- 6 months ago
Carl Nagin looks into how ancient artifacts looted from pre-Columbian tombs in Latin America wound up in auction houses, galleries, museums, and private collections in the United States.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01Frontline is made possible by the financial support of viewers like you
00:06and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
00:11Tonight, from Mexico to Peru, the tombs of ancient civilizations are being plundered for their treasures.
00:18The plunderer does it purely for monetary reasons.
00:21He knows he can sell the material to someone who sells it to someone's whole chain of command until he gets to the museum or the collection.
00:27Frontline investigates the international network of looters and smugglers that supplies the pre-Columbian art market.
00:33The dealers, the collectors, the museums, everybody who's involved knows that the bulk of it is illegal.
00:40Tonight on Frontline.
00:43Plunder.
00:44From the network of public television stations, a presentation of KCTS Seattle, WNET New York, WPBT Miami, WTVS Detroit, and WGBH Boston.
01:05This is Frontline, with Judy Woodruff.
01:13Good evening.
01:14Almost three years ago, there was news from Peru of a sensational archeological find, the tombs of the Lords of Sipan.
01:22They were the warrior priests of the mysterious ancient Peruvian culture called the Moche that flourished from 100 to 700 A.D.
01:32The tombs have been partially looted by grave robbers who had made off with a treasure of gold and silver artifacts worth millions of dollars on the international antiquities market.
01:43Frontline reporter Carl Nagin has spent the last year investigating the trail of the plundered Sipan artifacts and how they were smuggled from Peru to Europe and finally to collectors in Southern California.
01:58He interviewed all the principal players in the U.S. and abroad and obtained exclusive access to thousands of documents, including internal Peruvian police reports of their investigation.
02:10Tonight's film begins in the jungles of Guatemala, where British producer Chris Winner spent months tracking the waqueros, the grave robbers, and following the trail of looted objects north to the United States.
02:25It is a tale of smugglers and scholars, art lovers and gold fever, but it is also about a much larger question, who should own and protect the past?
02:37Tonight's film was produced by William Cran and Jim Gilmore and reported by Carl Nagin.
02:43It is called Plunder.
02:49San Benito Paten, a remote backwater on the edge of the Guatemalan jungle.
02:55Like other frontier towns, a place of bars, brothels, guns and jungle traders.
03:10At the back of a cantina, a man who calls himself Dino has something to sell.
03:20This 1,500-year-old piece of Mayan pottery was recently looted, and its painted figures could make it worth $10,000 in a New York gallery.
03:32But Dino knows the score.
03:35He and the grave robbers who supply the gringos will get less than a tenth of the take.
03:41The profits go to the gringos.
03:54We run the risk of getting caught.
03:56We can get killed or go to prison.
03:59Those are big risks you run, while they stuck their pockets with money.
04:04Today, the black market in ancient artifacts is a lucrative and secretive business.
04:25Dino is a link in a chain of looters and smugglers who supply the international antiquities trade.
04:36Law enforcement agents say the monetary value of stolen and plundered art today is surpassed only by the traffic in arms and narcotics.
04:46In misty jungles of the Yucatan and hidden corners of the Andes, there are striking reminders of ancient civilizations, like the Maya, Moche, Inca, and Aztec.
05:09They built observatories, temples, and vast ceremonial centers.
05:16Scholars have only just begun to unravel their secrets.
05:21But it is a race against time and human greed.
05:25By the end of the century, most of these ruins will have been plundered.
05:30For over 30 years, a Harvard archaeologist has been coming to the jungle to study the language of the ancient Maya.
05:39These monuments hold the key.
05:42They are covered with hieroglyphs, the only clues scholars have to work with.
05:47But looters hack them into smaller pieces for sale on the international antiquities market.
05:53Ian Graham treks to plundered sites like these to photograph, record, and save the remnants for his work.
06:03It's a race to get there first, but if you don't get there first, you still want to get there very soon.
06:09Otherwise, the fragments they left behind will gradually disappear or get trodden on and become harder to restore.
06:18At the moment, we can only do a very partial reconstruction of some of the pieces which can be fitted back together.
06:28Here, for instance, apparently machete cuts, very clumsy work indeed, destroyed a lot of this sculpture.
06:38There's not much left for me to try and restore.
06:43They obviously took away quite a lot of pieces.
06:46It's a mess now, really.
06:48Very sad.
06:53Meanwhile, in another part of the jungle, the people Graham fears most, the plunderers, are going to work.
07:00Archaeologists call them huaqueros, or grave robbers.
07:05Pedro and his band of looters have been traveling for days searching for treasure buried beneath the jungle floor.
