Mexico City AP —
Nearly five centuries after Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés signed it and decades after someone swiped it from Mexico’s national archives, the FBI returned a priceless manuscript page to Mexico on Wednesday.
The FBI said in a statement that the document had changed hands various times over the years, so no one will be charged.
“This is an original manuscript page that was actually signed by Hernán Cortés on February 20, 1527,” said Special Agent Jessica Dittmer, a member of the FBI’s Art Crime Team. By then, Cortés had conquered the Aztec empire in 1521, two years after landing in present-day Mexico.
While archivists at Mexico’s General Archive of the Nation were microfilming their collection of documents signed by Cortés in 1993, they discovered that 15 pages