Stolen 16th Century Manuscript Returned to Paraguay

The intrepid sleuths of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit (ATU) of the Manhattan DA’s office have done it again—this time returning a unique 13-page manuscript to Paraguay, from whose National Archives in Asunción it was pilfered at least a decade ago.

Known as the Hernandarias manuscript, the document was written, signed, and dated by Hernando Arias de Saavedra, a Spanish colonial governor in Paraguay, in 1598. (Spain had been colonizing the area around Asunción since the mid-1530s.)

When last offered for public sale by the Upper West Side rare books and maps dealer Martayan Lan, of 10 W. 66th St., the manuscript had a list price of $18,500.

Lan herself, who acquired the manuscript from Swann Auction Galleries, at 104 E. 25th St., in 2013, was shocked to hear from the DA earlier this year. “No dealer wants to work with stolen material,” she told Gothamist.

Founded in 1941 by Benjamin Swann, the auction house, which bills itself as “the largest specialist auctioneer of Works on Paper in the world,” couldn’t be reached for comment.

Given that their auction catalogue containing a detailed description of the manuscript—as well its final buyer’s price of $11,875, remains online—one can presume they believed they had nothing to hide when selling the Hernandarias manuscript.

A tip from the consul general of Paraguay in New York initiated the ATU’s investigation.

In DA Alvin Bragg’s summary, “this manuscript is seen as an important precursor to Hernandarias’s 1603 abolition of the punitive encomienda system, a form of enslavement that allowed colonists to demand tribute and forced labor from Indigenous peoples.”

These people, the Guaraní, exist to this day, and the Guarani language, along with Spanish, are the two official languages of Paraguay. Paraguay celebrates its independence every May 14 and 15, in commemoration of a revolution against Spain that began in Asunción in 1811.

“I am thrilled that, for the first time, we have been able to return a stolen artifact to the people of Paraguay,” said DA Bragg.

“The return of this historical manuscript is a meaningful gesture of friendship and respect between our nations. It symbolizes our shared commitment to the preservation of cultural heritage and historical memory,” said Fabiola Torres Figueredo, consul general of Paraguay in New York.

While no local criminality is suggested by these statements, the story of the Hernandarias manuscript recalls one of the great Manhattan crime novels, Nick Tosches’s In the Hand of Dante.

Published in September 2002, Tosches’s audacious book alternates metafiction—the tale of a downtown writer, amateur Dante scholar, and mostly non-criminal mob associate named Nick Tosches—with the historical fiction of Dante Alighieri as he struggles to compose The Divine Comedy.