07:18Their work is illegal, and this rare footage reveals their methods.
07:22Pedro and his crew will have to work as quickly as possible.
07:28They ransack the grave to find treasure they can sell.
07:35Discovery by military patrols is only one of the dangers they face.
07:43Men like Pedro are often better at finding graves than trained scholars like Graham.
07:52The white floor protects the tomb, and this black line could be the roof, so maybe we are getting close to a tomb.
08:00Pedro has been digging in these jungles for years, and he knows how long it takes to find anything worthwhile.
08:09There's a bigger temple further on, but it would take a lot of supplies to tackle.
08:15That could perhaps take a month.
08:18They've had to dig several shafts.
08:25Almost three weeks have gone by, and they've found nothing worth selling.
08:38Underneath, it's tunneled down to the bottom, and since there was no tomb there, we thought it had to be above.
08:43But there's nothing there, so it's got to be on the sides.
08:47A friend found a vase here with painted flowers and hieroglyphics, a really beautiful vase, and some jade beads came out.
09:01And a few more pieces too, but what we call huashca, worthless.
09:09To archaeologists, Pedro's treasure hunt destroys the knowledge a scientific excavation would yield.
09:17For men like Graham, reconstructing ancient hieroglyphs can be dangerous too.
09:24Working at a site like this, an assistant was shot dead at Graham's side by a huachero.
09:32His sketches and photographs provide an image of a lost masterpiece.
09:39Often, the fragments left by the looters are his only clues.
09:47The Mayans were a complex culture with a rich array of symbols and myths that Graham tries to decode.
09:56It's a kind of archaeological jigsaw puzzle.
10:02His detective work takes him to a site called El Zatz, where a carved wooden lintel beam was ripped from a tomb.
10:17Looters hacked off the back to lighten the load.
10:20I think this may be the piece which has the peculiar shape on its butt.
10:26It's a little like it will fit.
10:34Perfect.
10:35These fragments are the only remnants left.
10:38They are the only clues Graham has to reconstruct the missing lintel.
10:42Here is a mask panel.
10:47It shows a serpent jaw, this being the eye of the serpent.
10:52Here, a fang, and the nose ends there.
10:55And the particular style in which this is executed, particularly the two groups of feathers like this, again is unique.
11:04Except that they're found also on the wooden lintel in Denver.
11:08This is the rest of the lintel.
11:12It is in the Denver Art Museum.
11:15The museum acquired it in the early 70s, before laws clamped down on such importations.
11:21Officials at Denver declined to discuss their acquisition policies on camera.
11:26As did museums we contacted in Cleveland and Fort Worth.
11:30Both of which have pieces Ian Graham has traced to looted sites.
11:34The only one who would talk was the Metropolitan Museum's Oscar Muscarella.
11:41Museums refuse to talk openly about where antiquities come from.
11:46For the same reason dealers refuse to talk about where the antiquities come from.
11:50Because they don't want the public to know that in fact many of the objects they acquire are stolen, plundered works of art.
11:59They don't want the public to realize that museums which claim to preserve are in fact participating in destruction.
12:07Dealers are a part of this world of secrecy and discretion.
12:10The owner of this world famous gallery would not return Frontline's calls.
12:16Edward Marin handled the Elzatz lintel.
12:19He sold it to a business partnership which donated it to the Denver Art Museum for a tax write-off.
12:24When a museum, that is to say the trustees of a museum, purchase an antiquity that they and others know is a smuggled object,
12:38then they have to bear the responsibility of setting in motion the whole plundering process.
12:42By their purchase, they are putting the money into the pipeline which goes from the trustees to the dealer, to the runners, to the people being bribed,
12:54right down finally to the plunderers themselves.
12:58Like many archaeologists, Muscarella believes that 90% of the antiquities sold to American museums are plundered and smuggled from their country of origin.
13:07By now, Pedro and his gang have been digging for weeks with no payoff.
13:14They live off the land.
13:19Lunch today is snake meat.
13:23One guacquero has come down with malaria and the nearest doctor is two days away.
13:30They will try one more tunnel before moving on.
13:33This time, luck is with them.
13:43Pedro moves a rock and unseals a tomb which has lain undisturbed for 15 centuries.
13:49He finds a jade bead.
13:55It is the first object of value he has uncovered.
13:57But there are more treasures.
14:02This artifact may be the long-awaited payoff after a month of hard labor.
14:21A perfect plate painted and stuccoed with Mayan hieroglyphs.
14:35In San Benito Petén, the traders will pay several hundred dollars, a small fortune in the jungle.
14:46But others will pay much more for similar artifacts.
14:4914,000.
14:52At 14,000 dollars now, at 14,000.
