In May 2025, French President Emmanuel Macron visited Mexico City for his first official trip to Mexico, where President Claudia Sheinbaum announced a temporary exchange of two pre-Hispanic codices. The Codex Azcatitlán, held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, will travel to Mexico City, while the Codex Boturini, housed at Mexico's Biblioteca Nacional de Antropología e Historia, will go to Paris. Both illustrated manuscripts, rarely displayed due to conservation concerns, recount the Aztecs' migration to Tenochtitlan. The exchange comes amid ongoing Mexican efforts to repatriate Mesoamerican codices from European collections, including the Codex Borgia and Codex Vaticanus in the Vatican and the Codex Borbonicus in France.
The swap matters because it represents a rare moment of cultural cooperation between France and Mexico on heritage issues, but it also highlights the persistent challenges of repatriation. Mexican restitution activists, such as Emilia Mendoza of the Frente de Defensa de la Cultura Ancestral, view the loan as a positive step but stress that permanent return remains the goal. Repatriation is complicated by the fact that many codices were acquired before the 1970 UNESCO convention and 1972 heritage law, meaning returns rely on goodwill rather than legal obligation. This exchange could set a precedent for future negotiations over other contested manuscripts.