Training the State on Cultural Expertise: Lessons from workshops with district attorneys and detectives in Costa Rica
Leila Rodriguez is Associate Professor at the University of Puerto Rico - Río Piedras. Her research focuses on cultural expertise, legal anthropology, and the integration of migrants in the U.S. and Latin America. She has provided expert testimony in U.S. immigration courts and trains legal professionals in Costa Rica on the use of anthropological evidence.
Affiliation: University of Puerto Rico – Río Piedras, Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Keywords
Cultural expertise, legal anthropology, Indigenous rights, Costa Rica, expert testimony, judicial anthropology
Methodological Takeaway:
“Training can provide legal professionals with the definitions of culture they seek, reassurance about the validity of anthropological knowledge, and an indication of the quality of our expert reports. Providing examples of recent cultural change and the need for contextualization can change expectations about anthropological generalization and essentialization in our representation ofother cultures. Institutional support is also crucial – from state institutions like the Public Ministry creating these spaces for dialogue, to the openness of law schools to teach about cultural evidence, to anthropological professional associations supporting our work and helping to set guidelines for recognition of our expertise. .”
“Can you explain kinship systems to us?” I received this request during my third workshop on the value of cultural evidence and anthropological expertise to Costa Rican prosecutors and detectives who are involved in criminal proceedings with Indigenous defendants. I knew why they asked this question. Many of the cases they deal with involve Bribri individuals whose matrilineality is often relevant to understanding social and landholding relationships and conflict in their communities. My presentation forms part of the Specialized Course in Indigenous Affairs that the Public Ministry offers annually. I was happy to be asked about kinship because it showed that participants were beginning to see how cultural expertise enhanced their work. This essay reflects on my experience developing and delivering training on cultural expertise to Costa Rican prosecutors and detectives, offering a framework for anthropologists working at the intersection of law and culture.
The rise of cultural expertise in global courts
The use of cultural evidence in legal proceedings constitutes a growing field of anthropological research and practice across the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Australia. This evidence is presented as written and/or oral expert testimony provided by anthropologists to contextualize individual behavior within broader sociocultural frameworks. It aims to enhance access to justice for culturally diverse populations by challenging legal systems that affirm the monocultural despite serving multicultural societies. By incorporating such evidence, judges can render more informed and culturally contextualized decisions.
The use of cultural evidence varies significantly across regions. In the United States, while earlier applications ranged from indigenous child adoption (Morrow & Pete, 1996) to death penalty cases (Keefe, 2011), today the vast majority of cultural expert testimony occurs in immigration courts for asylum and deportation hearings (Campbell, 2023; Frank-Vitale, 2022; Hepner, 2019). Latin American cases are more diverse, encompassing land rights and criminal proceedings involving Indigenous peoples (Castro Neira & Castro Neira, 2021; Loperena et al., 2020), claims by Afrodescendant populations (da Silva & Pinheiro, 2022), and conflicts involving peasants (Rivasplata Caballero, 2021) and religious (Villanueva Gutiérrez, 2021) and sexual minorities (Sánchez Botero, 2021a).
Over the past decade, fragmented initiatives have converged into specialized training programs for anthropologists, notably at the National Autonomous Mexican University (UNAM), the University of Río Negro, Argentina, and the Royal Anthropological Institute of the United Kingdom and Ireland (RAI). Despite these developments, training for legal professionals on the production, use, and interpretation of cultural evidence remains limited. Effective application requires not only that anthropologists comprehend the legal systems within which they operate, but also that legal professionals acquire a foundational understanding of culture, cultural diversity, and anthropological forms of evidence.
The value of cultural evidence
At its core, cultural expertise informs. Judges rely on this testimony to better understand the facts of the case, interpret them within their cultural context, and make more informed decisions. Although systematic studies are still needed to better measure the impact of cultural evidence, there is some documentation of cultural evidence leading to reduced sentences, acquittal, or some other positive outcome for defendants (Berho et al., 2016). At its fullest potential, cultural expertise alters the state’s mode of conducting justice. In Colombia, for example, in many cases there is no longer a need for the provision of individual expert testimonies, as decades of cultural expertise have led to entire shifts in legal paradigms that recognize judicial pluralism (Sánchez Botero, 2021b).