14:57This is Carroll's bidder.
14:5915,000.
15:00At 15,000 dollars now, at 15,000.
15:0316,000.
15:04The bid's on the phone at 16,000 dollars.
15:08Sandy Carroll, 16.
15:10Twice a year, dealers and collectors from around the world attend Sotheby's sales of pre-Columbian art.
15:18For countries like Guatemala and Peru, these auctions have become increasingly controversial.
15:24To learn how these antiquities reach the American market, they are sending representatives like Peru's Chang Rodriguez.
15:31Auctions are taking place with objects, many of which are of dubious origin.
15:40Where do they come from?
15:42Art dealers are not so cautious.
15:45They trade objects that sometimes I wonder whether they are aware that they have been illicitly traded and brought into this country.
16:00I would like to find out whether the objects that they have there have been legally exported from Peru.
16:12And in reality, what's the origin of these artifacts?
16:19John Marion, chairman of Sotheby's, has a standard response to Peru's claims.
16:24Where they claim that something is stolen, then on an item-by-item basis, we ask that they show us where it was stolen from.
16:33If it was stolen, and in terms of the definition of stolen, that means from a church institution or museum, rather than the broader context of everything in the country of Peruvian nature belongs to the government.
16:47Uh, then if they can show that something was stolen, we would withdraw it from the sale.
16:56To the best of my knowledge, they have not shown anything.
16:59Meanwhile, statues like these fetch ever higher prices, and the bidding by collectors and dealers sets New World Records.
17:06At $105,000, then standing in the rear at $105,000.
17:13Marin, $105,000.
17:15High prices encourage plunder, say the archaeologists.
17:20But gallery owners like New York's Andre Emmerich defend the antiquities trade.
17:25There is a war on, in the field of what we might call archaeology, between people who call themselves field archaeologists, people who go out and dig, and others interested in, let's say, pre-Columbian art, museum curators, conservators.
17:47Archaeologists, archaeologists who write, people who collect, people who deal.
17:54The field archaeologists want everything left in the ground, that is in the ground, to be excavated by them slowly over the generations.
18:05Never mind the real world, and the freelance excavating that goes on.
18:14Which, by the way, is a much better word than looting.
18:16Looting, by definition, implies a crime.
18:19Looting is a crime.
18:21Freelance excavating is not.
18:23Some dealers and collectors claim they take better care of objects than the host country, the country from which they come.
18:32But that sentence is totally inadequate.
18:36It completely belies how they got the object in the first place.
18:40Every object that a dealer sells and a collector collects was once in a tomb that was covered and protected, was once in a mound that was covered and protected, waiting for an archaeologist to excavate it painstakingly and with care and love.
18:55So that the object they have does not represent care, it represents destruction.
19:02The story of how plunder moves from the graves to the galleries is largely untold, but the recent discovery of a fabulous treasure in Peru has revealed the secrets of the trade.
19:15The story began in the California Riviera town of Santa Barbara.
19:21While many public galleries did business here in the open, selling to the California elite, Santa Barbara was also the center for a less visible ring of pre-Columbian art smugglers.
19:34English-born art dealer Michael Kelly knew how they operated.
19:39He had come to Santa Barbara as an expert in Latin American art, both ancient and modern.
19:44He dreamt of starting a museum here, but his experience with dealers and collectors left him with few illusions.
19:51In my experience, there are two types of art dealing.
19:56There's honest art dealing and dishonest art dealing.
19:59And antiquities or primitive art dealers tend to have to be somewhat dishonest,
20:09because the dealers, the collectors, the museums, everybody who's involved, who's a professional, who knows the business, knows that the bulk of it is illegal when you're dealing with pre-Columbian art and other art from countries where they have national heritage laws.
20:26Kelly became involved when he made friends with a couple who worked out of this fashionable residence.
20:33David and Jacqueline Swetnam were dealers specializing in pre-Columbian textiles, ceramics, and jewelry.
20:40With only a high school education, David Swetnam was well on his way to the top.
20:48He and his wife ran a successful business importing Peruvian art.
20:52David had made his first trip to Peru in 1981, at the age of 24.
20:59Today, Peru is one of the poorest Latin American nations.
21:08The shanty towns outside Lima, the capital city, are home to one of South America's largest Indian populations.
21:15David Swetnam was drawn here by their exotic folk traditions.
21:26It was their weavings and ethnic art that the Swetnams first began buying for resale in the United States.
21:36But soon, he and Jacqueline went to Peru to acquire more ancient treasures.
21:41In 1984, Swetnam met his most important contact in Peru.
21:48Fred Drew was an American collector who liked to do business in the back streets of Lima.
