UNESCO celebrates half a century in the fight against the multimillion-dollar plunder of cultural property

"How do you erase an entire culture? Piece by piece."

Detail of one of the images from the campaign 'The true price of art' Unesco / DDB Paris

10 billion dollars, about 8,250 million euros.

That is what the smuggling of heritage artifacts generated in 2018, according to UNESCO, and that accounted for one sixth of the turnover generated by cultural goods worldwide that year.

The 1970 Convention, which prohibits the illegal transfer and trade of these antiquities, reached half a century of existence on November 24 and the organization has presented the campaign

The true price of art

, in collaboration with the advertising agency DDB, with images of stolen objects and messages such as "Art knows no borders, neither does organized crime" or "How do you erase an entire culture?

Piece by piece".

The Unesco Deputy Director General for Culture, Ernesto Ottone, explains in a video call that the statute has certain limitations and obstacles.

Only 140 of the 193 member states, plus the United States - which withdrew from the organization under the presidency of Donald Trump - have signed the document, which generates a lack of international coordination.

The United Kingdom, for example, only ratified the document in 2002, Germany in 2007, and Belgium and the Netherlands in 2009. “Africa is one of the most active regions on this issue, but of 54 countries on the continent, there are 18 that have not yet ratified the convention.

If they do it this year or next, everything that has happened before is not taken into account ”, affirms the deputy director, adding that the groups that are dedicated to the illicit trafficking of historical and cultural objects take advantage of the lack of legislation to circulate around these territories.

Another factor is that the 50-year-old document is focused on traffic through human networks, but a large part of these operations is carried out today through digital platforms.

Unesco, which works closely with Interpol and the World Customs Organization, together with the Antiquities Traffic and Heritage Anthropology Research Project (ATHAR) succeeded in getting Facebook to ban the trade in historical artifacts through its platform.

Not everyone agrees with some of the statements made by the organization.

The International Confederation of Art Objects Dealers (Cinoa), a union based in Brussels that claims to encompass 30 associations in 20 countries, points out in a text published this year certain irregularities with respect to the figure of 8,250 million euros.

A Cinoa representative argues, in an email, that "there is a growing body of policies and legislation based on false premises that harm legitimate interests and ignore the problems they were intended to solve."

However, the association reiterates its commitment to Unesco and the 1970 Convention.

Arrowheads and precious metals

There are different paths these pieces take to get to market.

The Mexican ethnohistorian Damián Olvera, a graduate of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and a professor at the Anahuac University Network, comments that in his country it can be as simple as a farmer or a builder digging up an ancient object while working: " People, in general, are afraid to notify INAH, because they believe that they will lose their land when archaeological remains are found there, without this really being the case. "

Olvera points out that these finds, in the case of Mexico, range from "relatively rudimentary arrowheads to rich offerings of fine ceramics and precious stones and metals" and range from the times of hunter-gatherers to the arrival of the Spanish in the century XVI.

The result tends to be the same: residents in areas where these deposits abound prefer to sell the pieces they find to traffickers than to notify institutions such as INAH.

This makes it impossible for these objects to have a proper record and follow-up, much less a proper study and analysis.

The Unesco Deputy Director of Culture assures that this is a very common problem in collections and museums in Africa and Latin America.

"Imagine the problem that this implies in archaeological sites where the objects are not yet cataloged," Ottone emphatically points out, giving as an example the case of museums looted in Syria, Libya and Iraq by the Islamic State, with the sale of the looting in the black market to finance the terrorist group.

This is one of the points of conflict with Cinoa, who alleges that these links have been exaggerated.

• The drug traffickers who took photos of themselves in beds full of banknotes and who hoarded 500 archaeological pieces

• Arrested in Cádiz a looter who exhibited his loot on social networks

The ethnohistorian Damián Olvera emphasizes that the trafficking of cultural property has become, along with extortion, kidnapping and sexual exploitation, one of the ways in which the cartels in his country have diversified their businesses beyond drug trafficking and indicates that In some cases, "the skill with which some archaeological sites have been looted" requires the assistance of specialized technicians.

"This produces large gaps in the knowledge we have about certain societies, especially those whose remains are limited to rich tombs that looters have learned to identify from the surface," he laments.

Ottone, who was Chile's Minister of Culture during Michelle Bachelet's second term, believes that a decisive element in combating the smuggling of cultural property is the adequate training of the competent authorities.

He points to the

carabinieri

of Italy as the greatest experts in this type of crime, but it is increasingly common to have security forces with more specialized training.

"I had to participate in the delivery of a diploma to a training of the East African customs police where we trained 54 agents

online,

" says the Chilean, adding that "the beauty is to see how we can use the networks to train in mass".