International Relations and Heritage: Patchwork in Times of Plurality (The Latin American Studies Book Series) 3030779904, 9783030779900

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The Latin American Studies Book Series

Rodrigo Christofoletti Maria Leonor Botelho   Editors

International Relations and Heritage Patchwork in Times of Plurality

The Latin American Studies Book Series Series Editors Eustógio W. Correia Dantas, Departamento de Geografia, Centro de Ciências, Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil Jorge Rabassa, Laboratorio de Geomorfología y Cuaternario, CADIC-CONICET, Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina Andrew Sluyter, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

The Latin American Studies Book Series promotes quality scientific research focusing on Latin American countries. The series accepts disciplinary and interdisciplinary titles related to geographical, environmental, cultural, economic, political and urban research dedicated to Latin America. The series publishes comprehensive monographs, edited volumes and textbooks refereed by a region or country expert specialized in Latin American studies. The series aims to raise the profile of Latin American studies, showcasing important works developed focusing on the region. It is aimed at researchers, students, and everyone interested in Latin American topics. Submit a proposal: Proposals for the series will be considered by the Series Advisory Board. A book proposal form can be obtained from the Publisher, Juliana Pitanguy ([email protected]).

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/15104

Rodrigo Christofoletti · Maria Leonor Botelho Editors

International Relations and Heritage Patchwork in Times of Plurality

Editors Rodrigo Christofoletti Santa Helena, Juiz de Fora Minas Gerais, Brazil

Maria Leonor Botelho Arts and Humanities University of Porto Porto, Portugal

ISSN 2366-3421 ISSN 2366-343X (electronic) The Latin American Studies Book Series ISBN 978-3-030-77990-0 ISBN 978-3-030-77991-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

We thank our partners that made this idea possible: Springer-Nature, the Publisher, in the persons of Professor Jorge Rabassa and the Publishing Editor, Juliana Pitanguy, for the opportunity to publish with this prestigious editorial; the members of the Cultural Heritage Laboratory—LAPA, the Heritage and International Relations Research Group, and the UFJF Memory Conservation Center—CECOM; and the Transdisciplinary Center for Culture, Space and Memory of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto (CITCEM–FLUP), through professors Amélia Apolónia and Lúcia Maria Cardoso Rosas for supporting this publication. We would like to formally thank Professor Leandro Pereira Gonçalves, the editor of Locus Magazine—UFJF, for agreeing with the publication of the translated texts in this book. We also thank Inês de Carvalho Costa, who helped us with the first translations of parts of this book. Special thanks to the experienced directors, Irina Bokova and Francesco Bandarin for their generosity in collaborating with very important personal interviews. Last but not least, we thank all colleagues that have contributed to this book. We invite its readers to think with us about the patchwork formed by International Relations and Heritage in an age of plurality such as that we live in. May we explore this path together, stitching, embroidery and weaving the conscience of our role in an equation whose fundamental element is the preservation of heritage worldwide.

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Contents

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Presentation: Will the International Relationships Connected with Heritage Preservation Change in a Post-pandemic World? . . . . Rodrigo Christofoletti and Maria Leonor Botelho

Part I 2

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Between Bridges and Frontiers

Damnatio Memoria or Damnatio Consensus. Conflicting Colonial Heritage in Latin American Port Cities. A Project in Motion: CoopMar—Transoceanic Cooperation, Public Policies and Ibero-American Sociocultural Community . . . . . . . . . . . Amélia Polónia, Cátia Miriam Costa, and Fernando Mouta Regional Assets, Industrial Growth, Global Reach: The Case Study of the Film Industry in the San Francisco Bay Area . . . . . . . . Frédéric Leriche Cultural Heritage and Globalization: Trajectory, Projects, and Strategies of the Santa María la Real Foundation (Aguilar de Campoo, Castile, and León, Spain) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jaime Nuño González

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Cultural Diplomacy: From Praxis to a Possible Concept . . . . . . . . . . Bruno do Vale Novais

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Digital Culture and Digital Media as Heritage: Innovative Approaches in Interaction with Information and Scientific Communication in the Era of Massive Data and Immersive Interactive Technologies. New Contexts in International Relationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 José Luis Rubio-Tamayo, Manuel Gertrudix, and Hernando Gómez

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The “National Fact” and the Notion of Cultural Heritage in Brazilian Constituent Assembly (1987/1988) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Yussef Daibert Salomão de Campos and Paulo Peixoto vii

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“The Abyss of History is Deep Enough to Hold Us All” The Beginnings of the 1931 Athens Charter and the Proposition of the Notion of World Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Marcos Olender

Part II 9

Unfortunate Events of the Cultural Goods

Political Issues of the Louvre’s Internationalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 Marie-Alix Molinié-Andlauer

10 DA‘ESH’s Video in the Mosul Museum: Heritage Destruction or Heritage-Making? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 Jorge Elices Ocón 11 The Protection of Cultural Property in the 1954 Hague Convention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193 Fernando Fernandes da Silva 12 From Construction to Restitution: Some Trajectories of New Zealand’s Cultural Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 Manuel Burón 13 The Demand for Restitution of Cultural Heritage Through Relations Between Africa and Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Karine Lima da Costa 14 Mapping Cultural Heritage in the Bi-regional Relations Between Europe and Latin America: Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Vitória dos Santos Acerbi Part III Soft Power As a Key? 15 Three Themes in Transition: Soft Power, Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Goods, and the Cartography of World Heritage Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263 Rodrigo Christofoletti 16 War Trophies and Diplomatic Relations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 Bruno Miranda Zétola 17 Soft Power of Minas Gerais: The Circula Minas Program (2015–2018) as a Measure of Preservation, National and International Diffusion of Minas Gerais Culture and Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309 Vanessa Gomes de Castro and Thiago Rodrigues Tavares 18 Historic Heritage Policies as Soft Power During Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331 Filipe Queiroz de Campos

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19 The University of Coimbra and the Various Appropriations of the International World Heritage Stamp of Approval from UNESCO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349 Carlos Gustavo Nóbrega de Jesus 20 Brazil with Its Back to Soft Power: Indifference or Lack of Knowledge About Cultural Goods? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375 Lara Elissa Andrade Cardoso and Nathan Assunção Agostinho 21 The Timbila of Mozambique in the Concert of Nations . . . . . . . . . . . 399 Sara Morais 22 Salazar, Propaganda and Heritage: The Design of “Being Portuguese” as a “Soft Power” Around 1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 Maria Leonor Botelho Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 445

Chapter 1

Presentation: Will the International Relationships Connected with Heritage Preservation Change in a Post-pandemic World? Rodrigo Christofoletti and Maria Leonor Botelho

The Covid-19 pandemic brought a strong appeal, like crises usually do for culture by individuals and their communities. In a time where people are physically apart from each other, culture reunites us. (Ernesto Ottone, UNESCO, April 2020).

Abstract As we face nowadays an unprecedented global crisis, one that is radically different from those we have already witnessed in the this century, this book This paper is financed by National Funds through the FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project UIDB/04059/2020. Cultural Heritage Professor in the undergraduate and graduate History degrees at Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Minas Gerais, Brazil. Leader of the research group Heritage and International Relations (CNPq). Collaborator member of the Transdisciplinary Research Centre “Culture, Space, and Memory” (CITCEM-FLUP). He is a doctor of History, Politics and Cultural Heritage by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV-CPDOC) and works at the interface between History and International Relations, focussing on cultural heritage. Assistant Professor at the Department of Science and Techniques of Heritage and Director of the master’s degree in Art History, Heritage and Visual Culture at the Universidade do Porto (FLUP). Researcher at CITCEM-FLUP. Alongside professors Lúcia Rosas and Mário Barroca, she coordinates the Encyclopaedia of Romanesque Art in Portugal (2018–2021), part of the protocol between FLUP and the Historical Heritage Foundation of Santa María la Real, a project from Castile and Leon, Spain. Her research interests relate to heritage management, world heritage, digital heritage, urban history and the historiography of Romanesque architecture. R. Christofoletti (B) Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Minas Gerais, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] M. L. Botelho CITCEM Researcher/Assitant Professor DCTP/FLUPFLUP Masater’s in History Art, Heritage and Visual Culture, Director, Universidade Do Porto (FLUP), FLUP - Via Panorâmica, s/n, Porto 4250-564, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_1

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wants to question and debate how will the international relations connected with heritage preservation change in a post-pandemic world? Thus, facing this overall shift in perspective, what will happen to the already ‘outdated’ heritage debates? How can they not be impacted by this new world order? The urge to answer these queries motivated the edition of a special journal issue, containing part of the texts that are newly presented in this book, and that were particularly enlarged. Being aware that regarding this scenario, UNESCO is encouraging World Heritage sites, its platforms and the European World Heritage Journeys to offer people alternative ways for exploring their heritage from home, we are particularly aware that international relations will not be the same after the pandemic, and consequently nor will the conception and management of heritage. Thus, the instantaneous character of (social) media has supplied a new angle towards heritage at the transnational scale. The examination of power relations uncovers new actors, spaces and representations. Cultural Heritage has become an increasingly important actor in multilateral debates. So, the subtitle that ‘nicknames’ this book is more than an attempt to add poetry to the subject matter. Patchwork in times of plurality encompasses the multitude of actions as a revealing symbol of attitudes, actors, organisms and manifestations of the frontiers of preservation and dialogue. Almost like a patchwork, this plural metaphor aggregates yet segregates, it conforms yet disfigures, it boosts the meanings which represent this new field that international relations have recently crossed to. Just like the mirror metaphor—that reflects everything before all, sometimes adding distortion—the patchwork analogy allows the book to take responsibility for disclosing preservation actions on a global scale. This publication has a pioneering role insofar as it sits probably alone in displaying such characteristics, concerns and coverage. The main goal of the book is to illustrate the way in which intergovernmental relations have been privileging heritage and culture as a field of action for broader needs. Therefore, the book addresses topics related with the international agenda, focusing on less debated subjects. Two examples of these undervalued matters are the links between actors, preservationist actions and the universe of world cultural heritage. The book also pursues a critical dialogue between interdisciplinary fields bridging the frontiers of heritage studies, in search of contributing a spectrum of academic perspectives and (inter)national study cases. Keyword Soft power · World heritage · International relations In times of crisis, people crave culture.1 Ernesto Ottone, UNESCO Deputy DirectorGeneral for Culture, recognized that the past 2 years illustrate this very well. World heritage players are realizing just the same. Currently, we face an unprecedented global crisis, one that is radically different from those we have already witnessed in this century. By the time of writing this book (until April 2021, more than 130 million people had been infected and over 2.5 million lost their lives to COVID-19. 1

The translation of this presentation was financed by National Funds through FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology under the project UIDB/04059/2020.

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Billions remain confined to their homes, which makes us believe that the impact of the pandemic will endure for a long time to come, even if the consequences are not yet fully understood. Vaccines are now available, yet they do not represent a comprehensive solution, for the moment, since they have not reached everyone and it is possible that they will not do it for years or even decades. Regarding this scenario, UNESCO is encouraging World Heritage sites, its platforms and the European World Heritage Journeys to offer people alternative ways for exploring their heritage from home—another way to curtail distances, reinforce connections and reunite people through culture. Facing this overall shift in perspective, what will happen to the already “outdated” heritage debates? How can they not be impacted by this new world order? The urge to answer these queries motivated the edition of a special journal issue, containing part of the texts which are now presented in this work.2 In a recent publication, Guilherme d’Oliveira Martins highlighted the relevance of discussions about cultural heritage and its economic value. Beyond affirming the urgency in developing a link between common belongings and universal values, Martins also claimed that cultural differences should be considered. Ergo, in a context of international confinement as imposed by COVID-19, it is vital to question the role of heritage in present societies. Martins states that “when we speak about cultural heritage, we tend to think about past things lost in a shadow of collective memory”. (Martins 2020, p. 33). Hence, he anticipates that “the necessity to promote cultural diversity, cultural exchange, and social cohesion [will increase,] (…) as well as the need to underline heritage’s role in international relations, from conflict prevention to post-conflict reconciliation, and for the recovery of destroyed heritage” (Martins 2020, pp. 33–34). The book in hand is motivated by this belief, especially since we consider that international relations will not be the same after the pandemic, and consequently nor will the conception and management of heritage. For instance, some world-renowned museums, which previously conditioned digital resources pertaining to their collections, chose to make them available during this period. Never before did “virtual” visits to museums have so much impact and pertinence, especially given the impossibility of visiting in person, forced by the lockdown. Once again, along with the digital reality—interconnected with information transmission—the issue has become more and more serious, allowing us to apprehend multiple elements in its acquired role as an agent of new-world demands. The instantaneous character of (social) media has supplied a new angle towards heritage at the transnational scale. Reports of catastrophes such as the recent fires at Rio de Janeiro’s National Museum and Notre-Dame in Paris, the floods in Venice, as well as the iconoclastic attempts in Bamiyan and Mosul (to mention only just a few) have moved heritage elsewhere as far as international relations go. Two factors add to this proposition. The first concerns the increasing assimilation of cultural heritage by transnational debates. Indeed, cultural heritage is getting visibility whilst public 2

Some of the chapters in this book were originally published in Portuguese language: “Heritage and International Relations Dossier”, Locus Magazine—UFJF, 26, vol. 2, 2020, coordinated by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botelho (FLUP-CITCEM).

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participation in it continues to expand thanks to (social) media. The effects of this exposure reflect upon the unparalleled advance of some organizations in the negotiation of international politics. The second factor is the growth, at the international level, of the political and economic power enjoyed by countries with “preservationist” policies. As the new century unravels, the examination of these power relations uncovers new actors, spaces and representations. Cultural Heritage has become an increasingly important actor in multilateral debates. As such, it contributes to the flare of actions in the scope of intergovernmental relations. New objects of study, that remain only partially examined, derive from the following: as traces of an increasingly manysided soft power; shaped as themes and criteria, hierarchically established by the advisory bodies of UNESCO; and, among others, as expanding issues associated with “Africanism”, “Asianism”, “Latinism” and “Orientalism” (still undervalued by our researchers, given the predominance of European and North American points of view). In line with this, archaeological sites, museums, cultural spaces, international preservation organisms, states, actors of paradiplomacy, expressions of tradition, living and doing, the dichotomy between inflation and heritage destruction, as well as other elements informed the mental representations of an ever-changing heritage. Understanding the mechanisms behind the expansion of the theme would benefit the assemblage of new (inter)national heritage valuations. Besides, we must consider the aforementioned digital reality, in the way that it transcends the constraints of social distancing, so as to become the single vehicle for visiting and transmitting heritage resources. The subtitle that “nicknames” this book is more than an attempt to add poetry to the subject matter. “Patchwork in times of plurality” encompasses the multitude of actions as a revealing symbol of attitudes, actors, organisms and manifestations of the frontiers of preservation and dialogue. Almost like a patchwork, this plural metaphor aggregates yet segregates, it conforms yet disfigures, it boosts the meanings which represent this new field that international relations have recently crossed to. Just like the mirror metaphor—that reflects everything before all, sometimes adding distortion—the patchwork analogy allows the book to take responsibility for disclosing preservation actions on a global scale. This publication has a pioneering role insofar as it sits probably alone in displaying such characteristics, concerns and coverage. The book has a detailed snip about the interconnection between cultural property and international relations by understanding them as a mosaic before the bridges connecting people and borders. Besides, the book has a cut-out about the misfortunes afflicting cultural heritage, and lastly a reflection on soft power as a master key to unlock gateways around the globe. The main goal of the book is to illustrate the way in which intergovernmental relations have been privileging heritage and culture as a field of action for broader needs. Therefore, the book addresses topics related to the international agenda, focusing on less-debated subjects. Two examples of these undervalued matters are the links between actors, preservationist actions and the universe of world cultural heritage. The book also pursues a critical dialogue between interdisciplinary fields bridging

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the frontiers of heritage studies, in search of contributing a spectrum of academic perspectives and (inter)national study cases. To serve distinct economic, social or political purposes, institutionalized heritage (embodied in different values) becomes instrumentalized in a top-down direction. In a developmental framework, when we perceive culture as being indispensable to human life, the past is transformed into a currency that can be exchanged. Through the creation of alternative fields of action, usually employing a bottom-up logic, new heritage connections can be built from afresh. The preservation, dissemination and appreciation of digital heritage have responded to the same frameworks. Cultural Heritage and its intersection point with international relations is part of an expanding research field, and this is why it has surfaced in multilateral discussions around the globe. This is a time of confidence in heritage preservation, and against the odds, it is closer to intergovernmental relations today. At the turn of the twentieth century, classical themes that were universal in scope—such as the polarity of the international system, the equilibrium of power, safety and so on—left space for other theoretical lines. This phenomenon has resulted in an increase of publications based on sensitive contemporary themes, including human rights, the environment, sustainability or diversity. In this context, cultural questions and heritage preservation emerge due to concerns with international safety. To grasp the interface between cultural heritage and international relations, we must bring to mind the expression of soft power was coined by Joseph Nye Jr. (1990), which helps us untangle scarcely explored ideas. Soft power is the ability to influence others to do what we desire by means of attraction, instead of coercion. In international politics, power is considered to be a means to an end. Through it, a relationship of domination develops, in which the dominant part controls the actions of the dominated to achieve certain interests. This definition is a leitmotif with which to understand the role of cultural heritage preservation in international relations. Since the 1970s, we have witnessed efforts to institutionalize new practices of conservation, mostly thanks to UNESCO. Several documents define these efforts, and the generalized applicability of juridical mechanisms has given rise to cultural heritage as being key for new diplomatic approaches, a topic worth constant updating. The broadening out of themes related to cultural heritage has fomented: insights into the immaterial dimension of cultural properties; the presence of new actors in heritage management; the rise of different styles of tourism (sustainable or predatory) in world heritage sites; the intensification of comparative studies of multilateral organisms between State Parties; the criteria used for the selection, reception, accession and safeguard measures related to cultural properties; the extension of studies about heritage incentivized by waves of immigration; and the increasingly multifaceted role of cultural diplomacy. Lastly, the definite expansion of the field of heritage representation (material and immaterial) through the world wide web, which created unprecedented institutional networks for the exchange of knowledge, and the implication of citizens thanks to non-formal communication in social media. International organisms started to regard heritage in a far-reaching perspective by including it in the guidelines for global governance. Simultaneously, they took the first steps towards a bottom-up logic, through the inclusion of communities.

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Whether via the connection to sustainability, the fight against extremism, or politics surrounding access to citizenship and tradition, cultural heritage has begun to have a prominent role, and preservation actors have experienced a significant influence at the table of international negotiations. Meanwhile, we are living through the worst cultural heritage crisis of the last decades. Two examples cause both astonishment and discomfort. The first is the dizzying increase in the trafficking of cultural goods, an activity which currently ranks third among all the illegal financial activities, and the profit of which continues to foster cultural terrorism, drugs and the arms trade. The second relates to the financial tearing apart caused by the withdrawal of some States from their obligations towards UNESCO. These examples deepen the challenge of preservation, even if such actions— which have become more viable over the last decade—are only the tip of the iceberg. Besides, the pluralization of heritage narratives has led challenges to the Eurocentric legacy to increase. That legacy in conducting policies is considered to homogenize the safeguard of world heritage. In Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East, criticism of this kind gave rise to emancipatory acts of preservation based on the exploration of themes regarding the local cultures. With cultural heritage being appropriated for commercial and political purposes, heritage preservation is now playing a significant part in cultural diplomacy, seeing its status rise from the simple political strategy of positive “neighbourly” relations to intricate soft power techniques as applied in different countries. Comparing this with what used to be the case five decades ago, when only countries with enough economic power dictated the rules of preservation and defined what merited the definition of outstanding universal value, the situation today is quite different. This perception corroborates the proposition that soft power employing culture, the exchange of traditions and cultural diplomacy has become a motor for change in international relations. Fundamentally, this means that new actors enunciate and propose different agendas, capable of responding to local, internal necessities. Cultural heritage is an intrinsic element in this new international agenda. A close observation of the current geopolitical map, or the cartography of UNESCO’s world heritage sites, helps consolidate this point of view without having to place limitations on the critical assessment of reality. In this sense, international preservation organizations, national governments, actors of diplomacy and paradiplomacy, manifestations of tradition, lifestyle, ways of making and the dialectic between the inflation of heritage and its destruction have become the exponents of that ever-changing map. Such is another domain where international relations and heritage come together. Despite claims to the power of cultural heritage in present geopolitics—seen as a crucial element for sustainable development and people’s identity—the association between heritage and international relations has been little scrutinized in the academic world. After all, only recently have scientific works of a considerable wingspan elected this promising subject matter. Stimulated by the dynamics in question, cultural heritage (as a key to new sociocultural and diplomatic approaches) deserved due attention from scholars. The product of this “verticalization” exemplifies the extraordinary moment we are at: we witness, maybe, the worst crisis since World War II if we consider the (war) crimes perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq

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and Syria (ISIS). In the case of ISIS, the consequences have been horrific, given that since 2014 the organization has systematically and intentionally destroyed a significant part of the material legacy of its ancestors. In front of the television cameras, ISIS destroyed sculptures and sites, only because they do not fit their interpretation of Islam. Not even the Taliban or the dreaded Al-Qaeda have reached such a degree of atrocity. More recently, following the protests over George Floyd’s death, another wave of iconoclastic and symbolic destruction has taken place. All around the globe, statues of historical characters like Winston Churchill or Christopher Colombus have been voluntarily damaged or destroyed. Radicalism is not the only problem that cultural heritage faces on a global scale. Other examples cause serious concern. The physical deterioration of heritage worldwide and the lack of sensibility from governments towards the protection of cultural property is shocking. This is especially true when it comes to trafficking, a business worth in excess of 6 billion U.S.A. dollars a year, according to UNESCO. The previous examples harden the challenge which is the repatriation of misplaced artifacts. Notwithstanding, in the last decade these actions have gained international viability, as was the case in Brazil (Christofoletti 2017, 16). Again, when cultural heritage encompasses different values, it can be instrumentalized to serve economic purposes. At that point, the past becomes a bargaining chip. This causal nexus deserves attention. People’s legacy and their past: barriers to comprehend the present. All the topics mentioned above already made sense in a world without social distancing, compulsory isolation, or a virus to fight against. The themes approached in this book predate the pandemic logic, but inevitably they have ended up assimilating it. The first concerns, needs and objects of the book belonged to a complex yet familiar world, where rules were known and agreed upon. The pandemic changed everything, including international relations and their concerns. Thus, we believe this book can contribute to uniting past needs and present ones. We cannot foresee the future and guess what will happen with heritage preservation worldwide. However, we can recognize some signs of change in public policies, funding and tentative rules for a game that we do not yet know how to play. Thus, the essays selected for this book discuss realities that most probably will be impacted by this abrupt change in the scope of a (recently) globalized world. The book is divided into three connected parts. Part 1—Between bridges and frontiers explores the connections between several examples of heritage preservation—taken as an extended concept of time—and proposes a type of discussion about spaces and actors that the international historiography has entered only in part. Here we find texts by Amélia Polónia, Cátia Miriam Costa and Fernando Mouta. Damnatio memoria or Damnatio consensus.Conflicting colonial heritage in Latin American port cities. A project in motion: CoopMar—Transoceanic Cooperation, Public Policies and Ibero-American Sociocultural Community analyzes the planning of a research and development network financed by CYTED (the IberoAmerican Program of Science and Technology for Development), which promotes pathways of scientific diplomacy aimed at reinforcing synergies among the partners involved, according to an agenda of “sea and society for development”. Seaports

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were, for centuries, the most continuous exchange platform between Europe, Africa and America. Port cities emerge as structures and social constructions with specific characteristics. Taking them as study foci favors the debate of issues related to urban and social complexity, as they usually bring together marks of diversity, both human and cultural, presenting themselves as privileged places for the development of studies of alterity and permeability, including cultural. Port cities in Europe and Latin America are also challenged by risks arising from the high levels of development of the tourism industry. This exploits heritage, material and immaterial, built, symbolic, or natural, often without benefits for the builders and heirs of those assets—the local communities. In Regional Assets, Industrial Growth, Global Reach: The Case Study of the Film Industry in the San Francisco Bay Area, Frédéric Lerich debates a poorly known dimension for the public. According to Lerich, in the cinematographic industry of the U.S.A., Hollywood is a (big) tree hiding a forest. Beyond this powerful and dominant cluster of the film industry, there are small others, particularly in New York and San Francisco. Lerich argues that the development of the San Francisco Bay industry depends on specific regional assets, such as an alternative culture, a technological culture and a unique urban experience. The article is grounded on the idea that San Francisco is a welcoming place to film and produce movies, and today’s perfect example of a dynamic and industrial cluster having several locations. Lerich also highlights different strategies aimed at promoting the development of regional actives related to the film industry and questions their capacity for recovery by enhancing the industry’s impact on the global influence of San Francisco itself. In Cultural Heritage and globalization: Trajectory, projects and strategies of the Santa María la Real Foundation (Aguilar de Campoo, Castilla and León, Spain), Jaime Nuño González offers an engaging narrative about the dynamics of preserving the ruins of a medieval monastery in the small locality of Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia, Castilla and León, Spain). In 1977, an association was created to recover and transform the monument into a cultural center. That was a changing moment for a region suffering from depopulation. The Foundation of Santa Maria de la Real, the heiress of that association, diversified the sector in which it operated, intervening privately elsewhere in Spain. González introduces the preservation projects of the Foundation, tracing the trajectory of protection of the ruins as they eventually became a prominent example of heritage protection in the Iberian Peninsula. Bruno do Vale Novais discusses what he believes to be one of the broadest fields of action in the State’s international relations, Cultural Diplomacy. In Cultural Diplomacy: from praxis to a possible concept, he asks: What is Cultural Diplomacy? This question has motivated studies in the field of International Relations and its interface with Culture as research fields. To speak of Cultural Diplomacy is to think about the symbolic and cultural elements that the national states employ as instruments of foreign policy. Novais presents a discussion of the connections between Culture, Diplomacy, Foreign Policy and International Cultural Relations in order to identify what Cultural Diplomacy is, and thus elaborate upon a concept that may explain what this field is about. It starts with the premise that Cultural Diplomacy is an umbrella for another diplomacy: artistic, educational, sports, or based upon heritage,

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tourism, science and innovation. In this text, it is structured around the discussion, in two complementary parts, surrounding the success of the objectives proposed by this study. Firstly, sought to discuss the interface between Culture and International Relations. Secondly, applied hat to understanding what Cultural Diplomacy is. Both objectives are sustained by specific discussions that help to understand the object of analysis. Thus, in thinking about the intersection between Culture, Diplomacy and Politics, Novais shows how Cultural Diplomacy has gained strength since the last century. In addition, the adoption by some countries of models in line with cultural diplomacy allows us to understand that the nation states of today have taken steps towards strengthening this area. José Luis Rubio-Tamayo, Manuel Gertrudix and Hernando Gómez Gómez set a compelling counterpoint to the previous texts by analyzing how digital technologies have changed the relationship between users, content and information in recent years. In Digital Culture and Digital Media as Heritage: Innovative Approaches in Interaction with Information and Scientific Communication in the Era of Massive Data and Immersive Interactive Technologies. New Contexts in International Relationships, the authors signal that such changes were clearly felt in the last decade, particularly in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This context has positioned societies in new scenarios, in which interactions have radically changed and the digital technologies and scientific culture (as they developed over the last decades) have attained a fundamental role. The authors think through a technological context focused on media technologies, the production and dissemination of data and the potential to proposition and implement new relationships between stakeholders, users, organizations, research groups and data, information and knowledge. Technologies such as extended reality, motion graphics, immersive journalism, massive open data, data visualization, open science, etc., draw a group of plots where access to information and knowledge gives rise to innovative approaches. The authors claim that the digital technologies previously mentioned playing a relevant role in accelerating even further the chances of new scenarios and contexts emerging, changing relationships and ways of interacting at all levels, from individual to international relations, and, of course, between individuals and information. In “National fact” and the notion of cultural heritage in the Brazilian Constituent Assembly (1987/1988), Yussef Daibert Salomão de Campos and Paulo Peixoto assess the speeches construed in the framework of the Constituent Assembly of Brazil (1987/1988), through lengthy auditions and documents such as the formulation of the constitutional article about cultural heritage, which broaches the national identity apology that was so prevalent in public policy during the 1920s and 1930s. Among other topics, the authors highlight that those responsible for electing what needed preservation were no longer the clergy and the aristocracy. Each object has its narrative; however, the state, historical, juridical and administrative processes of heritage construction go beyond singular object narratives. The History of Heritage, the authors argue, is not the sum of each object’s history, but a convenient narrative linked, in its own context, to the invention of Nation and the hardening of national identity.

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The first part of the book closes with a new reading of celebrated documents of heritage preservation, by Marcos Olender. The author tries to answer some of the present interrogations and to understand the dynamics of the construction of world heritage imagery. Olender approaches the 1931 Charter of Athens by offering a “verticalized” assessment of the underpinnings of the production of the first international document concerned with the protection of historical and artistic heritage worldwide. In “The Abyss of History is Deep Enough to Hold Us All”. The beginnings of the 1931 Athens Charter and the proposition of the notion of world heritage, the author addresses the historical process which shaped the appearance of the document. That state of affairs started with World War I and the founding of institutions that structured international policies of heritage protection, something which highlighted concerns with the conceptualization of world heritage. Part 2—Unfortunate events of the cultural goods offer a narrative around the evaluation of unfortunate events involving cultural properties by considering those events as highly damaging heritage protection internationally. The Louvre, a worldrenowned museum and a significant heritage symbol in France, now responds to a request from the French government to perfect its global interactions and influence. The internationalization of the Louvre is therefore perceived not as being about the worldwide reputation of the museum itself, but rather as channelling the museum’s power in international strategic policies. In Political Issues of the Louvre’s Internationalisation, Marie-Alix-Mólinier-Andlauer addresses the internationalization of the Louvre since the year 2000. Successive governments and the French State have been mobilizing the museum as an intermediary in international agreements. This museum/cultural institution became a direct participant in French international relations, which motivated Andlauer to examine the questions and controversies which surround the intimate connection between the Louvre and the French State. Lastly, Andlauer analyses the stance taken by French media regarding the utilization of the Louvre by the State. The media speech is equally revealing of the strategies and antagonisms relating to the internationalization of one of the most famous museums in the world. Even if museums keep statues (regardless of the discussion if they should keep objects whose acquisition is considered to be controversial), on the other hand, they can be the stage of vandalism and destruction on occasion. The devastation of museums and local sculptures perpetrated by DAESH in Syria and Iraq should not be taken as a simple act of vandalism or iconoclasm based on an interpretation of Islam. These actions conceal a far more complex debate about the current redefinition of heritage, particularly of sculptures associated with a colonial or autocratic past, and because of that, maybe no longer seen as worthy of protection or remembrance. In Statues also die. Heritage, museums and memories on target by DAESH, Jorge Elices Ocón presents a literature review of the topic, focusing on the remarkable difference between other iconoclastic actions and those perpetrated by DAESH. For terrorists, the redefinition of these sculptures is not possible. As Ocón declares, “It is not a speech of justice, but hate, and it seeks not only the death of statues but that of people and cultures".

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Fernando Fernandes da Silva, a precursor of studies about the preservation of Brazilian heritage from a juridical perspective, offers The International Protection of Cultural Heritage in Times of Armed Conflict: the normative framework of the 1954 Hague Convention. The author considers the intricacies that led to the adoption and execution of preservation policies derived from the armed conflicts of the twentieth century. Silva also describes the context of the Convention and the negotiations to create a culture of protecting endangered heritage, throughout the second half of the century. Manuel Burón Díaz engages with the previous contribution by signalling the trajectory of New Zealand’s heritage through examining the construction, exchange, exhibition, claim and restitution of heritage, offering also a critical reading about the conditions for returning heritage. For Burón Díaz, heritage, including the materials that comprise it, and the meanings attributed to it, is not static: it varies in time, and as part of that metamorphosis it follows different trajectories on the map. Díaz approaches how new demands related to heritage restitution suppose a more active offshoot for a series of meanings which we attribute to cultural materials. The author highlights how the repatriation of some objects has become a crucial tool in international relations nowadays. Thus, Heads and Birds: Building and Restoring Heritage in New Zealand reflect the search for clarification of the idea that heritage has been a crucial instrument for diplomatic relations since in symbolizing different desires and by attending to different needs, it sets contacts between cultures and nations. The author cautions that this should not make the observer fall victim to sterile relativism and the immutability of cultural essentialism. Besides concern with the images of heritage, its destruction, the trafficking of cultural property and the historical revisionism of symbols revered in the past, another high-ranking topic in international relations is the restitution of looted goods. Karine Lima da Costa contributes to this question by analyzing the restitution or repatriation of cultural properties—especially artefacts from Sub-Saharan Africa—throughout the publication of the Savoy–Sarr Report, concluded in 2018. In The demand for restitution of cultural heritage through relations between Africa and Europe, Costa addresses the case of the Benin Bronzes removed from Africa in the nineteenth century to be distributed among several museum institutions, mainly in France and the United Kingdom. The repatriation and restitution also matter to the change of attitude towards the treatment and interpretation of cultural goods. This must consider something that seems to be forgotten along the process: the collective sense of cultural goods. For the same reason, the problem of restitution fosters new forms of relating with cultural heritage, for when we speak of it, we are also speaking of diplomacy. Therefore, we should not limit the options to the permanent recovery of the property in question. We must contemplate loans, cultural exchanges and the circulation of pieces as they occurred, despite the lack of agreements and cooperation between agents. Biregional relations between Europe and Latin America have been the subject of great academic attention and political efforts in recent years. Going back to colonial times (sixteenth–nineteenth centuries), these relationships currently seek to achieve a complex arrangement, as they are commonly described in a framework of multilevel

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interregionalism that encompasses relationships carried out mainly in three widely identified and discussed areas—political dialogue, economic association, cooperation for the development. In this text, Vitória Acerbi presents the mapping of the diplomatic cultural relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries between two of the biggest producers of cultural diplomacy in the world. In Mapping cultural heritage in the biregional relations between Europe and Latin America: case studies Acerbi signals cooperation initiatives from the prism of cultural heritage preservation and the politics of promotion and sharing of cultural diplomacy actions. As such, the author analyzes cases of cooperation, knowledge exchange and bilateral specialization when deepening the role of some of the institutions and actors involved. The third part of the book raises the following problem: Soft power as a key? Trying to respond to this provocative idea, Rodrigo Christofoletti draws from a wide range of historical examples to illustrate the effects of soft power in the preservation of cultural heritage within the scope of international relations. It leans towards three essential areas: a) A critique of the cartography represented in world heritage lists and the properties linked to UNESCO; b) The growing actions around the trafficking, repatriation and restitution of cultural goods, as well as the universe of the so-called illegal “criminogenic collectibles”; c) The mapping of actors involved in the production, maintenance and management of heritage. With an increasing tendency to explore themes related to “Africanism”, “Asiatism”, “Latinism” and “Orientalism”, themes that are still marginalized by the supremacy of a European and North American perspective, how is this relationship when it arises as a result dialogue between various areas of knowledge and the concept of soft power? Thereby, the text Three themes in transition: soft power, illicit trafficking in cultural goods and the cartography of world heritage sites face a central task: to demonstrate that the connection between cultural heritage, international relations and soft power is relevant. To that end, it documents significant examples from Brazil and compares them with international ones. Given the relevance of this category of analysis, it seems advisable to offer research possibilities on the effects of soft power (a concept questioned only on the margins of history), thus providing the conceptual basis and strict methodological approaches on its central idea. Connecting with the contributions by Christofoletti and Novais, Gustavo de Jesus Nóbrega examines the universe of paradiplomacy and presents the partial results of research linked to an interdisciplinary project entitled “Different uses of institutional places in Cultural Heritage preservation”. In it, the usage and appropriation by different agents of the University of Coimbra (UC) and the city itself is analyzed, via the introduction of the educational institution as a World Heritage Site, with its immovable goods being regarded as part of an open-air museum collection. In The University of Coimbra and the various appropriations of the international seal of Human Heritage attributed by UNESCO, Nóbrega raises the hypothesis that the UNESCO nomination in 2014 leveraged the use of the “Coimbra” brand as a form of soft power. Gustavo states that the UNESCO nomination reinforced the reputation of the city and its University as international spaces of excellence.

