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A visiting priest and the female owner of a hostel where he was staying were arrested in the theft. Prosecutors say they are suspected of assisting a criminal gang. Most targets are more like the Tomave church, unprotected by anything more than a lock and chain on the door when last burgled in December. Most are built above 13,100 feet and at least 60 miles from the nearest police station. As for burglar alarms, electricity is unreliable when it exists at all. "Security is impossible," said Yates. "You are left with the kind of situation where you could either try to take all the goods out of these rural churches, which is ethnically questionable because you are taking people's heritage away from them." Even if the art were removed, there is no place to safely store it. Not even the La Merced church in Bolivia's southern regional capital of Potosi, whose silver mine was once the Spanish empire's economic engine, was immune from one of the year's biggest heists. Among loot stolen after an alarm was deactivated: An 18th-century scapular shield encrusted with pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds worth an estimated $1 million. Also taken: part of a huge silver archway laminate. Peru's cultural patrimony director, Blanca Alva, says much of the stolen silver is simply melted down. If it were merely stolen, she said, "at least it would be conserved and I'd hope it could be recovered." Yet authorities have had little luck recovering colonial art. Officials at Bolivia's Culture Ministry were reluctant to share details of stolen items, fearing it could boost their black-market value. A rare victory came in 2005 when 18th-century paintings of St. Francis of Assisi and Jesus Christ stolen from the San Pedro de la Paz church in Bolivia were recovered in Lima, Peru, where someone had tried to sell them to foreigners for $100,000. "That's why this country should have a specialized (antiquities) police, like Italy," said Carlos Rua, the ministry's chief of artistic restoration. No country in the region has more than a handful of police working regularly on antiquities thefts. The rare times that plunderers are caught, consequences can be dire. Police held up by a swollen river arrived too late in Quila Quila, a Quechua-speaking village in Bolivia's southern highlands, to save the thieves whom villagers caught the previous day absconding from their church with canvases and jewels. Local journalist Henry Ayra said the men were caught, beaten and buried in the churchyard on March 5, 2012. Local police Maj. Bismark Pereira told the AP his men unearthed and carted away the handcuffed corpses. He he could not confirm reports the men were buried alive. "The community," said Pereira, "had entered into a pact of silence."
[Associated
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