Overview
- Mexican officials said the FBI delivered the nearly 500-year-old folio to the Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores in recent weeks and the recovery was publicly announced on June 16, 2026.
- The item is a libramiento de pago dated February 20, 1527, and Mexican authorities say it came from a set of folios with Hernán Cortés’s signatures taken from volume 362, legajo 203 of the Hospital de Jesús archive.
- Mexico’s return effort began about four years ago after officials learned the folio would be offered at a U.S. auction house and led to a criminal complaint to the Fiscalía General de la República with archival provenance evidence.
- Authorities said the document was placed under the Mexican embassy’s custody in the United States in August 2025 and that the handover reflects coordinated work by the SRE, Archivo General de la Nación, FGR and the FBI.
- Officials have not yet disclosed plans for public display or conservation and they say the recovery forms part of a broader government policy that aims to block sales and reclaim Mexican documentary patrimony.