Indigenous groups claim interest in sunken Spanish ship carrying cargo off Colombia’s coast

The San Jose galleon, which historians believed carried one of the largest known unrecovered collections of maritime treasures, sank in 1708 near the port of Cartagena on Colombia’s Caribbean coast.

The wreckage was located in 2015 with sonar imagery identifying bronze cannons, weapons, ceramics and other artifacts among the cargo. Colombia announced in February it would launch an underwater exploration mission to recover the galleon.

The indigenous Killakas, Carangas and Chichas peoples estimate that their ancestors – who often worked in slave-like conditions – obtained the metals that make up about half of the ship’s cargo from mines in what is now Bolivia, then under Spanish control, and which were then transported north to Cartagena.

Lawyer Jose Maria Lancho, an expert in underwater heritage, has requested on behalf of the indigenous communities to share any proceeds from the ship’s salvage with Spain and Colombia.

“Our indigenous communities consider any act of intervention and unilateral appropriation of the galleon, without directly consulting us and without expressly and effectively taking into account its communal and shared character, as an act of plunder and neo-colonialism,” the statement said. indigenous communities in letters. sent to UNESCO and Spain and seen by Reuters.

TREASURE HUNTERS

Colombia has proposed that Spain relinquish its claim to the ship and its contents in favor of Bogota. A move that Lancho and his clients fear could set a dangerous precedent regarding the beneficiaries of other sunken colonial-era ships and their bounties. Colombian law favors treasure hunters.

“If Spain waives its sovereign immunity in this case, there will be no state or treasure-hunting company that does not rely on this precedent,” Lancho told Reuters.

The Colombian government did not respond to a request for comment.

UNESCO, the United Nations culture agency, confirmed it had received the petition from the indigenous communities.

A UNESCO spokesperson said that Colombia – unlike Spain – has not signed the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which addresses such issues, which “limits the scope of our action in the specific case of San Jose limited”.

The San Jose was part of King Philip V’s fleet that fought against the British during the War of the Spanish Succession from 1701-1714. About 600 people were killed when a British fleet sank the galleon in a firefight.

Spain considers the San Jose a state ship whose remains are classified as an underwater cemetery and cannot be exploited commercially.

Asked about the matter, Spain’s Ministry of Culture told Reuters: “Colombia and Spain currently enjoy excellent relations that should closely align their interests in this area.”

(Additional reporting by Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota; Editing by Aislinn Laing and Gareth Jones)