It already costs 12 euros to see the Plume of Moctezuma in Austria

Until yesterday, Mexicans who visited the Vienna Ethnographic Museum (Weltmuseum Wien) to admire the Plume of Montezuma They could do it for free just by showing their passport, but as of 2023 they are charging them 12 euros (approximately 250 Mexican pesos).

“The first museum we went to was the one with the Plume of Moctezuma, and it was that you arrived and showed your Mexican passport and they let you in for free, but right now we showed the Mexican passport and they told us: it’s 12 euros.

“And we asked them if we could no longer pass for free with the Mexican passport and they said that as of today, January 1, 2023, no longer”, pointed out a Mexican tourist who is in Vienna, Austria, to La Verdad Noticias.

The most valuable piece in the collection of the Weltmuseum Wien is the “Plume of Ancient Mexico”.

“This plume dates from 1515 and is the only one of its kind that has been preserved. It is currently a true icon of the Weltmuseum Wien ”, indicates the cultural venue.

The controversy over the plume

The pre-Hispanic object has been the subject of dispute between the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obradory that of Austria due to the attempts of the former to return the plume to Mexico, as has been announced The Truth News.

In October 2020, Beatriz Gutierrez Mullerwife of President López Obrador, personally delivered a letter to the Austrian president, Alexander Van der Bellenin which the Mexican government requested a loan of Moctezuma’s Plume to exhibit it in our country as part of the exhibition to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Consummation of Independence.

The government of Austria He refused such a request, arguing that the object would not withstand the trip, which caused the anger of the Mexican president.

It may interest you: Austria is “arrogant” by denying Moctezuma’s Plume: AMLO

On February 23, 2022, López Obrador once again insisted that Austria return the plume to Mexico and criticized what he considered Alexander Van der Bellen’s “arrogant” attitude towards Gutiérrez Müller, when she requested the loan.

“It is a matter that we have dealt with since last year, even Beatriz, my wife, went with a letter that I sent to the President of Austria to ask him, in effect, to allow us to expose the Plume of Moctezuma and the response that was not argued from that he was not going to resist the trip.

“The truth is they have appropriated something that belongs to the Mexicans as usually happens in everything that has to do with art, culture. They have not only looted the peoples in terms of their natural resources, their material wealth, but also their cultural, artistic heritage… We are in a campaign to get them to return everything that has been stolen from art and culture that belongs to Mexico” said the Mexican president.

He added that it was a “very unpleasant” meeting because Gutiérrez Müller was surrounded by “men and above all a woman who they feel the owners of the Plumewho feels like the owner of the Plume and the issue was barely being discussed and they were already saying no ”.

The most widely accepted version is that Moctezuma’s Plume –composed of quetzal feathers and other birds mounted on a base of gold and precious stones– was a gift from the Aztec ruler to Hernán Cortés.