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In the same topic, War trophies and diplomatic relations, by Bruno Miranda Zétola, examines the singularity of the war trophy as cultural heritage and as a significant point in diplomatic relations. Starting with three case studies, Zétola points out possible paradigms of the use of this type of cultural good as a resource for international politics. War trophies are a specific category of heritage since they consist of military artifacts obtained from the battlefield, also because their cultural value can only be measured after they have been apprehended. Practiced since Antiquity, the acquisition and exhibition of war trophies were never internationally regarded as being unlawful. However, its implications for international relations may be significant, depending on the appreciation of the artifact as the historiographical narratives of the societies that either lost it or conquered it transformed it into a war trophy. In Soft Power of Minas Gerais: the Circula Minas program (2015–2018) as a measure of preservation, national and international diffusion of Minas Gerais culture and heritage, Vanessa Gomes de Castro and Thiago Rodrigues discuss the internationalization program for culture of the State of Minas Gerais in Brazil through the Circula Minas Program. The authors base their arguments upon a critical analysis of the concept of soft power, examining the results and implications of cultural exchanges sponsored by the State Secretary of Culture, especially in terms of cultural heritage. According to the authors, by receiving and financially supporting cultural projects the State of Circula Minas facilitated the participation of civil society in the safeguard of heritage. Cultural policies should not fall solely with the State and its representatives, rather they ought to involve civil society on every stage of the preservation process, as legitimized by international law-making. In turn, Felipe Queiroz de Campos proposes an examination of the limitations and potential of the predecessor of the Brazilian national institute for historical preservation, the SPHAN (National Service of Historical and Artistic Heritage), as a soft power project of the dictatorial government of Getúlio Vargas, during the Estado Novo period in Brazil. Between 1937 and 1945, the policy undertaken by the Estado Novo was tied to the needs of self-advertisement before the Brazilian population and the world. An original concern of this government was the politics of heritage and the official recognition of heritage as the highest symbol of the Brazilian culture to the world. Understanding SPHAN as a soft power project integrated into cultural diplomacy is a recent endeavour since the concept of soft power is usually applied to more recent historical examples of Brazil’s external politics. For that reason, the text The limitations and potentialities of SPHAN as a soft power project during Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas suggests that the SPHAN project should not be regarded merely as a program of external policy linked to Getúlio Vargas in terms of soft power but also as a relevant case of intertwined relations between internal and external politics. Lara Elisa Carvalho and Nathan Assunção Agostinho show that countries that respect multiculturalism, when accepting requests for the repatriation of cultural heritage, are evidently distinct from those that reject the repatriation of assets removed in the context of colonialism. In Brazil with its back to soft power, the authors consider that despite Brazil being at the top of the list of trafficking in cultural goods, the country has systematically turned its back on the problem, even though

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the withdrawal of information and knowledge embodied in lost goods is in Game. Therefore, the authors construct a narrative starting with their experiences with international relations by compiling guiding notes to support their criticism of the erasing of Brazilian culture in the world because of three major factors: (a) The lack of instrumentalization of Brazilian heritage and its safeguard as a way to promote soft power; (b) The insufficiency of state mechanisms in preventing trafficking; (c) And the systematic erasure of the concept of soft power in generating social identity. In The timbila of Mozambique in the concert of nations, Sara S. Morais debates some aspects of the process of patrimonialization of Mozambique’s “timbila chopes”, which saw their recognition by UNESCO in 2005 as Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Inspired in assessments of the process of objectification and semantic reduction implied in the official recognition of certain expressions of cultural heritage, the author addresses elements of the historical and social trajectory of timbila to understand its place in Mozambique’s national imagery and its choice as the country’s first internationally recognized immaterial cultural property. Morais emphasizes different elements that help to locate this African country against the backdrop of international relations, while debating some of the dynamics derived from colonialism, reflecting upon Mozambique’s relationship with UNESCO in light of past national politics and the relationship’s outcomes regarding certain criteria from UNESCO and the organization’s understanding of intangible heritage. Morais also highlights the interpretations made by the Mozambican State of the UNESCO ideals of social participation, showing how the Dossier produced by the government used the criteria of authenticity to justify the choice of timbila. The last part of the book closes with the text by Maria Leonor Botelho, who dialogues directly with the work of Campos. Botelho analyzes António de Oliveira Salazar’s desire to project the Portuguese national brand around the world as an expression of soft power. The “Política dos Centenários”, as defined by Salazar in March 1938 (in the Nota Oficiosa da Presidência do Conselho), came to be reflected in the Política do Espírito by António Ferro (1895–1956). As Ferro explained, the centenary commemorations were not only intended to glorify the Portuguese, from past to eternity but also to celebrate Portugal in its own day (Portugal of the past, for observers today). For the Estado Novo (1933–1974), the idea of “Portugal being portuguese” clearly identified with the glorious and triumphant past of the Nation. Given the need to affirm the historical value of a country that wanted to keep neutrality during World War II, the National Service of Information (SNI) engendered a series of actions that put heritage at the service of national identity, making it an instrument for producing memories. Through the restoration of buildings associated to a supposedly glorious past, the holding of large exhibitions such as the Grande Exposição Histórica do Mundo Português (in Lisbon), and the support to private initiatives like “Portugal dos Pequenitos” (in Coimbra), we see Portugal asserting itself as a Nation before the Portuguese and, indirectly, beyond borders too. Simultaneously, at a moment when Europe started to appear fragile due to World War II, Portugal entered into “collaborative neutrality” through an intense, active political propaganda ultimately aimed at the “material restoration” of the country. The double centenary commemoration, in 1940, of the Fundação da Nacionalidade and the Restauração

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da Independência is an example of a political statement based on the assertion (or search) of what it means to be Portuguese. Botelho examines these events to understand how heritage, either existing or created, was regarded back then as Portuguese “soft power”. The basic premise of this book was to discuss how the interpretations made by present observers helps to understand the changes found in the field of heritage conservation and in an ever-changing world oscillating between the perpetual and the ephemeral. This was the motto for the interview with former Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova and Francesco Bandarin, Special advisor to the directorgeneral of ICCROM and Senior Advisor and Member of the Steering Committee of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC). The two interlocutors offered concise yet consolidated answers at a time of uncertainty. Faced with an interconnected scenario and a novel theme, they are asked about the growing concern with heritage preservation during a time that hangs between generalized forgetfulness and the super-production of memories. Does heritage, especially heritage that is considered to be “universal”, have the power to fuel social and political changes? What about before the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the restrictions of accessibility that followed— how to escape the “depatrimonialization” of these places? Are we already moving towards a post-heritage age? Answering those questions was not an easy task, but the responses of our guests can help us to understand the framework we live in a little more, regardless of whether we agree with their positions. Even in the face of the imponderable, we continue to work to see this issue expand and we hope that these discussions can be assimilated in order to increase the visibility of the preservation of cultural heritage and its international aspects. We believe that the main question of this book—whether international relations linked to heritage preservation will change in a post-pandemic world—has been addressed. However, the changes that have occurred in governmental agendas, in the preferences of academics and in the global dynamics will reflect from day to day on the planet, and consequently, on world heritage itself. The words of Oliveira Martins, for whom “the value of cultural, material and immaterial heritage, requires the acceptance of the truth of events, positive and negative, so that we can gain experience, through the “work of memories” (2020, p. 28), motivate us to carry on with the effort of preserving our heritage. In this world, marked by an unprecedented pandemic, it is worth questioning the events, trying to understand them and to create a heritage memory after them, and by means of the experience gained, to open pathways for our own comprehension. We can be sure that these avenues will not be the same as before, and that new lessons will come loaded with meanings so that we know how to measure the preservation between the present and the past, between the new and the ancestral. That heritage (an element that transits between memory and history) may find its space as a protagonist in the international agendas, mediating the existing demands between what is local and what is global, without overlaps or losses of any kind. Rodrigo Christofoletti and Maria Leonor Botelho, April 2021

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References Christofoletti R (2017) Introdução. Bens culturais e Relações Internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Santos, Leopoldianum Martins GD (2020) Património cultural: realidade viva. Lisbon: Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos Ottone E (2020) Em momentos de crise, as pessoas precisam de cultura

Part I

Between Bridges and Frontiers

Chapter 2

Damnatio Memoria or Damnatio Consensus. Conflicting Colonial Heritage in Latin American Port Cities. A Project in Motion: CoopMar—Transoceanic Cooperation, Public Policies and Ibero-American Sociocultural Community Amélia Polónia, Cátia Miriam Costa, and Fernando Mouta

Amélia Polónia is the scientific coordinator of CITCEM (Transdisciplinary Research Centre Culture, Space and Memory). Full Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto, her research areas focus on colonial and globalisation studies, particularly in the modern period. She has been a researcher responsible for projects funded by Portuguese and European agencies. She is the coordinator of the research network CoopMar—Transoceanic Cooperation, Public Policies and Ibero-American Sociocultural Community, funded by CYTED—Ibero-American Programme of Science and Technology for Development. Information about publications, organisation of scientific events, knowledge transfer and participation in faculty mobility programmes and research networks can be consulted at https://www.cienciavitae.pt/portal/6310-2507-EFDC. Cátia Miriam Costa is a researcher at the Centre for International Studies (IUL) and visiting assistant professor at ISCTE—University Institute of Lisbon. She is also the director of the Chair of IberoAmerica at the European Institute of International Studies (Stockholm/Salamanca). She has participated in and coordinated several international scientific projects, funded by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation, the European Union and CYTED—Ibero-American Programme of Science and Technology for Development. She has published scientific articles and book chapters in several languages. More information: https://ciencia.iscte-iul.pt/authors/catia-costa/cv. Fernando Mouta was born in Luanda, Angola, on November 2, 1974, but always lived in Porto, Portugal. He has a BA in Marketing and Advertising (since 2006) and in History (2015) from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto (FLUP). He is a master in Medieval Studies (2017) and holds a specialisation in African Studies (2018), both conferred by the same institution. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Porto with the research project entitled ‘Commerce, cooperation and conflict in the West African coast (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). Beyond the transatlantic slave trade’, which is funded by the Portuguese Government. More information: https:// www.cienciavitae.pt//en/2E11-9883-9147. A. Polónia (B) · F. Mouta University of Porto, Porto, Portugal C. M. Costa University Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_2

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Abstract Seaports were, for centuries, the most continuous exchange platform between Europe, Africa and America. Port cities emerge as structures and social constructions with specific characteristics. Taking them as study foci favours the debate of issues related to urban and social complexity, as they usually bring together marks of diversity, both human and cultural, presenting themselves as privileged places for the development of studies of alterity and permeability, including cultural. Port cities in Europe and Latin America are also challenged by risks arising from the high levels of development of the tourism industry. This exploits heritage, material and immaterial, built, symbolic or natural, often without benefits for the builders and heirs of those assets—the local communities. This matter becomes more acute when we are dealing with memories and heritage historically built through colonial dynamics. Many questions arise around the management of these memories and inheritances. Today communities in Latin America ask for recognition of indigenous identities and values and call for different concepts and practices for the preservation of their own values. This paper builds on the tension arising between two concepts, Damnatio memoria and Damnatio consensus, as expressing vibrant reactions from the communities involved. These are the main challenges faced by the project supported by the CoopMar network, whose aims, strategies and achievements this article deals with. Keyword Port cities · Ibero-America · Heritage diplomacy · Damnatio memoria · Damnatio consensus

2.1 Memory(s), Heritage and Entrepreneurship The way the past and its memory are appropriated by contemporary actors is subject to multiple understandings,1 by involving different stakeholders and contested interpretations. The introduction of a business logic, linked to cultural entrepreneurship and the action of the creative industries, exacerbates the debate and requires a participatory dialogue of the multiple entities and agents involved in the process. The emergence of a ‘heritage industry’ adds actors to this debate, including policymakers, academics, heritage managers and entrepreneurs, conveying different perspectives on the same reality, sometimes carrying tensions that inhibit informed action (Falser and Juneja 2013, 1). This evolution was generally recognised by various states at a worldwide level, which brought into the political action the role of the individuals 1

This paper builds on a previous one, with common authorship: Polónia, Amélia; Costa, Cátia Miriam. “Preserving heritage and sharing memories in Latin American port-cities: a project in action: CoopMar – Transoceanic Cooperation, Public Policies and Ibero-American Sociocultural Community”. Locus: Revista de História, 26, n. 2 (2020): 13–28. https://doi.org/10.34019/25948296.2020.v26.31151. This research was supported by CITCEM (Transdisciplinary Research Centre Culture, Space and Memory), an R&D Centre supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and by the CoopMar project—Transoceanic Cooperation: Public Policies and Ibero-American Sociocultural Community, sponsored by CYTED.

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and communities (Telles 2011, 25). Depending on public policies in action, local communities tend thus to be integrated into these debates. This conveys, on the one hand, the awareness of their rights as beneficiaries of memories and heritage of their own, and hinders heritage preservation projects where their recognition is unavoidable. This results also from the recognition that those projects that did not involve them were contested or failed completely, due to the community’s lack of identification and added involvement. Furthermore, a considerable part of the preservation plans and heritage uses is associated to tourism purposes and imposes on these sites a large number of visitors, seen as intruders in loci considered as essential in the structuring of local identities, sometimes disregarding their own memories and symbolic meanings. This matter becomes more acute when facing memories and heritage historically constructed through colonial dynamics, such as those imposed by Europeans in Africa, America and Asia since modern times. Many questions occur around the management of memories and heritages seen as arising from these colonial dynamics (Stoler 2013, 2; McAtackney and Palmer 2016, 473), raising discussions around the self and the other, in relation to the different ethnic groups which are part of those societies. As a result, we witness difficult assimilation of some sites or components of this heritage by today’s communities, who demand the recognition of autochthonous identities and values and sometimes clamour for distinct concepts and practices of preserving their own memories and heritage (Luco 2013 256). The port cities of Ibero-America and the Iberian Peninsula have a common history, which has generated an important heritage, part of it classified as world cultural assets. Most of these sites are a true example of the melting of cultures, due to forced and free migrations, producing a very rich tangible and intangible heritage. The connections between the American and the European worlds are not only a source for new approaches on heritage policies but also for the study of shared memories, some of them traumatic, related to European colonial rule. In this case, innovative interpretations about the colonial legacy and how to integrate it and dialogue with it within Ibero-American societies is clear, mostly driven by institutions responsible for launching new diplomatic forms in the international community, also focused on heritage and, above all, on shared heritage (Winter 2015, 1007–1011). The European Union has come to recognise the potential of the creative and cultural sectors and the benefit of cultural exchanges as well as mutual learning through common projects, which is clear from the 2017 strategy to place culture at the heart of the European Union’s international relations (European Commission 2017, 1). An example of this policy is the ILUCIDARE project, supported by European Union (EU) funds and dedicated to heritage-oriented innovation, involving several EU partners and only one non-EU one, Ecuador. The project aims to increase sustainable territorial development and cultural exchanges, but still not dealing with one of the most striking aspects of European heritage diplomacy: the colonial heritage. The new international framework has not only allowed the development of important international organisations but also of new forms of technical cooperation, anchored in the understanding between states, and between institutions and national communities. This international recognition has been embodied in the emergence

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and maintenance of organisations such as UNESCO, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) or the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), which is developing important work in 108 countries around the world, including all those involved in the CoopMar2 project. Recently, ICOMOS launched a ‘Guide on Post-Trauma Recovery and Reconstruction for World Heritage Cultural Properties’,3 focusing on areas destroyed by wars and natural disasters. ICOMOS also advocates technical intervention in built landscapes, through good conservation and preservation practices, also directing its attention to other areas, such as human occupation and the memories associated with the built space. In Chile, one of the project’s partner countries, Valparaíso, a city with classified cultural heritage, has been the target of such concerns. The main challenge is to reconcile the interests of the various parties involved in urban projects linked to historical legacies. A series of conferences led by heritage and urban planning experts have been held, and scientific work developed, while also promoting campaigns, such as those for the ‘Valuable Place’ in 2001, trying to encourage the connection between local and traditional commerce and the use of heritage, or the 2002 campaign to maintain the characteristics of the recovered buildings. In both cases, the idea was to promote the exchange of knowledge and activities between universities, NGOs, public institutions and civil society.

2.2 Port Cities—Spaces for Intercultural Dialogues The port cities of Ibero-America present themselves as a particularly pertinent universe of analysis to address the issue of memories and heritage, their uses and interpretations. New challenges are posed to port cities in times of a significant increase in tourism which exponentially increase the social and economic value of maritime heritage, whether coastal landscapes or material or immaterial historical legacies. Moreover, port cities remain as privileged actors in globalisation processes. Their study is essential to understand modernity. In general, they synthesise and carry in their memory contradictory legacies, as they were the main front of colonisation processes. As such, because they were essential nodes in processes of slavery, forced labour and identified for centuries as spaces for marginality and conflict, some processes of damnatio memoria have been developed. But they are also zones of contact, of cultural exchange, of transference of knowledge, of syncretic experiences. Critically analysing these facets is still a way to go. During the twentieth century, international movements were set in motion to protect these kinds of memory and heritage. Starting in Europe, the USA and Japan, 2

CoopMar—Cooperación Transoceánica, Políticas Públicas y Comunidad Sociocultural Iberoamericana/ Transoceanic Cooperation, Public Policies and Sociocultural Ibero-American Communities (CYTED—617RT0532). 3 ICOMOS, “Post Trauma Recovery and Reconstruction for World Heritage Cultural Properties”, 2017, (http://openarchive.icomos.org/1763/19/ICOMOS%20Guidance%20on%20Post%20T rauma%20Recovery%20.pdf).

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these movements spread rapidly. In the 1990s, some Latin American cities joined this movement. Havana (Cuba) and Santos (Brazil) were among the first port cities in the region to have a renovated historic centre and a requalified seafront. To meet the expectations of the inhabitants of these areas, access to recreational areas, green spaces and their integration into the urban perimeter were guaranteed by urban intervention projects (Hoyle 2002, 142). Still, the risk of antagonising the community and its interests was and still is high. Dialogues with the community are also required to make public authorities and international institutions aware of their feelings about the transformation of historical centres and to identify memories associated with these places. Modernisation and investment in these poles are well received, but their acceptance diminishes when other implications of public and private investments interfere with citizens’ daily lives. In some of these redeveloped cities, mass tourism has become a point of tension with the local community as they feel their space invaded or even disrespected. Recent studies indicate the need to implement bottom-up initiatives in the design and implementation of heritage preservation and enhancement projects (Parkinson et al. 2016, 2). Developing discussions with communities helps to gather shared opinions and add new perspectives to the expected outcome of the multiple projects in action (Falser and Juneja 2013, 2). It is expected that obtaining community agreement on the interventions to be undertaken will help stabilise the political and social dialogue and provide a better interpretation of planned or ongoing transformation processes. This, besides requiring local interventions and actual interaction with communities, implies multidisciplinary teams in action, using a wide variety of communication channels. Social scientists (sociologists, economists, psychologists) are required, but also well-prepared heritage managers, as well as mediation agents able to build bridges between the expectations of the population and the ones of the urban and heritage policies, which must comply with precepts that are no longer just local, regional or national, but international. The classification by UNESCO of some of these sites implies the observation of international rules, which requires the assimilation and recognition of their meanings and requirements. This leads to another dimension of the debate: the reinterpretation of heritage in the light of the new statuses of these cities as global cities (Curtis 2016). This implies that the city sees itself as a participant in these international networks and develops a strategic policy based on the (re)signification of its heritage as a space with non-European foundations, in spite of European colonialism, which often constituted the way of its integration into a globalised space (Curtis 2016, 1). As socially constructed places, Latin American cities, like all cities, face the challenge of dealing with the old and the new, and, at the same time, with facts and memories. Decision-makers also need to take into account that intangible heritage, including memories and discourses, is as important as material and built heritage. Hence, the involvement of local communities is essential to the success of any project including heritage, both classified as material (tangible) and immaterial (intangible).

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In short, on all continents, with particular emphasis on Latin America, heated debates call for such participation of local populations in the planning and execution of heritage policies. In Latin American port cities, highly associated with the predominance of colonial heritage, this becomes particularly relevant, for two reasons. First, because for decades there was an uncritical acceptance of colonial heritage, in a context in which the emerging power elites saw them as part of a political project of unification and international recognition. Second, because in times when heritage (natural, cultural, material and immaterial) has, mostly in these countries, economic value, it is crucial to consider new policies to implement the integration of the various strata of the population both as active economic actors and beneficiaries of the dynamics resulting from the economic uses of heritage. Regarding the first topic, the assertion of nativist claims and the critical awareness of the colonial heritage bring new ideas and point to new directions for policies of memory. To clarify some of these issues, it becomes necessary to study mobility (of people, ideas and goods), migrations and permeabilities. Likewise, the dialogue between the population, heritage experts and other stakeholders, including economic agents, needs to be pursued, without avoiding the controversial aspects inherent to dealing with plural and often conflicting memories. The projects implemented based on colonial heritage in port cities and the literature on the subject are clear on the benefits of the connection between experts, policymakers, investors and local communities. This dialogue should increasingly include the professional training of technicians and public awareness of the social and economic advantages offered by informed heritage management. Only a shared and participatory memory policy and a plural approach to tangible and intangible heritage can contribute to its preservation without generating dissatisfaction. A crosscultural approach, as well as a multidisciplinary one, becomes necessary to allow new interpretations of the past while trying to convert disused heritage sites and sites embodying negative memories into places with new functions. The development of creative and cultural industries, new economic solutions and permanent dialogue between academia and society can help these port cities to assume their status as places of transcultural contact, open to global trends and movements, but considering, integrating and benefiting local populations, who are and have been for centuries active builders of heritage, without necessarily being beneficiaries of it. The aim is to incorporate their voice in the global dynamics of heritage preservation and in the decisions to be taken regarding their sociocultural and economic uses. In this journey, scholars, policymakers and heritage managers have the opportunity to reactivate silent presences and voices, which, being essential to the construction of pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial worlds, are hardly ever heard. Women, slaves, creole population, ethnic and religious minorities are just some of them, despite the current concern with slavery and the cultural marks of an Afro-Latin American culture or with gender issues.

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2.3 Damnatio consensus: Examples of Conflicting Colonial Heritage As already referred, colonial heritage can be conflicting for local populations in a multitude of facets. But the lack of recognition of the role of any given remnant from the past as a ‘worthy’ candidate for inclusion in the World Heritage list can also lead to the dissatisfaction of local communities that feel deprived of the economic benefits of living close to a tourist attraction. Even when a colonial heritage site is recognised and appreciated across the world, local communities can still reject it and express their discontent if they do not feel that they are partners in the site’s management or beneficiaries of its economic and cultural potential. Finally, a controversy can be started by the opinion of a politician—usually the policymakers—about a colonial heritage site, especially if at odds with most people’s opinions about that same site. Let’s look at three concrete examples of these possibilities. Without a doubt, the most horrid episode of the colonial era is the transatlantic slave trade, considered a crime against humanity. According to the latest consensus, 12.5 million individuals were forcefully transported from Africa across the oceans to help build the European colonial empires (Fuglestad 2018, 94). To help us never forget this historical episode, UNESCO added to the World Heritage List several cultural assets bearing direct or indirect traces of the slave trade. One of the first examples is the ‘Forts and Castles, Volta, Greater Accra, Central and Western Regions’, all located on the coast of Ghana. These European-built forts played a pivotal role in all trading relations between Africa, Europe and America. Although they were designated as national monuments in 1972, many were in ruinous state before UNESCO’s World Heritage designation in 1979 (UNESCO 2014, 6–9). The publishing of Alex Haley’s book Roots: The Saga of an American Family (Haley 1976) and the smashing success of the 1977 TV miniseries based on the same book triggered a very specific kind of tourism—the so-called ‘ethno-tourism’—especially by African-Americans, which came to be called ‘finding one’s roots’ (Fuglestad 2018, 293). These individuals started visiting Africa—their mother nation—and more specifically heritage sites related to the transatlantic slave trade, to understand and reconnect with their historical past. Because of this dynamic, communities around these sites, that until then did not pay much attention to them, started to benefit from the economic opportunities brought by the arrival of groups of people with a far superior purchasing power. At another level, many American public agencies and private foundations started contributing to the restoration and upkeep of these sites, creating many job opportunities for local communities (Kankpeyeng 2009, 210). Attracted by this economic bliss, many communities in northern Ghana living near hinterland forts (Kumasi, Bole, and Ba), transit camps, slave markets and shrines, began claiming and assert the role of Ghanaians, not only in the transatlantic slave trade but also in the trans-Saharan slave trade and even in the ownership of slaves. For them, being connected to such a negative historical episode is at the end an opportunity to improve their lives and revitalise the economic stratum of their regions, besides being acknowledged as participant victims of such trends. To address these

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claims, the UNESCO-sponsored Slave Route programme has promoted projects of identifying and studying the connections of northern Ghanaians to the slave trade. Nonetheless, these communities feel that these sites should also be part of the World Heritage List—without them, the slaves would never have reached buyers in the coastal forts and castles. They even accuse UNESCO of only valuing Europeanbuilt or European-style buildings, a clear example of architectural discrimination— completely at odds with UNESCO’s mission and goals (Kankpeyeng 2009). The second example to be called for connects directly with a field experience of the CoopMar network team itself. In October 2019, the CoopMar team was supposed to have a week of institutional and academic interactions at the port city of Valparaíso, in Chile. These activities coincided with the protests that became known as El Estallido Social—The Social Outbreak—happening in all the major Chilean cities. The Chilean population protested the increased cost of living, privatisation and inequality prevalent in the political and economic organisation of the country. Because of these events, all public buildings and institutions in Valparaíso closed to prevent damage from rioters. This included most of the venues in the Historic Quarter, a World Heritage site, renowned for the nineteenth-century buildings, which bear witness to the leading position of the city as a merchant port. This provided an opportunity to walk around the neighborhoods located in the hills surrounding the port and, as protests intensified, talk with many people about the management of the World Heritage site and its benefits for the local population. What became obvious was the lack of connection felt by locals with a neighborhood where the families of rich and foreign merchants historically lived. For them, what is being valued as World Heritage is not the contribution of Valparaíso’s common people for the development of the city, but what an elite of individuals, many of them representatives of colonial countries, profited and built. This mirrored the current situation because the general opinion fuelling the riots was that elites had taken over the country and governed the rest of the population for their benefit. The discontent was evident, not only for their opinions and protests but also for the many graffiti in the streets and statues around the city (see Fig. 2.1). This did not mean that Valparaíso’s inhabitants were not proud of their city. Everyone complained about the economic crisis and the almost derelict state of most of the neighbourhood’s public spaces—evidence of the failure of the city council’s and government’s policies—but they were fiercely parochial. They all thought that their neighborhood was beautiful, and this was made evident in the spectacular urban art that could turn a rough neighbourhood into an open-air art museum (see Fig. 2.2)4 . Intriguingly, not one of these true works of art had any kind of graffiti tags so common in many government and commercial buildings all over the city’s centre. It was as if the city’s population rebelled against institutionalised heritage and instead cherished popular forms of art. The contempt made evident for the World Heritage site meant that for locals the real history of the city is not represented in it, even if a lot of tourists visit Valparaíso mostly thanks to the world fame of that neighbourhood.

4

https://www.urbanadventures.com/blog/discover-the-urban-art-of-valparaiso/.

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Fig. 2.1 Images of dissatisfaction (left: ‘Monument to the WC—World Heritage’; right: ‘The heroes of the people are us’) (Author: Fernando Mouta)

One needs to cross the Atlantic Ocean for the last example. The Padrão dos Descobrimentos5 is an international-renowned monument on the northern bank of the Tagus River, in Lisbon. It was inaugurated in 1960 to commemorate the 500 years of the death of Henry the Navigator. This was one of a series of national monuments built by the Estado Novo regime of António de Oliveira Salazar, intended to exalt the glorious past of the Portuguese empire and the role of the Portuguese in the European Age of Discoveries. The monument is in modern classicism style and has the shape of a gigantic padrão6 sided by Caravel sails with a ramp that leads 32 statues of famous figures from the Portuguese Age of Discoveries—all lead by Henry the Navigator— into the sea. The monument was also a strong political statement of a regime asserting its legitimacy by holding overseas territories—especially in Africa—as an integral 5

https://padraodosdescobrimentos.pt/. A padrão was a stone marker left by Portuguese navigators when arriving at unknown lands, to commemorate the arrival of the Portuguese Crown and assert its supremacy over the region.

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Fig. 2.2 Urban art in the streets of Valparaíso’s neighbourhoods (Author: Fernando Mouta)

part of the country, in a time when other colonies were claiming their independence from European countries. This particular padrão had a dual significance: the assertion of supremacy of an authoritarian regime and as a testament of a glorified—and mythical—historical past. Forty-five years after the Carnation Revolution of 1974 that overthrew the dictatorial regime, the Padrão dos Descobrimentos has become one of the most wellknown fixtures of the riverine skyline of Lisbon and one of the most visited by tourists flocking until recently to the capital of Portugal. Put simply, the monument has become synonym of a particular glorious epoch in Portuguese history and is visited by thousands of Portuguese students each year to learn about and commemorate the historical figures portrayed. In February 2021, Ascenso Simões, a member of the Portuguese Parliament and of the Socialist Party—the ruling party—wrote an article in one of the most read Portuguese newspapers asking for the tearing down of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos. For him, the monument is still a symbol of Salazar’s regime and is a testimony of a colonial past that Portugal, as a modern European country, should be ashamed of. To reinforce his opinion, he wrote that the monument is truly ugly, a ‘mamarracho’ (Simões 2021). In the following days, there was a public outcry in Portugal. The article received special attention in all the main newscasts in Portuguese media and his unorthodox opinion was analysed and overwhelmingly criticised by journal and television

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commentators. There was even a public petition to expel Ascenso Simões from the Portuguese Parliament as an elected member of the Socialist Party.7 Nonetheless, what became obvious from this controversy is that nowadays the great majority of the Portuguese population does not connect the Padrão dos Descobrimentos to the regime of Salazar. Most know that it was built during the period of the Estado Novo but nowadays it symbolises a golden period in Portuguese history when Portugal was at the vanguard of the European Age of Discoveries, and it is valued as a pedagogical tool and as a tourist attraction, both foreign and national. Facing such challenges, CoopMar, a network funded by CYTED (Ibero-American Science and Technology Programme for Development), put into action a plan that connects Science and Society in order to provide analytical tools able to promote an action plan aiming at influencing public policies.

2.4 CoopMar—A Project in Action CoopMar is a project qualified to contributing to this debate, focusing specifically on the Ibero-American region. CoopMar is a research and development network financed by CYTED (Ibero-American Programme of Science and Technology for Development) that promotes active forms of scientific diplomacy, aiming to leverage existing synergies between different stakeholders. CoopMar prioritises the circulation of knowledge between different actors (universities, museums, foundations, companies, public institutions and society in general) and aims to contribute to a knowledge society, transnational and transdisciplinary. It assumes the cooperative exchange of values and visions as an intangible value that functions as social capital capable of benefiting port cities in the Ibero-Latin American region. The CoopMar network involves teams from six Ibero-American countries: Portugal, the coordinating country, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Spain and Panama. These teams include historians, economists, journalists, archaeologists, museum curators, experts in political science and international relations, and a total of 23 institutions, including universities, research centres, foundations and museums. Its goals include promoting the operational exchange of heritage values as social capital; encouraging an active transfer of knowledge between universities, research centres, public authorities, cultural heritage management institutions, companies and society; giving meaning, through concrete practices, to the concept of social responsibility when applied to public policies of memory and heritage and to economic solutions that usually target citizens but do not always (or rarely) include them in their decision-making. Specific aims derive from this, among which are those of promoting a participative dialogue between political agents, culture and heritage experts, universities, research centres and Ibero-American communities; influencing public policies and promoting participative forms of sustainable development in Atlantic port cities. 7

https://peticaopublica.com/pview.aspx?pi=PT106538.

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Also part of its programmatic agenda is the raising awareness of communities and public authorities to the issue of heritage as a factor in sustainable development; the inventorying, in Latin America and Europe, of marginalised and silenced heritage and memories (including those linked to pre-colonial societies and those resulting from migration processes and enslavement of African populations). The network also intends to propose and promote business models based on experiences of cultural entrepreneurship, including practices proper to the new economies of the sea and creative industries. Pursuing these goals, CoopMar promotes active forms of science diplomacy, heritage diplomacy and paradiplomacy, aiming to leverage existing synergies between various partners, academic and non-academic, around an agenda of ‘sea and society for development’. The CoopMar network seeks to materialise the concept of a transnational and transdisciplinary knowledge society, through the promotion of technical cooperation and shared learning. In coherence with this, the network’s mission is to develop strategic research on intangible resources shared by the Ibero-American region and to present useful products in the areas of social sustainability and heritage preservation in port cities. The ultimate goal of this project is to consolidate a network that will be sustainable beyond its funding, with the aim of inventorying, preserving, promoting and valuing shared heritage. Intended to contribute to innovation strategies, involving communities, through the application of new tools and methods associated to new technologies, the network lives an intense interconnectivity between the researchers and institutions involved, aiming at an active dissemination of its results, from which tangible social impacts are expected. Its action strategies include the promotion of a participative dialogue between countries, organisations and communities of the port cities involved, as well as the definition of a joint action plan for researchers, citizens, entrepreneurs and politicians. As there is a consensus that History, Memory and Heritage are active tools for social development and influential actors in the design of scientific diplomacy policies, the experience and knowledge of historians, in dialogue with other specialists in the Social Sciences and Humanities (architects, urban planners, museum curators, sociologists, political scientists, economists), is essential. Consistent with these aims and strategic plans, the CoopMar network assumes the mission of developing research and strategic actions on tangible and intangible resources shared by the Ibero-American region and promoting useful products in the areas of social sustainability and heritage preservation. The ultimate goal of this project is to consolidate a network of action in the constituent port cities of the network, promoting awareness of the imperative of sustainability, and offering new options for public policies implying the involvement of a broad social spectrum. It is believed that the value of this strength has not yet been explored in depth with the application of the new tools and methods offered by new technologies. These are also used as a means of ensuring more effective interconnectivity between researchers and institutions by remote communication, as well as to facilitate the dissemination of the results of the work carried out.

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Its aims are materialised through the organisation of various events, including conferences, seminars and training courses. Scientific dissemination through the joint publication of books and articles in scientific journals and magazines is also part of its vocation. In terms of dissemination, its activities and action programmes are made available on its webpage,8 through the production of9 video documentaries and TV and radio programmes, and through social networks.10 One of the points identified as critical in order to guarantee the preservation of heritage is the lack of preparation for an active and informed intervention by civil society. Hence, the network has defined as a priority the training of students, organisations and technicians as a means of promoting civil society intervention in heritage protection. These initiatives include the holding of the course on ‘Good practices for public policies on memory, science and heritage’ (Madrid, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 20 and 21 November 2017). The course was broadcast via the UNED platform to the entire Ibero-American community.11 An e-book resulted from it, which is expected to be useful for heritage management technicians in the Ibero-American region. It also includes the creation of a documentary, bibliographic and iconographic archive, the ‘CoopMar Archive’, and the setting up of a digital exhibition on the impacts of the Magellan/Elcano route on the cities in the network, according to a transversal reading that articulates the past with the present. The topics and institutional actors involved in the meetings promoted by the network or in which its collective participation stands out to reveal the way in which it has pursued its mission. Examples include the session held on 23 October 2018 at the Museo del Canal Interoceánico de Panamá on ‘Políticas y prácticas de preservación patrimonial en Iberoamérica’ in which representatives of the Museo del Canal, the Patronato Panamá Viejo, CoopMar members and entities linked to local authorities participated, or the Symposio CoopMar, held on October 22, at the Universidad Latina de Panamá, on ‘Cultural Entrepreneurship, Connectivity and Creative Industries in Latin and Iberoamerican Port Cities’, with the participation of representatives from the Port Authority of Panama City, the Municipality, the Universidad Marítima Internacional de Panamá, the Universidad Latina and the CoopMar network. An important moment for a dialogic dissemination of the CoopMar network activities, this time in the academic environment, was the holding of the Round Table on ‘Desarrollo sostenible en ciudades puerto Ibero-Latinoamericanos—el rol de la diplomacia científica’ in the framework of the XVII Congreso Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología APANAC 2018 (Ciudad de Panamá, 23–26 October 2018). The activities carried out in Havana in 2018 pursued the network’s goals in another dimension: that of its articulation with the world of entrepreneurship and creativity. 8

https://coopmarcooperation.wordpress.com/. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8g2XaGTeIeYkkwiHhyR80A; https://canal.uned.es/ video/5db04a50a3eeb0d2188b4568. 10 https://www.facebook.com/RedeCYTED/. 11 The various sessions of the course can be viewed in full and in open access at https://canal.uned. es/video/5a6f2dd1b1111f907a8b456a. 9

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The Seminar ‘Industrias Culturales y Creativas, Patrimonio y Emprendimiento’ (Universidad de La Habana, Cuba, 4–8 December 2018) proved to be of great importance in this field, complemented by the meeting with representatives of the Oficina del Historiador, at the headquarters of the Plan Maestro de la Habana Vieja. This, linked to entrepreneurship with a focus on the area of Tourism and Cultural Heritage as a social and economic asset, continues the path of the team’s participation, in July 2017, in the city of Porto, at TOCREA (International Conference of Tourism and Creative Industry Promotion), through the organisation of a plenary panel on Public Policies, heritage management and cultural tourism promotion in the Ibero-American space.12 The CoopMar Symposium, held on 7 December 2018 at the Colegio Universitario San Gerónimo de La Habana, focused on a more reflective dimension, on ‘Memorialisation Processes in the Ibero-American Space’. The preservation and dissemination of forms of heritage and the respect for marginalised memories throughout a history marked by processes of colonialism and the silencing of cultures and languages of the various peoples of Latin America or enslaved African populations, together with the actions of women or ‘common men’, are also part of the mission of the CoopMar network, associated with the analysis of public policies of memory. On this same theme, the International Seminar Periodical Press and Memory13 was held at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto in April 2018 and, in Lisbon, at Iscte–IUL, the II Seminar Periodical Press. Creation and Recreation of political, economic, literary and scientific discourses.14 These seminars aimed to analyse the relationship between periodical press and port-cities, the way in which these urban spaces fostered opinion-forming projects and public debate, and how they gave rise to new specialised information. Giving priority to a direct relationship with the Community, the participation in the Cycle of Charlas on Culture & Technology, coordinated by the CoopMar team from Valparaíso, on 23 August 2018, or the presentation of the network in the Radio Viña.fm programme by the coordinator of the same team, also proved essential. Chile was the country that hosted the network’s general meeting from 20 to 22 October 2019, as already mentioned. The event provided for an intense activity of meetings with representatives of public authorities, citizens’ and cultural associations, film cycles and exhibitions. The strong social unrest installed in Chile in this period constituted a concrete, and real, obstacle, evidencing how the political and social contexts directly interfere with actions to implement an open debate and an interventive policy participated by all the agents involved. Although the members of the CoopMar network were prevented from carrying out the plan, they nevertheless intervened in this debate, in loco, by producing a video documentary which summarises some of the network’s reflections on these issues.15

12

http://online.fliphtml5.com/bugp/pcdj/#p=1. http://www.citcem.org/documents/events/Programa_Final.pdf. 14 https://cei.iscte-iul.pt/eventos/evento/ii-seminario-imprensa-colonial/. 15 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZGI1-SSWgQ. 13

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Also in October and December 2019, CoopMar was a partner of the Casa da América Latina and the European Institute for International Studies in the VI and VII Global Ibero-America Chairs, entitled ‘Ibero-America: Pacific or Atlantic? The 500th anniversary of the founding of Panama City’ and ‘Ibero-America and the Atlantic Triangle (Africa, Ibero-America and Europe): the 500th anniversary of the founding of Havana’, respectively. This is a concrete example of the network’s capacity to be associated with initiatives likely to have a significant impact on the Ibero-American sociocultural community. The collaboration with Casa da América Latina, however, transcends this achievement. Created in 1998 with the mission of bringing Portugal closer to Latin America by encouraging knowledge and cooperation with Latin American countries, the Casa da América Latina, formed by the Municipality of Lisbon, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Portugal, the Embassies of Latin American countries and a number of companies, operates in two areas: Culture and Knowledge and Economics and Politics, including activities in the business field. The Casa da América Latina, by aiming at the promotion and development of economic and trade relations between Portugal and Latin American countries, as well as an entity dedicated to institutional cooperation in the political and diplomatic field, is a fundamental partner of CoopMar in many of its dimensions. The achievements planned for 2020, the last year foreseen for the financed exercise of the network, but suspended due to the contingencies imposed by the pandemic caused by SARS-COV-2, and postponed to 2021, intend to complete this puzzle through a week of immersion, in the city of Espírito Santo, Brazil, with other memories and heritages: those of the indigenous communities still persistent and active in this region and those of a past with a strong link to Africa, of which several Quilombos in the state of Espírito Santo are living proof. In this whole process, the articulations with public institutions and entities and with local associations are of fundamental importance. In addition to the contacts established with municipalities, museums and cultural entities of the various cities involved in the network, the synergies established with the Casa da América Latina (Lisbon) should also be highlighted16 ; as much as the contacts established with the Oficina del Historiador (Havana), the articulations with the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura (CNCA), Chile, and La Unidad de Patrimonio Histórico, coordinated by Fernando Vergara (PUCV—Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile), as well as with the Dirección de Vinculación con el Medio (Chile) and with the Patronato Panamá Viejo (Panama). All of them are proof of a deep articulation between the network members with active agents of the political and cultural life of reference in the countries involved. Projecting the future and enabling the third aspect of the network intervention, cultural entrepreneurship, the CoopMar network has been reflecting on business models based on cultural entrepreneurship experiences, including forms of social economy, involving, among others, cultural and creative industries. It is expected that the network will obtain tangible results, through the expected interaction between academia and business agents, namely those involved with tourism. Initiatives related 16

http://casamericalatina.pt/2017/09/26/cal-estabelece-parceria-com-rede-coopmar/.

