Machu Picchu's former owners seek compensation on Astini News
A family that used to own Machu Picchu, a world heritage site in Peru, is taking its fight for compensation over the 15th-century Inca citadel to the United Nations.
The Abril family has already started five lawsuits in Peru over the matter since 2004 and believes the compensation due could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
The family owned the estate that included the archaeological ruins when they were "rediscovered" by Hiram Bingham, an American explorer, in 1911. Edgar Echegaray Abril, 70, still has the deed of sale dated June 14, 1910, showing that his family paid in gold for the estate where Machu Picchu stands.
In 1944, they sold the estate to the Zavaleta family, but the contract stated that the ruins did not form part of the sale as they were being expropriated by the state. But the expropriation was never formally completed.
The Peruvian government has never paid compensation despite long having treated both Machu Picchu and the surrounding land as state property.
Fausto Salinas, the lawyer representing the Abril family, is appealing to UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, to help settle the compensation claim by putting pressure on Peru's government.
"The state said at that time 'we're going to expropriate' but the process was never completed, and in Peru, as in international law, if the property is not expropriated from you, you don't lose it," Salinas said.
Salinas is also representing the Zavaleta family, which is claiming compensation for 22,000 hectares of land lying inside what is now the Machu Picchu archaeological park. The Peruvian government insists that the land and citadel "belongs to all Peruvians" and that state ownership is recorded in the regional land registry.
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