Every week, Ortega's collection of artifacts and curiosities keeps growing, but where is it all coming from? Surely he's not still buying these things through the normal channels, given the current situation.
General Miraflores has all cultural commerce locked down. Art galleries, antique dealers, even flee markets have been closed, forbidden to operate. Any commercial activity that doesn't serve the new regime or its allies has been made illegal. Of course, Miraflores hasn't touched the American crap, consumer brands that are actually made in China and exported across the world for the good old U. S. of A.
Ortega must have art stashed in places across the city, that he's just
hauling into the apartment bit by bit. Or maybe people in his network feel that handing things over to him is a reliable way to safeguard the most precious works in their collections.
Some of this stuff looks expensive. I'm fairly certain that the new statuette in the foyer is solid gold. An upright bear or dog, fierce yet protective, with an elaborate headdress fanning out across its shoulders. Possibly Incan or Aztec. I can only imagine how much it's worth. How many mouths it could feed.
At least that statuette is beautiful, as opposed to what people do with gold nowadays: melt it down into bricks and hide those away in vaults, where no one can see them. Perfect gold bars, stacked in humming chambers under the ground. Makes you wonder what the point is.
Such righteous things could be fashioned out of all that gold, beautiful pieces for the galleries and cathedrals of the world, accessible to everyone. If I ruled, I'd melt the gold down every year then give it out to artisans; new sculptures of gold for all of us, reborn again and again each year. Glorious.