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to the encouragement of youth entrepreneurship consolidate advances from which more tangible fruits are expected in the course of 2020. Permanent contacts have been developed by researchers of the network with entrepreneurship promotion offices, in their universities, namely in the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso and the University of Porto. Working groups linked to research centres that sponsor the network and the involvement in master programmes dedicated to the training of students in business models based on cultural entrepreneurship experiences also attest the articulation of the network, through its researchers, with this area of intervention. Furthermore, collaboration protocols are being promoted with eHeritageLab (University of Porto)—New Media Laboratory for Heritage.17 This is a multidisciplinary and collaborative laboratory that combines skills, knowledge and technologies applied to heritage. The opening of a Business Ideas Competition to promote youth entrepreneurship is another avenue of intervention. Its objective is to generate new ideas and proposals to be developed within the scope of cultural entrepreneurship. It is expected that the winning proposals may be developed through their inclusion in the incubators and spin-offs18 of the various universities of the network committed to the CoopMar project. This is also an attempt to project into the future the results of the work carried out since 2017 by the CoopMar network. Practical results are expected for the years to come, resulting from the maintenance of active connections among the team members and the academic and public entities of the several Iberian–American port cities involved.

References Bauer DE (2012) Emergent identity, cultural heritage, and El Mestizaje: notes from the Ecuadorian Coast. J Lat Am Cult Stud 21(1):103–121 Beaven B, Karl B, Robert J (eds) (2016) Port towns and urban cultures: international histories of the waterfront c. 1700–2000. London: Palgrave Macmillan Benavides OH (2013) Working/Touring the past: Latin American identity and the political frustration of heritage. Int J Hist Archaeol 17(2):245–260 Corbett J, Veenendaal W (2016) Westminster in small states: comparing the Caribbean and Pacific experience. Contemp Polit 22(4):432–449 Curtis S (2016) Global cities and global order. Oxford University Press, Oxford European Commission (2017) A new strategy to put culture at the heart of EU international relations. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/MEMO_16_2075 Falser M, Juneja M (eds) (2013) Archaeologizing Heritage? transcultural entanglements between local social practices and global virtual realities. Berlin & Heidelberg: Springer Ferrada Aguilar M, Undurraga Castelblanco P (2016) Patrimonio Arquitectónico de Valparaíso. Del des-criterio a la Innovación Criteriosa. Int J Hist Archaeol 20(3):601–613

17

https://mil.up.pt/eheritagelab/. We used the term spin-off to refer to the possible by-products originated in the sub-areas of activity of universities linked directly or indirectly to incubators and creative industries projects existing therein. 18

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Fortenberry B (2016) Life among ruins, Bermuda and Britain’s colonial heritage. Int J Hist Archaeol 20(3):601–613 Fuglestad F (2018) Slave traders by invitation: West Africa in the Era of Trans-Atlantic slavery. Oxford University Press, New York Haley A (1976) Roots: the Saga of an American family. Doubleday, New York Haylar B, Griffin T, Edwards D (2008) City spaces—tourist spaces: urban tourism precincts. Elsevier, Oxford Hoyle B (2002) Urban waterfront revitalization in developing countries: the example of Zanzibar’s stone town. Geogr J 168(2):141–162 ICOMOS (2017) ICOMOS guidance on post trauma recovery and reconstruction for world heritage cultural properties. http://openarchive.icomos.org/1763/19/ICOMOS%20Guidance%20on%20P ost%20Trauma%20Recovery%20.pdf Jones R, Shaw BJ (2006) Palimpsests of progress: erasing the past and rewriting the future in developing societies—case studies of Singapore and Jakarta. Int J Herit Stud 12(2):122–138 Kankpeyeng BW (2009) The slave trade in Northern Ghana: landmarks, legacies and connections. Slavery and Abolition 30(2):209–221 Luco F (2013) The Angkorian palimpsest: the daily life of villagers living on a world heritage site. In: Michael F, Monica J (eds) Archaeologizing Heritage? transcultural entanglements between local social practices and global virtual realities. Berlin & Heidelberg: Springer, pp 251–262 McAtackney L, Palmer R (2016) Colonial institutions: uses, subversions, and material afterlives. Int J Hist Archaeol 20(3):471–476 O’Flanagan P (2008) Port cities of Atlantic iberia c. 1500–1900. Hampshire: Ashgate OECD (2014) Tourism and the creative economies. OECD Studies on Tourism, OECD Publishing Oliveira A, Guerra P (2016) Urban spaces between culture, margin and intervention: a reflection from three interventions in the city of Porto. Cities Communities Territ 32:118–131 Parkinson A, Scott M, Redmond D (2016) Revaluing colonial era architecture and townscape legacies: memory, identity and place-making in Irish towns. J Urban Des 22(4):1–18 Simões A (2021) Salazarism is not dead. Accessed Mar 2021. https://www.publico.pt/2021/02/19/ opiniao/opiniao/salazarismo-nao-morreu-1951297 Stoler AL (2009) Along the archival grain: epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense. Princeton: Princeton University Press Stoler AL (ed) (2013) Imperial debris. Duke University Press, On Ruins and Ruination. Durham & London Bosa MS (2014) Atlantic ports and the first globalisation c. 1850–1930. London: Palgrave Macmillan Telles ER (2011) Cultural diplomacy: its role in Brazilian foreign policy. Brasília: Alexandre Gusmão Foundation UNESCO (2014) The slave route: 1994–2014. The Route Travelled. Paris: UNESCO. http://www. unesco.org/culture/pdf/slave/the-slave-route-the-road-travelled-1994-2014-en.pdf Winter T (2015) Heritage diplomacy. Int J Herit Stud 21(10):997–1015

Chapter 3

Regional Assets, Industrial Growth, Global Reach: The Case Study of the Film Industry in the San Francisco Bay Area Frédéric Leriche Abstract Within the US motion picture industry, Hollywood is a (big) tree that hides the forest. Indeed, in this industry, besides this powerful and dominating industrial cluster, there are other—though minor—clusters, particularly in New York and San Francisco. The paper focuses on the latter and argues that the development of the film industry in the San Francisco Bay Area relies on specific regional assets: (1) a unique urban context and experience, (2) a unique alternative culture, and (3) a world-class technological cluster. The paper starts by briefly describing the path dependency of the film industry in the Bay Area, and how the city of San Francisco has started (in the 1980s) to implement a dedicated policy aimed at promoting the development of this industry. In this context, the paper explores the way that the San Francisco Bay Area became an attractive place for filmmakers and the fact that the 1970s marked the beginning of a new regime of film shootings. The paper then describes how, since then, the Bay Area asserted itself as a place for film production, and that has resulted in a multisite and smoothly expanding industrial cluster with a quite dynamic local labor market. Finally, the paper questions the mechanics of the film industry cluster in the Bay Area, its connections with Hollywood, and its impacts on the global influence of San Francisco. Keywords Film industry · San Francisco bay area · Industrial cluster · Regional assets · Path dependency · Urban development

This text is a revised version of a paper that was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botelho (FLUP-CITCEM). Université Versailles Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ)/Université Paris-Saclay/Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Mutations des Espaces Economiques et Politiques—Paris-Saclay (LIMEEP-PS). F. Leriche (B) Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University (UVSQ), Versailles, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_3

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The contemporary growth of the creative economy has raised much interest among academics from different fields. Following Landry and Bianchini (1995), economic geographers, urban geographers, and regional economists have emphasized the proclivity of such industries to agglomerate in specific places. Since creative industries are dominated by project-oriented work, requiring flexible and innovative forms of production organization (Grabher 2002), most of this literature has focused on clustering in metropolises as the major spatial pattern of the creative economy (Storper 1997; Scott 2004; Power and Scott 2004). Nevertheless, some researchers have questioned the “big city pattern,” and have shown that creative clusters can take roots and develop in smaller cities, and even in peripheral areas (Norcliffe and Rendace 2003; Harvey et al. 2012). This remark includes the geography of the film industry (Basset et al. 2002; Coe and Johns 2004; Vang and Chaminade 2007; Collins and Power 2019). We tackle this issue by considering the case of the San Francisco Bay Area film industry1 . Echoing Power’s ideas on “difference principle” and “market positionality” (Power 2010), this paper aims at showing that, even though—in different ways— the film industry in the Bay Area is connected to the “neighboring” Hollywood dominating cluster (in terms of capitalistic, industrial, technical, labor, commercial, and market links), this industry has been able to rise and grow in the Bay Area thanks to specific regional assets that led to the development of a relatively independent (in terms of industrial organization and capitalistic status) and original (in terms of esthetic production and creativity) cluster. For a century now, Hollywood has dominated the US film industry (Scott 2005), and, as a cornerstone of the US “soft power” (Nye 2009), has spread over the world US cultural products and images (Mingant 2009). Meanwhile, despite Hollywood, other places have witnessed the growth of (smaller) industrial clusters, also contributing to the US global influence. This is particularly the case with New York and San Francisco, two metropolises which are associated with renowned filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, or Spike Lee in New York (Lippy 2000), Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, or Clint Eastwood in San Francisco. Surprisingly, the latter has drawn very little attention among researchers. Hence, though the San Francisco Bay Area is renowned for its high-tech industry (Silicon Valley), we discuss here the case of the Bay Area in regards to its multifaceted, though underrated, relations with the motion picture industry. Since it is a key concept of our argument, we need to define what we mean by “specific regional assets,” and how they take shape in the Bay Area. As opposed to generic regional assets—or generic resources—which are basic resources available in many different points in the economic space (briefly defined here as a firm or an industry-related by the division of labor) or in the geographic space (a concrete place), specific regional assets—or specific resources—are original and non-interchangeable 1

“San Francisco” refers here to the city-county of San Francisco, located at the center of the metropolis, with a population of roughly 800 000, while the “San Francisco Bay Area”–or simply the “Bay Area”–refers to the whole metropolitan area, which comprises nine counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma, with a population of more than 7 million.

3 Regional Assets, Industrial Growth, Global …

39

resources, inherited from nature, social life, or history (like a landscape or a landmark), or endogenously built through time by a productive entity evolving in the economic space or in the geographic space (Storper and Walker 1989; Colletis and Pecqueur 1996; Gumuchian and Pecqueur 2007). Specific regional assets in the Bay Area are of three kinds: (1) a uniquely high standard metropolitan context and experience—promoted worldwide by cinema, literature, and other media, like advertising, or by the tourist industry—embedded in cherished natural and artificial landscapes, and iconic landmarks (like the Golden Gate Bridge) (Walker 2007); (2) a unique culture, since San Francisco is a place that has historically fostered “alternative” and disruptive ways of thinking and living, compared to the Mainstream America, such as environmentalist movements, Beatniks and Hippies, LGTB prominent communities (Leriche and Rubin 2011; Celnik 2012); and (3) a leading-edge technological cluster, dominating the world communication technologies and multimedia industries, and historically connected with motion picture techniques (Kenney 2000; Walker 2018). These three types of resources give San Francisco’s cinematographic production an idiosyncratic esthetic and narrative dimension. The purpose of this paper is to show that, thanks to these specific regional assets, the Bay Area is, despite the continuing reassertion of Hollywood’s dominance,2 California’s Alternative Film Capital (Stein 1984, 30). In other words, we argue that the Bay Area cannot be considered as a simple satellite or secondary production center, and that, despite symbiotic relations with Hollywood, on the contrary, like many other film industry clusters, such as Vancouver (Coe 2001) or Soho in London (Chapain and Stachowiak 2017), the Bay Area’s film cluster has been able to exist by itself, to partially get out of Hollywood’s sphere of influence, and even to regularly shake up Hollywood’s industrial and commercial routines.

3.1 From “Picture in Motion” to “Motion Picture” in San Francisco: First Historical Steps, and Detour Developments The purpose of this section is to briefly describe the path dependency of the film industry in San Francisco, and how it is related to the global reputation of the Bay Area. It shows that San Francisco has played a pioneering role in the industry, though it rapidly fell in Hollywood’s shadow after the mid-1910s, and that, nonetheless, a local film industry reemerged in the 1970s and 1980s, meeting and melting with high-tech industries in the 1980s and 1990s. It also shows that, since the 1980s, taking advantage of these industrial dynamics, San Francisco local authorities have actively backed the development of the industry, thanks to a dedicated policy aimed at promoting economic growth. 2

The most striking examples of the domination of Hollywood over San Francisco’s film industry probably occurred when Disney Corporation bought Pixar (in 2006) and Lucasfilm (in 2012).

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3.1.1 Path Creation and Path Development: A Brief Historical Overview San Francisco and the Bay Area have played a key role in the development of the basic techniques of the “picture in motion.” In this regard, Solnit (2010) highlights that thanks to Eadweard Muybridge, who was an innovative photographer, San Francisco was indeed a pioneer in the film industry. As Solnit puts it: “Photographer Eadweard Muybridge laid the foundation for a new technology of moving pictures that would evolve into cinema as we know it. (…) In that period [1855-1881], Muybridge sped up photography, which hitherto could produce those images the film business calls “stills” but so far had been able to capture only the slow world and the world stopped for the camera. Muybridge made photography fast; he was the fastest camera in the West, the first photographer who could capture horses and men in motion. He shot them in series that could be projected onto a big screen, projected in quick sequences that simulated life. Thus began the road to cinema. It was as though the ice of frozen photographic time had broken free into a river of images.” (Solnit 2010, 23 and 26).

Thereafter, in the silent film era, the small town of Niles—later incorporated in the city of Fremont3 —became an important place of the film industry, though for a short period of time. Indeed in 1915, the Essanay Studios hired Charlie Chaplin to work in Niles, where he shot five films in three months (including his famous The Tramp) (Barack 1998). Other filmmakers came to Niles, and, in the end, tens of films were shot there in the 1910s and 1920s, particularly “Cowboy films.” Nonetheless, despite such promising débuts, the Bay Area, like New York (which was the dominating cluster in the cinema industry until the mid-1910s), has not been able to benefit from this first-mover advantage. Indeed, between 1915 and 1920, and particularly thanks to David W. Griffith’s movie The Birth of a Nation (1915), Hollywood made a spectacular breakthrough in the industry, overshadowing all other production locations, leading to their stagnation or decline (Scott 2005). After Hollywood’s breakthrough, however, San Francisco continued to grow in its own way, becoming a leading center in industrial innovation (Walker 1996) and exploring new technological horizons (signal treatment, radio communication, and electronics) (Sturgeon 2000). Although all along this period San Francisco was not directly involved in the film industry, strictly speaking, some of these innovations have contributed to the improvement of techniques required in the motion picture industries. Some examples are the invention of vacuum tubes (in 1907), television (in 1927), and sound techniques like Dolby (in 1965) and THX (in 1983)—developments rooted in regional technology. Hollywood took advantage of the Bay Area innovation capacities. In 1939, for instance, Walt Disney Studios bought specialized tubes to Hewlett-Packard, at that time a new firm located in Palo Alto (Santa Clara County); such tubes were necessary equipment to develop sophisticated sound techniques for the film Fantasia (released in 1940).4 In other words, the rise and growth of Silicon 3

Fremont is located in Alameda County. Another example is the Ampex Company, which “stole” the German patent for tape recording at the end of World War II; created in 1944 and located in San Carlos (Santa Clara County), Ampex

4

3 Regional Assets, Industrial Growth, Global …

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Valley—Santa Clara County—spared little room for the development of relations between technology and industry, on the one hand, esthetic creativity and (visual) arts, on the other. Furthermore, relations between capital and technologic innovation, on the one side, and culture and artistic creativity, on the other, led in the 1970s and 1980s to the development of new ideas, new projects, and new firms, involved in the film industry (notably, as we shall see below, American Zoetrope, Lucasfilm, and Pixar). The development of specific skills in computer-generated images—thanks to local technology professional networks embedded in Silicon Valley—reinforced the growth of a very distinct sort of motion picture industry, in which visual effects play a key role, including animated films. This movement was strengthened in the 1990s by the rise of the internet and multimedia industry in San Francisco, which set the scene for the rise of a new sort of firms, exploring firstly the video on demand (VOD) market, before exploring secondly the production of films. In this regard, the Netflix Company definitely played a pioneering and disruptive role. The commercial success of these leading firms laid the foundation for the development of a dynamic industrial cluster. But, before developing this point, we need to emphasize that local governments, and particularly the city of San Francisco, aware of the opportunities offered by the development of the film industry, took several initiatives aiming at backing the growth of the industry.

3.1.2 The Rise of a Dedicated Public Policy: Urban (Re)development and Industrial Growth In the 1980s and 1990s, the economic context was marked by the rise of a new industrial paradigm, featured by the development of so-called “creative cities” (Landry and Bianchini 1995), by the development of a new “creative class” (Florida 2002), or, more accurately and in broader theoretical terms, by the development of a “cognitivecultural capitalism” (Scott 2008). In this context, San Francisco, like many other cities, regions, and countries around the world, engaged a public policy aiming at promoting the development of a local cultural and cognitive economy (Leriche and Rubin 2012). The film industry is one of the major aspects of this local economic development strategy. This led to the creation, in 1988, of the San Francisco Film Commission, which aims both at attracting film shootings and at helping regional producers to implement their projects: “The San Francisco Film Commission works to develop, recognize and promote film activities in San Francisco. We work to promote the San Francisco Bay Area as a film destination while also working with the local film community to support local projects with significant ties to San Francisco.”5 built recorders massively used in film, radio and television industries of Southern California (and elsewhere). 5 Source: https://filmsf.org/film-commission (06/22/2020).

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F. Leriche 80 60 40 20 0

Fig. 3.1 Number of films, and TV series, mainly or partly shot in San Francisco, 1920s–2010s Source Based on https://filmsf.org/sf-filmography

To back the development of the film industry, the city of San Francisco has constantly promoted both its comparative advantages (based on generic regional assets) and competitive advantages (based on specific regional assets), through a set of various tax incentives, dedicated services to interact with filmmakers (the San Francisco Film Commission and its extension, Film San Francisco), and an urban development policy aiming at providing specific facilities to filmmakers. This policy has proven to be successful since the number of films shot in San Francisco has considerably increased since the 1970s (Fig. 3.1). In 2007, the ICF Consulting report emphasized the success of this policy, in terms of direct, indirect, and induced economic impact (employment, firms, and local taxes).6 Moreover, by worldly broadcasting images, the film industry advertises the city of San Francisco and the Bay Area, and consequently has a major impact on the global reputation and fame of the city, hence on its influence and, conversely, on its attraction (particularly on migrants, investors, and tourists). Besides, urban redevelopment, engaged in the 1990s, plays a crucial role in this public policy. In the early 1990s, both global historic context and local geographic context have impacted San Francisco’s land market, hence the economic development strategy of the city of San Francisco, and, as a corollary, the locational structure of the film industry. The end of the Cold War, indeed, offered land and real estate opportunities in the Bay Area, particularly in San Francisco. Two military bases (Treasure Island and The Presidio) have shut down, and have then been reintegrated in the civilian urban fabric, i.e., in the speculative processes of the real estate industry. Treasure Island is a landfill island, developed for the 1939 international fair (Golden Gate International Exposition). Though it has then been a military base, during a long period of time (between 1941 and 1991), Treasure Island has welcomed some film shootings in the late 1980s (for movies like Indiana Jones or Copycat). The global geopolitical context led to the retrocession of the island to the city in 1997. After quite controversial negotiations, a redevelopment project was finally approved in 2011, and this zone is since then being converted and is the site of new urban developments, including offices, commercial spaces, hotels, and housing (Walker 2017). But, the most important change is related to The Presidio, a formerly military base (between 6

This report was ordered by the San Francisco Film Commission.

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1848 and 1994), which has been the setting of the 1988 eponym film. After complex negotiations, The Presidio was retroceded to the city of San Francisco, opening new development perspectives (Booth Wiley 2000). In 2005, Lucasfilm, which facilities had spread out over several locations within Marin County7 , decided to move some of its major services to the Presidio, where a dedicated new building—the Letterman Digital Arts Center—nowadays welcomes tech services like computer-generated images and online communication (Industrial Light & Magic, LucasArts, and Lucas OnLine). This relocation from Marin County to San Francisco (referred to here as the “Lucasfilm effect”) was an opportunity to concentrate different services at the same place, potentially allowing the decreasing of the cost of internal transactions. It also dramatically impacted the locational structure of firms and employment in the Bay Area (Table 3.2), since roughly 1500 workers were involved in this relocation process.

3.2 Regional Assets and Film Shootings: San Francisco, an Attractive Place for Filmmakers San Francisco has always been an attractive place for film shootings, and also for actors, filmmakers, and producers, to live and work. Different regional assets, both generic and—moreover—specific ones, are used as inputs, shaping a quite distinctive—compared to Hollywood’s products—esthetics of such films. At the same time, many of these films have contributed to the worldwide broadcasting of iconic images of the city of San Francisco and of the Bay Area, contributing to the promotion of the fame of the whole metropolitan area, and hence to its influence and its attractiveness.

3.2.1 Shootings: A Growing Number of Films After Hollywood’s breakthrough, San Francisco became a place for shooting films and TV series (like The Streets of San Francisco, 1972–1977). Indeed, San Francisco, as a “unique” and distinct city in the U.S.A., has attracted many film shootings, and still does—even more and more (Fig. 3.1). Furthermore, and this is a crucial point like Hollywood did in the 1910s with Cecil B. DeMille, David W. Griffith, and Thomas H. Ince, San Francisco has attracted—particularly in the late 1960s and early 1970s— many major filmmakers. Some of them (notably Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas) decided to make their living—and to work and create their own studio—in the Bay Area, setting the ground for the development of a local—production—film industry. As Film San Francisco puts it: 7

This spatial spread out is common in the case of a rapidly expanding firm; indeed, initial facilities can rapidly be overwhelmed by the success of the firm and, in this situation, by the “physical expansion” of the firm.

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F. Leriche “The first moving image was captured in Northern California and since then San Francisco has been a magnet for filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, Chris Columbus, Francis Ford Coppola, Philipp Kaufman, and George Lucas.”8

Echoing the general development of the industry, the number of films (and TV series) mainly or partly shot in San Francisco has spectacularly increased, from two in the 1920s to more than 60 in the last three decades.9 In this regard, the 1970s definitely marked the beginning of a new regime of film shootings.

3.2.2 San Francisco’s Regional Assets and the Esthetics of Films Table 3.1 provides a selected and non-exhaustive, but illustrative, list of twenty-six films partly (or, for some of them, mainly) shot in San Francisco or the Bay Area for outside scenes, in which different aspects of the city (natural and urban landscapes, local history and culture, social and economic lives) are used as inputs. Refining Pleven’s distinction (Pleven 2013) between “ville prétexte,” i.e., films in which the city plays a marginal role in the scenario (and is used for its clichés images), and “ville texte,” i.e., films in which the city plays a central role in the story (and influences action and characters), we suggest to distinguish four ways the Bay Area’s regional assets are used: universal, background, ingredient, purpose. We acknowledge that this categorization partly relies on esthetic considerations that are not measurable, that the limits between such categories are fuzzy, and even that the relevance of such categories is subject to debates.10 Still, we believe this helps to understand the way the Bay Area’s regional assets are designed and economically used by the film industry. First, for some of these films, based on a scenario that we will here consider as universal, the shooting could take place in any other city, and the value-added of a shooting located in San Francisco remains marginal; this is the case with Copycat (1995) for instance. Second, in some films, San Francisco’s landscapes or features are chiefly backgrounds, as in The Conversation (1974), Basic Instinct (1992), or Blue Jasmine (2013). In this case, the scenario is not deeply embedded in San Francisco’s culture, history, social or economic life. Aspects of the city are used as inputs that provide a distinctive esthetic dimension to the scenario. In other words, though the 8

Source: https://filmsf.org/film-fun-sf (06/18/2020). The list provided by filmsf.org does not mention the silent era films of the 1910s and 1920s shot in Niles, nor the animated films released by Pixar since the mid-1990s. Likewise, this list does not mention, surprisingly, Barbary Coast (1935), which we have included here. Exact numbers are: 2 in the 1920s (actually, the first film mentioned in this list was shot in 1923); 5 in the 1930s (including Barbary Coast); 6 in the 1940s; 10 in the 1950s; 16 in the 1960s; 25 in the 1970s; 47 in the 1980s; 64 in the 1990s; 63 in the 2000s; 49 on the period 2010–2016. Total: 287 films and TV series. 10 Such debates belong to humanities and social sciences, like Cultural Studies or Film Studies/Film Theory, for instance. It is beyond the ambition of this geographic paper to develop this point and to enter in these debates. 9

3 Regional Assets, Industrial Growth, Global … Table 3.1 Films mainly or partly shot in San Francisco (non-exhaustive selection)

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Title

Filmmaker

Released Category

THX 1138

George Lucas

1971

Copycat

Jon Amiel

1995

The Lady from Shanghai

Orson Welles

1947

Take the Money and Run

Woody Allen

1969

The Conversation

Francis Coppola

1974

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Philip Kaufman

1978

Sudden Impact

Clint Eastwood

1983

The Presidio

Peter Hyams

1988

Basic Instinct

Paul Verhoeven

1992

Metro

Thomas Carter

1997

Sucker Free City

Spike Lee

2004

Blue Jasmine

Woody Allen

2013

Dark Passage

Delmer Daves

1947

Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock 1958

Bullitt

Peter Yates

1968

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rupert Wyatt

2011

Dawn of the Matt Reeves Planet of the Apes

2014

San Andreas

Brad Peyton

2015

War for the Planet Matt Reeves of the Apes

2017

Barbary Coast

Howard Hawks

1935

San Francisco

W.S Van Dyke

1936

Dirty Harry

Don Siegel

1971

The Towering Inferno

John Guillermin

1974

Escape from Alcatraz

Don Siegel

1979

The Rock

Michaël Bay

1996

Harvey Milk

Gus Van Sant

2008

Source Based on https://filmsf.org/sf-filmography

Universal Background

Ingredient

Purpose

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scenario of such films could take place elsewhere, the specific natural and urban landscapes of San Francisco are commercially interesting inputs that give a positive dimension to the film. Third, in some films, different features of the city itself—and of the Bay Area—are used as ingredients that play a key role in the narrative line of the story. This is the case with the Planet of the Apes franchise (2011, 2014, 2017), dystopic science-fiction movies picturing a dark future generated by the combination of greedy capitalism and tech culture of Silicon Valley. The city of San Francisco can then become—sometimes uncomfortably—overwhelming, as in the movie Dark Passage (1947). As Peirano (2012) puts it: Dark Passage represents a new step of the film noir : the accession of the city to the rank of a personage marks the period of maturity of this genre, forthcoming other films in which San Francisco plays a major role, like Vertigo (1958) and Bullitt (1968) (Peirano 2012, 218).11

Fourth, sometimes, the “unique” local history, social life, and culture are the very reasons of a scenario and even the issue and purpose of the film itself. This is the case with, for instance, San Francisco (1936), Dirty Harry (1971), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), or Harvey Milk (2008), which echo several iconic aspects of San Francisco’s natural and cultural features. The film The Towering Inferno (1974), a disaster movie which denounces real estate speculation and cynical capitalism, referring to the early 1970s debate about the Manhattanization of downtown San Francisco (Brugman and Sletteland 1971), is another clear example of this category. The first category suggested here is composed of films that are sort of Hollywood runaway productions, or, conversely, films locally produced, which could have been shot elsewhere. In this case, San Francisco has to directly compete with other shooting locations, like Vancouver (Scott and Pope 2007), and the cost of generic regional assets is the main factor leading to the choice of the shooting place. This is the case with the film THX 1138, directed by George Lucas and produced by American Zoetrope and Warner Bros, that was supposed to be shot in Japan, but, facing a lack of funds, that was finally shot in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.12 But a few films can really be considered as belonging to this category. For the numerous films belonging to the second, third, and fourth categories, the locational factors of the shooting process are clearly based on San Francisco’s specific regional assets. In other words, natural and urban landscapes, local history, and local alternative and tech cultures become crucial inputs integrated into the final products. As in the case of Hollywood’s film industry, using Los Angeles icons and symbols to fill its film production with specific urban images (Christopherson and Storper 1986), different facets of San Francisco’s patrimony (landscapes, symbolic neighborhoods, and places, architectural icons, cultural features, historical events, and historic characters) are injected in these films, contributing to the shaping of the quite distinctive—and sometimes unique—esthetic dimension of the films shot in the Bay Area. 11

Dark Passage représente une nouvelle étape dans le film noir: l’accession de la ville au rang de personnage marque les années de maturité du genre, tout en annonçant d’autres films dans lesquels San Francisco joue un rôle majeur, comme Vertigo (1958) et Bullitt (1968); translation FL. 12 Source: https://filmsf.org/sf-filmography (07/10/2020). The film was a commercial failure, and Francis Ford Coppola actually lost money (Pollock 1983).

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3.3 Regional Assets and Film Production: Growth of the Cinema Industry in the San Francisco Bay Area Meanwhile, and most importantly here, the Bay Area has become a production center for films, chiefly thanks to the success of three important local firms: American Zoetrope, Lucasfilm, and Pixar, a “short list” that Netflix has recently caught up with. In this regard, a different set of specific regional assets is required, leading to the production of original films. These regional assets can be categorized in a more classical way: capital, in the form of a production system made of leading firms, and many kinds of specialized subcontractors and suppliers, and labor, in the form of artistic creativity and technologic skills. As a result, the film industrial cluster of the Bay Area is organized at two different geographic scales: a regional cluster, and three “local” clusters, anchored to the leading firms mentioned above.

3.3.1 Locational Structure of the Industry Many firms—of all sizes and specializations—are involved in the industry, at different stages of the production process. The number of these firms has slightly increased in 2003, 2011, and 2018 (from 606 to 620, and 699; + 12.7% in the last census period).13 The recent accelerating increase of the number of firms corroborates the growth of the local labor market (see below), and definitely confirms the idea that the Bay Area’s film industry is expanding. The micro-geography of the film industry in the Bay Area, shown in Table 3.2, underlines a logical correlation between firms and employment. In other words, the locational pattern of the industry in the Bay Area, expressed by the locational structure of the firms, is attuned to the locational structure of employment, forming three major local clusters. Each of these local clusters is spread over two proximate counties. The first local cluster is made up of Marin County and San Francisco, whose developments are clearly connected, and is remarkably stable (at 283 and 284 firms) from 2003 to 2011; but, thereafter, the number of firms increased to 315 firms (+10.9% between 2011 and 2018). The crossover between these two counties is the result of the relocation of some production facilities of the Lucasfilm Company, from Marin County to San Francisco in 2005 (the “Lucasfilm effect” mentioned above). This first local cluster represents 45.1% of all Bay Area firms in 2018, and is, by far, the most important one. Alameda and Contra Costa counties together are home to the second local cluster, which was stable between 2003 and 2011 (with 154 and 156 firms), but then showed a remarkable increase in the number of firms, rising to 202 in 2018 (+31.2%). This local cluster makes up 28.9% of the Bay Area firms in 2018. Finally, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties house a third local cluster, displaying 13

The stability in the number of firms—and employment—between 2003 and 2011 is likely explained, fundamentally, by the economic context of this census period, marked by the Great Recession (2008–2010).

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Table 3.2 Employment (number of workers, “E,” 1990, 2003, 2011, and 2018), firms (number of firms, “F,” 2003, 2011, and 2018), and size of firms (“E”/“F,” 2003, 2011, and 2018) in the cinema industry, San Francisco Bay Area, per county 1990

2003

County

E

E

F

E/F

E

2011 F

E/F

E

2018 F

E/F

Alameda

1385

1729

105

16.5

2286

107

21.4

2018

161

12.5

Contra Costa

513

1313

49

26.8

633

49

12.9

2480

41

60.5

Marin

525

2240

92

24.3

760

79

9.6

507

96

5.3

Napa

60

65 (est.)

7

9.3 (est.)

75 (est.)

4

18.7 (est.)

86

5

17.2

San Francisco

2213

1771

191

9.3

3718

215

17.3

4035

219

18.4

San Mateo 845

716

50

14.3

730 (est.)

46

15.9 (est.)

746

58

12.9

Santa Clara

1765

1836

73

25.2

1590

80

19.9

2080

81

25.7

Solano

354 (est.)

284

7

40.6

215

7

30.7

194

6

32.3

Sonoma

194

485

32

15.2

437

33

13.2

546

32

17.1

Total

7854 (est.)

10,439 (est.)

606

17.2 (est.)

10,444 (est.)

620

16.8 (est.)

12,692

699

18.2

NB: Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) for 1990/North American Industrial Classification Standards (NAICS) after 1997. NAICS 512—Motion Picture and Sound Recording Industries. NB: estimations (est.), due to data not available and proxies, result from our calculations, based on employment tendencies. Sources California Employment and Development Department (1990); Census Bureau—County Business Patterns (2003, 2011, 2018).

the same development pattern (123 firms in 2003, 126 in 2011, but 139 in 2018, hence + 10.3% in the last census period). This local cluster accounts for 19.9% of the Bay Area firms in 2018. .

3.3.2 Geography of the Local Labor Market Despite statistical bias (particularly the lack of accuracy of data for San Mateo County in 201114 ), Table 3.2 shows that employment in the film industry in the Bay Area has regularly increased between 1990 and 2018, though showing a slight decrease between 2001 and 2004 (ICF Consulting 2007). The number of employees in the 14

In 2011 indeed, the Census Bureau provides proxies of employment (1000–2499); we have here suggested estimations to complete Table 3.2.

3 Regional Assets, Industrial Growth, Global …

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Fig. 3.2 The transamerica pyramid (1972) The Transamerica Pyramid ignited a strong debate about the “manhatanization” of downtown San Francisco in the late 1960s and early 1970s; the building of this tower stimulated the shooting of the movie The Towering Inferno (John Guillermin, 1974) Source Sebastien Gabriel (2016) https://upload.wikime dia.org/wikipedia/commons/ c/cb/Sebastien_Gabriel_2 016-03-03_%28Unsplash_v ppR0Z6U_zY%29.jpg

industry rose from about 7900 in 1990, to 10,400 in 2003 and 2011, and 12,700 in 2018 (+21.5% in the last census period, 2011–2018). The micro-locational pattern of the film industry in the Bay Area again displays a structure made of three major employment loci (or local clusters) (Fig. 3.2). Displaying an impressive employment crossover, the two counties of Marin and San Francisco represent the most important locus (2738 jobs in 1990, increasing to 4542 in 2018).15 In the last census period (2011–2018), employment has hardly increased (+1.4%). Nevertheless, the relative weight of this locus in the Bay Area is quite stable (34.9% of all jobs of the Bay Area’s film industry in 1990, and 35.8% in 2018). The employment shift between these two counties dramatically impacted the average size of firms, with Marin dropping from 24.3 to 9.6 employees per firm between 2003 and 2011, while San Francisco, conversely, increased from 9.3 to 17.3 (this tendency is 15

Employment in Marin County has dropped between 2003 and 2011, from 2240 to 760 (and has continued to decline since then, at 507 in 2018), while in San Francisco, conversely, employment has increased on the same period 2003–2011, from 1771 to 3718 (and has continued to increase at 4035 in 2018).

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confirmed in 2018). Alameda and Contra Costa counties represent the second most important locus in size and the most dynamic one. Indeed, the growth of employment in these two counties (from 1898 jobs in 1990 to 4498 in 2018) has been amazingly high in the last census period (2011–2018), at + 64.9%, particularly thanks to Contra Costa County (+291.8%), contrasting with Alameda County (−11.7%). This growth likely relies on the tremendous success of the Pixar Company, located in Emeryville (North of Alameda County). As a result, the relative weight of this locus in the Bay Area has increased (from 25.1% of all jobs of the Bay Area’s film industry, in 1990, to 35.4% in 2018). A third—smaller yet promising—locus is found in the counties of San Mateo and Santa Clara. In the long-run employment has increased rather smoothly (from 2,610 jobs in 1990 to 2,826 jobs in 2018), and the relative weight of this locus in the Bay Area has actually declined (from 33.2% in 1990 to 22.3% in 2018). Nonetheless, employment in this locus displayed a noticeable increase in the last census period (2011–2018), at +21.8%, essentially thanks to Santa Clara County (1,590 jobs in 2011, and 2,080 jobs in 2018; + 30.8%). The recent and fast growth of employment in this locus is likely related to the commercial success of the Netflix Company, located in Los Gatos (Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley). This third locus is hence likely to continue its expansion (Fig. 3.3).

3.4 San Francisco’s Film Cluster(s): Innovation, Disruption, Global Reach Compared to Hollywood (with roughly 120,000 workers), the film industry in the Bay Area is much smaller. The purpose of this section is to briefly discuss the path dependency of the three film industry local clusters of the Bay Area, showing that a few related firms have played a leading role and that San Francisco’s film industry, though symbiotically connected to Hollywood, is likely to maintain some forms of creative independence and strategic autonomy and to shine over the world by itself, thanks to its regionally specific assets.

3.4.1 Genealogy of the Film Clusters in San Francisco The geographic and functional proximity of the firms involved in the film industry in the Bay Area—in the form of three local clusters—deserves some comments and explanations. To be sure, identifying and measuring inter-firms connections and co-operations would require in-depth research that is beyond the scope of this paper. Nevertheless, such connections are clearly suggested by previous research (ICF Consulting 2007) and are highlighted by prominent actors in the industry, particularly regarding the connections between creative firms and tech firms.16 16

Source: https://www.zoetrope.com/american-zoetrope/ (06/22/2020).