Yet cultural expertise is not without tensions. Anthropologists grapple with essentializing cultures in legal contexts that demand bounded definitions, risk reinforcing stereotypes when explaining “cultural difference,” and must navigate the politics of representing communities in adversarial settings. The act of “training the state” on cultural expertise also raises questions about who benefits from such knowledge and whether legal systems genuinely transform or merely incorporate anthropological language while maintaining structural inequities.
Legal professionals acknowledge the importance of cultural expertise and recognize the need for improved understanding of its form and content. Crabbe (2018) asserts that, beyond contextualizing the facts of the case, cultural evidence is crucial for interpreting two important legal standards. The principle of de minimis, found in many areas of the law, refers to matters that are considered too trivial for the court to concern itself with. Mens rea is the standard in criminal law that establishes the mental state a person must have when committing an act for it to be considered a crime. It involves intent, knowledge, recklessness, or negligence. What acts are relevant or trivial to a specific cultural group, and what is the culturally-conditioned intent or knowledge behind a behavior, are clearly issues on which expert testimony can shed light.
Stern, Gonzalez, and Turribiates (2016) argue that the lack of a clear definition of “culture” complicates the evaluation of expert testimony. Cultural experts, they claim, often face skepticism in courts because “cultural testimony is not scientific testimony,” but rather, a form of specialized knowledge (p.5). They recommend establishing a precise definition of “culture” to guide judicial decisions on expert qualifications and testimony, and argue for the improved understanding of the role and impact of cultural experts in legal proceedings. While the importance of cultural expertise is widely recognized, it is evident that more cross-cultural understanding between the anthropological and legal fields is necessary.
The training
The Specialized Course in Indigenous Affairs is a multi-day training offered annually by Costa Rica's Public Ministry to new prosecutors and detectives working with Indigenous populations. My two-hour workshop is one component of this larger program. I designed the training to move from broad context (why cultural expertise exists) to specific application (how to request and evaluate it), using a combination of lecture, case study discussion, and Q&A. The workshop typically includes about 20-25 participants with varying levels of experience with Indigenous communities and legal cases.
I have participated in the course since it was first organized in 2020. I was invited by a former professor and colleague at the University of Costa Rica, Dr. Marcos Guevara Berger. He led the first workshop on cultural expertise as part of the course, and asked me to participate. After his unfortunate passing in 2021, course organizers asked me to take over.
My position as an anthropologist training Costa Rican professionals is one of opportunity and necessity. I am Costa Rican and have close ties to the anthropology department at the University of Costa Rica. Since Dr. Guevara’s passing, no other anthropologist in the country systematically researches the production and use of cultural expertise, so the Public Ministry relies on me for this training component. As an insider to Costa Rican national culture but an outsider to Indigenous communities, I must navigate questions of authority and representation carefully. I focus the bulk of my training on issues of cultural evidence and the production of anthropological data. Often, other anthropologists or Indigenous professionals teach an additional workshop that delves deeper into Indigenous cultural diversity in the country. The act of "training the state"—teaching prosecutors who may criminally charge Indigenous people—raises ethical questions about the purpose of anthropological knowledge and participation in legal processes that address deep-seated inequalities in still relatively superficial ways. I approach this work believing that it is nevertheless a step forward in achieving a justice that is more cognizant of the diverse peoples it serves. Available findings suggest that Costa Rican Indigenous communities in general support cultural expertise (Nukada 2021), and I am very open in my training about the ethical tensions involved in this work. I also give examples of the different ways in which the questions that lawyers ask us regarding culture impact our testimony, and suggest broader phrasings that don’t require us to essentialize culture.
Cultural expertise in Costa Rica is incipient. It has only been used in the Costa Rican legal system since 2010, and exclusively on cases that implicate Indigenous persons. This impacts the structure of my workshop, starting with the most basic information and conducting a general survey of all aspects of cultural expertise. In established contexts, workshops can be more targeted and focus on a smaller set of focused topics. The training consists of the following sections:
Definition and purpose: I frame cultural expertise as “illustration”, echoing Mayan jurist Amílcar Pop’s (2006) argument that cultural expertise exists because [Latin American] states were not constructed according to the multicultural societies they encompassed. Since cultural expertise is relatively new in Costa Rica, providing a definition is important to have a common base of understanding.
