The General Archive of the Nation and Control Against the Illicit Traffic of the Archivistic Documentary Heritage

Abstract

This article aims to make a description of the activities carried out since 2004 jointly between the Ministry of Culture and the General Archive of the Nation for the prevention and control of Illicit Traffic of Cultural Property in general and in particular of the Goods Archival Documentary Heritage. With the implementation of the “National Program for Cooperation Against Illicit Traffic in Cultural Property”, 12 entities responsible for the different types of cultural heritage are integrated with control and academic entities where national and international cooperation, training, awareness and development actions are carried out belonging, strengthening legislation as an indispensable activity to protect the heritage and preserve the memory of the country and the realization of inventories. Based on these pillars of work are carried out among the entities involved, work tables of different topics such as cooperation, criminalization, repatriation, illegal trade, training and dissemination where the General Archive of the Nation identifies both strengths and weaknesses that they must be tackled in order to counteract the illicit traffic of archival documentary goods.