21:54A retired U.S. State Department contract employee, he seemed to know everyone.
22:00With an eye for exotica like tropical birds, his real passion was ancient ceramics.
22:06To a large extent, I suppose it's an addictive vice, so to speak.
22:14I've been at it for a long time.
22:16I'm extremely fond of pre-Columbian art.
22:20I met David, what, four or five or six years ago, I can't recall exactly.
22:25David and his wife both came over to look at some things which I had.
22:33They were beginners at the time.
22:35Largely beginners.
22:36They had some experience in Peruvian, some in Bolivian, some in Peruvian textiles.
22:42But to a large extent, they were beginners.
22:44But they were both very, very enthusiastic about things, and I tried to assist them in every way that I could.
22:52And, in fact, I gave them a number of pieces on consignment to take back with them to experiment with.
23:00And then later on, we collaborated more closely.
23:05And on his trips to Peru, he would acquire other things from me to take back with him.
23:13Fred felt that he was almost a father figure to David, teaching him about the art and about the business.
23:22And David, I think, used that.
23:24And I think David played on that relationship tremendously.
23:29And one of his main aims in doing that was to have Fred exclude the other dealers.
23:35He wanted to become the top dealer in the States.
23:37That was his main ambition.
23:39And he was trying to find ways to cut off the other dealers' supply.
23:44Drew became Swetnam's main source for Peruvian artifacts like these.
23:48And according to Kelly, a steady stream of packages began arriving from Drew.
23:54They would contain photographs showing what was currently available.
23:59What the dealers would say had been recently surfaced or fresh pieces.
24:04In other words, they're pieces that come from the Huaccaros from the various archaeological sites.
24:13Drew and Swetnam found ways to circumvent Peru's export ban on pre-Columbian artifacts.
24:18One method they used involved disguising genuine antiques as reproductions like these
24:24and declaring them as modern folk art.
24:30This letter from Drew to Swetnam showed how their smuggling operation worked.
24:35Peruvian antiquities were disguised as modern replicas purchased in Bolivia.
24:43But soon, they would have to contend with U.S. customs.
24:46Senior Special Agent Gaston Wallace is an expert on pre-Columbian art smuggling.
24:56It is very, very difficult for an individual to import directly out of Peru, Peruvian artifacts, into the United States.
25:04So what one must do is one must attempt, by some fashion, to hide the country of origin of these items.
25:15And the way that you do that, and the way that Mr. Swetnam did it, was he moved the artifacts, literally smuggled them out of Peru into another country,
25:25then shipped them from that country, that Latin nation, to Canada for ultimate smuggling into the United States.
25:33Swetnam and Drew were sending crates of artifacts through Canada in the spring of 1985.
25:40Canadian customs suspected they contained narcotics.
25:43They've labeled them as a replica.
25:47The false bottoms said, made in Bolivia.
25:52The replica ruse was unmasked.
25:57Under oath in Canadian federal court, Swetnam stated he had never purchased pre-Columbian art in South America, but only at Sotheby's auctions.
26:11Well, feeling, as we do morally, about the collecting of Peruvian art, we felt that there was really very little wrong in pursuing our avocation
26:28in bringing it into this country, where we felt it was better cared for, that it was shared with a greater number of people.
26:38And the laws really mattered very little to us.
26:42We felt that the Peruvian authorities really didn't have a great degree of concern about the art, that that was basically our motivation.
26:55The Canadian seizures did little to discourage the Swetnams.
27:01With their rare Peruvian dogs, they affected a wealthy California lifestyle.
27:07It was part of their appeal to clients eager for the top-quality antiquities the Swetnams were continuing to import.
27:15You know, there's a trend in a lot of business, but especially in the arts.
27:19If you have a lot of money to spend on the art, you're not going to go to some second-hand art dealer who lives in an unsavory neighborhood who sells things cheap.
27:33You want to go to the best and buy it for as much money as they'll take from you.
27:37In fact, they didn't own this fashionable home where they did business.
27:42The Swetnams were only house-sitting.
27:45It was a little bit like a fantasy island.
27:49David used the house to make anybody's dreams come true.
27:53He would have guests there and pretend it was his house, or he would entertain people there.
28:01They had dinners there, and they had the swimming pool and played tennis, and it was very impressive.
28:06I mean, people would come from different places to possibly buy art.
28:10Many Santa Barbara collectors and dealers were impressed with the Swetnams' inventory.
28:17But with a Canadian pipeline shut down, they needed a new smuggling route and a new partner.
28:24Swetnams' friendship with Michael Kelly became a business association.
28:29As a British citizen, Kelly could import artifacts from England as personal effects.