International context: Brief overview of cultural expertise use globally, with case studies from the U.S, Latin America, and Costa Rica. The international context supports the legitimacy of cultural expertise and highlights that there is precedent for using it with a broad range of populations.
Legal framework: The laws and regulations enabling cultural expertise in Costa Rica (Criminal Procedural Code Art. 213 and 339, 2015 Constitutional amendment declaring the state “multiethnic and pluricultural,” 2008 Brasilia Regulations, ILO Convention 169). Here, I emphasize that the conditions for cultural expertise were legally set decades ago, and there is a historical debt to Indigenous peoples whose cases went through the legal process with no consideration of their culture.
Cultural diversity in Costa Rica: Overview of eight legally-recognized Indigenous groups and other ethnic populations.
Anthropological understandings of culture: I contrast anthropology’s view of culture as dynamic and historically contingent with law’s treatment of culture as fixed and place-based.
Expertise of anthropologists: Four key competencies: study of culture, ethnographic methods, historical perspective, and interpretive skills at the community and national levels. This highlights the validity of anthropological data.
Elaboration of expert testimony: Framework covering inquiry (case file review, documentary research, fieldwork, interviews), analysis (synthesizing information, developing conclusions), and reporting (crafting clear, concise written reports).
This year, all 20 participants completed post-workshop feedback forms using a 3-2-1 format: three things learned, two lingering questions, and one opinion about cultural evidence. Their responses provide additional information on what training for legal professionals can encompass.
When asked what they learned from the workshop, the top three answers were the existence of cultural expertise to begin with (21.74% of responses), the value of cultural evidence for the judicial process (17.39%), and the range of cases and populations to which it can be applied (13.04%). Other responses included the variation in the time required to construct the expert testimony, the comparative international context, the process for elaborating expert testimony, and the professional competencies of anthropologists.
That the existence of cultural expertise was participants' top learning reveals how marginalized anthropological knowledge remains in Costa Rican legal practice—despite the 2015 constitutional amendment declaring the state "multiethnic and pluricultural." This gap between constitutional recognition and professional practice suggests that multiculturalism remains largely symbolic rather than operationalized in everyday legal work.
The second most common learning—the value of cultural evidence for judicial process—points to a pragmatic orientation among legal professionals. They recognize utility when they see it, but hadn't previously encountered anthropological methods as relevant to their work. This suggests that anthropologists' marginalization from legal practice stems not from active rejection but from simple invisibility.
Regarding lingering or new questions, the top response concerned the validity of the cultural expert testimony. Elsewhere (see Rodriguez, 2022), I argue that we have means in our anthropological toolkit for asserting the validity of our testimony. For respondents, it was important to know whether “there are ISO norms to guarantee quality,” “the population of interest can manipulate the testimony,” “there are specialized anthropologists or if anyone can provide any testimony,” and “what impact can this testimony have if it doesn’t determine whether something is right or wrong.” The second most frequent question concerns recent cultural changes among Indigenous populations, specifically the impact of digital technologies (17.24%). Respondents also had questions about the geographic scale of cultural expert testimony (10.34%), including whether “one expert report can cover an entire region or only an individual,” or if “cultural testimony can be provided for a specific criminal group.” Other questions wondered how best to formulate the question that anthropologists should address in their testimony, and how to determine which cases require cultural expertise and which do not.
Questions about "ISO norms" and whether "populations can manipulate testimony" reveal legal professionals' discomfort with qualitative knowledge and deeper anxieties about Indigenous agency and authenticity. The assumption that Indigenous people might "manipulate" testimony suggests distrust that itself merits examination—do prosecutors worry that non-Indigenous defendants might "manipulate" forensic evidence?
Questions about recent cultural change—particularly digital technology’s impact—indicate that legal professionals were considering cultural change within Indigenous societies, perhaps for the first time.
Finally, when stating one opinion they now held regarding cultural evidence as provided by anthropological expert testimony, there were only four different responses: they are useful (35%), important (35%), fundamental (15%), and interesting and worthy of further study (15%).