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Fig. 3.3 Employment in the film industry, San Francisco Bay Area: geographic concentrations (2018), and growth (2011–2018), per county Conception: Frédéric Leriche; production: Cécile Michoudet (Adobe Illustrator®) Sources Based on Census Bureau—County Business Patterns (2018)

Moreover, an analysis of the three leading firms in each cluster, i.e., American Zoetrope, Lucasfilm, and Pixar, illustrates three key facts about the Bay Area’s film industry. First, the path creation (Garud and Karnøe 2001)—or the “planting of the seed”—of the film industry in San Francisco was the result of a “rejection” of the Hollywood studio system. Second, the development paths of these three companies are closely intertwined with each other. Third, the commercial success of these firms, from the 1970s to the 2000s, gave a strong impetus to the Bay Area to become an alternative film production center to Hollywood. When Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas created their own company, American Zoetrope, in 1969, and located it in San Francisco, their purpose was to distance themselves from the Hollywood studios, which they found creatively stultifying. American Zoetrope, which is a relatively small firm but of a high reputation, played a key role in the rise of the industry in San Francisco as the pioneering studio in the metropolitan area. Nevertheless, and quite paradoxically, Hollywood and the Bay Area were still strongly connected. In these regards, we need to emphasize the

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impact of Francis Ford Coppola’s trilogy The Godfather,17 which marked a shift in the U.S.A, cinematographic production, as a commercial and artistic landmark of American film d’auteur. Furthermore, Lewis (2009) argues that thanks to its commercial success, to its creative influence on filmmakers, and to its effects on the renewing of the gangster film genre, The Godfather saved Paramount and—probably pushing his point a bit too far—saved Hollywood. Conversely, this film allowed Francis Ford Coppola to fund his future film d’auteur projects, like The Conversation (1974) for instance. Leaving American Zoetrope in 1971, George Lucas created Lucasfilm, whose tremendous growth—thanks to the worldwide commercial success of the sagas Indiana Jones and Star Wars—played then a determinant role in the development of San Francisco’s film industry in the 1970s and 1980s. Lucasfilm was a pioneer in computer-enhanced filmmaking, particularly in the Star Wars saga, and in a new generation of fantasy blockbusters. Lucasfilm is still a major employer of the industry in the Bay Area, despite having been purchased by Disney Corporation in 2012 upon the retirement of George Lucas. Over the East Bay, in Emeryville (Alameda County), Pixar has been a powerhouse in animated films since the 1990s. Pixar is related to Lucasfilm since it was founded in 1986 by Steve Jobs, who purchased the Graphics Group, a service of the Lucas Computer Division (an affiliate of Lucasfilm) dedicated to software vision effects, from George Lucas. Pixar revolutionized animated filmmaking with its computergenerated images, leading to several imitators in Hollywood and around the world.18 In this sense, Pixar has become the clearest symbol of the association between artistic creativity and technological innovation embedded in Silicon Valley. Pixar was bought up by Disney Corporation in 2006 but still operates relatively independently. In the 2000s, another new and innovative firm, Netflix, emerged in the Bay Area. Its development has proven to be disruptive for the relations between the film industry— as a creative industry—and high tech, and for the relations between the Bay Area and Hollywood. Netflix was founded in 1997 as a DVD rental company, and located in Los Gatos. The company subsequently took advantage of the rise of the multimedia industries in the Bay Area (Zook 2001; Epstein 2005). In 2007, it successfully switched to the expanding and lucrative VOD market and became the leading streaming system for the next decade. Then, in 2013, Netflix started producing films and TV series, and even distributing for other producers. After Netflix, other companies, belonging both to the tech industry (Apple and Amazon) or the creative industries (Disney Studios), have developed their own VOD platforms and have moved back to Hollywood to buy up studios for production. In other words, thanks to Netflix, the Bay Area proved to be innovative, disruptive, and able to benefit from the first-mover advantage, and, in fine, once again, to challenge Hollywood. 17

The Godfather (1972), The Godfather Part II (1974), The Godfather Part III (1990); the American Film Institute ranks The Godfather second on its “The 100 Greatest American Films of All Time” list (source: https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies-10th-anniversary-edition/) (07/28/2020). 18 Between 1995 and 2020, Pixar has released 22 animated feature films. Source: https://www.pixar. com/feature-films-launch (07/16/2020).

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3.4.2 San Francisco’s Film Cluster Development: A Framework As many researchers have demonstrated, the design of complex technological products and of cultural products requires geographic proximity (Scott 1988; Boschma 2005; Scott and Leriche 2005; Talbot 2010; Torre and Talbot 2019). Nevertheless, geographic proximity does not necessarily imply functional proximity, and, as a consequence, efficiency of the production process. In other words, co-location does not mean co-operation, and performance and effectiveness of any production system, or of any economic space, require ad hoc institutions, political order, and local collective governance. For decades now, the factors leading to success and regional growth have attracted the attention of many researchers in social sciences, particularly in economic geography. The purpose of this paper is not to go back to the scientific debates and to the huge bibliography that has resulted, but to suggest a framework aiming at highlighting the foundations of regional development, and to confront it with the empirical case of the Bay Area’s film cluster. According to Scott (2006), regional development relies on five key foundations, related to geographic agglomeration, which stimulates positive externalities and increasing returns effects: (1) a complex of various kinds of firms, connected by traded and untraded relations; (2) a local labor market comprising complementary specialized categories of workers19 ; (3) collective structures of training, learning, and innovation20 ; (4) institutional infrastructures, both public and private21 ; (5) physical infrastructures and planning policies. The combining of these five foundations fosters the Bay Area’s film cluster. In other words, our view is that more is required than the analysis of inter and intra-firms interactions and local labor markets. This case study indeed shows the importance of being embedded in specific regional assets that inspire and nourish the cluster, even as a new growth center (here, the Bay Area’s film industry) remains deeply connected to the primary one (Hollywood) and to the rest of the world through different types of relations (capitalistic, industrial, technical, labor, commercial, and market links).

19

This includes, in the case of the film industry, which is a major segment of cultural industries, artists, creative and innovative workers. As demonstrated by Markusen and King (2003), art and artistic creativity are at the center of the cultural economy system. 20 Like in San Francisco, the School of Digital Filmmaking (created in 2005). 21 Among such institutional infrastructures, we can mention the yearly programming of 48 film festivals in the Bay Area, like the Noir City Film Festival, the San Francisco International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, the Wine Country Film Festival, the United Nations Association Film Festival, the Bicycle Film Festival, French Cinema Now. Source: https://filmsf.org/film-commis sion (06/22/2020).

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3.5 Concluding Remarks The development and the peculiarities of the Bay Area’s film industry have been influenced by regional assets that are available in the city of San Francisco and in the Bay Area: an amazing geographic context, a unique progressive culture, and a local technology expertise. The example of San Francisco’s film cluster corroborates Sarita, Chapain, and Comunian’s (2017)—among others—hypothesis about the importance of place in understanding cultural industry dynamics. As they expressed it: “this literature [about the economic geography of the creative industries] discusses how creative workers and industries are embedded within place in terms of inspiration, cultural framework, economic dynamics, skills and professional practices and supporting infrastructure—local and national idiosyncrasies, economic and social contexts and policies play a role—in addition to connecting with global networks and economic dynamics” (Sarita et al. 2017).

Balancing between competition and cooperation, the relations between the Bay Area and Hollywood are complex, multifaceted, and symbiotic. On the one side, these two clusters have always been closely linked, yet the foundations of the Bay Area’s film industry rely on a certain rebellion against the domination of Hollywood, even as the latter has reasserted over the last two decades control with the buyouts by Disney Corporation. But, on the other side, thanks to its specific regional assets, the Bay Area’s film industry remains different, innovative, and displays some forms of rebounding capacities, which, in the end, allow the Bay Area’s film cluster to preserve a relative industrial and esthetic independence. In these regards, American Zoetrope provides a significant testimony of an explicitly proclaimed specificity of San Francisco’s film industry: “American Zoetrope has constantly embraced the creative possibilities of technology, and is known for orchestrating alternative approaches to filmmaking and challenging stale Hollywood standards.”22 Furthermore, from Zoetrope to Netflix, the Bay Area’s film industrial complex has demonstrated its ability to take disruptive esthetic, technological, industrial, and commercial initiatives. The development of the four leading companies in the Bay Area has, one after the other, disrupted the routines of Hollywood producers and changed the entire film industry. This is an exceptional record for a secondary industrial center. Storper and Walker (1989) suggested that such innovation could generate a new growth center and also that the latter might replace the original primary industrial center. In this case, however, that has not happened and Hollywood clearly remains the leading production center, partly thanks to the adoption and absorption of the Bay Area’s innovations and innovators. In other words, despite the capitalistic, financial, industrial, and commercial domination of Hollywood, the Bay Area’s film industry has been able to take advantage of its regional assets to move forward on its own path, allowing the Bay Area to reinforce its global image and influence. To put it in a metaphoric way, within the “forest” of the U.S.A. motion picture industry, 22

Source: https://www.zoetrope.com/american-zoetrope/ (06/22/2020).

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Hollywood indeed is a big “tree.” But, behind this tree, there are smaller ones, of different species, rooted in different soils, and giving different fruits, though these trees might be interconnected by different types of lianas, in both directions.

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Chapter 4

Cultural Heritage and Globalization: Trajectory, Projects, and Strategies of the Santa María la Real Foundation (Aguilar de Campoo, Castile, and León, Spain) Jaime Nuño González Abstract In 1977, an association was founded to restore the ruins of a medieval monastery located in the small town of Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia, Castile and León, Spain) and turn it into the hub of cultural engagement of a progressively depopulated region with scarce economic resources but a remarkably rich cultural heritage. This original initiative has since led to an enormous wealth of activity, and the Santa María la Real Foundation, heir to that association, has diversified the fields in which it works, extending its activities throughout Spain and other countries. The link with Romanesque art, one of the hallmarks of the Aguilar region, has always remained very much alive, although its reach is now much greater, notably through the publication of an ambitious work, the now benchmark “Enciclopedia del Románico en la Península Ibérica” (Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in the Iberian Peninsula). The international impact of this foundation, in an increasingly globalized world with greater demand for culture and heritage, is growing, with activities in different fields and a wide range of projects. However, the roots and ideological foundations that drove those who, more than forty years ago, with no funds but with a tremendous This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). Director of the Center for Romanesque Studies of the Santa María la Real Foundation, an institution with which he has been associated since 1985. An archaeologist and medievalist, he is the general coordinator of the “Enciclopedia del Románico en la Península Ibérica” (Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in the Iberian Peninsula) and has published more than seventy works related to the art, history and culture of the Middle Ages, as well as cultural heritage management. He is the author of several books, mainly historical works, including “Una aldea en tiempos del Románico” (A Village in Romanesque Times) (2009), which was awarded a national prize by the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Along these same lines, he has published “Peregrinar a Compostela en la Edad Media” (Pilgrimage to Compostela in the Middle Ages) (2016), as well as the guide “Palencia, románico imprescindible” (Palencia, Must-See Romanesque Art) (2019). J. N. González (B) Fundación Santa María La Real, Avda. Ronda, 1, Aguilar de Campoo, 34800 Palencia, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_4

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amount of enthusiasm, decided that the role civil society plays is crucial when raising awareness about and conserving heritage and that this cultural wealth, far from being a burden, should be understood as an enormous resource, have never been forgotten. This is what they believed, and they got right to work. Keywords Heritage · Region · Economy · Internationalization · Strategies This story began more than forty years ago, or rather, more than a thousand years ago, because what the Santa María la Real Foundation (SMLRF) has accomplished in the last four decades is to take up the historical baton of the Monastery of Santa María la Real, also known as the Monastery of Aguilar, founded towards the end of the first millennium. The trajectory, which included a long, almost century-and-ahalf long hiatus from 1835 to 1977, has not been a continuous one, as with many other monasteries that were disentailed and later recovered the community of monks or nuns, but has meant a radical shift in objectives, uses, people and approaches, giving rise to a system of heritage-related work that has been widely recognized as exemplary. The ideological foundations, the journey—one in which the author has been involved for 35 years and therefore has first-hand knowledge—and the results are what we intend to describe in this article.

4.1 History as a Subject and as a Resource: From the Monastery to the Foundation The origin of the Monastery can be traced back to the mists of the late Middle Ages. Legend dates it to the mid-ninth century, with a founding linked—which should come as no surprise—to an episode involving a knight, an abbot, a forest, and two caves with altars and relics: in short, an almost miraculous event. But legends and apocryphal documents aside, what we know is that the Monastery already existed shortly before the year 1000. Although its beginnings were not easy, it managed to survive better than many other small monastic houses that succumbed only a few decades after they were founded, when kings or magnates withdrew their direct support. Hence monasteries became obsessed with the necessity of securing their own resources that would provide a certain degree of independence and ensure survival regardless of the patron’s decisions; even today, it is only an institution’s own resources that ensure sustainability, one of the lessons that the SMLRF has learned from those ancient monasteries. Fortunately for the Monastery, in 1169 King Alfonso VIII of Castile, together with a series of nobles who were its patrons, turned it over to the Premonstratensian order, which marked the beginning of the building’s renovation and the consolidation and enlargement of the institution. This change was transcendental for the Monastery, but it was also dramatic for the small community of monks that had been living there, because they were expelled—in exchange for a small sum—to settle the new order.

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There is another lesson here: people change, but it is the institutions that shape the long term. It was at this point that Santa María la Real became a great monastery, protected by the monarchy and inhabited by a new and dynamic order which, while it never reached the level of the Benedictines or Cistercians, was one of the most important in the Middle Ages. There was a substantial difference compared with the former order, as it was not cloistered, but its mission was to preach to and trained lower clergy, whose intellectual capacity at that time left much to be desired. This work of direct involvement with the local area and its people is another of the legacies taken on by the SMLRF, and it serves as a new lesson: if the institutions give prestige to the people who form them—in this case the Premonstratensians contributed their reputation and fame—it is the people who must in turn foster this prestige, as was the case here with a series of abbots who were able to promote the enlargement of the Monastery. Santa María la Real has gone through better and worse times since then, yet the intention here is not to discuss its history as a monastic house because, although a complete history of the Monastery has yet to be written, there are numerous partial studies available (including Assas 1872; Rodríguez 1897; Mélida 1915; García Guinea 1975, pp. 185–195; de Fauve 1992; Matesanz Vera 1994; Hernando Garrido 1995, 2002; de Guereño Sanz 1997, pp. 341–438; de Diego 2004; Pérez 2017) and what is of particular interest here is the process of recovery and development after the monks disappeared. The latter occurred in 1835, with the Royal Order of Ecclesiastical Exclaustration, which was followed the next year by a disentailment process through which the state seized the assets of the religious orders and then put them up for public auction. Some years earlier (1827), a School of Arts was established at the Monastery of Aguilar to teach logic, ontology, general physics, mathematics, geography and astronomy, but the project was short-lived and in 1836 the Monastery’s monastic life came to a definitive end. The contents were gradually moved elsewhere or disappeared, the archive was dispersed—although part of it is preserved in the National Historical Archive and the National Library—and the property was put up for sale. The land and orchards were purchased, but the building never found a buyer. This was the fate of many historic buildings, which were eventually dismantled, while others were converted into farms, with mixed fortunes for this artistic heritage. In some cases, the churches survived as parish churches and the monks’ quarters were converted into town halls, schools, barracks, etc. On occasion, some monasteries saw religious life and new communities return decades later. The Monastery of Aguilar gradually fell into ruin—accelerated further by the destruction of arches, pillars and columns which were dismantled to move a considerable part of its capitals to the National Archaeological Museum—with some families living in its ever-increasing decrepitude. This was the unstoppable ruin that writer Miguel de Unamuno observed when he visited in 1920, collection his impressions in a few heartfelt pages, noting that “the ruins continue to be ruined” and asking himself “Are there any men left among these ruins? Is there any manhood left in the ruined men?”, and ending with an appeal for the future, convinced that “even a ruin can be a source of hope” (Unamuno 1922, pp. 236–237). His words did not fall on deaf ears, but it would take more than half a century before the ruin began to turn into hope. An attempt to

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restore the Monastery was made in the 1960s with historical criteria that began to strip the building of post-medieval additions in an attempt to restore its Romanesque “purity”. Unfortunately (or fortunately, considering all that was lost) the money ran out and the Monastery returned to its usual neglect, to the undergrowth and moss. And so it was until 1977. Drastic changes began to take place in Spain following the death of the dictator Franco in late 1975. There was a rapid development of community involvement through associations that went beyond the political, although that was perhaps its most visible manifestation, with the rise of groups and organizations that were concerned with culture and removing it from the state monopoly to make way for more direct citizen participation. Some who lived in small villages still remembered the Pedagogical Missions during the Second Spanish Republic (which started in 1931), which aimed to make available art, reading, theater, cinema, and classical music to the most remote corners, a task in which many of the era’s leading intellectuals and artists were involved. Post-dictatorship, a new opportunity for this cultural activism arose. At the same time, Franco’s death meant the collapse of his centralist state and the resurgence of regionalisms and nationalisms that gradually took shape in what a few years later would become the Autonomous Communities. Regionalists and nationalists looked to the past as the ideological framework for their political positions, and local culture, traditions and artistic heritage—both the great monuments and, more importantly, the small buildings specific to each region—played a decisive role in that past. An enormous interest in culture quickly permeated society, or at least its better-off groups, but those years of awakening coincided with an economic crisis of such magnitude that it made any kind of public funding impossible, particularly in areas which, like Aguilar de Campoo, were far removed from the large urban centers. It was then that civil society started to organize locally to turn its dreams into reality and the Monastery of Aguilar was one of the first monuments to begin to re-emerge, not only as a building, but also as an active organization. In 1977 a small group of “Aguilarenses by birth, adoption or heart” understood that it was easier and more productive for people to take action first, and then involve the institutions, rather than the other way around. Thus, the Association of Friends of the Monastery of Aguilar (AFMA) was created, led by the multifaceted architect José María Pérez González, who was better known as “Peridis”, ultimately the driving force behind many of the initiatives that were launched in subsequent decades under the name of Santa María la Real. The association aimed to achieve much more than a simple restoration, as stated in the first issue of the newsletter it published: it wanted to set up a secondary school, create a summer university, a museum, library, guest house, public park, open a Center for Romanesque Studies, organize exhibitions and concerts, and make the Monastery a place for lifelong learning (VV. AA. 1977, p. 1). What until then had been known as the “Fallen Convent” gradually recovered its name: the Monastery of Santa María la Real. The dynamic experienced there was also extended to the region’s small villages with the celebration of Romanesque Weeks, bringing a series of cultural activities to the surrounding area’s numerous Romanesque churches. Over the years, the architectural restoration was

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completed, and, with the same perseverance, all the Association’s initial objectives were progressively achieved. The restoration itself was a laboratory of both architectural and social experimentation. Given the scarce financial resources, the impossibility of bringing in experienced workers and the magnitude of the undertaking, local youth without any training in the traditional trades (masonry, stonemasonry, forging, carpentry, etc.) were initially hired. The results were incredibly positive, so the decision was made to convert this system into a more formal program, with the support of public institutions, and to replicate it at many other monuments that were in urgent need of restoration and use. The protracted crisis in Spain had driven many young people out of schools and colleges, and without the option of a job in an increasingly declining industry and without any training, their future employment was very much in jeopardy. Thus, the workshop schools were created in 1985; designed for this group, they also involved young graduates in a wide range of subjects (architects to musicians, archaeologists to designers, biologists to cultural animators) who not only were given their first professional opportunity, but were also largely responsible for the work and, at the same time, for the cultural training of the other group of young people who were about to start out in a manual trade. In short, it was believed that the best way to engage with what was being done to the monument was to have a global understanding of the building and all its contexts: historical, natural, and social. But not only the professionals would receive a salary; the students would as well, because the work they did during their training was incorporated into the monument, and this made them workers. Thus “Peridis”, who was also the driving force behind this program, explained its meaning to his first student-workers at the inauguration of the workshop created at the Monastery of Aguilar: In the workshop school we learn to do the work with intelligent hands, turning the ruins into spaces for education and community. Since you are what you do, you develop who you are through the performance of your work. Your teachers are here ready to teach you the dignity of having a trade. You will soon learn first-hand that with bricklaying you learn to construct the future, with stonework you build the future, with the forge you shape your character and with stone you sculpt your personality (Pérez 2017, p. 194).

With funding from the European Social Fund, thousands of workshop schools have since been created in Spain, working on the country’s most iconic monuments and natural spaces, many of which have subsequently been declared World Heritage Sites. Later, in 1991, the program and its underlying principles were extended to several Latin American countries and even to some in Africa and Asia; by 2017, more than 290 projects had been implemented in 24 countries aside from Spain, with the participation of more than 37,000 students (Salgado and Mosqueira 2018, p. 24). The social assimilation of the most impoverished and marginalized social groups has been a cornerstone of these workshops across the board, as was the case in Colombia, where the workshops helped integrate groups linked to the guerrillas after the signing of the peace agreement. The program is still alive and well today, with a promising future both in Spain and in many other countries (Figs. 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5).

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Fig. 4.1 The Monastery of Santa María la real in 1908 (Photo: Sanz Collection/SMLRF), and today (Photo: César del Valle)

This has perhaps been the most successful project launched by the Monastery of Santa María la Real de Aguilar and the one that has achieved the greatest international impact, although it began to take on a life of its own from the outset: the project leaders contributed the idea but that was as far as their involvement went. In the meantime, the Monastery and the Association had to carry on with their own dynamic, trying to complete the restoration and achieve the above-mentioned objectives, which gradually happened: the secondary school was inaugurated in 1984 and

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Fig. 4.2 Map of the implementation of the workshop schools as of 2017: Spain, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, Algeria, Cape Verde, Morocco, Senegal, Philippines and Palestinian territories. Source del Mazo and Mosqueira (2018)

Fig. 4.3 Symbiosis between Romanesque art and a pristine landscape. Hermitage of Santa Cecilia de Vallespinoso de Aguilar (Photo: J. Nuño)

the restoration was virtually completed by 1988. That same year, the AFMA won the Europa Nostra Award for its work, and then, with its mission practically complete after seven years, the Association saw the need to be dissolved or, rather, re-founded with new objectives that would now reach beyond the walls of the Monastery and

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Fig. 4.4 The “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in the Iberian Peninsula” (here in a partial image) is the Santa María la real foundation’s most ambitious publication (Photo: Marce Alonso/SMLRF)

Fig. 4.5 Four examples of the miniature models made by Ornamentos Arquitectónicos. NotreDame de Paris. Cover of La Madeliene de Vézelay, Medieval Citadel of Carcasonne and Chateau de Chenonceau overlooking the Loire valley (Photos: César del Valle)

the boundaries of the surrounding region. Thus, the Center for Romanesque Studies (CRS) was opened in 1988, also as an association, but with more ambitious objectives and, as its name indicated, focused to a large extent on the study and management of the important resource that is Romanesque art,1 developing restoration, diffusion and 1

For those unfamiliar with European historical terminology, the concept of ‘Romanesque’ is, in theory, an exclusively artistic reference, although over time it has taken on a much broader meaning. Romanesque is the art that developed throughout Europe, or rather in what was then called Christendom, i.e., the area dominated by Christians and which gradually expanded towards the north and east of the continent. Although diverse in its manifestations, Romanesque art follows a common

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use projects, seeking to generate jobs, an economy and activities related to heritage. It was then that an ambitious project, the “Enciclopedia del Románico” (Encyclopedia of the Romanesque Art), was launched under the premise that to tap into the resources, they must first be well-known and publicized, so that all of society can be informed of their existence and value. With the legacy and spirit of the former Association, the CRS continued to grow, multiplying its projects, making it necessary, once again, to reinforce the structure and adapt to ever greater demands and activity: the SMLRF was therefore created in 1994, and despite a series of changes it continues to pursue its mission today. Perhaps the reader may have found this explanation of the background leading up to the creation of the SMLRF excessively long, when the aim is to explain the institution’s strategies for managing cultural heritage in a globalized world, but the SMLRF was not created from scratch; rather, its origin and what it continues to be today is rooted in everything we have described up to this point. The Foundation works with history through history, although in recent years it has also ventured into many other fields of interest, particularly training and social care, which we will not address here but which, due to their philosophy, approach and results, are also highly innovative and gratifying experiences.

pattern, seeking to replicate the artistic forms of classical antiquity, a period considered by the people of the Middle Ages as the golden age of humanity. An ecclesiastical building frenzy began in the early eleventh century in several central European regions, roughly at the confluence of what is now France, Italy and Germany. Great churches with tall towers were built using the round arch and the vault, reaching a monumental scale that had not been seen since classical times. Rodulfus Glaber, a contemporary chronicler of the events, tells us that “it seemed as though each Christian community was aiming to surpass all others in the splendor of construction. It was as if the whole world were shaking itself free, shrugging off the burden of the past, and cladding itself everywhere in a white mantle of churches. Thus, almost all the episcopal churches and those of the monasteries dedicated to various saints, even little village chapels, were rebuilt better than before by the faithful” (Prieto 2004, pp. 155–157). Depending on the region, this phenomenon lasted until the early thirteenth century and was made possible by a combination of other circumstances: the end or containment of the second invasions (Vikings, Slavs and Muslims), the strengthening of the monarchies, which consolidated their power; a degree of social stability, particularly in comparison with previous centuries; the development of trade routes and an increase in population and productivity, with greater surpluses; and even a mild climate that favored good harvests and the expansion of cultivated land. At the same time, many of the monasteries adopted the Benedictine rule, creating a level of spiritual unity and cohesion within the church that had never been seen before. These were the years when the first crusades were called, which, as well as bringing Romanesque art to the Holy Land, drove the violence inherent in the aristocratic system of life out of the heart of Europe. This was a period of tremendous development at all levels, and a true European identity, with both its shared features and its diversity, began to take shape. The thousands of buildings and artistic objects that are still preserved today are the legacy of this historical period and represent an immensely rich cultural heritage, an enormous asset that is increasingly being tapped into today.

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4.2 Cultural Heritage as a Symbol of a Region From the outset, the AFMA has consistently emphasized that a monument belongs to an extremely broad context. The Monastery of Santa María la Real, like any other building or institution, was built and evolved under different historical circumstances, with different artistic processes, and has always existed surrounded by a society in constant evolution, both in terms of structure, tastes and mentality. The monument, if we want it to remain alive and not be a museum piece, today must also be part of its environment, both physical and social, hence the three concepts of heritage, landscape and people must effectively be part of the same reality. Therefore, how they are treated must be approached from this principle. If an intervention on a monumental site is made without considering the characteristics of its physical surroundings and, above all, its human environment, as so often happens, the monument will no longer related to its environment and becomes a place that might preserve its beauty but will be rejected by its own people. This is what happens with many of the great monumental landmarks in both small villages and large cities, where locals no longer see the monuments as something familiar, even intimate, as part of their history, their memories and their essence, but as an artefact meant exclusively for tourists. It generates revenue for an industry, one which does not even operate in the same community in many cases, particularly in small villages, yet involvement is disregarded, even rejected, by the local community, especially when the monument starts to become the focus of massive, sustained tourism. If these monuments have been preserved over the centuries, it is because a society around them has used them and, despite a certain level of responsibility for the monument’s deterioration at times, this local community must always be taken into consideration if we want monuments to remain protected, to be an essential place and not a theme park, the major risk to architectural heritage (and cultural heritage in general) that comes with the dizzying growth of tourism. The SMLRF has always recognized the need for people to identify with the heritage that they consider “theirs”, even if the property passes into different hands. It is for this very reason that the projects and programs the Foundation develops have always endeavored to include a local dimension, because only spaces with a certain scope, particularly in a rural setting, can manage to work successfully, uniting efforts and reaching further afield. Beyond fighting only for what is “mine”, we must understand that the success of our neighbor in terms of cultural heritage also benefits us, because what is “theirs” is ultimately also “ours”. Explaining this idea to the local population has been one of the Foundation’s priorities in almost all its interventions. Furthermore, a second principle is always kept at the forefront: the regions themselves are the main agents in their own development; the model can be imported, and the actions can be coordinated by someone from the outside who knows the subject and the dynamics, but it is the local community that has to put in the work to the extent possible, because the interventions are designed for them, and their involvement is fundamental. In short, this symbiosis between heritage, region, and society is one of the main guidelines that the SMLRF has followed when setting up any of

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its projects, both locally, in the region of Aguilar de Campoo, and in many regions in Spain and abroad. We might think that this concept of “local” as a small, manageable space with a human dimension is contradictory in a world of fast-paced globalization, where everything is unified and where the most extreme diversity is only a few hours away by car, train or plane, but it is precisely this concept—in its traditional sense of “country”, not as a political or administrative concept, as it is often used today—that allows us to explore what we have that is different, what we must take care of and promote, what represents the personal and non-transferable which, if well cultivated, can be of interest to others and, consequently, be a resource for the local economy. Cultural heritage can thus become an iconic element of identity, on that fortunately cannot be relocated, something that regularly happens with manufacturing facilities that move from one country to another, first creating great expectations and wealth, only to result a few years later in deep pockets of poverty and frustration. The fear that China is currently inspiring in many countries because of its growing industrial monopoly fortunately does not affect China’s cultural heritage or its main translation into economic and employment terms: tourism. A few years ago, we wrote an opinion article in a newspaper entitled China as an Opportunity, where we expressed the idea that the growing economic development of the Asian giant will ultimately be beneficial for those Western countries that have a strong cultural heritage. Enrichment creates a need to learn about other countries and cultures, and, at least until now, the world’s dominant culture has continued to be Western, in particular European (González 2011), which is why Europe is increasingly receiving an exponentially growing number of Chinese tourists. As does Japan, another country that has undergone development processes along similar lines to those of China: cheap labor exploited by first-world companies, imitation of those products they are commissioned to produce, development of their own technologies and, finally, cutting-edge innovation. There has always been a cornerstone on which we have based our work throughout the history of the Association of Friends of the Monastery of Aguilar and up to the present Foundation: Romanesque art. The region of Aguilar de Campoo is home to dozens of small Romanesque churches and several large monasteries (including Santa María la Real), all in the Romanesque style that swept across Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, even in the thirteenth century in some regions. Those were glorious times, and yet they have been prolifically preserved here after centuries of decline marked by a lack of funds to renovate these churches into more modern ones. Nor was there a need to expand them into larger ones, because the population of many of these villages stayed practically the same from the 12th to the midtwentieth century, when mass emigration to the cities began and ruin started to set in. Today, except for Aguilar, which has a little more than 6,000 inhabitants, practically 90% of the region’s villages have a population under 100 and 40% have less than 20 people, a truly dramatic situation, particularly because no one is going to create a new industrial infrastructure here—beyond that which already exists in Aguilar—unless they are hazardous or pollute the environment, options which have been considered on occasion and which the community itself has rejected.

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Considering these circumstances, the only option is to rely on the region’s own resources and their management to turn these “resources” into “products”, and this is where Romanesque art, generally surrounded by exceptional scenery, comes into play. Over the years, Romanesque art has become the region’s trademark, something that ties the people to the region. From the start, the SMLRF and its predecessors have been intricately linked to this art, first in terms of the local area itself, but later in terms of other regions and even other countries. The Foundation has always understood Romanesque art as a raw material that had to be manufactured in order to ensure that the benefits remained local. To make this transformation possible, it established a work plan that followed the process of understanding, preservation and promotion as the basis for exploitation, that is, a plan that converts Romanesque art into an economic asset and generates employment for the region or for all those outsiders who want to join the project, which have been many in recent years. Even though we are a foundation, the work processes are approached from a business perspective, but it is precisely because we are a foundation that there must also be a non-profit approach when it comes to economic results.

4.3 From Local Work to International Impact: Romanesque Art as a Common Thread Perhaps one of the things that has brought the greatest satisfaction to those of us who have worked at the SMLRF over the years is the giant step that has been taken from working in a small, practically uninhabited rural region to having international impact. This was no miracle, but rather the ability to work with a team that knew how to be imaginative, determined, committed, intuitive, and able to spot opportunities and quickly and efficiently seize them. We will now detail some examples of these efforts. When the Monastery of Aguilar opened its first workshop school in October 1985, one of the tasks entrusted to the historians working there (one of whom is telling this story now) was to study the area’s major Romanesque churches so that they could explain this context to the students. Little by little, what was intended to be simple school material turned into more exhaustive documentation; the team grew, and we considered the possibility of publishing a local guide which, ultimately, we decided to extend to the entire province, seeking to update Miguel Ángel García Guinea’s “El Arte Románico en Palencia” (Romanesque Art in Palencia). This was a tremendously successful book, the source and the window through which the outside world began to see the province of Palencia as a cultural tourist destination because of its Romanesque art at a time when the region barely had any cultural tourism in the region. Without the guide ever coming to fruition, the project quickly took another leap forward and the Foundation soon decided that it needed to be more ambitious if it wanted to make a difference. This is how the “Enciclopedia del Románico en

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Castilla y León” (Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in Castile and León) was created, a publication which aimed to document all the examples of the Romanesque style in the autonomous community’s nine provinces. It involved many years of work, slowdowns and even breaks, until the 17 volumes that constitute the studies on Romanesque art in Castile and León finally went into publication in 2002, an effort which merited a new Europa Nostra Award for this “work in the field of cultural heritage”. The “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque”, a work so comprehensive that it sought to include even the most insignificant surviving evidence, was a task so complex that no research team from any university or public administration had ever tackled it. An extensive team was needed to conduct thorough fieldwork to locate previously unknown buildings and remains. Absolutely everything had to be photographed and plans had to be drawn up of the significant buildings, of which there were several hundred in Castile and León. No institution had the budget to afford such a task, but once again we resorted to our imagination, and the money was found. An agreement with the National Institute of Employment, under the Ministry of Labor, made it possible to create a pilot project which, inspired by the workshop schools, made it possible to train unemployed university students who were able to do effective, lasting work while they searched for their first job. Thus, teams of historians and architects, some recently graduated, others more recently unemployed, were able to accomplish the project, which also involved the most established and prestigious researchers, who were tasked with producing several general studies and the analyses of the most relevant or complex elements. Hundreds of people worked on the “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in Castile and León” at different stages, with varying degrees of participation, but if there is one thing that should be underscored about the project, it is the paradox that the unemployed performed most of the work. This leads us to believe that societies are often unable to see and take advantage of their own resources: they are marginalized rather than valued. Developing this Encyclopedia with the efforts of the unemployed was highly significant. But it took more than just the team to publish the Encyclopedia, as editing and printing also required a great deal of financial effort. This is where the collaboration of a savings bank, Caja Duero, came into play, which embraced the project as its own and generously financed its publication. There were many difficulties and setbacks over the years it took to produce the Encyclopedia, particularly in terms of coordinating the teams and controlling the quality of the work, but these efforts were made easier because bishoprics, priests, locals, private building owners, collectors, and museums facilitated access and research for people who often had no known formal background in this type of work and who were backed by a small, rural institution that wanted to do a job so daunting that no organization or institution had ever thought it possible. Very few believed it could be done, but it was, and it was no miracle, simply the result of hard work and perseverance. The success of this “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in Castile and León” was swift and the SMLRF soon felt that the experience could be applied to other regions, since the method was already established, and the formula had been successfully developed. Thus, in 2003, after the volumes on Castile and León were completed,

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the study of the entirety of the Spanish Romanesque art was proposed, which shortly afterward was also extended to Portugal, resulting in the “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in the Iberian Peninsula”. The experience was a success and the name of the SMLRF started to gain recognition across Spain, but each autonomous community is a different world and the project started to require even more substantial funding. The different regional governments and institutions were gradually contacted, and once again the central government, through the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Culture, lent their support. Likewise, Caja Duero decided to continue supporting the company, but then the financial crisis of 2007 hit, destroying many jobs, more than a few businesses and especially most of the activities related to cultural heritage. At that time, the two volumes corresponding to Romanesque art in Asturias had just been published, in addition to another two dedicated to this region’s extraordinary and highly significant pre-Romanesque period, as well as three volumes on Romanesque art in Cantabria, but research was being completed in other places and the risk of not being able to publish the volumes, given the economic circumstances, was extremely high. Efforts had to be redoubled to involve large Spanish companies, regional governments, and other institutions which, with smaller donations, all contributed what was needed for the Encyclopedia to forge ahead. Thus, it was possible to carry on, with much effort and a great deal of uncertainty, but the subsequent involvement of Obra Social “la Caixa” was decisive in ensuring that the research was completed, and the publication of the books is now virtually finished. To date, the “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque” includes 55 volumes, with only the Spanish provinces of Girona (3 volumes) and Lérida (4 volumes) still to be published. The edition for these two provinces, as well as the other two Catalan provinces (Barcelona and Tarragona), is published in both Spanish and Catalan, while the three volumes published on the Basque Country/Euskadi were bilingual: Spanish and Basque. While we were working at full capacity on the documentation of Spanish Romanesque art, even during the crisis, the chance to start working on the “Enciclopedia del Románico en Portugal” (Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in Portugal) arose. The opportunity came in 2009 from the Ramón Areces Foundation, another of the SMLRF’s reliable and indispensable partners in many of its initiatives. The foundation raised the possibility of producing a book on Romanesque art in Portugal, and thus the “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in Spain” became the “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque in the Iberian Peninsula”, although its publication would have to wait a few more years. As it has been mentioned, one of the principles that governs any of the projects launched by the SMLRF is the implication of the region and its people and institutions. This has been the case at every step of the Encyclopedia project across Spain’s autonomous communities, where locals, the region’s own residents, have been responsible for researching their heritage; the Foundation’s role was to obtain the resources and coordinate the processes, on the understanding that the real stakeholder and ultimate beneficiary of the project is the region itself. The participation of Portuguese institutions and companies were also sought for the research on Portuguese Romanesque art, but this was not possible at the time, so this attempt to

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conduct research similar to the way it was conducted in Spain was only partially realized, the result of which was the book “Arte românica em Portugal” (Romanesque Art in Portugal), written by Portuguese specialists and published in 2010. But once again, perseverance paid off and a few years later the Ramón Areces Foundation decided to take on the compilation of “Romanesque Art in Portugal”; research began in 2018 to compile the country’s 300 Romanesque buildings, with several general studies on different aspects, and a publication date of 2021 was set. Although the funding is entirely Spanish, both foundations uphold the explicit approach of involving local stakeholders, not only because of the collaboration required from the owners or administrative managers of the properties being studied, but also because the research is being conducted by Portuguese specialists, who are also responsible for the scientific coordination of the work. The “Encyclopedia of the Romanesque” is currently one of the most significant examples of the internationalization of the SMLRF’s work, not only because of the research conducted outside Spain, but also because of its enormous diffusion; the Encyclopedia can be found in the world’s most prestigious libraries, almost a hundred of which are in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, and the United States. The entire archive that has been compiled for this project—not all of it published, particularly the photographs—is gradually being made available to the public, as an open source, through a website that aims to become the leading site for Romanesque art, a meeting point for specialists and enthusiasts: https://www.romanicodigital. com. The entire collection can be consulted here, searches can be performed, and new data, research and publications can be gradually added. In short, it is the online expression of the Center for Romanesque Studies, a tool to raise awareness about and popularize accumulated knowledge, which is also working to incorporate this content into repositories such as Europeana, and which also has a social media presence through Facebook and Twitter, with some 50,000 followers. At the same time as the initial efforts were being made in the study of Romanesque art, another team was embarking on a parallel path aimed at raising awareness about heritage, also from the necessary perspective of economic profitability and job creation. Ornamentos Arquitectónicos (OA) was created after a period of training in the workshop schools. This small company specializes in crafting models of different monuments with a high quality of execution, with the utmost realism, and with surprising detail that can be replicated in molds. It began first by reproducing miniature replicas of churches in the area, then other sites, and later it began to make all types of monuments and even a full range of buildings and constructions that their owners or managers—generally institutions or business corporations—wanted to publicize because of their representative value. Thus, models of façades, sculptures, architectural details, historic centers, even reservoir dams and football stadiums were created. The product was also internationalized by replicating buildings like the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, the Citadel of Carcassonne, Mont Saint-Michel, Mozart’s birthplace in Salzburg, the Monument to the Discoveries in Lisbon, the al-Haram Mosque in Mecca and the Esplanade of the Mosques in Jerusalem, etc., for over 600 original pieces, 29 of which are located

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outside of Spain. Made in an artificial marmorino designed specifically for OA’s work and then hand-painted, the success of these products was tremendous, but that success also posed a threat: China began to produce pirate plastic copies of the original OA models at much lower prices, albeit of much lower quality, making it necessary to focus on much more specialized pieces and to seek direct and personalized commissions, a segment on which the company now centers. Meanwhile, another part of the work team focused on restoration and conservation of the movable and immovable heritage of the surrounding area, seeking funding from both public administrations and private entities that include a commitment to heritage and culture among their social responsibility objectives. This work has made it possible to work on some hundred buildings to date, although we must recognize that the dedication of resources to the conservation of cultural heritage has left much to be desired in recent years. One of the most noteworthy of all the programs developed in this regard is the “Plan Románico Norte” (North Romanesque Plan), which, with a budget of almost 10 million euros, made work on 54 Romanesque churches possible from 2005 to 2012, both in terms of the buildings themselves and their furnishings and surroundings. The Spanish-Portuguese cross-border “Románico Atlántico (Atlantic Romanesque)” plan was also launched in 2000, which, with the support of public administrations and with funding from the Iberdrola Foundation, is still active after almost 30 projects and an investment of close to e5 million. The model has been replicated by the Foundation and by other organizations in other regions, following similar guidelines and with the underlying principle that the local population must always be informed of the work being done and that, in turn, a series of initiatives for the external promotion of this heritage must be set in motion. For this reason, the motto of the North Romanesque Plan was “we intervene, and we talk about it”, because public awareness is essential for the future conservation of these heritage sites. The informative aspect has been a constant in the activities of the SMLRF and its predecessors, in such a way that taking advantage of the infrastructure offered by the Monastery and its enormous attractiveness—even during its restoration—that it started organizing different courses and workshops on diverse topics (preferably related to the art and culture of the Middle Ages) as early as 1985. In 2021, the 35th edition of the “Seminar on the History of Monasticism” was held, which is one of the leading events of its kind in Spain, as well as the 22nd edition of “The Keys to Romanesque Art” and the 12th edition of the “Romanesque Educational Workshop”, in addition to other workshops on medieval music, medieval calligraphy and heritage photography. These events, traditionally held in Aguilar, are gradually starting to be celebrated in other cities as well, such as the “Romanesque Art Conference” which, in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council, is held in Madrid. But above all, we would like to mention the “Ars Mediaevalis Colloquiums”, which were slated to celebrate their 10th edition in 2020 and were canceled because of Covid-19, and which are experiencing a growing international impact. As one of the most specialized events, and therefore the one with the smallest attendance, it attracts scholars from a wide range of countries, both European and American, who are gradually finding the colloquiums to be an entertaining space for meeting and

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debate that is above all rigorous in its content. The limitations imposed by Covid-19 have made it necessary to explore new avenues for these courses, some of which are already offered online. And the response to this system has meant that the SMLRF has multiplied the number of courses on offer via the website. Once again, a challenge has been turned into an opportunity. The loyalty of students and speakers is strong, not only because they find relevant topics and rigorous organization in these courses and workshops, but also because they have discovered in Aguilar a welcoming place, where other people with the same interests can enjoy an atmosphere and experiences that are not easy to find. These activities have mostly managed to bring together academia and non-specialists with a great interest in heritage, bridging a gap that is sometimes abysmal. And once again, the strategy for success has been based on simple foundations such as honesty, humility, and precise and efficient work. The lectures given at some of these courses are regularly published, within a maximum period of half a year, and the SMLRF is currently perhaps the only Spanish publishing house specializing in medieval culture, or at least the one with the largest collection of titles on this subject. Five or six books are published annually on a regular basis, including the journal Codex Aqvilarensis, the 36th issue of which was published in 2021, and which is indexed and evaluated in SCOPUS, CIRC, Dialnet, Emerging Sources Citation Index, ERIHPlus, LATINDEX, MIAR, SHERPA/RoMEO, International Medieval Bibliograph, ISOC and Regesta Imperii. Its editorial and scientific boards include renowned researchers from universities and organizations in Spain, Portugal, France, Switzerland, Mexico, and the United States. Other publications, ranging from doctoral theses to children’s books and guides, as well as a quarterly magazine, “Patrimonio” (Heritage), are published in addition to the lectures given at the courses and symposia. The magazine was created as a tool to raise awareness about the activities of the Castile and León Historical Heritage Foundation, an organization that was actively involved in restoring and raising awareness about the autonomous community’s cultural heritage, and which joined the SMLRF in 2015. The contents were then opened up to broader topics, even those of international interest, incorporating the subtitle of “Heritage and Cultural Tourism Magazine”, which has been its new purpose ever since. At the time of writing, issue 72 has just been published and the magazine is a symbol of what the Foundation wants its future to be in the field of cultural activity: outreach based on knowledge, diversification of contents and emotions based on respect and quality.