28:34The arrangement would involve them both in the deal of a lifetime.
28:42In February 1987, on the northwest coast of Peru, at a place called Sipan, came news of a spectacular discovery.
28:56In one of the New World's richest burial grounds, tomb robbers found gold treasures worth millions.
29:05The Bernal brothers were huaqueros, the first to uncover what later were called the royal tombs of Sipan.
29:13When the huaqueros moved out, impoverished villagers moved in.
29:18Sifting the dirt, they hoped to find more treasure left by their ancestors.
29:23News of the looting reached authorities, and armed guards chased the villagers away.
29:36In a raid to recover the plundered treasures, one of the Bernal brothers was shot dead.
29:41But the authorities were too late.
29:46Sackfuls of looted gold artifacts like these were already for sale on the black market in Lima.
29:53An official archaeological excavation uncovered an even richer tomb after the site was cordoned off.
29:59The Sipan mound was a burial ground for a little known pre-Inca culture called the Moche.
30:09Dr. George Stewart is a staff archaeologist with National Geographic, which funded the dig.
30:14Sipan is showing us a lot about a very little known civilization that probably created some of the greatest works of art and incredible culture of adaptation and success in all of New World's prehistory.
30:32And we've never really known as much as we want to about it. We never know as much as we want to about anything.
30:39It's one of the things about archaeology.
30:41But the Sipan find is one of those rare cases where archaeologists actually have a chance to dig up something very spectacular.
30:51The Bernal brothers had missed this tomb by a few feet.
30:55It gave scholars some idea of what had been lost.
30:58The skeletons were covered with breastplates, rattles, and necklaces of golden peanuts.
31:05It was called the King Tut's tomb of Peru.
31:07The King Tut's tomb of Peru.
31:08The King Tut's tomb of Peru
31:15The King Tut's tomb of Peru
31:18The King Tut's tomb of Peru
31:21The King Tut's tomb of Peru
31:27Well, never before had such a fabulous discovery been made anywhere in the Americas.
31:33We've heard the stories of the fabulous gold of the Incas and the gold encountered by the conquistadors.
31:43And it was astounding, truly astounding, when such a tremendous cache, really, of golden artifacts was discovered.
31:53Really, it amounted to a river of art looking for a chorus. There was a great abundance of art.
32:00Kelly and Swetnam were lunching at this restaurant in Los Angeles with three businessmen they had been planning to take to Peru for a buying trip.
32:11Over the meal, Swetnam first mentioned news of the Sipan treasure.
32:16That day, David had heard from Fred Drew that there had been a major find, one of the most important gold finds in history.
32:27And that there was a possibility that Fred could get the pieces.
32:33That was the Sipan tomb.
32:34So sometime, a few days later, we went to Lima.
32:47Originally, they had planned to bring the businessmen down to Peru to buy antique furniture.
32:51But by the time they reached Lima, the Sipan treasure had already made headlines.
32:57Not long afterwards, pieces from the tomb started appearing on the scene in Lima of such a fabulous quality that really the whole town, at least the dealers and collectors of Lima, were soon talking about it over lunch and dinner.
33:20And it was creating quite a stir.
33:24Sipan things were extremely hard to obtain.
33:27That is, in the earlier stages, very, very few of them reached Lima.
33:32And I was lucky enough to have a few people who had been on the scene at the time up there who brought me a small number of pieces.
33:41Most of them not of any particular significance.
33:46But there was also an increasing demand for them.
33:49And when people like David and others came along, wanted some Sipan pieces, and I happened to have them, I passed them on to them.
33:58By now, Kelly and the L.A. businessmen had checked into a Lima hotel.
34:03So we got there, and that night, David called me in my room and said, I've got to come over, I've got the first pieces of gold from the Sipan find.
34:16So he comes over, and he had the two ear spools, and they were very impressive.
34:22And the rest of the week, it was madness.
34:27There were fights, arguments.
34:29It was like treasure of the Sierra Madre, where everybody sees gold and starts going nuts.
34:35They met in restaurants around town and argued about the gold deal.
34:39The L.A. businessmen agreed to invest $80,000, which they gave to Drew.
34:44He and Swetnam would arrange to smuggle the material out of Peru to London.
34:48In Peru, they do have laws against the exportation of the material.
34:55However, we have never taken those laws very seriously.
35:01None of the participants in pre-Columbian art within Peru really do.
35:06It's not much of a stumbling block.
35:09Fred Drew's main priority was to safeguard himself, because he was the Peruvian connection.
35:16He's the one who's down there supplying all these dealers with all this stuff and getting it directly from the Juanqueros.