Cultural expertise is not taught in law schools as part of lessons on means of evidence. While the need for the workshop and its overarching themes remains important, these responses suggest there is also openness and opportunity for interdisciplinary training—possibly a graduate certificate available to both law and anthropology students—that can bridge the epistemological and knowledge gaps early.
The general concern with validity is important. In Costa Rica, anthropologists are the only social scientists who do not have a professional association that governs their practice, requires ongoing training, sets their fees for consulting jobs, and establishes a code of ethics by which they must abide. These professional associations help provide an additional layer of diffusion about and legitimacy to our work.
The lessons
Three key insights emerged from this experience that extend beyond the Costa Rican context.
Awareness is the first barrier. I was not surprised that introducing cultural expertise as a concept was itself a major learning outcome. I knew that despite constitutional reforms and international conventions recognizing Indigenous rights, anthropological knowledge remains peripheral to legal practice. The Public Ministry’s course is a great platform for knowledge dissemination, but it cannot be the only one. For anthropologists seeking to influence legal systems, awareness-building is a necessary first step—we cannot assume legal professionals know our work exists or understand its relevance. Establishing connections with law schools, offering presentations to law students, and even creating joint certificates are additional forms of awareness-building.
Validity concerns require proactive address. Legal professionals’ questions about “ISO norms” and standardization reveal a fundamental epistemological gap. Law seeks certainty and standardization; anthropology offers contextualized interpretation and nuance. Rather than viewing this as an impasse, anthropologists can draw on systematic methodological practices to demonstrate rigor (Rodriguez, 2022). Explaining our research methods, analytical processes, and how we establish reliability within qualitative paradigms helps bridge this gap. The next iteration of my workshop will include expanded discussion of how anthropologists assess validity—through triangulation, member-checking, peer review, and theoretical grounding—without claiming the false objectivity of quantification. With changing research practices, in 2011, the American Anthropological Association published the Guidelines for Evaluating Scholarship in the Realm of Practicing, Applied, and Public Interest Anthropology for Academic Promotion and Tenure. This document helped academic departments across the U.S. understand, validate, and evaluate nontraditional research. Professional anthropological associations worldwide (of which Costa Rica still does not have one) can provide similar guidelines for non-academics in general, and legal professionals in particular, to evaluate the quality and validity of our findings.
Cultural change must be explicitly addressed. Persistent questions about “recent changes” among Indigenous populations reveal that ideas about cultural stasis remain powerful, despite anthropology's longstanding critique of such views. This points to a pedagogical challenge: how to communicate culture’s dynamism while still providing the bounded definitions legal systems require. One strategy I’ve adopted is emphasizing that cultural expertise addresses contemporary practices and meanings, not timeless traditions. Future workshops will include examples of how Indigenous communities adapt to digital technologies, migration, and market economies—demonstrating that cultural expertise concerns living, changing communities, not museum artifacts.
Finally, legal professionals seek practical criteria for when and how to use cultural expertise. Questions about scale and scope, case relevance, and how to formulate expert questions indicate that training should provide concrete decision-making tools and examples.
These strategies provide some relief from the epistemological gap between law and anthropology, but they do not resolve deeper tensions. Training prosecutors on cultural expertise may improve individual case outcomes, yet it also risks instrumentalizing anthropological knowledge for state surveillance and control. When I teach prosecutors to "understand" Indigenous cultures as explained in expert testimony, am I equipping them to deliver justice or to more effectively prosecute Indigenous people? This question has no easy answer, but it must be acknowledged. The work proceeds on the belief that culturally informed justice, even within an imperfect system, is preferable to cultural ignorance.
Training can provide legal professionals with the definitions of culture they seek, reassurance about the validity of anthropological knowledge, and an indication of the quality of our expert reports. Providing examples of recent cultural change and the need for contextualization can change expectations about anthropological generalization and essentialization in our representation ofother cultures. Institutional support is also crucial – from state institutions like the Public Ministry creating these spaces for dialogue, to the openness of law schools to teach about cultural evidence, to anthropological professional associations supporting our work and helping to set guidelines for recognition of our expertise.
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