4.4 Beyond the Romanesque Romanesque art was the reason behind all these efforts, and for years it has been one of the cornerstones on which many projects have been based. However, although the roots that the SMLRF has in the culture of the Middle Ages (particularly the one represented in the region of Aguilar de Campoo) and the natural relationship

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between the two must not be forgotten, the future necessarily involves broadening the Foundation’s horizons. Although we have launched projects related to social care for the elderly, training in a range of fields with a strong focus on employment, and the development of artificial intelligence systems for the protection of heritage, initiatives related to the world of culture and its discovery and enjoyment are still seen as vital for the future, and in recent years have been an intense field of work for the Foundation’s teams. Recognizing both that the impact and demand for cultural heritage depends on raising awareness about it and that the way awareness is raised has changed, Canal Patrimonio (https://www.canalpatrimonio.com) was launched in 2006. This is a platform that specializes in cultural heritage videos and news, with an emphatically educational and interactive approach, creating a virtual space dedicated entirely to the promotion and diffusion of art, history, architecture, archaeology, tourism and culture, a community that has more than 50,000 followers on social media. But if it is possible to see the characteristics, history, and beauty of a monument, a landscape or a canvas in a documentary, why not go and enjoy it first-hand, guided by people who can tell you everything about it and tell it well? This is the core concept behind Cultur Viajes SLU, a Foundation-created and owned travel agency that aims to take the classroom to the country, to the city, to any place where there is a heritage site worthy of being appreciated. The service it provides is based on a remarkably simple principle: quality enjoyment, understanding that this quality is tied to everything from transport, accommodation, and meals to the sites visited, the information provided, the supplementary material, etc. Fortunately, this initiative, which began as a small pilot test in 2014, is growing exponentially, with a customer profile similar to those who attend the courses, that is, a discerning customer with a high degree of interest in culture and enough financial comfort to allocate part of their budget to enjoying it. After seven years, and despite the difficult and forced interruption caused by the global pandemic, Cultur Viajes has reached different countries in Europe and the Middle East and is expecting to soon expand its range of services to Asia, Africa and America, all with cultural heritage as its objective and destination. The SMLRF also actively collaborates on international projects, especially those involving the European Union. By way of example, we would like to mention several projects that are under development or have recently been completed: CDETA, for the digitization of cultural and natural heritage, with the participation of Estonia, Spain, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, Slovenia, and Italy and a budget of e2 million. GEFRECON-POCTEP, which allocates e1 million for joint Spain-Portugal forest management and fire prevention. INUNDATIO-Interreg Sudoe, a collaboration between Spain, Portugal and France for the development of a system to reduce the risk of flooding due to sudden storms by combining sensor technology, artificial intelligence, geographic information systems and telecommunications, terrain modeling and prevention and emergency management strategies, with a budget of e1.4 million. NAPOCTEP, for the design, promotion and marketing of tourist routes featuring Napoleon, with a budget of e700,000. DISCOVER DUERO-DOURO, with the aim of promoting sustainable tourism around the Spanish Douro and Portuguese Douro, funded with e1 million. IBERICC GLOBAL-POCTEP, which, with an

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endowment of e1.2 million, aims to promote the internationalization of Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs) on the Spanish/Portuguese border through business cooperation and the implementation of new models, digital tools and strategies for the sector. Impactour-Horizon 2020, endowed with e3 million, which aims to turn cultural tourism into a major driver of local development, assessing resources, diversifying actions, promoting activities and implementing a policy of best practices. MUS.NET-Creative Europe, which devotes e325,000 to the development of best practices that improve experiences and attract new audiences for small museums. MUSeum NETwork, a project with a further e325,000 for audience development, designed for a network of cultural institutions in four European countries (Italy, Spain, Poland, and Slovenia) seeking to enhance awareness of their centers and attract new audiences. HERIT-DATA, which aims to develop and apply new technologies to measure and reduce the impact of mass tourism on heritage cities, a project involving organizations, companies and technology centers in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, and Portugal, with a budget of e4.2 million. BODAH-INTERREG ATLANTIC AREA, which allocates e1.5 million to the application of Big Open Data for the better management of tourism and heritage in cities in the Atlantic regions of Spain, Portugal, France, and the United Kingdom. WINE & SENSES, endowed with e300,000, to boost tourism in five European rural wine-growing regions (Spain, Italy, Hungary, Portugal, and the Czech Republic) by creating tours centered on wine heritage. And finally, for the sake of brevity, TExTOUR, for the design of policies and strategies based on cultural tourism with a positive impact on the social and economic development of different regions, with the participation of eighteen partners from eleven countries and a budget of around e4 million. Incorporating new technologies in the management of cultural heritage, in all its dimensions, is now clearly essential, which is why the SMLRF launched the Monitoring Heritage System (MHS) project years ago. This technological platform facilitates the management of heritage buildings, complexes, and cities through the installation of a network of wireless sensors at key points to monitor environmental and structural parameters in real time, as well as other parameters related to energy consumption, security, and visitor numbers. The data collected is transformed into knowledge and fed into a dashboard, which provides a 3D model of the building or the city that the manager uses to identify how each space is performing at any given moment and make the right conservation and management decisions. There have been many activities implemented since the recovery of the Monastery of Santa María la Real began, adapting to the times, to new demands and always exploring new avenues. We have discussed those related to cultural heritage, but the scope of action has also multiplied, with projects related to social care for the elderly, job training and resource management. The versatility of the SMLRF is one of its defining features and its work has been recognized with numerous accolades (https:// www.santamarialareal.org/premios-y-reconocimientos), although perhaps the best award has been its own sustainability, with a durability that has allowed the structure to consolidate and grow, with a committed staff that currently numbers around 200,

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the best and most obvious example that heritage can create jobs and an economy and that this initiative can be viable in any corner of the world.

4.5 In Closing: The Partnerships Needed to Take Us Forward into the Future Nobody, or hardly anybody, disputes the fact that there is strength in numbers, which is why collaborative proposals have always been fundamental to the SMLRF’s work, a focus underscored by years of experience and results. We have endeavored to align our efforts with public and private organizations that share the same interests and objectives, which means that there is a wide range of partners in any given project. We have tried to be competitive, but not to compete, because exclusivity, when it is gained alone, fails to make a contribution; on the contrary, it requires more effort for poorer results, which is why we have always encouraged the participation of people or groups who share the same interests. When it comes to cultural heritage, the economic resources to invest are always limited while the needs are many, which is why it is crucial to seize opportunities by designing projects, seeking support and partners, and ensuring careful management and good communication. Experience shows that needlessly seeking the limelight is absurd, and that it is results which add value and build a reputation, not just the photo-op. Helping others to help you is good policy, so whenever possible, we have also supported interesting projects, from the launch of the Center Européen d’Art et Civilisation Médiévale in Conques (France) in 1990, to the management of the Saint-Louis Workshop School in Senegal (2008–2014); from the design in 2012–2013 of a plan for the study and recovery of the Valdivia River and Corral Bay forts in Valdivia (Chile), to the latest European projects. The list of the SMLRF’s partners and collaborators includes dozens of names, from small local associations to governments and multinational companies. Most importantly, the Foundation has developed a working method, a strategy that started at the Monastery of Aguilar and has since been applied in many other regions: heritage as an economic value, the role of the local community (its identification with this heritage and its recognition of that heritage as a distinguishing feature), the consideration of the environment (in its broadest sense) and its management with local civil society leading the way, beyond the vital role of public administrations. The future, as the past has demonstrated, also involves seizing opportunities, analyzing viable scenarios, creativity, and the sustainability of actions, while seeking to maintain independence (above all economic) and not basing all cultural heritage initiatives on the exclusive backing of public administrations.

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References Assas MD (1872) Monasterio o Abadía de Aguilar de Campoó. Museo Español de Antiguëdades, I, 597–620 de Diego JLR (2004) Colección diplomática de Santa María de Aguilar de Campoo. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León de Fauve MEG (1992) La orden premonstratense en España. El monasterio de Santa María de Aguilar de Campoo (Siglos XI–XV). Two-volume. Aguilar de Campoo: Centro de Estudios del Románico de Guereño Sanz MTL (1997) Monasterios Medievales Premonstratenses. Reinos de Castilla y León. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León del Mazo SM, Mosqueira SH (2018) Escuelas Taller 2030. “Aprender haciendo”. Madrid: Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo García Guinea MÁ (1975) El Románico en Palencia. Segunda Edición. Palencia: Excma. Diputación Provincial González JN (2011) China como oportunidad”. El Norte de Castilla. 29 de marzo de 2011, Opinión, 25 Hernando Garrido JL (1995) Escultura tardorrománica en el Monasterio de Santa María la Real en Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia). Aguilar de Campoo: Centro de Estudios del Románico Hernando Garrido JL (2002) Aguilar de Campoo. Monasterio de Santa María la Real. In: Enciclopedia del Románico en Castilla y León. Palencia I, Miguel Ángel García Guinea y José María Pérez González (directores). Aguilar de Campoo: Fundación Santa María la Real—Centro de Estudios del Románico, pp 186–214 Matesanz Vera P (1994) Arqueología y restauración arquitectónica: el caso del monasterio de Santa María la Real (Aguilar de Campoo, Palencia). Cuadernos de Prehistoria y Arqueología de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, vol 21, pp 313–340. https://doi.org/10.15366/cupauam1994. 21.010 Mélida JR (1915) El monasterio de Aguilar de Campoo. Boletín De La Real Academia De La Historia 66:43–49 Prieto JT, Glaber R (2004) Historias del Primer Milenio. Edición revisada, introducción, traducción y notas. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas Pérez JM (2017) Peridis: Hasta una ruina puede ser una esperanza. Monasterio de Santa María la Real de Aguilar de Campoo. Aguilar de Campoo: Fundación Santa María la Real del Patrimonio Histórico Rodríguez D (1897) El monasterio aquilarense o Abadía de Aguilar de Campóo. Romero Impresor, Madrid Unamuno MD (1922) Andanzas y visiones españolas. Madrid: Renacimiento VV AA (1977) Boletín de la Asociación de Amigos del Monasterio de Aguilar, 1, Aguilar de Campoo

Chapter 5

Cultural Diplomacy: From Praxis to a Possible Concept Bruno do Vale Novais

Abstract What is Cultural Diplomacy? This question has been the motivation for my studies in the area of International Relations and its interface with research in the field of Culture. To speak of Cultural Diplomacy is to think about the symbolic-cultural elements that national states use as foreign policy instruments. This paper presents, therefore, a discussion about the connections between Culture, Diplomacy, Foreign Policy, and International Cultural Relations with a view to identifying what Cultural Diplomacy is and, thus, elaborating a concept that can explain what this field is. It is based on the premise that Cultural Diplomacy is an umbrella for other diplomacies: artistic, patrimonial, educational, sports, tourist, scientific, and innovation. In the case of the text on screen, it is structured in discussions in two complementary parts toward the success of the objectives proposed by this study. First, we sought to discuss the interface between Culture and International Relations to understand what Cultural Diplomacy is in the second part of the argumentation. In both, there are specific discussions that help in understanding the object of analysis referred to here. At the end, at the conclusion of the article, we present the concept of Cultural Diplomacy identified and described by the researcher who writes to you. Thus, from reflections about the intersection between Culture, Diplomacy, and Foreign Policy and understanding of what is meant by International Cultural Relations, it is concluded that Cultural Diplomacy is a part of the international action of the countries. This cultural dimension began to be part of foreign policy from the nineteenth century onwards and was strengthened in the twentieth century. Moreover, the observance of models consonant to cultural diplomacy worked by some countries allows us to understand that there is a demand, in contemporary times, for strengthening this area by national states. Ph.D. student in Culture and Society at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) with research for the production of doctoral thesis on cultural diplomacy in the contemporary world. Researcher at the Center for International Negotiations (CAENI), of the University of São Paulo (USP) (https:// caeni.com.br/), and in the Center for Multidisciplinary Studies in Culture (CULT) of UFBA (http:// www.cult.ufba.br/wordpress/). B. do Vale Novais (B) Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Salvador, Bahia, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_5

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Keywords International relations and culture · Cultural diplomacy · International cultural relations · Foreign policy · Diplomacy

5.1 Introduction What is Cultural Diplomacy? This question has been the motivation for my studies in the area of International Relations and its interface with research in the field of Culture.1 To speak of Cultural Diplomacy is to think about the symbolic-cultural elements that national states use as foreign policy instruments. When architecting a design to explain the possible field of Cultural Diplomacy, we would have the following proposal: The illustration presents Cultural Diplomacy with an umbrella for other diplomacies: artistic, heritage, educational, sports, tourist, scientific, and innovation. Based on this attempt to explain practice what could be configured as Cultural Diplomacy, it is then asked what meaning this would have. First, it is worth stating that it does not belong to a theoretical field, that is, it is not a specific academic discipline. Cultural Diplomacy is understood in a preliminary way as a praxis relevant to International Cultural Relations under the responsibility of the various national states. (Ribeiro 2011). In this sense, Cultural Relations at the world level aggregate, in addition to Cultural Diplomacy worked or supported by countries, other modes of cultural, intellectual, scientific, communicational, commercial, economic, religious, tourist exchange, among others. From this perspective, it will move on to the discussion of the interface between Culture and International Relations, which, in turn, will help in the subsequent discussion and presentation of the concept of Cultural Diplomacy that can only be understood from the observance of the actions of national states in this sector. Thus, the present work presents the trajectory that proposes a concept that can explain the field of Cultural Diplomacy. In the case of the text on screen, it is structured in discussions in two complementary parts toward the conclusions of the study. First, we sought to discuss the interface between “Culture and International Relations” in to understand “what Cultural Diplomacy is” in the second part of the argumentation. In both, there are specific discussions that help in understanding the object of study referred to here. At the end, at the conclusion of the paper, we present the concept of Cultural Diplomacy identified and described by the researcher who writes to you (Fig. 5.1).

1

This paper is a review of the first chapter of the authors’ master’s thesis produced and defended at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), in 2013, under the guidance of Professor Dr. Antonio Albino Canelas Rubim, whose title is: Paths trodden, possible horizons: a look under the cultural diplomacy of the Brazilian State in the period from 2003 to 2010. Available at: < https://repositorio. ufba.br/ri/handle/ri/14952 > . Access in: March 9, 2021.

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Fig. 5.1 Source Prepared by the author

5.2 Part 1—Culture in International Relations: From International Cultural Relations to Cultural Diplomacy Culture Studies, International Relations Studies, Two perspectives, Two ways of studying diverse practices that in theoretical-conceptual terms materialize in a transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and multidisciplinary way. How to talk about the studies of Culture and International Relations without reflecting the transversality that permeates both fields? How to study Culture and International Relations without thinking about its connections with Economics, Political Science, History, Geography, Communication, Law, Sociology, Anthropology, and other social and academic spheres in the field of Human Sciences, Social Sciences, Arts, Philosophy, and Humanities in general? In this perspective, studies by researchers João Pontes Nogueira and Nizar Messari can be used to understand the dialogue and intersection between Culture and International Relations. In “Theory of International Relations: currents and debates”, for example, the authors argue that the theories of International Relations are presented through so-called “great debates”, which have evolved throughout history from the events concerning world politics (Nogueira and Messari 2005). From the perspective of studies of Culture, contributions of researchers in this area—such as Canclini (2003), Garretón (2003), Rubim (2008), Castells (2000), among others—help to understand that there is dialogue with the field of International Relations in the sense that Culture is built, disseminated, assimilated, appropriated, and reconfigured by the exchange of knowledge, practices, speeches, and visions. Therefore, through dialogue and contact between different peoples. Thus, Culture is not restricted to political and geographical boundaries to be produced and reproduced. And it is from this perspective that the presence of the exchange is configured as essential to the dynamic character of the configuration and reconfiguration of culture.

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5.2.1 International Cultural Relations: Preliminary Observations The Argentine researcher Edwin Harvey published in 1991 International Cultural Relations in Ibero-America and the World. A classic book to study the theme of Culture and its connection with International Relations. This publication contributes to the understanding of “International Cultural Relations” in two ways: in the first place, the text corresponds to the observance of its praxis that in general can be described as the realization of cultural activities, programs, and projects across borders. The second mode refers to the analysis of the actions of its main agents: governments, non-governmental or intergovernmental organizations. In this sense, the author argues that International Cultural Relations are part of the four main dimensions of contemporary International Relations: (a) politics; (b) economic, financial and commercial; (c) defense of the Armed Forces; (d) cultural (Harvey 1991). It is from this premise that the researcher begins to study the place of Culture on the international scene. Harvey (1991) states that the field of Culture reflects a change in terms of a transformation in the functioning of international society in some senses, which allows us to say that, in the context of globalization—especially in the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall—characteristics of this phenomenon, particularly local and global interdependence, reflect tensions, and conflicts between global identity and national identity, in addition to the political and economic interests of states and international companies. Therefore, these factors interfere with the lives of communities, nations, and states. In illustrative terms, it is pertinent to mention the film industry as emblematic of the political propaganda carried out by the U.S. mainly during the Cold War, and its perpetuated values, such as the “American way of life” disseminated by the “Hollywood Industry”. Through this, it is possible to perceive relations between identity and its dialogue with tensions generated by the paradoxical and complement the interface between “local and global”. In this guideline, Harvey (1991) understands that there is a double tendency. Local identities are in the hands of the emerging universal civilization and have the world as an arena. This clash between “local and global” involves three fields—political, economic, and cultural—which have been part of the countries’ international activities. However, it is noticeable that only the first two were, in addition to the discourses, prioritized by the diplomacies and foreign policies of the countries. But why? This fact implies the rare bibliography on the connection between Culture and International Relations. The theories of this field themselves silence the relevance it has to the world system. About this, Janira Borja says that “[…] the main theoretical currents that make up the mainstream of the countryside do not take culture as a decisive theme for understanding the relationship between countries and international actors” (Borja 2011, p. 17). Notwithstanding, although studies on Culture in International Relations have restricted space, Harvey’s research (1991) shows the existence of a “field of International Cultural Relations”, which has been worked both by national states and by other actors—although with greater performance of countries, mainly through Cultural Diplomacy.

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Since the 1950s, national states have been carrying out cultural activities in the external sphere more clearly. During this period, international organizations of a public nature also inserted the cultural theme into their work agendas. In illustrative terms, the cultural programs implemented by the United Nations (UN), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), among others, can be cited. This occurred through a new conception of solidarity, cooperation, and global dispute in the context of the Cold War. Moreover, it arose because of the need to re-establish world peace, as well as the search for new markets. These demands would then be achieved through the strengthening of multilateral and bilateral relations. Therefore, the intense movement of goods, people, capital, messages, values, and cultural exchange programs—both by countries and international organizations has started to take place in different areas around the world. Because, from the middle of the twentieth century, international actors strengthened and/or started activities related to the field of Culture in their scope of work in the global sphere. In the context of “New World Order”, Ribeiro (2011), when studying the role of Cultural Diplomacy in Brazil’s Foreign Policy, considers the real power that national states had with regard to International Cultural Relations. In his view, cultural exchange had been, up to that moment, increasingly constant among societies from different parts of the globe. That is: at the end of the Cold War that the study of Harvey (1991) was carried out. Among the questions pointed out by the author, the following doubt emerged: what were the demands of International Cultural Relations at that time? Harvey’s study (1991), then, presents a possible answer to this question through two observations presented below. The first corresponds to the fact that there was a lack regarding the constitution or strengthening of institutional structures appropriate to the work of cultural policies abroad in the Cold War scenario. The second refers to the demand for the establishment of legal norms of international law. Therefore, in order for International Cultural Relations to develop as a field, it was necessary that both of the gaps mentioned were overcome, above all, in order to improve the performance of countries in this sector. There was, therefore, room for dialogue between different national states regarding the debate on International Cultural Relations. The previous argument allows us to conclude that in addition to creating/strengthening institutions and establishing legal norms of international law with a view to legitimizing Cultural Diplomacy, national states should: (a) consider domestic contexts with regard to the determination of activities, projects and proposals to be implemented at bilateral or multilateral level; (b) to link actions to the foreign policy guidelines of their countries and their national legal systems. Harvey (1991) also considers that three trends were part of International Cultural Relations since the 1990s: (a) Cultural Diplomacy of states; (b) cultural cooperation carried out by international organizations; (c) emergence of norms for international cultural legislation at the multilateral level—which gradually began to meet demands presented in the previous paragraph. In this way, in order to facilitate understanding,

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each trend to follow will be explained. The first corresponds to the Cultural Diplomacy of the States. This is linked to the foreign and cultural policy of the countries. It can be unilateral or bilateral. It is, by the way, a recent phenomenon. In illustrative terms, the emergence at the end of the nineteenth century of the International Union for the Protection of Artistic and Literary Works (established through the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of September 9, 1886—which became in 1974 the current World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)—a specialized body of the UN) has certainly inspired the performance of countries in the field of Culture at the international level. Nonetheless: It was up to France to pioneer the work of incorporating the cultural alternative into the universe of its Foreign Policy. From the beginning of the 20th century, other countries gradually followed the example of France: Great Britain and Italy in the war-war period, Canada and the United States mainly after the second great war, the Federal Republic of Germany and Japan from the 1960s on. (Ribeiro 2011, p. 68).

But, the diffusion of the cultural production of the countries was already carried out in several periods before the last century. This was done according to the political, economic, and commercial interests of nations in other regions of the world even without being strategically planned as Cultural Diplomacy. To exemplify this assertion, the text of Professor José Roberto Severino entitled “Policies of Culture in Brazil: a brief reflection on the publication of the Universal Exhibition of Philadelphia (1876)” helps to understand actions of the Brazilian Empire in the nineteenth century related to the external dissemination of the country with a view to the search for investors and opening of new markets (Severino 2011, p. 04). The second trend of International Cultural Relations is in line with the recent birth of intergovernmental organizations aimed at the service of multilateral cooperation and cultural action. In general, they began to develop cultural policies on the international scene. These were systematized in objectives, goals, and own extranational programs, such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Ibero-American General Secretariat (Segib). The third trend, finally, refers to the development of a broad set of standards for international cultural legislation at the multilateral level, generally approved in world for a. These areas are specialized in regulation of constitutions and guidance of the functioning of intergovernmental organizations operating in the cultural field, a process that can be understood as the “Constitutional Law of International Organizations” that is formatted as follows: through agreements, conventions, and treaties. In addition, it refers to a new legal problem that corresponds to the process of standardization of interests and relationships linked to the very development of International Cultural Relations in contemporary times. (Harvey 1991). This author, therefore, advocates that even linked to the Foreign Policy of the countries since the end of the nineteenth century, only from the first decades of the twentieth century did the Cultural Diplomacy of the States acquire professionalism and organization. This occurred when this field began to coordinate its actions with emerging intergovernmental organizations, such as the UN.

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5.2.2 International Cultural Relations: Insertion of Cultural Diplomacy in the Foreign Policy of Some Countries In the preface to the work, Nations and Nationalisms: since 1780, Eric Hobsbawm states that throughout the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, issues involving “nations” and “nationalisms” were present more intensely in regions seen as “developed”. (Hobsbawn 1990). In this sense, criteria and objectives that defined “what a nation would be” resorted to the combination of elements shared by a given people, in a given territory: language, common history, common cultural traits, among others. These characteristics, from Hobsbawm’s perspective (1990), were “[…] exceptionally convincing for propagandistic and programmatic purposes” (Hobsbawn 1990, p. 15) by countries—such as political propaganda worked through the external dissemination of “national” cultural elements. That is, according to Harvey (1991), the first stage of development of International Cultural Relations took place between the end of the nineteenth century and the midtwentieth century—as previously said. Cultural advertising is the central feature of this period. On the other hand, it cannot be affirmed that cultural diplomacy occurred at this time. For, according to the author, national states only worked with dissemination of their cultural production in other countries through information, ideas, and messages with a view to the propagation of a national identity built by them, as well as to raise political, economic, and commercial benefits and advantages since the ideological dispute underpin and guide the political propaganda of countries, such as the USA, the USSR, Italy, and Germany, among others. Yes, moreover, initial phase. The main feature is the unilateral mode of action on the part of countries. Specific objectives and purposes were missing. There were also no institutional structures, as well as specialized human resources. In Europe this model developed with state participation. In this case, private initiatives received public funds to carry out dissemination and language teaching activities, in addition to disseminating the culture of their nations abroad. (Harvey 1991). Meanwhile, France and Germany cannot be included in the format explained. This assertion is justified with the argument that these countries have imposed administrative and budgetary measures, human resources in their Ministries of Foreign Affairs, and favor educational and cultural activities in other nations. There were also peculiarities of France and Germany concerning cultural propaganda. While that basically emphasized education in the internal environment, but with a look at the external scenario, it prioritized the maintenance of German identity outside Germany through investment in schools abroad. (Harvey 1991). From the perspective of Gómez-Escalonilla and Figueroa (2008), the cultural propaganda of France and Germany in this context occurred as exposed by Harvey (1991). In addition, they add that this political-ideological resource has been used in the Foreign Policy of Italy and the United Kingdom. Moreover, the occurrence of World War I entailed new demands for the external propaganda of states. Political emphasis was emphasized with a reduction in cultural diffusion by warring nations. After the end of the great conflict, most countries began the process of restructuring their actions related to political advertisements at the international level. Germany, an

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exception in this case, maintained its structures. Already in the period between wars, totalitarian policies and systems emerged. Cultural propaganda became ideological and political penetration for the purpose of expansion and domination. Therefore, a distinct form of cultural propaganda was inserted by national states, which characterizes the second phase of International Cultural Relations (Harvey 1991). The Soviet Foreign Policy Service adequately illustrates this step. The Pan Unionist Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) was created, which became Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries in 1958. The proposal of this body was to popularize Soviet culture abroad. This would be feasible through the mobilization of foreign intellectuals—a characteristic of periods called “Leninism” and “Stalinism” in the twentieth century, when not to intensify a Bolshevik militant proselytism in the rest of the world (Harvey 1991, p. 22). The rise of Hitler and, therefore, the end of the Weimar Republic provided the development of a Cultural Diplomacy in the German Reich. In line with the current context, this was used as an instrument of totalitarian political propaganda: Nazism sought to control cultural means, factors, and agents with a view to political-ideological propaganda. To this end, it adapted the organizational structure of the direction of cultural affairs of the Germanic Chancellery to the objectives of this political orientation that was characterized by ideological elements, as well as by a policy of exaltation of “Germanism” between Germans and their descendants residing abroad. This process was named, according to Harvey (1991), by The Fifth Column of Hitler’s Germany. In Italian lands, the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini created in 1938 the Institute of Cultural Relations with the Countries of Abroad, with a view, among other objectives, to the diffusion of homeland culture in different parts of the globe. Based in Rome, the Institute was responsible for coordinating and financing activities of other Italian cultural centers in different countries. The main purpose concerned the main function of this: to communicate to the world the Italian fascist ideology of Benito Mussolini. However, since 1889, a group of Italian intellectuals had created La Società Dante Alighieri for the spread of Italian culture and language in the world, […] reviving the spiritual ties of Italians abroad with their mother land and feeding between love and worship of Italian civilization (Alighieri 2013). Certainly, the pioneering character of French Cultural Diplomacy is related to the legacy of the reigns of Louis XIII and Louis XIV, in particular through the spread of French language and culture in Europe, Canada, and the Middle East (Ribeiro 2011)—which contributed to the French language already present in the aristocratic circuits of the Old World. Of bilateral character in its organizational beginnings during the first decades of the twentieth century, French Cultural Diplomacy was developed through the systematization of national governmental bodies, as Harvey (1991) pointed out. The Interministerial Commission on French Activities and Information abroad illustrates well the Cultural Diplomacy of France in its elementary period. Dependent on the Presidency of the French Council, the Commission comprised three Ministries: (a) Foreign Affairs; (b) National Education; (c) Public Works. In 1946, though, the Commission was added to the Directorate General for Cultural Relations of the French Chancellery (Ribeiro 2011, p. 70).

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The British Council, established in 1935, is the main example of the architecture of Cultural Diplomacy in England. In a short time, he obtained a high degree of professionalism and specialization, particularly because of the outbreak of World War II and for having received the Royal Charter in 1940. In this sense, the British Council was institutionalized through the view that British foreign trade could be maximized if the State invested in International Cultural Relations. In the case of Spain, Júlia Erminia Riscado (2011) states that the performance of this State in Cultural Diplomacy was improved during the twentieth century. At that time, the Spanish government prioritized the American region and resorted to the use of the nation’s artistic-cultural products to make political propaganda. In Asia, particularly in Japan, the state’s work on Cultural Diplomacy was initiated by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) in 1923. On this issue, researcher Ploy Khumthukthit (2010) advocates that this country began its work in Cultural Diplomacy through the creation of an institute that same year with the purpose of promoting cultural exchange with China. The motivation for such an investment occurred once anti-Japanese sentiment was observed among young Chinese intellectuals. Therefore, in 1924, the Institute was elevated to the category of Department of Cultural Affairs linked to MOFA. Later, in the 1930s, this Department realized that rich countries had intensified their investments in international cultural exchange programs as instruments of Foreign Policy and Diplomacy. With the end of World War II, KBS began to prioritize work with China and Southeast Asian countries in order to maintain good relations with these nations. In this context, the body responsible for Japanese Cultural Diplomacy was already the Information Department, no longer linked to MOFA. In turn, this Department focused on the aspiration for a post at UNESCO, which was reached in July 1951 (Khumthukthit 2010). In the Region of the Americas, with regard to the United States, Ribeiro (2011) states that the country’s activities in the areas of International Cultural Relations and Cultural Diplomacy were started in an intense way in 1938, in the period between wars. In contrast to, his actions were restricted to private and philanthropic entities, such as the Carnegie Endowment and the Rockfeller Foundation (Ribeiro 2011). With the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. realized that it would be strategic to use the transmission of cultural information beyond geographical boundaries since this “[…] it was the only means capable of mitigating the external effects of the isolation that the country had so far lived” (Ribeiro 2011, p. 79). In the post-war period, Ribeiro (2011) pointed out that contrary to the International Cultural Relations and Cultural Diplomacy of western European countries, which emphasized the international projection of their cultural values, the U.S. believed that in this context it was necessary to work more intensely on issues depending on ideological disputes through culture due to its status as a world superpower. In this way, “[…] anti-communism came to occupy the first place in the concerns of those responsible for the work in this field” (Ribeiro 2011, p. 82). Regarding Cultural Diplomacy in Mexico, studies by researcher Fabiola Rodríguez Barba, specifically “La Diplomacia Cultural de México”, are pertinent. In this work, the author argues that since the Mexican Revolution of 1910 the national

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state began to create a cultural identity for the country and to invest in internal and external dissemination of Mexican artistic-cultural production (Barba 2008, p. 01). In addition, in the late 1950s, the Mexican state created the Undersecretary of Culture. In the following decade, Culture was inserted in the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs. Later, between 1970 and 1976, Mexico began to participate in several international cultural forums. “[…] Further diversification of foreign relations has been achieved and Cultural Diplomacy has been promoted, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean” (Barba 2008a, p. 02). Canada began working in the field of Cultural Diplomacy through the conclusion of bilateral cultural agreements. These instruments consequently helped the dissemination of the country’s international image. The choice of the Canadian State, with regard to the insertion of the cultural dimension in its scope of international action, was defined with the perspective that the strengthening of relations with other national states through Culture could be a potential strategy to generate positive impacts on its diplomatic work, as well as the interests of its Foreign Policy (Barba 2008b). Whereas, this country only negotiated and signed cultural agreements from the mid1960s, specifically with France in 1965. A posteriori did so with the following parts: Belgium in 1967; Federal Republic of Germany in 1975; Mexico in 1976; Japan in 1976; Italy in 1984; Spain, in 1989, among others. Although the author argues that the Canadian State decided to invest in Cultural Diplomacy as a reaction to the first cultural and educational exchanges carried out by the province of Québec during the 1960s in the twentieth century.

