacts Bingham might find, or had found.