Earth Monster Returned to Mexico

"Portal al inframundo"- Chalcatzingo Monument 9

A view shows the Olmec bas-relief "Portal al inframundo"—Monument 9 of Chalcatzingo— after it was repatriated from the city of Denver, Colorado, U.S., at the "Museo Regional de los Pueblos de Morelos" museum, in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Olmec Antiquities

The Olmecs were a prehistoric people inhabiting the coast of Veracruz and western Tabasco on the Gulf of Mexico c. 1200–400 BCE. The Olmec culture, known for the production of exquisitely carved stone monuments, extended eastward from the Tuxtla Mountains of southern Veracruz to the humid lowlands of western Tabasco. Several dozen archaeological sites are known to contain monuments, but the majority are found at only four sites: Laguna de los Cerros, Tres Zapotes, La Venta, and San Lorenzo Tenochtitlan. The history of the archaeological work carried on at these four centers forms the basis of the book, Discovering the Olmecs: An Unconventional History.¹

Of Olmec art that has survived the centuries, their carved heads are particularly striking and well known. By 1000 B.C., Olmec sculptors at San Lorenzo, Mexico, had fashioned no fewer than 10 colossal heads, all over 6 feet high. Archaeologists believe these are individualized portraits of rulers, each with their own specific headdress: depictions of specific people, which is quite rare in New World art.²

One of the heads, the Portal al inframundo (Chalcatzingo-Monument 9) has long been missing. Although the date and manner in which Monument 9 was illegally removed from Chalcatzingo is unknown, its removal was disclosed in 1968 by archaeologist David Grove in issue 33 of American Antiquity magazine.³ It is believed to already have been in the U.S. by the beginning of the second half of the 20th century.

“Portal al inframundo” Chalcatzingo Monument 9 Returned to Mexico

On March 31, 2023 the Consul General of Mexico in New York, Jorge Islas, after the Manhattan District Attorney's Antiquities Trafficking Unit⁴ communicated that the important archeological monument—“Portal al inframundo”— Chalcatzingo Monument 9 — had been recovered announced as a result of the coordinated work done by the Mexican Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Culture and New York State authorities in the United States. ⁵

The sculpture has been dated to between 800 and 400 B.C. and represents an earth monster, a cosmogonic creature that appears frequently in Olmec iconography. Its open jaws symbolize access to the underworld. The four shapes at the corners of the mouth represent the branches of the bromeliad, a plant typical of the area around Chalcatzingo that is also found on other carvings at the site.⁶

Where Was the “Portal al inframundo”? New York? Chicago? Denver!

Mysteriously disappearing and appearing more than once, the Portal al inframundo made out of a 21-million-year-old type of volcanic rock called granodiorite, was stolen and cut into eighteen pieces sometime in the 1950s or early 1960s before being brought to the U.S., where it was reassembled in the 1970s and eventually put on public display at an exhibition at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. ⁷

It was put on display in upstate New York in the 1980s and then again in Chicago in 2004 and 2006, according to Alejandro Celorio Alcántara, principal legal advisor for the Mexican Foreign Affairs office. Its appearance in 2006 was the last that Mexico had known of the Earth Monster's whereabouts before it went off the grid again.⁸

It was in Denver, Colorado.

Authorities recovered Portal al inframundo from an unnamed collector or collectors. The Mexican delegation stood on the tarmac Friday afternoon near Denver International Airport, waiting under hazy skies for a forklift to deliver a wooden box, the contents of which archaeologists have been searching for nearly two decades.⁹

Inside that box — 95 inches tall, 46 inches wide, emblazoned with the Mexican flag — sat a 2,000-pound, elaborately carved stone from the ancient Olmec civilization, a precursor to the Mayans who thrived more than 2,500 years ago near the Gulf of Mexico.

The Denver collectors, characterized as “super-rich”, have not been named.

The Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (National Institute of Anthropology and History) (INAH) reported in a statement the repatriation of Monument 9 of Chalcatzingo, an archaeological piece of great relevance that originated in this region of the current state of Morelos.

Portal al inframundo  will stay at the Palacio de Cortés in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, before being returned to its home at an archeological site in Chalcatzingo, Morelos, in September or soon after.

1. Grove, David C. Discovering the Olmecs : An Unconventional History / by David C. Grove. First ed. 2014. Print. William & Bettye Nowlin Ser. in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere.

2. Taube, Karl. (June 19, 2023).  An Olmec ‘Earth Monster’ Returns to Mexico: The repatriation of an ancient sculpture highlights the influential early Mesoamerican culture. Atlas Obscura.

3. Grove, David C. “Chalcatzingo, Morelos, Mexico: A Reappraisal of the Olmec Rock Carvings.” American Antiquity 33, no. 4 (1968): 486–91.

4. Sabar, Ariel. “THE TOMB RAIDERS OF THE UPPER EAST SIDE: Inside the Manhattan DA’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit.” The Atlantic. December 2021. The only one of its kind in the world, this squad of prosecutors, criminal investigators, and art specialists polices the loftiest reaches of New York’s art market—a genteel club of museums, collectors, and auction houses that buy and sell the relics of ancient civilizations…. Tips from scholars, dealers, and other informants have repeatedly led to the Upper East Side of New York. The enclave of old-money families along Fifth Avenue’s Museum Mile is America’s worst neighborhood for antiquities crime.

5. Gobierno de México. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores | 31 de marzo de 2023 | Comunicado Chalcatzingo Monument 9 to be repatriated to Mexico.

6. Olmec Sculpture Will Return to Mexico. Archaeology, April 4, 2023.

7. Thanks to KP for Denver articles: A $12 million ancient Mexican artifact has been seized in Colorado. Now the “Earth Monster” is headed back home. Denver Post.

8. Kelty, Benito. (May 22, 2023)."Earth Monster" Olmec Head Found in Private Colorado Collection Finally Goes Home: For over half a century, the stolen "Earth Monster" stone carving was displayed in art collections across the U.S., including a private one in Colorado.

9. Ibid.