5.2.3 Cultural Diplomacy: Parallel Field to the Foreign Policy of National States? It is identified that there was a greater concern to disseminate cultural elements on the part of the political action of national states in the international environment, especially from the “Age of Extremes”—title given by Eric Hobsbawm in one of his works in the twentieth century—until contemporaneity. It is perceived that issues of identity, political projects, and external dissemination of countries through Culture are problems pertinent to Cultural Diplomacy. It is observed the existence of two primordial models of Cultural Diplomacy that have been used by the international actors identified by Harvey (1991): “administrative unions” and “conference diplomacy”. The first example took place throughout the nineteenth century. The agents of this movement are organizations, such as the Universal Postal Union, the International Union for the Protection of Artistic and Literary Works, which since 1974 has been succeeded by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Regarding the second example, “conference diplomacy”, it is stated that the holding of international multilateral congresses characterizes this format. In illustrative terms it is possible to mention: (a) Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council; (b) Vienna Congress (1814–1815); (c) Holy Covenant (1814); (d) Bretton

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Woods Conference (1944); (e) Yalta, San Francisco, and Potsdam Conference (1945). This type of diplomacy had high significance in terms of international policy, such as the Hague Conferences on the Right of War (1899; 1907) and the United Nations Conferences convened by UNESCO from the mid-last century. These have implications for the field of Cultural Diplomacy: approval of norms and conventions of international law linked to international cultural legislation. From the mid-20th. century, permanent international organizations were created, such as The United Nations Educational, Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), resulting from the International Conference of States held in 1945. UNESCO would become, a posteriori, paradigmatic to what is understood by Multilateral Cultural Diplomacy because of the insertion of observed work parameters and in many cases adopted by national states. In this period, the Organization of American States (OAS) was created in 1948 and the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI) in 1949, among others. It is appropriate to support the assertion that there is interdependence between the spheres that underlie Cultural Diplomacy, that is, Culture and International Relations. In this sense, it is advocated that, in a kind of dialectic, it is believed that the former depends and contributes to the development of the second and vice versa. It is almost impossible, moreover, to claim that there is a genuine culture, typical of each nation. Culture, or rather, cultures, are developed by mixing, dialogue, exchange, as well as tensions, shocks, and conflicts. In this sense, International Relations are locus so that cultures can interact and transform. Through this discussion, it is also understood that elements of a way of seeing and building life are entered in another distinct way, which implies a new culture or a different clothing for what already existed. But is it possible to speak in a particular Culture of each nation? Canclini (2008) explains this through the ideas of “cultural hybridism” or “hybrid cultures”. From the author’s perspective, the culture produced, reproduced, and appropriated in a given space is reterritorialized and communicates with other cultures or forms of production of symbolic goods. In this case, it can be understood that states have defined national identities of their countries through the understanding and construction of a homeland culture that is, in fact, the sum of different “international” cultures assimilated and reinterpreted by people from a certain territorial space. This occurs, therefore, through cultural exchange: states delimit their homeland identities through the choice of manifestations, artistic-cultural products, and ways of life practiced in their geographical boundaries, according to their interests—both in the domestic environment and in the international scenario. When considering exchange as a catalyst for contemporary cultural production, it is pertinent to resume these questions: since national culture is a construction, in the sense of political definition, how can Cultural Diplomacy be seen? As an instrument to support the foreign policy of countries or as a parallel field to the actions of national states in the world? Moreover, by the understanding that the Culture of any space dialogues and reincorporates elements of other territorial areas, is it possible to say that there is a national Culture? How does Cultural Diplomacy reflect these problems? In “Global Culture: nationalism, globalization, and modernity”, the researcher Mike Featherstone, with regard to the period parallel to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the “New World Order”, questions whether there is a global culture. “[…] If

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by a global culture we mean something akin to the culture of the nation-state writ large, then the answer is patently a negative one” (Featherstone 1990, p. 03). The author adds that it is impossible to identify global cultural integration without the protagonism of national states. But, from the end of the 1980s, the process of “globalization of culture” or “transnationalization of culture” by other international actors was intensified: societies began to shift from the “national” to the “transnational” direction. It is in this global space of political, economic, commercial, and symbolic disputes—in an image-cultural order—that the inquiry into national identity is maintained. This question certainly highlights the search for an understanding of its own or that represents the image that national states have of themselves and/or want to transmit to the world. In this perspective, studies by Manuel Castells, particularly the work “The power of identity”, published in 2000, helps to understand these issues. Castells (2000) advocates that he understands identity as a source of experience for a people. In this sense, when observing the historical dynamics of the early 1990s, the author states that there is a return of nationalisms and the strengthening of national states as agents of international relationship. Castells (2000), therefore, points to the possibility that, in the final context of the twentieth century, national states have reconfigured themselves as actors of a world intensely interconnected in the face of the paradoxical conjuncture between local and global, national identity/culture, and world identity/culture. Would imperialism have thus collapsed? From the perspective of Said (1999), especially in the book “Culture and Imperialism”, there is a strong relationship between Culture and Empire, particularly between the metropolitan West and its overseas territories—Africa, India, parts of the Far East, Australia, and the Caribbean. This study helps to think about how the imperialism movement implied conflicts between national identities in the world system, that is, in a scenario of dispute between cultures. In enlightening terms, the “resistance” of the colonizers of Europe is mentioned by Said. It is understood that national states have realized that investment in Cultural Diplomacy is potential for the following purpose: to promote, strengthen, and consolidate the insertion of their countries worldwide. With regard to the cultural dimension, external policies have based their scope of action essentially on the constructed national cultural identity. However, through the examples cited in the previous topic, the Cultural Diplomacy of the countries has not been seen either as a specific field of work of the States, but as an instrument in favor of the interests of the countries. The problem is that one does not perceive a state policy for Cultural Diplomacy, but policies of governments that work in this sector, according to their political-party platforms that may or may not consider the cultural diversity of their nations—except very few exceptions, such as France and Germany. Thus, it is correct to ratify that national identity is historical construction. Therefore, it is narrative used by its States to treat intercultural conflicts as well as to propose new synthesis to possible national identities that are in the continuous process of transformation (Canclini 1999). To that argument, Said adds that: “[…] the power to narrate, or to prevent other narratives from forming and arising, is very important for culture and imperialism, and is one of the main connections between them” (Said 1999, p. 13).

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These visions help to understand Cultural Diplomacy as a means by which the Foreign Policy of countries has used to consolidate spaces conquered in the world system through “Soft Power”—a concept studied and advocated by Nye (2004). Thus, by disseminating cultures experienced in their territories abroad, state actors implicitly explain the national identity they construct with a view to strengthening their bilateral relations and to seek opportunities conducive to future political, economic, and commercial negotiations, among other typologies. Therefore, it is perceived that Cultural Diplomacy has been a precious resource to discursive and ideological disputes on the international scene—that is, clashes over power. Based on this understanding, it will move on to the next topic. In this, a possible answer to the question that entitles it will be constructed.

5.3 Part 2—What is Cultural Diplomacy then? By observing the previous part of this article, it is perceived that researchers’ understandings about International Cultural Relations and problems about culture, identity, nations, and states were explained. In addition, inauguration examples of Cultural Diplomacy of some countries were presented, spread throughout the various continents of the globe.

5.3.1 Expansion of the Cultural Theme in Contemporary Diplomacy Ambassador Edgar Ribeiro (2011) presents Marcel Merle’s thesis to support the idea of the “centrality of culture in contemporary International Relations”. From this perspective, the cultural theme cannot currently be neglected—as it once was. Conversely, culture has the potential to be the object of constant dialogue with a view to creating “cultural ecumenism” since through this strategy, different cultures—from the West and the East—could enter into a political process of integration from cultural cooperation (Ribeiro 2011). This idea is in line with F.S.C. Northrop’s position on the subject. This intellectual emphasizes in “The Taming of the Nations” (1952) the importance of the cultural factor as a dynamic element of International Relations. Because it was written during the Cold War and under the impact of the Korean War, Ribeiro (2011) argues that the work contests the criterion of the “national interest” as an exclusive basis for Foreign Policy. This therefore reinforces its foundation. The core of Northrop’s proposal, from Ribeiro’s perspective (2011), is the demand for international cooperation sustained in mutual knowledge. In turn, culture, in this perspective, is seen as a favorable instrument for the effectiveness of foreign policy. Thus, the work of Culture research can be interpreted as a relevant moment for the construction of diagnosis by national states with a view to formatting a Foreign

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Policy in line with the contexts of their area of activity, with a view, above all, to the realization of their national interests. It would be an accessory element, in the words of Ribeiro (2011), who would seek to penetrate politically and ideologically through international cooperation. Another publication on the theme, International Cultural Relations (1986), by J.M. Mitchell, from Ribeiro’s perspective (2011), is relevant to the understanding of the field of Cultural Diplomacy. This occurs since the work reveals the contours of cultural cooperation referred to in the experience of countries that have more intensely worked on the subject, such as France and Germany. This book is innovative in the sense that it considers the particularity of the mechanisms of cultural diffusion. In summary, the diplomat understands that the texts of Northrop (1952), Merle (1985), and Mitchell (1986) collaborate, therefore, with the possibility of understanding a new dimension attributed to the locus of Culture in International Relations: not only the dissemination of products, goods or manifestations of a given culture to the world stage, but, above all, the cultural benefits achieved through cooperation and cultural exchange by different countries (Ribeiro 2011). With regard to Cultural Diplomacy, there is also interdependence between the State and cultural subsidies from internal agents. This results directly from the emergence of the vast and complex international network of intellectual cooperation, characterized by an increasingly interdisciplinary vision. In addition, Cultural Diplomacy can project values of nations’ internal cultures (Ribeiro 2011, p. 66). Finally, it is observed that the notion of Cultural Diplomacy advocated by Ribeiro (2011) corresponds to the relations between States in the field of Culture. These are made by the exchange and projections of cultural values between countries. Thus, cultural policies developed by the State, in its internal scope, are the basis for Cultural Diplomacy. In the reading of Kirsten Bound, Rachel Briggs, John Holden, and Samuel Jones, particularly in the report entitled “Cultural Diplomacy”, published in 2007, Cultural Diplomacy has been used as an instrument by state leaders to disseminate their personal images and the positive points of their nations. In addition, it seeks to strengthen the power of its countries on the international stage, as well as to build and/or solidify their bilateral and multilateral relations. The authors point out, while, that in terms of foreign policy, particularly in realpolitik thinking, culture and cultural exchanges are considered desirable, although not essential. Therefore, culture has been used to support the realization of economic, political, and commercial interests of countries in the international system. Bound et al. (2007) also affirm that it is consensual among many statesmen, the view that Cultural Diplomacy can be useful to relations between countries. In addition, the authors share the same view of Ribeiro (2011) regarding the argument that the field of Cultural Diplomacy is in turn based on a set of values pertinent to each national state (Bound et al. 2007, p. 13). Also, in this book, Bound et al. (2007) address the central character of culture in International Relations. They state that the concept of Cultural Diplomacy is polysemic, as it represents the complexity of contemporary Cultural Relations and values. In addition, culture—and therefore Cultural Diplomacy—are cross-cutting themes. They relate to Politics, Arts, Gastronomy, etc. Moreover, communication is one of the areas whose Cultural Diplomacy and International Cultural Relations in general can develop more

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vehemently particularly in the Internet. Futhermore, the authors argue that developing countries have not yet understood the degree of importance that Cultural Diplomacy can offer for their foreign relations, with the exception of India. This country, in the view of Bound et al. (2007), realized that this diplomatic aspect can strengthen its strategic project to expand its international insertion. Thus, the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, based in Washington and Paris, complements the existence of the 18 offices that operate in large cities in various parts of the world (Bound et al. 2007). China has also resorted to Cultural Diplomacy as a relevant means of reconfiguring its image. This will be done through the investment of the State in the Confucius Institutes, which have worked: promotion of the Chinese language; teacher training to teach the language; international dissemination of China’s culture. In relation to these Institutes, it should be noted that the first unit was established in 2004 in Seoul and was expanded to several continents. “[…] In 2011, it already had about 350 units in 105 countries or regions” (Moraes 2013). In addition to maintaining these cultural centers, China, in 2008, hosted the Olympic Games—an event whose image of a modern country could be dissected. The authors believe, finally, that the use of mass media is a new way of performing Cultural Diplomacy in contemporaneity because of the predominant space that massive communications have achieved in societies from different parts of the world. This thought is in line with the non-traditional way of performing Cultural Diplomacy identified by Harvey (1991), which consisted of the use of elements of the cultural industry (literature, radio, film, television, etc.) in evidence at the time of writing his work. In this guideline, Bound et al. (2007) highlight that the Internet is a communication environment with potential value for bringing people from different cultures closer together. In order for the Internet to favor the exchange and approximation of cultures, it is necessary to know languages or have access to translations that are made in several languages. Moreover, the increase in the movement of tourists, students, and workers in different parts of the world are other ways in which International Cultural Relations have benefited. These factors, therefore, need to be considered by Cultural Diplomacy formulators in contemporary times, since questions arise in accordance with the intentions, proposals, and objectives of this political-diplomatic field.

5.3.2 Purposes and Materialization of Cultural Diplomacy Harvey (1991) considers that Cultural Diplomacy can also be understood through its purposes: (a) to promote peace and international cultural cooperation; (b) support conventional diplomacy; (c) be one of the means for international understanding; (d) serve as fuel to foreign trade. In addition, it can provide services worldwide, such as (a) the conclusion of bilateral cultural agreements; (b) creation of houses and/or cultural institutes; (c) promotion of cultural activities; (d) use of products from the domestic cultural industry for the purpose of disseminating national cultural production; (e) promoting exports of cultural goods and products (Harvey 1991). The

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researcher also clarifies how the evolution of the use of instruments and means of Cultural Diplomacy by countries takes place. Generally, the first contents worked correspond to intellectual productions and are intended for elite groups—the initial audiences. Over time, the notion of Culture becomes a broader perspective. If we think about the world environment, international audiences—from other nations, regions, and continents—also begin to be contemplated according to the evolution of bilateral relations between States and driven by particular interests between the parties. As for praxis, adds Harvey (1991), Cultural Diplomacy has been carried out in two complementary ways. First, through devices and languages of the cultural industries: radio, television, cinema, music, literature—such as the translation of works into several languages of writers such as Danti Alighieri, Goetche, and in the case of Brazil, Machado de Assis, Guimarães Rosa, Jorge Amado, Clarice Lispector and, currently, Paulo Coelho. The other way to carry out Cultural Diplomacy is the traditional dissemination of culture abroad: in general, countries carry out or support: exchanges of people and cultural goods; scholarships; phonic sets; theatrical casts; arts exhibition, etc. (Harvey 1991). It is understood that domestic factors are essential to Cultural Diplomacy. According to Harvey (1991) and Ribeiro (2011), peculiarities of the internal politics of the countries also need to be considered in the process of architecture, execution, and evaluation of the national state’s performance in this field—categories and models come from the political and administrative systems of each State, in addition to the particular cultural contexts of nations. In addition, Harvey (1991) identified paradigmatic characteristics of the Cultural Diplomacy of states, which, in turn, help to understand the systematization of the field of which it is spoken. They are (a) planning and execution; (b) driving principles and standards; (c) action plans; (d) precise objectives; (e) specialized programs; (f) priorities; (g) administrative and institutional structures; (h) specialized human resources; (i) bilateral and multilateral cultural negotiations; (j) financial resources; (k) goals. Thus, “planning and execution” of Cultural Diplomacy are carried out on the basis of “principles and driving standards” that are, in general, intended to meet “precise objectives”. For this, “action plans and specialized programs” are designed. “Priorities” are delegated. “Administrative and institutional structures” are intended for the fulfillment of purposes. In addition, “specialized human resources” particularly in the diplomatic sphere are necessary for the conclusion of “bilateral and multilateral cultural negotiations”. It emerges, above all, demand for “financing” that, according to Harvey (1991) needs to be in line with “goals” outlined at the external cultural level.

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5.4 Conclusion: Cultural Diplomacy—From Praxis to a Possible Concept After these reflections about the intersection between Culture, Diplomacy, and Foreign Policy and understanding of what is meant by International Cultural Relations, it is concluded that Cultural Diplomacy is a part of the international action of the countries. This cultural dimension began to be part of foreign policy from the nineteenth century onwards and was strengthened in the twentieth century. Moreover, the observance of models consonant to cultural diplomacy worked by some countries allows us to understand that there is a demand, in contemporary times, for strengthening this area by national states. The main agents of Cultural Diplomacy are national states which, when aiming at the implementation of actions, activities, projects, and cultural programs, can establish partnerships with entities of the public authorities, as well as other ministries and other bodies related to public administration as well as with private entities—NGOs, companies, and individuals—depending on the interests of the parties. Cultural Diplomacy carries out actions—activities, projects, programs, negotiation of cultural agreements, etc.—through three perspectives: unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral. There is, in this view, unilateral cultural diplomacy when states finance, implement, or support, indirectly, projects with a view to disseminating, solely, cultural production, or national identity aspects in other countries. In this case, the main purpose is to disseminate the culture “homeland” to different audiences. On the other hand, when the interest of a given country is, in addition to dissemination, providing cultural exchange and cooperation through the insertion of cultural policies in other territories, it is possible to say that bilateral cultural diplomacy occurs. This format can take place in three modalities: (a) in bilateral relations between countries; (b) in bilateral relations between a country and a regional and/or international bloc/forum/grouping; (c) in bilateral relations between blocs. Multilateral cultural diplomacy is developed within multilateral bodies (which may have the support of member states) or when countries choose to carry out multilateral activities, projects or programs. In the first case, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), the Ibero-American General Secretariat (Segib) adequately illustrate what is advocated. In the second, it is therefore observed the choice, by countries, with regard to direct promotion or indirect investment in projects, configured from a multilateral perspective—such as international film or theater festivals, or even joint projects with other countries with a view to contemplation of international audiences—such as the “World Cup of Culture in Germany” held by Brazil and the host country of the football world cup in 2006 in the German Republic and the “Year Germany in Brazil—Germany + Brazil” in 2013. Within the framework of the National States, Cultural Diplomacy in general is in charge of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs or their core reports. It can share work with related ministerial entities, especially: Ministries of Culture, Ministries of Education, Ministries of Industry and Foreign Trade, Ministries of Tourism, Ministries of Sport,

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Ministries of Science and Technology, among others. However, it is emphasized the existence of models in which intergovernmental bodies are responsible for this field of work, such as the British Council in England and the Japan Foundation, etc.—as was explained earlier, although the role of these is limited to management since they resort to the use of pecuniary resources from their national states. Therefore, it is feasible to construct a concept to define Cultural Diplomacy in contemporary times—which concludes the discussion presented in this text. Therefore, it can be affirmed that Cultural Diplomacy is a strand of foreign policy worked by national states in correlation with public and/or private entities with a view to spreading the culture of a given country abroad as well as developing international cultural policies with a view to cultural exchange and cooperation between various international actors—States, International Organizations and private agents.

References Barba F (2008) Image building: diplomacia cultural en la política exterior de Canadá. Revista Mexicana de Estudios Canadienses, vol 16 Barba FR (2008a) Image building: cultural diplomacy en la política exterior de Canadá. Mex J Can Stud, Mex 16; autumn-winter. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/739/73918504012.pdf. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2021 Barba FR (2008b) The cultural diplomacy of Mexico. Madr R Elcano Inst. http://biblioteca.ribei. org/1387/1/ARI-78_2008-E.pdf. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2021 Borja JT (2011) The rhetoric of silence: culture in Mercosur. 2011. 160 f. Unpublished Master Thesis (Master’s degree in International Relations)—Institute of International Relations, University of Brasilia, Brasília Bound et al (2007) Cultural diplomacy. London: Demos, 111 p. http://www.demos.co.uk/files/Cul tural%20diplomacy%20-%20web.pdf. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2021 Canclini NG (2003) Cultures of Ibero-America: diagnosis and proposals for its development. São Paulo: Moderna Canclini NG (2008) Culturas híbridas: estratégias para sair e entrar na modernidade Canclini NG, Moneta CJ (1999) Las industrias culturales en la integración Latinoamericana. Mexico: Grijalbo; Selas Castells M (2000) The power of identity. 2 ed. São Paulo: Paz e Terra. Translation Klauss Brandini Gerhardt Featherstone M (1990) Global Culture: nationalism, globalization and modernity. 3 rd ed. Petrópolis: Voices Garretón MA (2003) The Latin American cultural space: bases for a cultural policy of integración. Santiago: Andrés Bello Agreement Gómez-Escalonilla LD, Figueroa M (2208) Spain’s international commitments on culture. Boletín Elcano 99:21. https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/14826. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2021 Harvey E (1991) International cultural relations in Latin America and the world. Tecnos, Madrid Hobsbawn E (1990) Nações e nacionalismo desde 1780. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e terra Hollanda SB (1995) Raízes do Brasil. 26 ed. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras Khumthuckthit P (2010) Japan’s new public diplomacy. 2010. 115 sheets. Unpublished master thesis (Master in International Relations)—Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro

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La Alighieri D (2013) Website developed by Società Dante Alighieri. Displays information about this entity. http://www.ladante.it. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2021 McMurry ER, Lee M (1947) The cultural approach. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press Merle M (1985) Strengths and engeux in internacional relations, 2nd edn. Economica, Paris Mitchell JM (1986) International cultural relations. London: Allen & Unwind Moraes JL (2013) Economy of Chinese culture and the expansion of the confucius institute. Appl Econ Themes, São Paulo. https://downloads.fipe.org.br/publicacoes/bif/2013/2_bif389.pdf. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2021 Nogueira JP, Messari N (2005) Theory of international relations: currents and debates. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier Northrop F (1952) The taming of the nations: a study of the cultural bases of international policy. New York: Macmillan Company Nye JS (2004) Soft power: the means to success in world politics. New York: Public affairs Ribeiro ET (2011) Cultural diplomacy: its role in Brazilian foreign policy. Brasilia: FUNAG Riscado JE (2011) A política externa cultural espanhola para o Brasil. In: Anais do XXVI Simposio Nacional de Historia-ANPUH. Sao Paulo, p 1–10 Rubim AAC (2008) Cultural policies and knowledge society in Brazil. RIPS J Polit Sociol Res 7(1):127–142. https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/380/38070109.pdf. Last Accessed 10 Mar 2021 Said EW (1999) Culture and imperialism. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras Severino JR (2011) Cultural policies in Brazil: a brief reflection on the publication of the universal exhibition in Philadelphia, 1876. In: History, city and sociability. Itajaí: Open House

Chapter 6

Digital Culture and Digital Media as Heritage: Innovative Approaches in Interaction with Information and Scientific Communication in the Era of Massive Data and Immersive Interactive Technologies. New Contexts in International Relationships José Luis Rubio-Tamayo, Manuel Gertrudix, and Hernando Gómez Abstract Digital technologies have, in recent years, changed the relationship between users, content, and information. These changes have been more noteworthy and tangible, particularly in the 2010s, accelerating in the year 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This context places societies in new scenarios where interactions change dramatically, and where digital technologies and scientific culture developed in recent decades have a relevant role. In this work, we analyse the technological context, focusing on media technologies and data production and dissemination, and their potential to advance and implement new relationships between stakeholders, users, organisations, research groups, and with data, information, and knowledge. Technologies such as extended reality, motion graphics, immersive journalism, massive and open data, data visualisation, open science, etc. create an ensemble of potential scenarios where the access to information and knowledge will present us with many innovative approaches. When digital technologies have changed our lives and our way of interacting with our peers and information, the new context This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organised by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). J. L. Rubio-Tamayo (B) Faculty of Communication, Lecturer/Researcher/Coordinator of the Advertising Agency, URJC, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] M. Gertrudix Faculty of Communication, URJC, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] H. Gómez Lecturer Faculty of Communication, URJC, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_6

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has enhanced these changes, due to the emergence of new necessities: firstly, the necessity of scientific research; and secondly, the necessity of designing and considering new interactions and ways of establishing relationships. In both cases, digital media technologies are performing a relevant role which may even further accelerate changes in the new context and scenarios emerging, changing relationships and ways of interacting at all levels, from individuals to international relationships, and, of course, between individuals and information. This context places a new scenario before us, where digital media and scientific research and production are a relevant part of human heritage, always in a process of change and evolution. Keywords Digital culture · Heritage · Media technologies · International relationships

6.1 Introduction: An Approach to Digital Heritage Digital culture has dramatically evolved in recent years due to the evolution of media technology. In the era of information, and accelerated evolution in the last two decades, an evolving framework is changing our way of establishing relationships with our peers and organisations. These changes are being produced both at a personal and organisational-institutional level, even involving stakeholders such as international organisations, as well as countries, and, ultimately, spheres of influence. The production and dissemination of knowledge has also experienced dramatic changes in recent years, due to the proliferation of digital technologies in societies around the globe. This fact positions stakeholders (citizens, organisations) in a framework where they are, at the same time, producers and generators of data, information, and knowledge. In addition, they are “recipients” of this knowledge generated, and usually make decisions based on this knowledge. This knowledge produced is also part of an ensemble that can in some way be considered digital heritage. However, the approach of this publication attempts to develop wider connotations for the term digital heritage than the perspective of the scientific literature review (Parry 2005; MacDonald 2006; Parry 2007). The classic perspective of the term digital heritage considers the process and mechanisms of digitalisation or digital representation of classical cultural heritage, such as historical sites, museums and libraries, etc. This approach as a process is highlighted by authors such as Rahaman and Tan (2011). Other authors, such as Grilli and Remondino (2019), focus on this approach by developing a framework for 3D scene analysis. Furthermore, other authors, such as Galani and Kidd (2019), also place the focus on “interpretation”, their main contribution also being the analysis of evaluative challenges related to the embodied, multimodal, and transmedia nature of digital heritage experiences. In recent years, new technological advances such as machine learning (Yaser 2017) and photogrammetry (Rahaman and Champion 2019a, b) have been included, among others.

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Undoubtedly, this approach to the term digital heritage in the literature in recent years has many inherent connotations: cultural heritage (understood as real cultural sites), reconstruction, interpretation, or visual 3D representation with computer graphics, among others. In some way, these consider digital heritage as the fact or process of digitalisation of a physical object or environment. In this approach, this process of digitalisation consists of a visual interpretation or reconstruction of a real object or environment, often a museum or historical site. Thus, the term cultural also has many connotations for strengthening this point of view of the term digital heritage: we often refer to it as digital cultural heritage (Navarrete 2013; Portalés et al. 2018). The epistemological and ontological approach of the term digital heritage has also been tackled by authors such as Bonacchi and Krzyzanska (2019). They emphasise the necessity of revisiting some approaches or retheorising the framework from the ground up, due to the incorporation of new technologies such as big data or machine learning in the process of generating digital heritage. However, what if we take this wider approach suggested in this research, and consider digital heritage as the ensemble of the knowledge produced by any means? This would of course include scientific research, but also scientific dissemination, and other new techniques such as machine learning or big data, among others. Just as a language, a culinary recipe, or even a source code may be considered intangible cultural heritage, as defined by UNESCO (Smith and Akagawa 2008; Labadi 2013; Giannoulakis et al. 2018), we may consider the ensemble of the knowledge generated and disseminated, including the products of scientific research and dissemination, as part of this digital heritage, as it is also stored in digital formats. This approach makes a qualitative leap in expanding what is considered part of digital heritage (Fig. 6.1).

6.2 Digital Media and Soft Power Digital media has dramatically influenced society in recent decades and has undoubtedly changed citizens’ approach to knowledge. Access to culture and scientific production is today more achievable than ever, even if many challenges and shortcomings still exist. The growth of digitalisation in many sectors involves deep changes leading to new opportunities in access to knowledge, relationships, and interactions between citizens and organisations. This framework leads us, as both individuals and as societies, to a complex scenario where it is necessary to explain new interactions and ways to participate and contribute to the creation and dissemination of knowledge. Digital media, as a noteworthy component for maintaining and communicating digital heritage, is also an important stakeholder for establishing new kinds of interactions and relationships with knowledge. As technology has changed societies, digital technologies entail a qualitative leap in how societies, organisations and individuals interact, and produce and share knowledge. When we identify the different levels of organisations, we may also identify the

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Fig. 6.1 Infographic explaining the notion of digital heritage under the approach of current research. We may consider digital heritage part of the digital space, and factors such as big data, machine learning and digital media, among others, are relevant for building and disseminating information produced and stored there. Further explanations may be found in Table 6.1. Source The present authors

way in which they are influenced by digital media in their functioning. In this way, these levels of organisations move from the scale of individuals (citizens, users, etc.) to the scale of the global village (the ensemble of all individuals). In the mid-range we can find organisations of all kinds, as well as states and spheres of influence (the more global stakeholders), which interact in many ways and, as a result, establish relationships of power. Furthermore, individuals can be also approached as citizens or users, depending on the relationship that they have with other organisational stakeholders, such as sovereign states, organisations, or agencies. In other words, individuals may adopt the role of citizens, as a subject (Balibar 1991) taking part in social and policy aspects in organisation levels such as states (Hayden 2012). This fact is an approach of the classical definition of citizen by Aristotle (Johnson 1984). The term user has, by contrast, normally been applied to an individual interacting with a system or technology, and nowadays may be also applied in considering their relationship with organisations or institutions, as these provide an ensemble of services for them, as technology does. It may also be considered that digital technologies have dramatically changed the relationships between individuals (users, citizens) and their environment. This notion was approached by researchers such as Oldenburg (1989, 1999), who coined the terms first place (homeplace), second place (workplace), and third place (community) to

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establish where social activities happen. The interactions between citizens and these places (especially the second and third places) have suffered a deep and dramatic transformation since the digitalisation of many services and activities (Fig. 6.2), mainly since 2020 and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the activities in these places have been partially displaced, to the first place, thanks to the implementation of digital technologies. However, the approach of Oldenburg is also initially based on interactions and social behaviours of the Modern Era by clearly distinguishing the three places as well differentiated. However, this context changes when we focus on a Pre-Industrial Era (where the workplace was often also situated at the homeplace) and third places were not so prominent (but still existed), as the tertiary economic sector was not so developed (Kenessey 1987.) Likewise, the Digital Era has also transformed the relationships between users and places, and between users themselves, and further between organisations and international stakeholders such as states, mainly thanks to the access to digital heritage (Fig. 6.3).

Fig. 6.2 Levels of organisation identified for establishing their role in the interaction with digital heritage. We may observe that organisations are arranged in different levels, and one kind of organisation may be part of several organisations of another level, at the same time. Individuals may also be identified as users (when they interact with a digital system or organisations) or citizens (when they have a relationship with an organisation—such as states—which give them rights and obligations). Source The present authors

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Fig. 6.3 This infographic shows the different approaches to the relationship between the terms coined by Oldenburg (1989): First place (homeplace), second place (workplace) and third place (leisure, socialising). The approach of Oldenburg is based on a clear distinction between activities carried out in these places, but with digitalisation (and the continuous building of a digital heritage), work, and socialisation-leisure have undergone dramatic transformations, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the activities corresponding to workplaces (second place) have been displaced to homeplace (first place) with telecommuting or remote working. Before the arrival of the pandemic, telecommuting also had a relevant presence in third places (such as freelancers working from cafés or other similar spaces considered third places). Source The present authors from the approach of Oldenburg (1989)

This approach has a relationship with digital media as a form of access to knowledge, as well as a way of producing it and contributing to digital heritage as previously explained, and notions such as soft power. The term soft power was coined by Nye (1990) in his work “Bound to Lead”, referring to the capacity of an organisation, institution, or country (a political actor) to develop influence on others by diplomatic or cultural actions. Thus, in this context, it is necessary to pose some questions related with the power of digital technologies, and then digital heritage, for transforming and influencing how societies behave and progress. The terms culture, science, knowledge, data, information, and work constantly take new approaches if we consider the capacity for influencing the configuring of societies and establishing relationships. So how can science be a new framework for creating soft power? To what extent has the first place (homeplace) been a platform where citizens may access culture

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and scientific knowledge thanks to digital platforms? What is the influencing capability of a state when citizens may access open cultural and scientific knowledge and also contribute to it? What are the relationships and connections between digital media (including digital heritage) and the notion of soft power? How is digital media changing our perception and approach to facts today and how many countless ways does digital media offer access and represent information? Finally, how can scientific knowledge be one of the main forms of soft power? These questions may be difficult to answer, as in the current social and political context we may find many factors and variables in a complex scenario. Nevertheless, identifying and defining these factors and variables in the digital environment, and, as a result, in the ensemble of what we consider digital heritage, may help researchers in these areas define how stakeholders in new global scenarios behave and interact.

6.3 Massive Data and Open Knowledge as a New Framework in Scientific Production Under the approach of this research, science and the ability to communicate it may be considered a key element of all the components belonging to digital heritage. Scientific knowledge is increasingly accessible to citizens, due to many factors. Among these factors we may find: research published in open access, greater access to information by a wider range of the global population, strategies for science dissemination and communication, and the possibilities of new media for representing information with computer graphics and new information and communication technologies. The collaboration between different stakeholders (scientists, citizens, organisations), and, of course, between different states or even spheres of influence is also important. This is especially relevant when we refer to global issues, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic or Global Warming. Digital technologies have, for the last two decades, dramatically contributed to creating an ecosystem for a global-level collaboration in production, storage, and dissemination of knowledge. Nevertheless, strategies for producing, storing, and disseminating knowledge in the context of this powerful tool called digital media need to be further defined. Under the approach of this research, there is no single strategy for building digital heritage, but it depends on evolution of the means for producing scientific and cultural knowledge, as well as the evolution of the technologies and strategies for communication (Rubio-Tamayo et al. 2018). If we consider education and the establishment of educational systems as key aspects, and also one of the first steps for building societies (understood as an ensemble of citizens) interested in achieving and producing knowledge, we may find other factors that are an inherent part of digital heritage. Thus, these factors may themselves be considered key aspects of digital heritage, which cannot be understood without, among other elements: open data, massive data, open access, machine learning, deep learning, and, as previously mentioned, scientific production

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(including citizen science) and scientific communication. All these factors are vital for building of digital heritage, where all potential knowledge of public interest may be stored and accessible. Below is a table (Table 6.1) explaining the relationship and Table 6.1 Relationships of terms related to the notion of digital heritage, as we approach it in this research. Recently coined terms, such as massive data, open access, and machine learning, are samples and exponents of how digital heritage operates and evolves. Digital heritage will, in the future, assign more terms associated to the functioning of the process of digitalisation and this evolution Massive Data: Large amounts of data are produced every minute by digital computational technologies. Much of this data needs to be processed and analysed (Abello et al. 2013) to be transformed into information which may be understood and contextualised. Digital technologies provide researchers in this area with many tools and datasets for processing and interpreting this data (Leskovec et al. 2020) in a process known as data mining. Raw data is part of digital heritage under this approach but is not easily accessible and interpretable. It is like an archaeological site that has not been entirely unearthed, whose restoration has not started yet Big data: Big data, like massive data, refers also to large amounts of data. The term big data refers to the discipline or research field that designs mechanisms to analyse and systematically extract information from the digital space and their data sets. Authors such as De Mauro et al. (2016) suggest a review and a definition of the term based on its features. However, while massive data refers to the quantity of data existing in the digital space (and data sets) (Abello et al. 2013), big data refers to the techniques and tools existing, as well as research techniques, to extract this data in digital space. Thus, big data is a relevant research field to contribute to building digital heritage. It is like the archaeological research and techniques for unearthing an archaeological site, as well as restoring it The discipline of big data has a relationship with the area of knowledge management (Kebede 2010; Dalkir 2017; Andreasik 2018) but the model structure based on the DIKW hierarchical relationship (data, information, knowledge, wisdom) has been also revised by other researchers (Jennex and Bartczak 2013; Jennex 2017) Open Data: Open data refers to (raw) data generated and provided by institutions, researchers, or organisations (mainly public). This data is normally an issue of public interest and related with transparency and public participation policies. Thus, data in the digital space may exist, but it is not accessible to the citizenship, and open data helps to establish the guidelines for access to information of public interest. Open data is a key factor in building digital heritage, as authors such as García et al. (2021) evaluate its potential for digital communication and development of more inclusive and peaceful societies Science: This a relevant aspect, because it determines the ability of an actor, such as a country, an institution, organisation, or even a business (e.g. pharmaceuticals) to generate knowledge based on observation of the facts and experimentation (scientific method). Science has emerged and developed since the implementation of scientific method and obviously before the notion of digital technologies. Digital technologies and digital heritage have in the last decade contributed to generating, preserving, and disseminating scientific knowledge, despite the information in the digital space not always being based on scientific method and research, leading to misinformation Furthermore, there is an evident relationship between the ability to produce scientific knowledge and the ability to develop technology and, finally, the ability to influence (soft power) an institution, organisation, state, or sphere of influence (continued)

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Table 6.1 (continued) Scientific Communication: Well-designed scientific communication allows citizens of a part of the world to have access to and easy understanding of this knowledge generated by the scientific community. This scientific dissemination is today an ability to generate “scientific culture” in citizens, making them prone to checking information and adopting an analytic approach over the facts, while at the same time, having greater protection against disinformation such as fake news Digital media today offers countless tools to disseminate knowledge produced by the scientific method. Scientific communication also plays a relevant role in building digital heritage, as it is related with the ability to connect with citizens and show information with media content. It is also important that citizens have mechanisms for checking this information and accessing the original source, and a critical perspective, but always based on the scientific method Open access: Open access allows users to access this information, essentially educational resources and scientific research, such as papers or data, among others. Today there is a digital gap existing between regions around the globe and even in the same societies. This open access can exist, but a minimum infrastructure (computer, networks) is needed. Additionally, open access is contributing to reducing the gap in access to the knowledge produced. It is necessary to continue working to improve infrastructures in order to allow access for every citizen Its relevance in the context of digital heritage is very high, because it is the aspect which makes knowledge accessible to every citizen and is related with open data, science, and scientific communication Machine Learning: Machine learning is related with artificial intelligence (Mitchell 1997; Zhang 2020; Molnar 2020). This fact leads us to the question: could digital heritage generate knowledge and analyse facts? Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, as well as deep learning, may answer these questions. Evolution of these disciplines may entail a qualitative milestone in how digital heritage generates content itself from the content available in the digital space Deep Learning: This is directly linked with machine learning. The notion of deep learning allows computational models, composed of multiple processing layers to learn representations of data, performing it in different and multiple levels of abstraction (LeCun et al. 2015; Bengio et al. 2017). These levels of abstraction and ability to represent data (thinking machines) will also be a key factor contributing to defining the features of digital heritage. Thus, under this approach, and with the implementation of machine learning and deep learning, we may think about a digital heritage which contributes to improve itself and which generates knowledge Digital Heritage: Digital heritage, as previously mentioned, is the ensemble of the knowledge produced and uploaded to the network. It may also be the product of the digitalisation of a “real fact” or a real environment. Thus, digital heritage originates from the digitalisation of the information of the physical world. Digital information allows us to interpret and represent, with data, computer graphics or research papers, among other elements, what is happening in the real world. Digital heritage is nevertheless a subject of knowledge, as the digital information is also “real”; at least, as real as the physical world. It is able to store information that it is sometimes possible to reply to in the real world. In other words, the content generated by digital heritage has consequences in the physical world Digital heritage, under the approach of this research, is a global concept, and we propose defining it as the ensemble of knowledge generated by mankind and stored on digital devices, as well as being represented at various levels: computer graphics, words, code, algorithms, etc. Therefore, every digital production (a video, a scientific paper, amounts of data) that could be potentially accessible by every individual, would be part of the context of global digital heritage Source The present authors

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influence of these factors in the context of digital heritage and the generation and communication of knowledge.

