Family Claims Ownership Of Machu Picchu Ruins
A Peruvian family has laid claim to the Machu Picchu ruins of Peru, and has appealed to the United Nations' global heritage body to help them. The Abril family already launched five lawsuits over the Machu Picchu ruins in 2004, and after the Peruvian government maintained a strong stand, they have appealed to the United Nations' agency UNESCO to solve the dispute.
Seventy-year-old Edgar Echegaray Abril still has the sale deed showing that his family bought the estate where Machu Picchu stands with gold in 1910. They sold it to the Zavaleta family, in 1944, but not the land forming the Machu Picchu ruins as they were being expropriated by the state. However, the expropriation was never formally completed of both Machu Picchu and the surrounding land, although they have been treated as government lands for a long time now. Now, the Abril family is now claiming the compensation that could potentially run into hundreds of millions of dollars for the Machu Picchu site, whereas the Zavaleta family is claiming compensation for the 22,000 hectares of land lying inside what is now the Machu Picchu Archaeological Park. Machu Picchu is one of the major revenue generators for Peruvian tourism as about 90 % of its revenue from tourism is from the site.