PUEBLA, Mexico — Three years after her tiny, 16th century chapel was looted, sacristan Maria Elena Sauza still noses around Puebla's Frog Alley flea market, hoping for a miracle. Sacred art objects stolen from churches all over Mexico resurface here, and she prays hers will too.
Trafficking in stolen religious art is big business in Mexico, and the thieves who broke into her San Cosme chapel knew exactly what to take: four statues and two paintings, all dating from the 17th century, each worth thousands of dollars.
"The robbery was horrible. You feel pain and impotence of not being able to do anything," said Sauza, who regularly makes a three-hour bus trip from the town of Otumba to scour Frog Alley.
One night in June 2001, thieves armed with bolt cutters broke into the padlocked chapel. Sauza, whose family has provided the chapel's custodians for four generations, discovered the thefts the next morning.
San Cosme's icons may have been smuggled to the United States or Europe or peddled to clandestine buyers in Mexico. Growing international demand drives an epidemic of theft. On average, one of Mexico's 17,000 churches is looted each day.
San Cosme's rustic paintings of the Virgin Mary and wooden icons of saints Cosme, Damian and Antonio and the Virgin of the Assumption may already have been sold in southwestern U.S. cities such as Santa Fe, N.M., San Antonio, or Phoenix, where the market for stolen objects is strongest.
"The market is excellent for these objects all over the world," said Luis Alvarez, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency attache in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. "But in states like Arizona, California or Texas where the Spanish Colonial home style is predominant, these objects are highly appropriate as decor."
But buyers of Latin American sacred art should be aware that whatever the circumstances of their purchase, chances are that the relics were stolen, said Mary-Anne Martin, owner of a New York City gallery that specializes in modern Latin American paintings.
"It's very shady," said Martin, who has brokered major sales of paintings by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and others. "There really never has been a legitimate market for this material. It's not supposed to leave the churches anyway." Martin added that most Latin American countries, including Mexico, have laws that declare the artwork national patrimony, "so it's supposed to stay put."