35:22So, he was constantly in one of the most dangerous positions, potentially dangerous positions, if the export-import system was broken.
35:35Fred, have you ever taken any pre-Columbian object out of this country?
35:42No, I never have. I've never taken even the smallest pre-Columbian object out of Peru.
35:46Have you been involved with people who have?
35:51I have sold lots of people, lots of pieces to many people, some of whom certainly did take the things out of the country when they left.
36:00This was the principal problem, of course, is exporting the material from Peru.
36:07We knew that the country, you know, where it was destined to be shipped to would be England, where there, of course, would be no problem importing the art.
36:20There's no regulations regarding, or prohibitions rather, regarding the importation of cultural material.
36:29In fact, they encourage it.
36:31They had broken Peruvian law to get the gold to England.
36:35But to sell it in the United States, they would have to break U.S. law.
36:39George Roberts represented Peru in its efforts to recover the Sipan treasures.
36:47It turned out that Kelly's father was very sick and near death in London.
36:54And Kelly agreed that for money, I mean, they paid him some money and tickets and stuff,
37:03that he could go to London, see his family and see his father and so on.
37:09And after his father died, that he would have access to death certificates and other documents, state documents and so on,
37:18that would allow him to bring materials from his father's estate as personal items into the United States.
37:24And that was the plan.
37:26Well, it seems that since my contacts were principally in the United States,
37:30that if I was to attempt to try to satisfy the investors,
37:36that the gold would, or at least a portion of it, would have to end up in this country.
37:42But Michael understood this and undertook to try to help us do that.
37:49How was he going to do that?
37:50To import, as he had in prior times, some of the artifacts into this country via his status as a foreign national.
38:02While Kelly says he had offered to help Swetnam import ceramics as personal effects,
38:07he insists he never offered to smuggle in Sipan gold.
38:10The shipments were all in my name.
38:14And if the smuggling setup was exposed in some fashion, I was the one who was in serious trouble.
38:31In August 1987, a shipment packed by Swetnam in London arrived in Los Angeles.
38:40Kelly claims that Swetnam never told him beforehand what was in it.
38:44David informed me when the shipment was going to be made, the third shipment.
38:48And Pandair, who was a customs broker here, informed me of its arrival.
38:53So David picked me up. We went to the Pandair offices.
38:57I signed some papers, paid my broker's fee, took the papers to the Pan Am clearinghouse,
39:03where they either opened stuff or let it through.
39:07And I cleared the shipment as personal effects.
39:09I paid them the tax that has to be paid, a $10 fee.
39:13And they let the box out, and we put it in the truck, and we went out of the lot,
39:21and actually David lent it out of the window and screamed and put his hand up,
39:25like in a celebration scream. I didn't know why he did that.
39:29I had no idea, because I didn't know what was in the box.
39:32Together, Swetnam and Kelly drove through L.A. to Santa Monica
39:37and the home of a well-known art conservator, Ben Johnson, one of Swetnam's business associates.
39:41Swetnam was about to unpack over a half a million dollars worth of Sipan gold.
39:50We went to Ben Johnson's house. Ben was very excited. David was very excited.
39:56I didn't know why they were excited, because I just thought there was a few pieces in there.
40:01They opened a box, and the only thing of mine was an old overcoat.
40:04And there were all kinds of little boxes packed inside this big trunk.
40:11And they started unpacking this stuff, and it was incredible.
40:13There was, it was all gold from Sipan.
40:17Jaguars, heads, warrior figures, amethyst necklaces, some ceramics.
40:23Incredible stuff.
40:25stuff I woke up to find myself embroiled in an international smuggling ring
40:54and I had made a decision to get involved with that and I and I realized that was a stupid decision
41:02all I saw was hypocrisy seedy art dealing amongst people who purport to be intellectuals
41:13have high aesthetic values who believe that culture is very important and that
41:20it's part of the glory of human development and they're involved with museums and they
41:25they're benefactors and they donate things and they're patrons of the museums and so on
41:30and all these people are doing is addictively exercising their ego by possessing artifacts at
41:39all costs. Michael had gave a description where he would meet us on the promenade there are benches
41:48along the promenade there for people who want to just sit and look at the Pacific Ocean the waves
41:53crash in. Michael told me about the Sipan find. He told me about the people who he knew who were
42:06involved in it both in the United States and in Peru. He told me about the importations that he
42:13had made where he had made those importations right down to who the carrier was that that flew the
42:21footlockers and that the artifacts were contained in.
