The Christmas Eve Robbery of the National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico)

On December 25, 1985, in the very early hours of the morning, two veterinary students, Carlos Perches Treviño and Ramón Sardina García, broke into the National Museum of Anthropology (MNA) in Mexico City and stole 124 priceless pre-Columbian Mexican artifacts.

The theft, which was fictionalized in the film Museo, has been called “the robbery of the century” in Mexico and was named one of the "five best museum heists in history" by Time magazine.

[1] Perches and Sardina were both under thirty years old at the time of the robbery and enrolled as veterinary students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

[1][4][6] On the night of Christmas Eve, December 24, 1985, Perches and Sardina spent the holiday with their families before putting on black clothing and leaving to meet up.

They included objects from the sacred cenote of Chichén Itzá, more than 60 Mayan pieces from the Temple of Palenque, gold jewelry from the Mixteca room and the famous mask of the Zapotec Bat God, among others.

According to Felipe Solís, a curator of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), the black-market value of just one of these pieces (the Aztec obsidian vessel in the form of a monkey) was 10 billion pesos (or $27 million USD) at the time of the robbery.

[1][6] An investigation started with the cooperation of the immigration department, personnel from the General Directorate of Customs, workers from the country's airports, Interpol, and more than thirty people who were tasked with solving the case.

Additionally, the Association of Friends of the National Museum of Anthropology raised 50 million pesos to be given as a reward to anyone who could provide information that would lead to the recovery of the pieces.

A year after the event, then-President Miguel de la Madrid announced in his second government report that 700 million pesos would be allocated to the security of museums that depended on the INAH.