On July 15, 2022, the U.S. Department of State’s Cultural Antiquities Task Force (CATF) held a virtual training workshop for law enforcement officials from the United States to enhance their knowledge of cultural property from Latin America and to build capacity to disrupt its trafficking.
The training brought together 100 participants and presenters from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the State Department, the Smithsonian Institution, international partners, and representatives from U.S. universities and museums. Participants learned about current trends in cultural heritage crimes and legal frameworks for disrupting cultural property trafficking, as well as detailed information about different types of cultural property from Latin America.
This training was the fifth in a series of cultural property anti-trafficking workshops supported by the CATF and organized by the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Conservation Institute and Office of International Relations, in collaboration with HSI, CBP, and FBI. The workshops provide law enforcement with knowledge and capabilities to help identify, investigate, and prosecute some of the most-trafficked categories of cultural property. Previous workshops addressed trafficking in coins, manuscripts, fakes and forgeries, and cultural objects from Central Asia.
This workshop supplements the CATF’s annual training program that, in partnership with HSI and Smithsonian, has now trained over 360 law enforcement personnel since 2009. Collectively, members of the CATF have successfully repatriated more than 20,000 pieces of cultural property to more than 45 countries since 2004.
About the Cultural Antiquities Task Force
Created by the State Department in 2004 at the direction of Congress, the CATF comprises federal agencies that share a common mission to disrupt cultural property trafficking in the United States and abroad. Since its creation, the CATF has supported more than 100 domestic and international cultural property training programs. CATF is a law enforcement-focused working group of the Cultural Heritage Coordinating Committee. Both are managed by the State Department’s Cultural Heritage Center.
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