42:26Customs asked me to do several things one would I be prepared to have my telephone wired and I think
42:47I recorded probably 40 or 50 telephone calls and the other thing though is that little green guy
42:55you know that that that thing is is is you know very liquid as it turns out you know what I mean
43:01that's one of the most liquid that and the bird and the crown and there's a number of things that are
43:05going to generate really serious money in there and everything else is going to give the desired
43:09results but those are the things that are going to be real stellar performers you know what I mean.
43:12Customs had what they needed on March 30th 1988 the Swetnams residence was raided and seven other locations as well
43:3060 US Customs agents affected the most extensive seizures of pre-Columbian artifacts ever conducted
43:38well it was a most unsettling experience the customs personnel who raided my home were conducting the
43:55raid as though it were a crack house raid they were all outfitted in bulletproof vests and were
44:02burnishing m16s and weapons of all types we were treated rather like drug dealers than then the
44:11harmless call you know art collectors that we were I think that United States Customs has been waiting
44:19for quite a long time to nail somebody for pre-Columbian importations into this country and conversely a
44:27lot of dealers and collectors in this country have been waiting for someone to come along and and and
44:32actually test these laws we're sending a message to the people that want to traffic and this stuff
44:39is that we'll arrest you we'll seize the artifacts and we'll arrest you and we hope that they're getting
44:49the message David Swetnams served six months at a federal prison camp in Boron California he was the
44:57first prominent US dealer in pre-Columbian artifacts ever to be jailed for smuggling if I had foreseen what
45:04what was going to happen what was going to happen that this trial would take place in the states that David would end up in jail with all of the complications which is caused
45:12around here all of the ill will which is engendered I think it's I think it's had a very bad effect in general on
45:22proving US relations even so if I had foreseen all of those things no I wouldn't I would not have gone ahead with it but on the other hand
45:34I could I did not at any time feel that I was doing anything incorrect in any way there is of course a real
45:41analogy between the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and our prohibition our effective prohibition of the
45:51import of pre-Columbian antiquities it's only partially effective and the negative aspects as we found with
46:02prohibition tend to outweigh the presumed advantages it certainly has had the effect of driving honorable
46:09people out of the pre-Columbian field to some considerable degree and of allowing less scrupulous people in
46:19The Swetnam case aroused indignation in Peru
46:25Fernando Cabezas heads the National Institute of Culture
46:27Fernando Cabezas heads the National Institute of Culture
46:29Fernando Cabezas heads the National Institute of Culture
46:31Right now the ugly American is being represented by the art dealers
46:35and the art dealers are ugly Americans for us
46:39and now there's a mafia going on selling Peruvian artifacts in the United States and in Europe for profit
46:51not just to have one remembrance of Peru and they're selling them to people that raise their prices and there's a tremendous amount of money going on into this
47:03this is prostitution like it or not this is crime
47:11in Peru the Swetnam affair reached the highest levels of government they were determined to recover their treasures
47:19although US customs had seized nearly 1400 artifacts Peru would only get 123 of them back
47:27Most came from Swetnam's clients who forfeited them in return for immunity from prosecution
47:35Last December in Lima his most prominent client Nobel laureate Murray Gelman returned artifacts worth a quarter of a million dollars
47:45But to get the rest back Peru would have to sue in US civil court
47:51and win lose or draw
47:53win lose or draw
47:55win lose or draw in this case I think we're smoking everybody out
47:57we're going to find out
47:59number one where the American judiciary sits on this important issue
48:03number two where the State State Department sits on the issue
48:06where the Justice Department sits as far as enforcement
48:09and how they interpret the current legislation
48:12how customs feels about all these things
48:15and equally important how the rest of the United States feels
48:19as far as the public is concerned
48:21and just as important
48:23each one of these countries
48:25how do their laws stack up with what the expectations that the Americans have
48:29In court, Peru argued that the seized artifacts were national stolen property
48:34For dealers, it tested whether Peruvian laws could shut down the US market
48:40I've always felt that it wasn't incumbent upon this country to enforce the export restrictions of other countries
48:52particularly export restrictions like the Peruvian ones which are broad claims of nationalization
49:00At the trial, the dealers prevailed
49:04Peru's blanket claim of ownership was rejected
49:07Peru's laws were not only imprecise
49:10but they had changed several times
49:12according to the ruling by US District Judge William Gray
49:16If the foreign government, in fact, says Judge Gray
49:20acts like an owner
