Overview

• The parchment page, dated Feb. 20, 1527, details pesos of common gold paid for expenses in preparation for early colonial expeditions.
• Archivists discovered 15 pages missing from Mexico’s national archives during 1993 preservation work and used wax numbering to date the theft between 1985 and 1993.
• Investigators from the FBI, NYPD and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York tracked the manuscript’s location in the continental United States before seizing it.
• All former and current stakeholders signed legal transfers relinquishing their claims, enabling the FBI to secure and authenticate the document without filing criminal charges.
• This handover follows a July 2023 repatriation of a 16th-century Cortés letter and underscores ongoing U.S.–Mexico cooperation to recover cultural heritage.