6.4 Approaching Digital Heritage Through Digital Technologies and Stakeholders: Management of Information Education is undoubtedly an essential factor for generating scientific culture in citizens. Nevertheless, education itself is not part of digital heritage, though there are series of actions carried through by educators (teachers, professors, researchers, etc.) established to generate knowledge in individuals. Most important is allowing them to acquire this knowledge, as well as to develop an analytical point of view. Without a doubt, if education occurs mostly in the physical world, digitalisation (thus, digital heritage as well) has dramatically contributed to improving some educational processes, as previously mentioned. Thus, digital heritage is continuously establishing new forms of interaction and access to knowledge, but education continues to be a relevant factor in how to interact with it. There are also other factors that describe the ability of digital heritage for influencing societies. If we consider digital heritage also under the approach of the actions that can be performed, we can include research, representation, communication, and establishing new forms of interaction. This interaction between users, between users and information, or between users and organisations, has many approaches. Thus, the processes of the terms of these approaches must be described and classified in order to design strategies which will improve the way knowledge is accessed, and the interaction at different levels, from individuals to international organisations. Authors such as Calof et al. (2018) place the focus on the analytical techniques with scenarios and the decision making. This fact is directly related with the tools provided by digital media, and how to improve these interaction processes, between individuals, organisations, and with systems and technology. Arcos (2016) argues that we are in a context of superabundance of publicly available information on the general environment for organisations and their stakeholders, and that for this reason it is necessary to create a framework that would facilitate the formulation of strategic communication and enhance relationship management activities. Another issue related to interaction with data and information is visualisation. Rubio-Tamayo et al. (2018) develop a model gathering the potential interactions between users and information and how this information can be shown and represented using current digital technologies. The way in which information is represented is essential to determine how the communication is performed and how the users may interact with information and may contribute to generating it in the digital space. This notion of contribution and participatory activities is strongly related with the notion of digital heritage itself, but also with innovative practices in education, and

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additionally, with the notion of citizen science, which is a relevant factor indicating the contribution of citizens to common heritage by applying the scientific method. With regard to citizen science and other participatory activities in the development of knowledge, there are arguments through this approach in recent decades. Authors such Hand (2010) maintain that citizens are stakeholders that constitute networks of contributors which may accelerate knowledge, mediated by digital technologies. For this reason, citizen science is an interesting approach of this focus, based on participatory activities of citizens, users, or stakeholders in contribution to build knowledge that will be accessible by peers, and potentially every citizen. Heigl et al. (2019) undertake an approach in the search for a definition of this concept, focusing on the idea of citizens participating in scientific projects. In addition, another relevant issue is the participation of citizens in dissemination of the scientific results, as well as communicating science. For this reason, the notion of digital heritage and a relevant role of education will make it possible for citizens to participate in the creation, storage, and dissemination of knowledge. Projects such as CS-Track, created by the research group Ciberimaginario, move in this direction, by focusing on the potential ability of citizens to produce knowledge using the scientific method, based on experimentation and observation, and to share it with peers. This would be directly related with citizen science but has involved other approaches such as open access or scientific communication, as well as the role of digital technologies. Strategies for disseminating part of this digital heritage produced by culture and scientific research analyse its impact using digital media. In this area, methodologies such as Macomed (Method for Analyse Scientific Communication in Digital Media) (Gertrudix et al. 2021) are being developed and implemented. This method includes different variables, such as presence in media, the use of these communication channels, diversity in their use, and the level of production, seen as a form of interaction. Following the notion of participatory activities for generating knowledge with digital media, we can find a whole framework of projects based on heritage and involvement of different actors or stakeholders. The BioSphera—Citizen science for the Natural and Cultural Heritage monitoring project “is committed to linking the research carried out in academia with society and developing citizen science strategies and tools to create or participate in projects where observation of natural and/or cultural heritage is the main objective” (BioSphera). Interesting initiatives of citizen science with the involvement of the public are being developed by institutions such as museums (Maremma Natural History Museum). Others, such as the Heritage Quest Project, try to involve stakeholders such as citizens to collaborate with archaeologists, in order to discover traces from historical sites, using highresolution elevation maps created using lasers mounted on aircrafts (LiDAR). Other institutions such as the European Commission have created similar projects, such as “Citizen Science in cultural heritage through the application of crowdsourcing and co-creation tools leveraging open digital collections of European heritage”. This project aims to systematically promote the participatory activities of citizens in scientific research and production of knowledge.

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6.5 Conclusions: International Relationships and Digital Heritage What is the influence of the new framework on the international relationships, and on relationships between individuals, and with organisations and institutions? Further and future research will have to respond these and other related questions. As digital heritage evolves, researchers must analyse its features, and the factors involved in the generation and dissemination of knowledge. They must also determine the evolution of its influence on relationships and behaviour in individuals and societies. Under the approach of this research, we have considered digital heritage, digital technologies, and the digital space a relevant factor and a form of soft power. It should also be decisive for establishing more equal and democratic societies and enhancing the balance of power by allowing all societies and global regions to produce and access knowledge. Science, culture, and knowledge have always been approached as a form of soft power, and the idea of the existence of a global digital heritage, with all the scientific and cultural production of mankind, is a milestone in the history. Likewise, it is necessary to continue working on reducing the digital shortcomings, as well as developing mechanisms for disseminating scientific knowledge and involving every citizen in the global society in the production of scientific research. The tools for digital heritage and digital space exist massive data, machine learning, digital media. Researchers need only continue developing strategies to make them more efficient in production and dissemination of culture and science.

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Gertrudix M, Fernández MR, Luis JR, Alcocer AC (2021) Comunicación científica en el espacio digital. Acciones de difusión de proyectos de investigación del programa H2020. Profesional de la información 30(1) Giannoulakis S, Tsapatsoulis N, Grammalidis N (2018) Metadata for intangible cultural heritage. In: Proceedings of the 13th international joint conference on computer vision, imaging and computer graphics theory and applications (VISAPP 2018) Grilli E, Remondino F (2019) Classification of 3D digital heritage. Remote Sens 11(7):847 Hand E (2010) Citizen science: people power. Nat News 466(7307):685–687 Hayden C (2012) The rhetoric of soft power: public diplomacy in global contexts. Lexington Books Heigl F, et al (2019) Opinion: toward an international definition of citizen science. Proceed Natl Acad Sci 116(17):8089–8092 Heritage Quest Project (Zooniverse.org) Jennex ME, Bartczak SE (2013) A revised knowledge pyramid. Int J Knowl Manag (IJKM) 9(3):19– 30 Jennex ME (2017) Big data, the internet of things, and the revised knowledge pyramid. ACM SIGMIS Database: DATABASE Adv Inform Syst 48(4):69–79 Johnson C (1984) Who is Aristotle’s Citizen? Phronesis 73–90 Kebede G (2010) Knowledge management: an information science perspective. Int J Inf Manag 30(5):416–424 Kenessey Z (1987) The primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary sectors of the economy. Rev Income Wealth 33(4):359–385 Labadi S (2013) UNESCO, cultural heritage, and outstanding universal value: value-based analyses of the World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage Conventions LeCun Y, Bengio Y, Hinton G (2015) Deep learning. Nature 521(7553):436–444 Leskovec J, Rajaraman A, Ullman JD (2020) Mining of massive data sets. Cambridge University Press MacDonald L (ed) (2006) Digital heritage. Routledge Mitchell TM (1997) Machine learning Molnar C (2020) Interpretable machine learning. Lulu. com Navarrete T (2013) Digital cultural heritage. In: Handbook on the economics of cultural heritage. Edward Elgar Publishing Nye JS (1990) Soft power. Foreign Policy 80:153–171 Oldenburg R (1989) The great good place: cafes. coffee shops, community centers Oldenburg R (1999) The great good place: Cafes, coffee shops, bookstores, bars, hair salons, and other hangouts at the heart of a community. Da Capo Press Rahaman H, Champion E (2019) To 3D or not 3D: choosing a photogrammetry workflow for cultural heritage groups. Heritage 2(3):1835–1851 Parry R (2005) Digital heritage and the rise of theory in museum computing. Museum Manag Curatorship 20(4):333–348 Parry R (2007) Recoding the museum: digital heritage and the technologies of change. Routledge Portalés C; Rodrigues JMF, Rodrigues Gonçalves A, Alba E, Sebastián J (2018) Digital cultural heritage. Multimodal Technol Interact 2(3):58. https://doi.org/10.3390/mti2030058 Rahaman H, Tan B-K (2011) Interpreting digital heritage: a conceptual model with end-users’ perspective. Int J Archit Comput 9(1):99–113 Rubio-Tamayo JL, Hernández MB, Gómez H (2018) Digital data visualization with interactive and virtual reality tools. review of current state of the art and proposal of a model. Revista ICONO14 Revista científica de Comunicación y Tecnologías emergentes 16(2):40–65 Smith L, Natsuko A (eds) (2008) Intangible heritage. Routledge Yasser A, et al (2017) Saving cultural heritage with digital make-believe: machine learning and digital techniques to the rescue. In: HCI’17: proceedings of the 31st British computer society human computer interaction conference. No. 97. ACM Zhang X-D (2020) Machine learning. In: A matrix algebra approach to artificial intelligence. Springer, Singapore, pp 223–440

Chapter 7

The “National Fact” and the Notion of Cultural Heritage in Brazilian Constituent Assembly (1987/1988) Yussef Daibert Salomão de Campos

and Paulo Peixoto

Abstract The UNESCO Universal Declaration on cultural diversity, states that “cultural diversity is as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature”, recognizing cultural diversity as “humanity’s common heritage”. In this perspective it is urgent to discuss the relationship between cultural diversity and heritage preservation policies. In 1980, Chastel and Babelon published a work which would become a reference for those researching on cultural heritage: “La notion de patrimoine”. Starting from this work, and arguing that heritage is as much cultural as it is economic Yussef Daibert Salomão de Campos is an Adjunct Professor at the School of History and permanent member of the Postgraduate Programme in History and the Postgraduate Programme ProfHistória— Universidade Federal de Goiás. PhD in History (Federal University of Juiz de Fora); Master in Social Memory and Cultural Heritage (Federal University of Pelotas-RS). Graduated in Law from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora; Specialist in Cultural Heritage Management (Granbery and PERMEAR, Juiz de Fora-MG). Researches on cultural heritage focusing on the relationship between History, Memory, and Identity and their legal nuances. During his master’s degree he participated, as a CAPES scholar, in the project “Perspectivas Teóricas sobre el Patrimonio Material e Inmaterial en Sudamerica (Brasil y Argentina)”. He is a member of ICOMOS-Brazil (International Council of Monuments and Sites). He collaborated, as co-organizer and author, in the 35th and 36th editions of Revista do Patrimônio, in celebration of IPHAN’s 80th anniversary. He is a member of IBDCult and leader of the CNPq research group LUPA—Places and Heritages. Paulo Peixoto is a research fellow at Centre for Social Studies, a member and former coordinator of the Research Group on Cities, Cultures, and Architecture, professor in Sociology at the University of Coimbra, and lecturer of the doctoral programme of “Heritage of Portuguese Origin”. Paulo holds a PhD in Sociology by the University of Coimbra, is the President of the Board of the Portuguese Sociological Association and is member of several research groups: International Institute for Research and Action on Academic Fraud and Plagiarism; Research Group on “Art, Culture and Power” (CNPq/UERJ); Research Group on “Geography, Tourism and Cultural Heritage” (CNPq/UNICAMP); “Urban and Cultural Studies Laboratory” (CNPq/UFS); “City, Culture and Difference” (CNPq/Univille): and LUPA—Research group on “Places and heritages”. Paulo currently carries out research on Heritage and Tourism. His research interests are on cities and urban cultures; heritage; tourism; and urban exclusion. Y. Daibert Salomão de Campos (B) · P. Peixoto Goiania 74835-085, Brazil P. Peixoto e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_7

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and political, we propose to discuss the relationship between heritage and cultural diversity from the idea of “national fact”. To this end, we resort to the process developed by the Brazilian Constituent Assembly of 1987/1988. We analysed minutes of hearings and other documents to conclude that the construction of the constitutional article concerning heritage (article 216) shook the apology of national identity that had shaped public Brazilian policies since the 1920s and 1930s. Keywords Cultural heritage · Cultural diversity · National fact · Brazilian national constituent assembly

7.1 Introduction There is a dimension of heritage that was born with the French Revolution of the late eighteenth century. This dimension makes heritage less monumental, more plural, and less aligned with conservative visions of society. There is another dimension of heritage which arises with the two World Wars of the twentieth century. This second dimension, which emerges from the trauma of mass destruction, places heritage on global agendas and spreads the urgency of identifying and preserving a world heritage. There is also a third dimension, resulting above all from the disintegration of nation states and the cultural critique of the westernization of the world. This third dimension has manifested itself particularly since the beginning of the twenty-first century and brings with it the notions of intangible heritage, cultural diversity, and postcolonial heritage. As highlighted by Babelon and Chastel, what can be listed as heritage are not only Catholic relics and churches (1994: 17); nor only monarchical libraries and archives (1994: 32); nor only the works of art that decorate aristocratic homes (1994: 51). In France, the secularization of clerical property, and the consequent “de-Christianisation” and “defeudalisation” (1994: 58) of works of art and monuments, post 1789, paved the way for the “national fact” to become an avenue of heritagization, allowing the listening of palaces, monuments, archives, libraries, etc. (1994: 57). Among other relevant issues, it is worth highlighting that, from now on, the protagonists of the selection of what would be preserved would no longer be the clergy and the nobility. A plural Constituent Assembly became the instrument that triggered a process that allowed to list goods and facts that gave the revolutionaries a French, i.e. national, identity, which reveals, in the political approach we adopt, that “the history of cultural heritage is different from the history of the objects that are part of that heritage” (Pomian apud Prats 2009: 21). One can say that, since the eighteenth century, namely, in France, there are directives for heritage enshrined in a structuring element of modernity—the Constitution. These directives pave the way, in the following centuries, for the invention and the consequent strengthening of a national identity (Maxime Choay 2006, among others); “from the monument, support of memory, we move to the heritage, support

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of identity. Ferreira will point to this century as the one responsible for an epistemological turn”, allowing “searching in the past for the trajectory of identity that emerges in the political organizations of the present”. In “an attempt to establish a “legal reason about the past”, “what we call cultural heritage” is brought up in a process of assimilation of “identity affiliations” (apud Campos 2015: 49). Giving voice to the archaeologist. The bloody methods of creation of modern States, from the Renaissance on, were accompanied by the definition of good taste and the choice of imitable styles: the recognition of a canon of masters and the delimitation of an artistic corpus to be preserved. Legislation to protect and conserve heritage was instituted, especially in the nascent states of the Italian peninsula. One of the most famous is the decree of 1601, by which the Grand Duke Ferdinand de Medici listed eighteen painters of the past whose works would not be sold abroad (2015: 49). In Brazil, since the 1920s and 1930s, when the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN) was established by Federal Law (378/1937), laws have been created to manage the heritage (there being previous legislation, such as Decrees 15,596/1922, 22,928/1933 and 24,735/1934 which, respectively, created the National Historical Museum and approved its regulations—Epitácio Pessôa government; erecting the city of Ouro Preto as a National Monument; and creating the Inspectorate of National Museums (Getúlio Vargas government). Products of the Vargas’ eagerness to build a homogeneous national identity, able to elect metonyms and metaphors for the nation-state Brazil, these legislations for the heritage, and those that followed, ran into the issue of national identity, until the advent of the Federal Constitution of 1988. The new Charter was more ambitious. It expanded, conceptually and factually, the cultural heritage. Until then treated as “historical and artistic”, support of the national memory and narrative of a common collective identity, the constitutional text transmutes the heritage into “cultural”, in an anthropological mirage, able to recognize the diversity as the basis for the expansion of the heritage spectrum in Brazil. This radical change is executed against the “imposition of a single perspective” (Cabral 2011: 32), which is the unavoidable result of an “incomplete process that is subject to continuous revisions” (Faria and Almeida apud Cabra 2011: 126)—this being one of the most striking features of heritage classification processes. The new legal framework fosters the “emergence of cultural identities suffocated during the period of formation and consolidation of the national state” (Vieira, 2009: 63). Perusing Brazilian legal and constitutional texts of the twentieth century, we highlight the following expressions to reinforce our arguments: “artistic heritage of the Country”, in the Constitution of 1934, article 148 (Presidência da República 1934a, b); “historical, artistic, and natural monuments” and “special care of the Nation”, in the Constitution of 1937, article 134 (Presidência da República 1937a); “memorable facts of the history of Brazil”, in Decree-Law 25/1937, article one (Presidência da República 1937b); “protection by the Public Power” of monuments, in the Constitution of 1946, article 175 (Presidência da República, 1946); “special protection by the Public Power” in the Constitution of 1967, article 172 (Presidência da República, 1967); expression equally present in constitutional amendment 01/1969, article 180

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(Presidência da República, 1969). Although not exhaustive, these examples demonstrate the spirit prevailing until the 1988 Constitution, highlighting the innovative nature of the new constitutional text. What we intend to demonstrate is that the projection of national identity through heritage, or this “national fact”, in the words of Babelon and Chastel, was object of a relativizing action through the wording of Article 216 of the 1988 Constitution. This article, in contrast to previous texts, makes “reference to the identity, action, and memory of the different groups that make up Brazilian society”, clearly evoking an identity marked no longer by the profile of a homogeneous nation, but rather by the diversity and alterity of national identity. The analytical cut that allows the national dimension to be defined goes beyond the dimensions presented by the two French authors—namely, the “administrative” and “scientific” facts, which manage, conceptualize and re-signify cultural assets. The “national fact” in Brazil of the late 1980s highlights two fundamental issues. On the one hand, a context of political negotiation resulting from claims for places of cultural identities (Poulot, 1998: 10), as, for example, the one verified in the Brazilian National Constituent Assembly (NCA). On the other hand, it evidences the rhetorical use of culture by the political discourse. One thing is what we see in the final text—cultural diversity—another thing is the intestinal perversity that characterized the constituent process. A process that sought to meet divergent and antagonistic interests, such as, for example, the demands regarding agrarian reform and the claims of indigenous people and quilombolas who demanded the right to land. Corroborating Durham, we note the use of the “subterfuge of recognizing formal rights and allowing their systematic disrespect” (2004: 300). Therefore, a third thing, distinct from the two previously mentioned, is the gap between the rights enshrined in the constitutional text and the effective possibility of using these rights in everyday social practices. The inclusion of the “intangible heritage” in a legal text that founded the idea of nation, as well as the indication of the forms of expression and the ways of creating, doing, and living, raised to the condition of cultural assets subject to heritage processes, reinforce the new breadth of the Brazilian notion of heritage since 1988. This inclusion also reveals an additional field of disputes. Disputes not only for the recognition of cultural traditions, but also disputes in which intangible heritage becomes a mobile to guarantee property rights. In the Brazilian case, intangible heritage has increasingly come to be used to claim rights of remaining quilombo communities and indigenous tribes to legitimize and consolidate historical conflicts over land ownership and use. Disputes that, on another level, extend to the scale of the relationship between nations, namely, in the forums of Unesco, where Brazil, from the beginning of the 1990s, began to have a more active, more assertive, and more concerted intervention, allying itself with other countries to promote the adoption of new heritage categories by Unesco (Abreu and Peixoto 2014). The Recommendation for the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore (1989), which includes living human treasures, endangered languages of the world, and traditional music; the adoption of the category of Cultural Landscape, adopted by the World Heritage Committee in 1992; the Charter of Nara (1994), which recognizes the importance of “cultural diversity and the diversity of heritage”; the Proclamation of Masterpieces of

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the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity (1997–1999); the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, adopted in 2001; are part of a long journey which culminates with the adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, which was adopted at the end of 2003 and entered into force in 2006. The Brazilian Constitution of 1988, which subdivides cultural heritage into material and immaterial, launched Brazil to the frontline in the dispute that opened up for the recognition of a less westernized, less monumentalized, and less materialized world heritage. Decree n° 3,551, of 2000, evidences that Brazil not only assumed internationally this dispute at the political level, but also anticipated in its internal legal system the possibilities of recognition of diversity and of a more plural heritage. The Decree allowed the creation of four registration books in which each one points to distinct heritage areas: the Registration Book of Knowledge; the Registration Book of Celebrations; the Registration Book of Forms of Expression; and the Registration Book of Places. The homogenizing discourse of national identity, “built in detriment of other identities” (Vieira 2009: 82), through legislations and Constitutions, was present in almost a century of cultural heritage management in Brazil. We must highlight, however, the participation of intellectuals, members of civil society, parliamentarians, in the NCA (1987/1988), because this participation contributed to a definition of heritage reified no longer by the homogenizing narrative, but by cultural diversity. It is at this specific point that the theoretical contribution presented above (Babelon and Chastel 1994) reveals its acuity, insofar as it allows evidencing that the “national fact” authorizes different appropriations of the national identity in the heritage narratives. This theoretical contribution allows us to verify, on the one hand, that “the identification, recognition and guarantee of minority rights […] constitute an unequivocal sign of political and cultural learning in contemporary democracies” (Maia 2009: 89), such as the Brazilian one. And, on the other hand, that the denial of pluralism and the institutionalization of exclusion, when cultural diversity is used anti-democratically (de Lucas 2003: 54), generate a “spectacular delegitimization” (Gamboni 1998: 256).

7.2 The Facts in “La Notion De Patrimoine” and Their Constitutional Resonance The factual dimensions of Babelon and Chastel are not mutually exclusive. Their complementarity can be gauged in the following statement: “the gestation of the heritage feeling, as a national feeling, was long and dramatic, insofar as it concerned works inevitably marked by religious, monarchical and aristocratic institutions” (1994: 69). In other words, the definition of “French society” (1994: 70), through identity and heritage discourse, pervades the long duration as, over the course of centuries, it is institutions that mark the narrative, not individuals. The same can be said of “Brazilian society”. In contrast to the current inventory of Brazilian heritage, listed in the different registration books, whether national or UNESCO conventions,

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until the 1990s, the Brazilian “national fact” displayed, in its highest splendour and recognition, the heritage of colonial origin, silencing the diversity of heritage that could give rise to multiple, minoritarian, and complex identities. In Brazil, the 1988 Federal Constitution also sought to define identity through heritage, but in a different way from previous ones. This change, visible in the articles of the Constitutional Charts that were analysed above, is clear when reading Article 216: Art. 216. Brazilian cultural heritage shall comprise assets of a tangible and intangible nature, considered individually or jointly, bearers of reference to the identity, action, and memory of the different groups that form Brazilian society, including: I II III IV V

the forms of expression; ways of creating, doing, and living; scientific, artistic, and technological creations; the works, objects, documents, buildings, and other spaces destined to artistic and cultural manifestations; urban groups and sites of historical, landscape, artistic, archaeological, palaeontological, ecological, and scientific value.

§ 1. The public authority, with the collaboration of the community, shall promote and protect the Brazilian cultural heritage by means of inventories, registers, surveillance, toppling and expropriation, and other forms of safeguarding and preservation. § The public administration shall be responsible, in the form of the law, for the management of government documentation and for making arrangements to make it available for consultation by all those who need it. § 3. The law shall establish incentives for the production and knowledge of cultural assets and values. § 4. Damages and threats to cultural heritage shall be punished, in the form of law. § 5. All documents and sites containing historical reminiscences of the former quilombos shall be protected as historic monuments (Federal 1988a, b). In the first moment, the insertion of the new category “intangible heritage” stands out, as well as the possibility of recognizing individualized assets and a group of assets. Immediately following is the turning point offered by the Charter of 1988: “different groups that form the Brazilian society”. This demonstrates how diversity erased the homogeneity contained in previous texts, seeking to go beyond an “appeal to unity in diversity” (Maia 2009: 104). A change of this nature and scope is of no small importance when embodied in the nation’s highest document. This change translates the recognition of the “Brazilian society” as a multicultural reality, henceforth fostering the recognition of the diversity of cultures and traditions; providing opportunities for interactions that stimulate interculturality, so that differences can be advantages and not barriers; promoting respect for differences; legitimating claims for the redistribution of resources; empowering people in their daily lives, so that they are able to achieve their best and become committed citizens. Giving heritage

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policies the status of instruments to achieve these objectives is the great innovative change of Article 216 of the 1988 Constitution. This change opens the door to the manifestation of plural memories. For the first time in Brazil, heritage becomes a relevant and operative symbol of identity. The shift towards the recognition of particularisms and local expressions in the field of heritage recognition shows that this option does not necessarily erode national identity. This is the lesson that the Brazilian example brings to the field of heritage policies. Trying to trace the path taken by the text in the constituent process, it is necessary to analyse some basic documents that were fundamental for the implementation of what is known today as article 216.

7.3 Constituent Assembly and Heritage The President of the Republic at the time, José Sarney (Brazilian Democratic Movement Party—PMDB/MA), gathered a group of literati, intellectuals and politicians in the “Provisional Commission of Constitutional Studies” (instituted by Decree 91,450/1985), then nicknamed “Commission of the Notables” or “Afonso Arinos Commission”, since it was presided by this Brazilian intellectual, to organize a preliminary draft to be delivered to the NCA. The list of notables included, among others Afonso Arinos de Melo Franco, Alexandre José Barbosa Lima Sobrinho, Antônio Ermírio de Moraes, Bolívar Lamounier, Cândido Mendes, Celso Furtado, Cláudio Pacheco, Cláudio Penna Lacombe, Clóvis Ferro Costa, Cristovam Buarque, Eduardo Mattos Portella, Evaristo de Moraes Filho, Fajardo José de Pereira Faria, Padre Fernando Bastos de Ávila, Floriza Verucci, Gilberto de Ulhoa Canto, Gilberto Freyre, Reverend Guilhermino Cunha, Hélio Jaguaribe, Hélio Santos João Pedro Gouvea Vieira, Jorge Amado, José Afonso da Silva, José Alberto de Assumpção, José Francisco da Silva, José do Rego Barros Meira de Araújo, Sepúlveda Pertence, Saulo Ramos, Laerte Ramos Vieira, Mário de Souza Martins, Mauro Santayana (Executive Secretary of the Committee), Miguel Reale, Miguel Reale Júnior, Ney Prado (General Secretary of the Committee), Orlando Magalhães Carvalho, Paulo Brossard, Raul Machado Horta, Rosah Russomano and Walter Barelli. According to the Jornal do Brasil newspaper, in its edition of September 14th 1985, this Commission already had around 500 suggestions to be included in the new Magna Carta that was about to be born. In relation to heritage, the following suggestion was made. Article 397—The Public Power will provide for conditions for preserving the ambience of cultural assets with a view to ensuring: I—the safeguarding of their significant form, including, among other measures, register and the obligation to restore; II—a systematic inventory of these assets which are references to national identity (emphasis added by the authors).

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Article 398—Cultural assets are those of a material or immaterial nature, which are individual or collective, bearers of reference to national memory, including documents, works, places, ways of making of historical and artistic value, significant natural landscapes, and archaeological collections. Sarney asked Celso Furtado (PMDB), who would become a member of the Notables Commission and leader of the recently founded Ministry of Culture, to organize, within the Secretariat of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (SPHAN), a commission to draw up a document that would back up the constituents in the drafting of a specific text. Constituted by jurists Modesto Sousa Barros Carvalhosa, who chaired it, Raphael Carneiro da Rocha and Cláudia Martins Dutra, and architects Augusto Carlos da Silva Telles and Paulo Ormindo David de Azevedo, the commission came up with the following definition. Cultural assets are those of a tangible or intangible nature, which are individual or collective, bearers of reference to national identity and local memory—urban and rural—including manifestations, ways of doing things and living together, documents, works, places, and sites of historic, artistic, archaeological, or scientific value and anthropic and natural landscapes. Sole paragraph. Attacks against them are equivalent to those committed against the national heritage. As one can see, article 398 had a major influence on SPHAN’s version. But article 397 of the Committee of the Notables still refers to a single, almost unequivocal, national identity. According to Campos. On 17 November 1987, Modesto Carvalhosa published in Jornal da Tarde the SPHAN’s proposals to the Constituent Assembly on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Institution’s creation. He highlighted the influence of Aloísio Magalhães in his propositions by stating that the “heritage strand is concerned with guarding what has already crystallized in our culture, seeking to identify this heritage, recovering, preserving, and revitalizing it”, while the “cultural production strand, […] is concerned with the dynamics of artistic creation in various sectors, […], and it is up to the preservation bodies to identify what, in this continuous creation, can be incorporated into the heritage dimension”, favouring the broadening of participation of actors in the heritage processes (Campos 2018: 120). Under the argument that the NCA should be independent of the other constituted powers, publicly, the representatives of the constituent power stated that they would not accept the draft text, so as to ensure that the system of checks and balances that stabilizes and makes equidistant the three powers of the republic, would not be tainted. However, objectively, the texts of the Committee of Notables were reflected in the final version of the NCA. The first sentence of the suggestion makes this clear. What is worth analysing in the course of the text within the constituent process. This began in the thematic sub-commissions, which fed into the respective commissions, being forwarded for systematization and to the plenary, so that the texts and amendments could be considered for revision and approval. Objectively speaking, the process took the following course.

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Elaboration of the constitutional provisions by sub-themes, under the responsibility of the Thematic Sub-commissions; Elaboration of the chapters, by themes, under the responsibility of the Thematic Commissions; Elaboration of the Titles and systematization of the provisions approved by the Commissions and elaboration of the Constitution Project, under the responsibility of the Systematization Commission; Voting and final drafting of the definitive text, under the responsibility of the Plenary of the National Constituent Assembly and the Drafting Commission (Câmara dos Deputados 2021). The period of almost two years of drafting the 1988 Federal Constitution can be divided into 7 stages, stretching from February 1st., 1987 to October 5th., 1988: 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

Preliminary stage: Definition of the NCA’s Internal Regulations and receipt of suggestions (Citizens, Constituents, and Entities); Thematic Sub-commissions: Draft of the Rapporteur; Amendment to the Draft of the Rapporteur; Draft of the Sub-commission; Thematic Commissions: Amendment to the Subcommittee’s Bill in the Commission; Reporter’s Substitute; Amendment to the Substitute; Commission’s Preliminary Draft; Systematization Committee: Draft Constitution; Amendments of merit and adequacy to the draft; Draft Constitution; Amendments (1P) of Plenary and Popular; Reporter’s Substitute 1; Amendment (ES) to Substitute 1; Reporter’s Substitute 2; Plenary: Bill A (start of 1st round); Transitional Provisions Act; Amendment (2P) of Plenary and Amendments; Bill B (end of 1st.; start of 2nd. round); Amendment (2 T) to Bill B; Bill C (end of 2nd. round). Drafting Committee: Drafting proposal only; Bill D—final drafting. Epilogue: Promulgation (Câmara dos deputados 2021).

It should be added that the NCA that materialized the 1988 Constitution was avantgarde in Brazil’s brief constitutional history, as it welcomed popular participation and their suggestions for the constitutional document, drawing closer to the social movements already operating in the 1970s. For Octávio Elísio, a constituent of the PMDB/MG, “All [the] people went inside the plenary and discussed, and brought suggestions. That was extremely rich. […] it was certainly one of the richest opportunities I had of such a rewarding and participatory political work” (apud Campos 2018, p. 88). In a divergent view, for Antonio Augusto Arantes, representative of the ABA (Brazilian Association of Anthropology), according to Campos, “the reception of popular participation was not something full, but popular participation was undoubtedly indispensable for the legitimization of the Constitutional Charter” (2018: 89). After the debate phase with popular, intellectual, and parliamentary representatives, the Sub-commission of Education, Culture, and Sports, in which the cultural heritage was inserted, presented the following text version.

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Art. 19. § 1 Heritage and manifestations of popular culture, principally indigenous and Afro-Brazilian, shall enjoy special protection by the State against extraneous actions that violate their nature and authenticity. […]. Art. 22. The public authorities shall promote and encourage the preservation of sites, buildings, objects, documents, and other goods of cultural value—archaeological, historical, scientific, artistic, ecology, and landscape—through their systematic inventory, surveillance, list, acquisition, and other actions of safeguarding and protection. Diversity as a structuring element of national identity is not explicitly mentioned. However, there is a clear reference to popular culture, notably indigenous and AfroBrazilian culture. Both were reallocated, in the final version, in a specific chapter, in the case of Indians, and in articles scattered throughout the Constitution, in the case of Afro-Brazilians. But the paradigm shift showed trends that would come to be consummated in the following decades. The dimension of this change is more easily understood if we recall that, during the entire first half of the twentieth century, blacks and Indians were seen as a social problem, being segments of society that did not incorporate the map of civilization. The first decades of the twentieth century were strongly dominated by scientific discussions around the ideals of population whitening. Having been sent to the competent committee, that of Family, Education, Culture and Sports, Science and Technology and Communication, the propositions for heritage became the following excerpts. Article 18. Brazilian cultural heritage is constituted by material and immaterial assets, considered individually, or collectively, which are receptacles of reference to the identities, actions, and memory of the different groups and classes that make up Brazilian society. This heritage includes forms of expression, ways of doing and living, scientific, artistic and technological creations, works, objects, documents, buildings, urban groups, and sites of historical, landscape, artistic, archaeological, ecological, and scientific value. Sole Paragraph—The State shall protect, in its entirety and development, the heritage and manifestations of popular culture, of Indigenous cultures, of cultures of African origin, and of the various immigrant groups that participate in the Brazilian civilizing process (emphasis added by the authors). This is a version much closer to the final version, especially in the dimension under analysis: the identity materialized by diversity. The rapporteur, Artur da Távola (PMDB/RJ), stated that there is in this proposal a “dematerialization of the heritage concept”, saying that the proposal “is not the work of this Rapporteur. Personally, I would even like to be its author, but it is the work of a series of advances that the ideas allowed to be consummated and the form could be reached, throughout the debates in the Sub-commission”. The protagonists of these debates were, among parliamentarians, Octávio Elísio (PMDB/MG) and Florestan Fernandes (Workers’ Party—PT/SP), who mediated the text of the Sub-commission on Education, Culture and Sport. Besides them, Antônio

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Augusto Arantes, representing the Brazilian Association of Anthropology and Ailton Krenak, for the Union of Indigenous Nations, stood out in the debate on heritage. The perception of identity and difference in Krenak’s discourse reveals the search for legitimacy of his claims, as demands of indigenous nations, which are based not on homogeneity, but on diversity, as established in the caput of Article 216 of the Federal Constitution (Campos 2018: 133). In the Systematization and Plenary stages, what we saw were some attempts to defenestrate heritage. Among them, Álvaro Valle (Liberal Party—PL/RJ) presented a suppressive amendment to the text, since “it is not up to the law to define what constitutes Brazilian cultural heritage”. Like him, Acival Gomes (PMDB/SE), requested the suppression of the same, for being “incompatible with the individual guarantee of the right to property”. Unfortunately, Ruben Branquinho (PMDB/AC) was successful in approving his suggestion, succeeding in removing the version of the text that until then had guaranteed the cultural heritage of indigenous people. This allowed the recognition of culture to exclude the settlement of Indians, with indigenous settlements being allocated to the Acts of Transitory Constitutional Dispositions (ATCD). Although legally there is no hierarchy between the article in the permanent text and the one in the transitional text, politically, those in favour of postponing land reform were strengthened. It is worth noting that the same occurred with quilombola communities and the issue of ownership of their lands. Among other lobbies, the victory came from the Rural Democratic Union, presided over by Ronaldo Caiado, who acted almost as an “elected Constituent” (Dreifuss apud Barbosa 2016: 232). This allowed some victories of the social movements of the 1970s to be reflected in the following decade. According to Campos. One of the examples of social demands that were welcomed by the public authorities resulted in the listing of the Terreiro Casa Branca, in Salvador. The importance of its listing results from the fact that it was the first non-Catholic religious property preserved by the State. Even though the listing is a legal instrument dating from 1937, it was only in 1986 (a year precisely placed between the end of the military dictatorship and the beginning of the Constituent Assembly) that the listing of the terreiro was homologated (Campos 2018: 95). However, conservative positions such as those we have highlighted were successful. The dispute took place in the NCA, through “identity politics” (Hall 2009: 105), between “identities situated asymmetrically in relation to power” (Silva 2009: 87). Although the “political assertion of identities” (Woodward 2009: 25) requires forms of authentication, such as heritage, promoted across diversity in the Constitution, once again the voices of minorities succumbed to economic power. Heritage was catalogued by diversity, but the ownership of the land on which this heritage is lived was omitted. The major obstacles to the implementation of more plural heritage policies do not stem from a fear of corrosion of the idea of nationhood. They result from the struggles and the perpetuation of hegemonies which frame a selective appropriation of resources, namely the land.

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7.4 Final Notes It is globally and transversally recognized that Article 216 is innovative, as it is responsible for the insertion of minority groups, or “cultures of aspiration” (Appadurai 2002: 9). These minorities did not have, until 1988, a legal framework for their cultural manifestations, namely, in constitutional terms. Article 216 provides, in the words of Appadurai, the “constant dialogue between the capacity to aspire and the capacity to remember” (2002: 9). However, it should not be denied that the cultural diversity evoked by Article 216 repeats the problems that its simple naturalization presents: the failure to meet specific demands; the postponement of the realization of the right to property and ownership of Indians and quilombolas; the claim of immigrants as part of the national identity, etc. As Barbosa states, the 1988 political charter “grants rights to subaltern classes, but many of them were never implemented and others were reformed” (Barbosa 2016: 51). Who would be included in the expression “different groups forming Brazilian society”? In other words, would the “national fact” presented by Babelon and Chastel have been effectively and efficiently reformulated by an identity through diversity? Or did the “administrative fact” fail in its “(un)adequacy […] of existing legislation” (Barbosa 2016: 51)? There are several versions for an identity, and each and every version is ideological (Prats 2009: 31). Identity, which is established at least by a “dialectical relationship between reality, ideas, and values, and the interests of those who propound and share them” (2009: 31), should be seen as: […] an imagined and relational concept, dialogically constructed through a process of recognition of the similarity with what we believe to be our own group in relation to other groups, also imagined (Faria and Almeida apud Cabral 2011: 44). Or as a construction “both symbolic and social” (Woodward 2009: 10). A similar statement is made by Peralta. In this sense, all heritage construction is a symbolic representation of a given version of identity, of an identity “manufactured” by the present which idealizes it. Thus, cultural heritage will then comprise all those elements which found the identity of a group and which differentiate it from others (2000: 219). The claims inherent to the intangible heritage indicate that the “national fact” concretizes an identity through diversity. Since the advent of Decree 3551/2000, which regulates the registration of these cultural assets, several manifestations started to catalogue the Brazilian list of cultural heritage, in a reaction to the “homogenization imposed by dominant economic interests that threaten with the extinction of cultural diversity” (Prats 2009: 62), and globalization may be considered as a challenge imposed on cultural diversity (Appadurai 2002: 09). Besides churches, military fortifications, aristocratic mansions, the matrices of samba, tambores de crioula, frevo, capoeira, divine festivities, fandango, carimbó, pilgrimages, caboclinho, etc., began to refer to Brazilian culture, in evident “better acceptance of other values” (Barbosa 2016: 88).

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“Heritage and identity do not always coexist harmoniously” (Faria and Almeida apud Cabral 2011: 128). As Lowenthal points out, “the attachment to heritage is accused of many evils: excessive chauvinism, elitist reactions, vanity and vulgarity and above all perversion of history” (Lowenthal 1998: 110). It is necessary to consider the unethical conduct of petty and perverse political bargaining, such as that seen in this text, arising from elitist reactions to claims which were far from being demonstrated in attachment to a particular heritage, but which saw, through it, means of attaining their redemption, in order to praise equity, by having possession and ownership of land effectively instituted. However, they encountered, on the stronger side of the constituent battle, hordes of chauvinists backed by their vanities and vulgar attitudes, who perverted the rare moment of an NCA, by maintaining the privileges of a group that has for decades paraded its economic and political powers in the halls of the Legislative Branch. If these heritagizations—which should be acts of citizenship—are not able to provide dignity to those who identify themselves with heritage assets, the constitutional text will have been only a vehicle of empty political rhetoric. “Thus, identity can be dangerous for heritage” (Peixoto 2006: 70). As Babelon and Chastel state, heritage has to be able to provoke feelings beyond the amusing, the picturesque, as it would only be ironic, causing distancing (Babelon and Chastel 1994: 109), apart from a “spectacular consummation” (Poulot1998: 65). Heritage should be more cultural and less cultic (Barbosa 2016).