49:22acts like an owner
49:24then that is
49:26then you have ownership
49:28and you have stolen property
49:30but if the foreign government does nothing other than pass a law
49:34and say
49:35everything that's in somebody's backyard
49:38or on the shelf
49:41in some farmer's house
49:43is the government's property
49:45and they never
49:47they never enforce that until
49:49something shows up in New York City
49:51then the government
49:52then the foreign government
49:53isn't owning something
49:55in a sense that we recognize
49:57and we have fought
50:00and lost
50:03so far
50:04because
50:05all the people who
50:06are behind this
50:07illicit trade
50:09this criminal trade
50:10just ganged up
50:12against us
50:14in the courts of the United States of America
50:17where we cannot defend ourselves
50:19because we do not have the money that they have
50:22to pay good lawyers
50:24and to pay
50:25everything that has to be paid
50:27in a lawsuit in the United States
50:31is a very costly thing
50:33Peru had failed to prove that the artifacts were stolen property
50:37so in a final irony
50:39David Swetnam, a convicted smuggler
50:41had all but nine of the seized antiquities returned to him
50:45The claim being made
50:47by the US government
50:49had to do with
50:51the fact that all
50:52pre-Columbian art
50:54that had originated in Peru
50:56was the
50:57the ownership was vested with Peru
50:59in fact
51:01the courts have now decided that these articles are ours
51:04and we feel
51:06vindicated in many of our arguments
51:08in that vein
51:10and the biggest prize returned
51:13was Swetnam's most valuable treasure
51:16this gold jaguar head
51:18which Peru believes
51:20was looted from the royal tombs of Sipan
51:23According to the law
51:25which I like to think of as Solomon's law
51:30the one who loves the baby best
51:33gets the baby
51:34the one who will pay the most for the baby
51:36gets the baby
51:37If Peru cannot properly take care of its national treasures
51:41the rest of the world will take care of it
51:44for the Peruvians
51:46as it should be
51:47but in Latin America
51:49it is not the wisdom of Solomon
51:51but the law of the jungle that prevails
51:54as the plundering goes on
51:56there is little local police can do to stop it
52:06this Guatemalan patrol has received a tip
52:09that Joqueros are at work in the area
52:11they may be armed
52:13and possibly dangerous
52:16thousands of ruins lie scattered in the jungle
52:19it would require several armies to protect them
52:24I have walked for miles
52:26in virtually trackless rainforest in Central America
52:30to a mound or a set of mounds I've heard about
52:33and I've never found one yet
52:35no matter how inaccessible
52:37that was not already dug by somebody
52:40I don't know if there are any out there that are untouched
52:44I would be very surprised if there are
52:48the patrol arrives too late
52:50the tomb is empty
52:52all they can do is sort through the rubble left by the looters
52:57there are too many sites
52:59and not enough money or manpower to protect them
53:04of the millions spent each year to acquire antiquities
53:08less than a penny of every dollar
53:10goes to preserve or excavate the past
53:18for archaeologists like Ian Graham
53:20the battle is being lost to those who gain the least
53:23the looters
53:24and he believes we are all the poorer for the loss
53:42A final note on the Sipan story
53:45Peru is appealing Judge Gray's decision in the civil case
53:48but even before the appellate decision
53:51Peru has already received some satisfaction
53:53last June
53:55Peru formally asked the United States
53:57to impose an emergency ban
53:59on imports of Sipan artifacts
54:02President Bush has now approved that request
54:06thank you for joining us
54:08I'm Judy Woodruff
54:09good night
54:10the United States
54:11the United States
54:13the American
54:32dog
55:35When 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins was murdered in a white New York neighborhood called Bensonhurst, racial tensions exploded.
55:44Yesterday showed the open hostility that exists in New York.
55:49Yusuf was a victim of racism.
55:52Nobody has the right to kill people, nobody.
55:55But this is instigation, it's not demonstration.
55:57The Frontline examines the climate of racial politics and how Yusuf Hawkins' killing was exploited by blacks and whites.
56:04Everybody has used this incident for their own soapbox.
56:09Everyone has exploited this boy's death.
56:11You were there when Martin Luther King marched from Selma to Montgomery.
56:18You were there when they crucified Malcolm X.
56:22You were there when they crucified Elijah Muhammad, Kwame Ture, H. Rapp Brown.
56:30You were always there.
56:33And now we're here again on the front row mourning the loss of an innocent life.
56:41Never again.
56:43I think Bensonhurst should have been the Selma of the 80s.
56:48To me, this was the same kind of issue.
56:51Race, politics, and seven days in Bensonhurst.
56:54Next time on Frontline.
56:58Frontline is produced for the Documentary Consortium by WGBH Boston,
57:03which is solely responsible for its content.
57:07Frontline is made possible by the financial support of viewers like you
57:12and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
57:19For videocassette information about this program,
57:22please write to this address.
57:24This is PBS.
57:33For a printed transcript of this or any Frontline program,
57:36send $5 to Journal Graphics, Inc.,
57:40267 Broadway, New York, New York, 1007.
Comments