References Abreu R, Peixoto P (2014) Construindo políticas patrimoniais. Reflexões em torno dos 10 anos da Convenção do Património Cultural Imaterial. E-cadernos CES 21(1 de Junho de 2014):3–13. https://doi.org/10.4000/eces.1740 Appadurai A (2002) Cultural diversity: a conceptual platform. sustainable diversity: the indivisibility of culture and development. In: Stenou K (ed) Declaration on cultural diversity. Cultural diversity series 1. UNESCO, Paris, pp 9–15. http://www.arjunappadurai.org/articles/Appadurai_Cultural_ Diversity_A_Conceptual_Platform.pdf Babelon J-P, André C (1994) [1980]. La notion de patrimoine. Liana Levi, Paris Barbosa MOL (2016) A Comunicação Popular: O Debate e o Processo Constituinte No Brasil (1977–1988). Gráfica UFG, Goiânia Cabral CB (2011) Património Cultural Imaterial - Convenção da Unesco e Seus Contextos. Edições, Lisboa, p 70 Campos YDS (2015) O Patrimônio Cultural como Objeto de Lei: Legalização, Constituinte, Revolução. In: Campos YDS (ed) Patrimônio Cultural Plural. Arraes Editores, pp 46–71 Campos YDS (2018) Palanque e Patíbulo. O Patrimônio Cultural na Assembleia Nacional Constituinte. 1987–1988. 1a edição. Annablume, São Paulo, SP, Brasil Choay F (2006) A alegoria do patrimônio, 4th edn. Estação Liberdade: Ed. da UNESP, São Paulo dos Deputados C (2021) ‘Etapas e Fases’. Portal da Câmara dos Deputados. Accessed 5 March 2021. https://www2.camara.leg.br/atividade-legislativa/legislacao/Constituicoes_Brasile iras/constituicao-cidada/o-processo-constituinte/o-processo-constituinte Durham ER, Omar RT (2004) A dinâmica da cultura: ensaios de antropologia. Cosac Naify

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Federal S (1988a) Art. 216. https://www.senado.leg.br/atividade/const/con1988/CON1988_0 5.https://doi.org/10.1988/art_216_.asp Federal S (1988b) Constituição Federal (Texto Promulgado Em 05/10/1988). https://www.senado. leg.br/atividade/const/con1988/CON1988_05.https://doi.org/10.1988/art_216_.asp Gamboni D (1998) La face cachée du procès de constitution du patrimoine. In: Poulot D (ed) Patrimoine et modernité. Harmattan, pp 251–63 Lowenthal D (1998) La Fabrication d’un Héritage. In: Poulot D (ed) Patrimoine et Modernité. L’Harmattan, Paris, pp 107–127 Lucas J (2003) Globalización e identidades: claves políticas y jurídicas. Icaria Editorial Peixoto P (2006) O Património Mata a Identidade. In: Peralta E, Anico M (eds) Patrimónios e Identidades: Ficções Contemporâneas. Celta, Oeiras Peralta E (2000) Património e Identidade: Os Desafios Do Turismo Cultural. Antropológicas 4:217– 224 Poulot D (1998) Le Patrimonie et Les Aventures de La Modernité. In: Patrimoine et Modernité. L’Harmattan, Paris, pp 7–67 Prats L (2009) Antropología y patrimonio. Ariel, Barcelona Presidência da República (1934) Constituição Da República Dos Estados Unidos Do Brasil (de 16 de Julho de 1934). http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao34.htm Presidência da República (1937a) Constituição Dos Estados Unidos Do Brasil de 10 de Março de 1937. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao37.htm Presidência da República (1937b) Decreto-Lei No 25, de 30 de Novembro De1937. http://www.pla nalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/decreto-lei/Del0025.htm Presidência da República (1946) Constituição Dos Estados Unidos Do Brasil de 18 de Setembro de 1946. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao46.htm Presidência da República (1967) Constituição Da República Federativa Do Brasil de 1967. http:// www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao67.htm Presidência da República (1969) Emenda Constitucional No 1, de 17 de Outubro De 1969. http:// www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/Constituicao/Emendas/Emc_anterior1988/emc01-69.htm Vieira L (2009) Morrer Pela Pátria? Notas Sobre Identidade Nacional e Globalização. In: Vieira L (ed) Identidade e Globalização: Impasses e Perspectivas Da Identidade e a Diversidade Cultural. Record, Rio de Janeiro, pp 61–86 Woodward K (2009) Identidade e Diferença: Uma Introdução Teórica e Conceitual. In: Identidade e Diferença: A Perspectiva Dos Estudos Culturais, edited by Tomaz Tadeu Silva, 7–22. Petrópolis: Editora Vozes

Chapter 8

“The Abyss of History is Deep Enough to Hold Us All” The Beginnings of the 1931 Athens Charter and the Proposition of the Notion of World Heritage Marcos Olender Abstract The article discusses some of the production aspects of the 1931’s Athens Charter, the first international document referring to the protection of historical and artistic heritage produced within the framework of an international political and institutional articulation. It addresses the historical conjecture construction process of elaboration of the aforementioned document, starting with the context of the First World War, passing through the implantation of institutions that began the structuring of an international policy for the protection of heritage, in which the concern for the viability of the constitution of a humanity heritage is highlighted. Keywords 1931’s Athens charter · World heritage · Preservation

8.1 “In a Force Field of Destructive Currents and Explosions”: The Traumas of the First World War No, this much is clear: experitroductionence has fallen in value, amid a generation which from 1914 to 1918 had to experience some of the most monstrous events in the history of the world. Perhaps this is less remarkable than it appears. Wasn’t it noticed at the time how many people returned from the front in silence? Not richer but poorer in communicable experience? [...] No, there was nothing remarkable about that. For never has experience been contradicted more thoroughly: strategic experience has been contravened by positional This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus–Revista de História-UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). English version by Lílian Costa Magalhães. Olender—Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). Master’s Degree in Social History from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). PhD in Architecture and Urban Planning from UFBA. Full Professor at the Department of History and Graduate Studies in History at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF). M. Olender (B) Juiz de Fora 36016-011, Minas Gerais, Brasil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_8

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warfare; economic experience, by the inflation; physical experience, by hunger; moral experiences, by the ruling powers. A generation that had gone to school in horse-drawn streetcars now stood in the open air, amid a landscape in which nothing was the same except the clouds and, at its center, in a force field of destructive torrents and explosions, the tiny, fragile human body (Benjamin 2012a, 123-124; emphasis added).

This use of Walter Benjamin’s thought in the context of the World War I to explain what he defines as the process of decay of collective experiences and the strengthening of individual experiences is well known. That process had begun in the nineteenth century and became stronger as a result of this international conflict which redefined the notion of tragedy in the early twentieth century. This situation is so striking for Benjamin that he even uses the same two phrases (in bold above) in two fundamental texts where he addresses the subject. One of them, and where the excerpt transcribed above was taken from, is “Experience and Poverty,” where he warned about a barbarism “not in a good way” that was immediately behind the door, and that was Nazism, and he proposes to contrast it with a “new, positive notion of barbarism […] to make a new start; […] to begin with a little […] from a tabula rasa”(Benjamin 2012a, 125). The other text is “The Storyteller,” which is about also in process of extinction “art of storytelling,” as it is structured precisely in collective experiences (Benjamin 2012b). Benjamin had lived through the horror of the First World War, although he refused to fight in it, and that was even the reason for the break with his mentor Gustav Wyneken, who was in favor of the war. But he had witnessed the damage caused by the war and the silence of the combatants who returned from the fronts because, as Gagnebin (2006, 51) said “what they experienced could no longer be assimilated by words.” World War I remained, at least “in the memory of the British and the French, who fought most of the First World War on the western front” Hobsbawn points out, as a memory which is “more terrible and traumatic […] than the Second,” (Hobsbawn 1995, 25–26) although the latter was more wide-ranging, crueler, and more deadly. That is probably because the war inaugurated a dimension of destruction and death that had never been known—not even imagined—before then for an international conflict. The repercussions of its horrors can also be seen in the first of the two letters written about it by the French poet Paul Valéry, collected in the publication “The Crisis of the Mind,” which begins with the following statement: “We later civilizations… we too know that we are mortal.” (“Nous autres, civilisations, nous savonsmaintenant que nous sommesmortelles.”) (Valéry 1919, 2). With World War I, the fall of empires and civilizations, which were known only in history books, recklessly approached the European peoples, as the French writer pointed out: We had long heard tell of whole worlds that had vanished, of empires sunk without a trace, gone down with all their men and all their machines into the unexplorable depths of the centuries, with their gods and their laws [...]. We were aware that the visible earth is made of ashes, and that ashes signify something. Through the obscure depths of history we could make out the phantoms of great ships laden with riches and intellect; we could not count

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them. But the disasters that had sent them down were, after all, none of our affair. Elam, Ninevah, Babylon were but beautiful vague names, and the total ruin of those worlds had as little significance for us as their very existence. But France, England, Russia... these too would be beautiful names. Lusitania too, is a beautiful name. And we see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all. We are aware that a civilization has the same fragility as a life. The circumstances that could send the works of Keats and Baudelaire to join the works of Menander are no longer inconceivable; they are in the newspapers (Valéry 1919, 2; emphasis added).

The conditions, characteristics, and scope of the destruction can be better apprehended if we look at the newspapers of the time, with their accounts and photographs. In April of 1916, in issue 154 of the French magazine “Les Arts” (The Arts), the French architect Paul Léon describes the situation of the historical monuments of his country in an article entitled “La guerre et les monuments” (The War and the Monuments). The tension and lack of foresight and perspective on the possible scale of the disaster are evident in the first paragraph of the text: It would be premature, after more than twenty months of the war, to attempt to make an inventory of our artistic losses. There is a lack of data, testimonies are inconsistent, and investigations are sometimes difficult to carry out. Furthermore, our fight goes on and today’s truth may no longer be tomorrow’s. However, it is possible, when it comes to monuments, to draw a general picture of the devastation suffered, to specify its current importance, and to determine the necessary restorations (Léon 1916, 2).

In its nine pages, the text addresses several issues concerning the war, the damage already caused, the threats yet to come, and it even comments on the options for the first conservation procedures and the preservation of the buildings affected. Still on the first page, Léon presents the strategy used by the Germans during the invasion of France, as well as its effects: The effects of vandalism varied according to the three phases of the war: invasion, the German withdrawal, and the stability of the fronts. The enemy offensive had to attack quickly and forcefully. In order to take France out of action quickly, it was not only necessary to destroy their armies, but also to break their material and moral resistance. Violence against people, looting of houses, destruction of buildings. These are the various forms of the same system of terror, of which the looting of Senlis or that of Gerbévillers were the logical consequences (Léon 1916, 2).

This German military strategy is also described and analyzed by Hobsbawn (1995, 25) in his book “The Age of Extremes”: The German plan was to knock out France quickly in the West and then move with equal rapidity to knock out Russia in the East, before the Tsar’s empire could bring the full weight of it enormous military manpower into effective action. Then, as later, Germany planned for a lightning campaign (what would in the Second World War be called a blitzkrieg) because it had to.

The destruction caused by the German army in French territory was not limited, however, to the bombing and burning of the historical monuments of each location invaded. It was worsened by the systematic plunder of artistic masterpieces. That attitude was justified by the German art historian and director of the Rhine Province

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Heritage Council, Paul Clemen, who was also assigned by his government to “inspect works of art in the invaded departments” (Léon 1916, 3) in France, in order to protect them from the action of the French army itself (!), according to an account made by Léon. In fact, as the text points out, the most significant destruction and looting often took place when the German troops withdrew from the invaded and dominated regions, leaving behind a trail of fire and debris. Direct bombing of cities was the main factor for their destruction. There are several striking examples documented and presented in photographs in Léon’s article, such as that of the “charming church of Tilloloy” (Figs. 8.1 and 8.2), shattered by bombs and where the “elegant ribs, stone and brick masonry, the façade with towers, the decoration adorned with all the graces of the Renaissance, composed a rare masterpiece inspired by the purest traditions of our civil and religious architecture”(Léon 1916, 6), or in the Church of Ablain-SaintNazaire, which “served as a target for the artillery” (Léon 1916, 6) and of which “today there is nothing more left than a sinister skeleton” (Léon 1916, 7) (Figs. 8.3 and 8.4). It is clear, however, according to Léon (1916, 7), that “all this destruction, of which it is impossible to make a comprehensive list, encompassed buildings of truly unparalleled value.” In them, we find buildings listed as cultural heritage, that is, included in the “list of historical monuments.” But even if “very few buildings” were on the list at the beginning of the war that would not remove their historical value, firstly because “this list, which becomes longer and longer every day, has only a

Fig. 8.1 Church of Tilloy (Somme) before the bombing. Photograph by Section Photographique de l’Armée (Léon 1916, 4)

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Fig. 8.2 Tilloy Church (Somme) after the bombing. Photograph by Section Photographique de l’Armée (Léon 1916, 5)

relative and provisional value” (Léon 1916, 7). Proof of that is the example given by Léon (1916, 7), which states that [...] in the department of Marne alone, twenty-seven churches have been added to the list [or “classified”, according to the French terminology] since the war. The Historical Monuments Commission decided that they have sufficient artistic character to place their restoration under the control of the government.

But more than that, because even though “many other” buildings did not present “great artistic interest, they did contribute to the picturesque aspect of the village by preserving precious memories of local history and contained venerated relics whose desecration is infinitely painful” (Léon 1916, 7). And how to deal with such destruction and with these vilified, violated memories? What about the defilement that also destroyed old civilian buildings? “To what extent will the future reveal the ruins of the present?” asked Léon (1916, 8). “During the war, the most that could be done (and that was actually done) was to avoid aggravating the damage already caused by the action of bad weather in structures weakened by aggression.” “After the war,” says Léon, “the problem of permanent restoration will arise. And it will arise to an extent unknown in our country since the destruction

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Fig. 8.3 Church of Ablain-Saint-Nazaire (Pas-de-Calais) before the bombing. Photograph by Séction photographique de l’Armée (Léon 1916, 6)

caused by the revolutionary vandalism was repaired [during the French Revolution of 1789]” (1916, 8; emphasis added). However, the French architect also points out, the situation “is already giving rise to very heated discussion” (Léon 1916, 8). The first point of discussion is in the question, “Should the ruins remain as the invasion left them?” Or “on the contrary, is it necessary to restore the monuments to the state they were in before the war and to erase the traces of their mutilation?” (Léon 1916, 8). Léon then presents the reasons for the two opposing positions. On the one hand, there are those who he calls “the supporters of full preservation” and, on the other hand, there are those who want restoration. Due to the importance of this debate, which spans the entire period between wars and which, in a certain way, returns after the second conflict, here are some excerpts from the article: Defenders of full preservation invoke reasons of national interest. We have forgotten too much since 1870 and forgetting was almost our damnation. The spectacle of the present must remain the teaching of the future. It is with this in mind that the socialist congressman Jules-Louis Breton and a number of his colleagues presented a bill proposing the conservation of historic ruins.”It is now necessary “, they state, “to choose some of the destroyed villages along our front to keep them in the exact same state in which the war left them... tomorrow

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Fig. 8.4 Ablain-Saint-Nazaire Church (PAS-DE-CALAIS) after the bombing. Photograph by Section Photographique de l’Armée (Léon 1916, 6)

and forever more the historic ruins must become a place of pilgrimage where the children will be taken.”Respect for the old work must be added to the concern for national education. As mutilated as it may be, the monument still has profound life that will probably be destroyed by a brutal restoration.[...] To those who want to restore, abstention seems like a confession of impotence and as a sign of defeat. The uncountable hills that raise the lands of the fields will remain as an imperishable teaching for our children. We owe them a country free from all the contamination of the invasion, and the first act of faith in our national destination must be the rebuilding of our destroyed monuments (Léon 1916, 8-9).

The French architect develops a brief digression on the issue, pondering the positions taken by both sides. With regard to those who defend the reconstruction of monuments, he recalls and criticizes the position taken by Eugène Emannuel Violletle-Duc, who defends filling the “artistic gaps” in the buildings with copies of “similar and contemporary works,” as seen in the restoration of the Notre-Dame in Paris (which he carried out). Léon, however, prefers that such gaps remain unchanged out of “respect for the truth” (Léon 1916, 10). In this sense, responding to the German criticism made by Paul Clemen, who takes on a posture explicitly like that of Violletle-Duc, he says that he can “affirm there is unanimity in the [French] Historical Monuments Commission to leave untouched the statues of Reims that caught fire,” (Léon 1916, 10) the same does not apply to “the parts essential to the stability of the building,” (Léon 1916, 10) which should be rebuilt. However, in Léon’s view, the ruin of historical assets is not an easy matter to be resolved. What to do, for example, with “the churches hit in the middle of the battlefield”? To him, at first, it is not a matter of restoration, but of reconstruction. But should this reconstruction, in order to serve the community, “reproduce the original monument or design a new monument without taking the past into account?” Here,

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Léon, a witness of the pain and anguish of the affected communities, says that “the methods will vary.” He mentions the city hall of Arras, in Pas-de-Calais, as an example, since it was completely destroyed by the Germans, and asks: “Will the city allow the image of the belfry—so closely linked to its history—to disappear forever?” To him, the best thing to do would be to construct a new building, but one in which the architect chosen to work on the project would have to take into account “the regional style when choosing the materials and interpreting the shapes,” so that he or she could “give freedom to his/her own inspiration.” However, it is important to note that, even in the middle of the conflict, Léon’s concern was with the open wounds in the affected communities and with how to best deal with them. In that sense, the French architect concludes his text leaving open the paths to be trodden: No matter what the solutions to these complex problems are, the task of the present is clearly outlined. Wherever workers can do their job and materials can be sourced behind the line of fire, it is important to start working. It is a sacred duty for public authorities to preserve the artistic heritage that the past has left us and that we must take into account in the future (Léon 1916, 10).

Léon had the opportunity to discuss these and other issues during the First International Congress of Architects and Technicians of Historic Monuments held in Athens, in 1931, and whose final product is considered the first international document to deal with the conservation of the built and urban heritage: the Athens Charter.

8.2 “A Special Type of League”: The League of Nations, Intellectual Cooperation and Heritage Preservation After the war, among the resolutions of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) was the creation of an international institution that could strengthen the dialogue between nations and find a solution for their problems and tensions, thereby avoiding a new conflict as large and tragic as the one which had just ended. Idealized by the American President Woodrow Wilson and with an explicitly Kantian foundation, the League of Nations was created. Wilson was inspired by two works by Kant, a German philosopher, where he presented the idea of “a federation of peoples in which every state, even the smallest, could expect to derive its security and rights not from its own power or its own legal judgment, but solely from this great federation,” (Kant 2011, 13) which are, “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” (1784, where the transcribed excerpt was taken from) and, mainly, “Perpetual Peace” (1795), written 11 years later, where Kant explains the concept of “League of Peoples.” This concept appears in the “Second Definitive Article for a Perpetual Peace” entitled “The Law of Nations Shall be Founded on a Federation of Free States.” There, Kant, after explaining the concept of “league of peoples,” a special league that he defined as a “league of peace,” states: Nations, as states, may be judged like individuals [...] for the sake of its own security, may— and ought to—demand that its neighbour should submit itself to conditions, similar to those

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of the civil society where the right of every individual is guaranteed. This would give rise to a federation of nations which, however, would not have to be a State of nations.[...] Without a compact between the nations, however, this state of peace cannot be established or assured. Hence there must be an alliance of a particular kind which we may call a covenant of peace (foedus pacificum), which would differ from a treaty of peace (pactum pacis) in this respect, that the latter merely puts an end to one war, while the former would seek to put an end to war for ever. [...] The practicability or objective reality of this idea of federation which is to extend gradually over all states and so lead to perpetual peace can be shewn (Kant 1903, 129-134).

The idea of an international league can be found 30 years before the founding of the League of Nations. It was proposed by the French architect Charles Normand, to institutionalize and make the international protection of the peoples’ historical and artistic heritage possible. As mentioned in a text published in 2017 that took place at the first international meeting that specifically dealt with the preservation of historical and artistic heritage, the First International Congress for the Protection of Works of Art and Monuments (Olender 2017, 189). In the opening speech of the event, Charles Normand, the general secretary and creator of the event, [...] aware that concerns about “the protection and safeguarding of monuments” are “common to all reflective spirits” and translated “into regulations on administration and even laws”, urged:”Imbued by the same thinking, we want to provoke a sympathetic current, an international league that can constitute, even in the midst of the violence of war, an effective defense for the heritage left by the past to all present generations.” (Normand 1889a, 191) (Olender 2017, 189)

But in order to effectively start its own construction and consolidation process, this specific international league for “an effective defense of the heritage left by the past to all present generations” had to wait for precisely the creation of another: the League of Nations, signed on June 28, 1919. However, this first attempt to establish an authentic federation of nations was unsuccessful, failing to prevent the occurrence of an even greater and crueler conflict: World War II. In spite of that, it made the constitution of the first truly international institutional experiences in the field of intellectual and cultural production possible. On the other hand, the refusal of the United States Congress to participate in the League of Nations (which is said to be one of the reasons for its failure) consolidated the European preponderance in it, as stated by Annamaria Ducci (2012, 228): So the League of Nations, while counting among its members great extra-European nations such as Japan, was essentially made up in its decisive organs by European members, and, in point of fact, the old continent, its geopolitical structure and its problems, always remained the League’s central concern. Importantly, it can be said that the idea of the League of Nations was openly European because in the European way of belonging could be found a character at once national and universal: ‘to be European is always to be at the same time pre-European (state, even state-nation) and post-European (global, worldwide)’

The creation of the League of Nations, as well as its bodies linked to cultural and intellectual issues, had the decisive influence of the French government. This influence was reflected in the choice of the first president of the League of Nations, the French politician Léon Bourgeois, as well as in the creation, in 1921, of the first body

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linked to that institution. This body aimed at the internationalization of intellectual production: The International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, created on the basis of a proposal sent to the League of Nations by the “French Association for the Society of Nations,” also presided over by Bourgeois. That proposal was approved in the September 1921 session of the League of Nations. The proposal for the creation of the “executive branch” of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, in 1926, would also come from the French government, the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation (IICI), whose headquarters were in Paris, and which will be discussed later in this article. The creation of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation inaugurated what Vittorio Mainetti calls the second of the three periods related to “the historical process of formation and consolidation of international cultural relations,” (Olender 2017, 208) a subject that I superficially addressed in my 2017 text. The three periods are 1.

2.

3.

One that goes from the second half of the nineteenth century to World War I and that “is characterized by the formation of international cultural relations” (Mainetti 2014, 175). Between the two World Wars, in which “a system of international intellectual cooperation is established within the framework of the League of Nations” (Mainetti 2014, 175). Right after World War II, which is characterized by “the creation of international organizations such as UNESCO and the development of a very articulated system of international cultural cooperation” (Mainetti 2014, 175).

It was mainly in the second period, as I also pointed out in the aforementioned text, that it was: [...] under the auspices of the Society of Nations that many of the proposals/recommendations approved by the International Congress for the Protection of Works of Art and Monuments would be developed and registered in the first international conventions that dealt with the theme. This process gains momentum with the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, created within the aforementioned organization, in 1922. Its concern with preservation has manifested itself since the proposal of then President Henri Bergson to seek internationally stipulated regulations and procedures regarding the prospecting and conservation of archaeological monuments and which was consolidated, by decision of International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, with the foundation of the International Museums Office, which organized the international conference in Athens in 1931 [...] (Olender 2017, 208).

That conference was characterized by Choay (2001, 156) as the “first conference of its kind to take place under the aegis of a supranational body.” In addition to Henri Bergson, other scientists and intellectuals, predominantly European, such as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Paul Valéry, and Johan Huizinga, participated in the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation. In turn, the development of the European hegemony (due to the U.S.A.’s refusal to participate in the League of Nations) in the international institutional initiatives of intellectual and cultural production seems to present itself as a true project that, in a way, was present

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in the second of the two letters contained in “The Crisis of the Mind,” published by Valéry in mid-1919, which concerns the post-World War I scenario. That is how Valéry approached what would be Europe’s mission in that context: A first thought dawns. The idea of culture, of intelligence, of great works, has for us a very ancient connection with the idea of Europe — so ancient that we rarely go back so far. Other parts of the world have had admirable civilizations, poets of the first order, builders, and even scientists. But no part of the world has possessed this singular physical property: the most intense power of radiation combined with an equally intense power of assimilation. Everything came to Europe, and everything came from it. Or almost everything. Now, the present day brings with it this important question: can Europe hold its pre-eminence in all fields? Will Europe become what it is in reality — that is, a little promontory on the continent of Asia? Or will it remain what it seems — that is, the elect portion of the terrestrial globe, the pearl of the sphere, the brain of a vast body? (Valéry 1919, 12). Small though it be, Europe has for centuries figured at the head of the list. In spite of her limited extent — and although the richness of her soil is not out of the ordinary — she dominates the picture. By what miracle? Certainly the miracle must lie in the high quality of her population. That quality must compensate for the smaller number of men, of square miles, of tons or ore, found in Europe (Valéry 1919, 13-14). We suggested just now that the quality of her men must be the determining factor in Europe’s superiority. I cannot analyze this quality in detail; but from a summary examination I would say that a driving thirst, an ardent and disinterested curiosity, a happy mixture of imagination and rigorous logic, a certain unpessimistic skepticism, an unresigned mysticism... are the most specifically active characteristics of the European psyche (Valéry 1919, 14)

Pierre Leveau states that, since its creation in the 1920s, the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation carried out, “four surveys on heritage conservation in different sectors: antiquities and monuments, in 1922; archives and libraries, in 1925; landscapes and natural beauty, in 1927; and lastly, paintings and sculptures, in 1929” (Leveau 2011, 7). Another fundamental activity of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation was to encourage the creation of its counterparts at the national level. As Laqua states (2011, 55), “it was the national intellectual cooperation commissions that constituted the formal link between the initiatives of intellectuals on a national scale and the Society of Nations.” Created starting in 1925, these bodies have now spread to all continents. They were present, for example, in South Africa (1925–1945), Egypt (1927–1945), Syria (1927–1946), El Salvador, Cuba and Bolivia (1925–1945), Japan (1930–1939), and Australia (1925–1945), among several other countries on the same continents as these, as well as in a significant majority of European countries. The Brazilian Commission on Intellectual Cooperation was created in 1925, “which little by little was placed under the guardianship of Itamaraty, while a delegado, Élysée Montarroyos, was also appointed as the intermediary between this body and the Ministry [of Foreign Affairs]” (Dumont and Fléchet 2014, 205). The action of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation had, since 1926, the support of the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation, which

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functioned practically as its executive body. It was created based on a proposal from the French government, in response to a request made in 1924 by then President of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, Henri Bergson, for financial assistance from the member states of the League of Nations. Since its beginning, the headquarters of the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation was located in the Palais-Royal, in Paris, and it received a significant grant from the French government, which accounted for more than 80% of the total contribution from the countries that collaborated with it. As Renoliet (2007, 55) reports, there were only three States when the Institute was founded in 1926, while that number reached 14 in 1939. However, “the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States and the Soviet Union had never been part of it.” The rest of the financial support was obtained “by the special contributions destined to specific works belonging to the States, associations or of the great American foundations (Carnegie Endowment and especially the Rockefeller Foundation)” (Renoliet 2007, 55). The organ’s first president (1926–1930) was the French writer Julien Luchaire, who was also one of the members of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation. In 1923, even before the creation of the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation, Luchaire had already explained what, to him, France’s role would be in the development of intellectual collaboration between peoples: Following an ancient tradition, [she] presents itself as the nation that is best equipped to understand the intellectual effort of all others, to serve as a meeting place for their different products, to harmonize them in accordance with their spirit and thus transform them into the common heritage of humanity. (Luchaire apud Laqua 2011, 54)

The notion of world heritage, or the heritage of humanity, had been developing at least since the middle of the nineteenth century, as pointed out in my 2017 text and explained in a more recent article (Olender 2021).1 It was in the proposals for the creation of a “Red Cross” of monuments, presented by the French architect Charles Normand at the aforementioned 1889 international congress in Paris that this notion had a very important moment in its development. Nevertheless, it is probably in Luchaire’s article that the term “common heritage of humanity” appears for the first time. And it appears when pointing to a crucial intellectual role attributed to the French people. It can be said, without fear of being anachronistic (since the concept would be formulated by Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. more than half a century later), that this “intellectual work” would be the French soft power. As Nye pointed out: In world politics, it is possible for a country to get the results it wants because others want to follow it, admiring its values, following on its footsteps, aspiring to its level of prosperity and freedom.[...] It is that aspect of power - getting others to want what you want - that I call ’soft power’. It co-opts people instead of coercing them (Nye Jr. apud Barão 2014, 94).

In that sense, one could understand France’s effort to occupy the decisive places in the international institutions of culture as well as in the specific case of the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation to be concerned with its implementation 1

The article cited mentioned here, entitled “‘Which Egypt will answer?’ Some genealogical notes on world heritage” will be part of the book: Christofoletti, Rodrigo and Olender, Marcos, org. World Heritage Patinas. Springer: Bern, 2020 (forthcoming).

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and strengthening. The immediate goal of this soft power was the annulment of the growing political power of its neighbor, Germany, as pointed out by Annamaria Ducci (2012, 229–230): The main cultural organism of the League of Nations was indubitably the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation (IICI), established in 1925. The institute had been strongly desired by France, with the intention of opposing – at least on a cultural plane – an ever stronger Germany. Not only did the French government seek the creation of the IICI, but it also supported it financially and deeply influenced its agenda. It should be noted that the birth of the IICI came at that crucial moment of French history at which – following the shattering effects of the Dreyfus affair – the idea of the intellectual as the homme engagé, as political mediator, if not himself the inspirer of new ideologies, took hold. (Ducci 2012, 229-230).

If the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation was predominantly made up of European countries, more specifically those of the “Atlantic region,” its link with Western culture was, according to Ducci, built by the French art historian Henri Focillon, with the support of Paul Valéry, both of whom were also members of the institution (representing France). But what did the two authors consider to be Atlantic Europe? According to Ducci, to them, the “Atlantic West” was increasingly France itself. In order to assert that they obtained support in the thoughts of another historian of art and architecture, who was also an architect and restorer: Viollet-le-Duc. Focillon’s interest in such issues started in the mid-1930s and grew and matured during two years of teaching at the Collège de France, alongside his friend Valéry. Both scholars reached the conclusion that the Atlantic West coincided with France alone. In reality, this was an equation referring to an important strand of nineteenth-century French historiography which had developed precisely in the art history focusing on the Middle Ages. From this angle, the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc’s synthesis in the seventh Entretien (1863) is rather enlightening: ‘In the West, on the contrary (and when I speak of West I intend to speak but of France), the dominant idea, the main idea, has been unity; the arts have been one of the most powerful means for reaching such unity.’ (Ducci, 2012, 231).

It was Henri Focillon who took the initiative to propose the creation of a specific body, linked to the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation, whose field of work was comprised of works of art and museums: the Office International des Musées (International Museums Office). That creation, which reinforced the French soft power, was the subject of immediate criticism, precisely from Germany, as reported by Passini (2018a, 52): Several art historians and heads of German heritage institutions complained about France’s over-representation at the IMO (International Museums Office), which they considered to be the product of a French cultural policy. In addition, those criticisms are justified: the creation of IMO is an initiative of French actors, such as Henri Focillon, then professor of History of Medieval Art at the Sorbonne, who directed the Museum of Fine Arts in Lyon between 1913 and 1923.France plays a dominant role in that institution, headquartered in Paris (in the Palais-Royal), whose language is French and which, during the first years of its life, was directed by a small committee, composed of only six members, including two Frenchmen (in addition to Focillon, Julien Luchaire, director of the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation).

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With the implementation of the IMO in 1926, the Belgian politician Jules Destrée, a prominent member of the IICI, took over the presidency of the body, as described by Ducci (2012, 235): “[…] a proud Flemish lawyer, firm pacifist and active congressman, he was a representative of socialist humanitarianism in the late nineteenth century, who firmly believed that culture in general and the arts in particular could be catalysts for the self-awareness of a people.” In turn, Focillon, the creator of the IMO, according to Ducci, at the time of his entry into the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation, a year before the IMO was set up, was a man of Proudhonian education, to him the “culture was the main springboard of social emancipation” (Ducci 2012, 236) and had extensive experience in the world of museums. To him: [...] the museum represented one of the fundamental institutions of social life, the basic structure of intellectual life in urban society; it was here that the connective tissue joining modernity to tradition was created and, importantly, that the specific values of a people blended with the ‘universal’ values of arts. He articulated such a belief, once again, in the programme of the OIM: the museum was ‘an institution dedicated to intellectual cooperation’, since it presented, at once, ‘the genius of a nation and those of foreign civilizations’; it was, therefore, ‘the best possible means of knowing a culture, in the most tangible manner’, since, just like books, museums represented the best way to reconstruct the history of cultural relations and exchanges of ideas among peoples. In their own way, overcoming ‘national questions, museums have been the first premonition of a European and world-wide self-awareness’ (Ducci 2012, 236).

8.3 “The New Concept That Has Been Emerging for Some Time”: The Issue of the Heritage of Humanity and the 1931 Athens Conference The First International Conference on the Conservation of Monuments of Art and History, promoted by the IMO, took place in Athens in 1931. However, the Athens Conference was not the first international event promoted by that body. In the middle of the previous year, the First Conference on the Scientific Analysis of Works of Art took place in Rome. It was scheduled to take place in 1929, in Paris, but the conference had to be postponed due to the lack of resources caused by the economic crisis resulting from the New York Stock Exchange crash. In the early 1930s, Benito Mussolini financed the event and took it to Rome, as Leveau informs, “for political and scientific reasons,” because “inspired by his Minister of Education, Corrado Ricci, he wanted to make restoration the instrument of his struggle against Italy’s moral decay and thus lead intellectuals to support his fascist policy” (Leveau 2011, 9). The second international event also had political, scientific, and cultural reasons. On the one hand, as Passini said (2018a, 52), it adds to “a series of initiatives and events” such as the restoration of the Parthenon and the inauguration of the Museum of Olympia but, on the other hand, it exposes tense situations regarding some Greek monuments. That can be seen, for example, in the letter sent on March 25, 1931, by the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Cecil Harcourt Smith (who was the

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English representative at IMO) in response to the request made by the IMO secretary general, the Greek lawyer, and art historian, Euripide Foundoukidis, to hold this meeting precisely in Athens: Regarding the idea of holding a congress in Athens next autumn, I believe that we can find many arguments for and against that. The issue of monument protection is of particular interest in Greece, but I am afraid that in Athens it is difficult to avoid the very embarrassing political implications of the problem (Smith apud Passini 2018a, 52).

Certainly, Smith referred to “episodes of plundering suffered by the Hellenic heritage,” among which the “Parthenon Marbles acquired by the British Museum in 1816” stood out (Passini 2018a, 53). In 1930, about a year before that letter, the Greek diplomat Ioannis Gennadios informed Passini that he “had published […] a study entitled Lord Elgin et les autres antiquaires envahisseursen Grèce, 1440–1837. Étude historique et archéologique, which listed […] [these] episodes of plundering” (Passini 2018b, 8). The main objective of the work, continues the author, was to gather solid historical evidence that could justify the demand for restitution of the fragments of Greek monuments and, in particular of the Parthenon Marbles[...].Gennadios claimed they were the exclusive property of the Greeks, both symbolically and materially, being of Greek artistic heritage. The Parthenon Marbles seemed to him to constitute a primordial place of identification and memory of the Greek nation. Thus, he rejected as clearly as possible any conception of Greek heritage belonging to an intellectual and memorial horizon different from that of his nation, or as carrying a European or even universal identity (Passini 2018b, 8).

That idea, in a way, was opposed to another that was becoming more and more explicit, as the proposal to hold the event in Athens was being consolidated, which was the idea of “heritage of humanity.” In the third 1931 edition of the Mouseion magazine (No. 15), published by the IMO since 1927, there is a transcript of the second meeting of the IMO Steering Committee, which took place on April 13 and 14 of that year. It discusses the organization of the conference that would take place in October, in Athens, as well as the main thematic axes that would structure the event, including “administrative and legislative problems of a technical and legal nature.” The reference to the legal aspect is precisely what draws attention: Finally, legal issues could occasionally be the subject of study during the conference. Among them, an example is an international listing [classement] of certain art monuments that can be considered heritage of humanity, which would imply international obligations (Office International des Musées 1931a, 92-93).

This concern with the choice of a “world heritage site,” which would be the object of an international listing, is not new. The proposal first appeared about 42 years earlier, at the First International Congress for the Protection of Works of Art and Monuments of 1889, in Paris, and was linked to the creation of a “Red Cross” of monuments. It was approved by the participants of the event and published with the following wording:

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VI. Organization of the Red Cross. Protection of monuments and works of art during wartime. Regarding Mr. Charles Normand’s proposition, the Congress established the monuments of art belong to all of humanity, [and] he requests that the different governments designate representatives in charge of researching and nominating the monuments of each country, which must be safeguarded by an international convention in times of war (Ministère du Commerce 1889, 25; emphasis added).

In defense of his proposal, approved by the plenary at the fifth session of the congress, Charles Normand explained the characteristics of the proposal, its scope, and the instrument to be used to carry it out, recognizing its originality: 1. Let us first ask for a completely Platonic recognition of the principle by the governments. It must be easy, [but] it is a little uncomfortable. 2. Let us claim an international listing [classement] of some buildings and, starting in the event of future wars, touching them would be forbidden, subject to certain penalties. A state that committed this crime more than once would be in the situation of a country that violated international agreements and moral law that were given the greatest importance by the solemn way in which they sanctioned the ideas of civilization. 3. Let us pursue, through unremitting work, the increase in the number of listed buildings [classés] by mutual agreement between the states. 4. The International Committee must immediately demand, by all means at its disposal, the suppression of this listing [classement], because this measure must be completely transitory, only taken to obtain immediate safeguarding of critic works. It is important to know that all monuments are worthy of solicitude. “Modesty” and the need to ensure the immediate triumph of this idea alone require such timid desires (Normand 1889b, 274-275).

Here there is proposal for a provisional international listing, as it concerns only the protection of historical monuments in times of war. However, it is worth highlighting the pioneering spirit of the proposal which, after four decades, was presented again, that time effectively, as recognition of the importance of assets made by an international organization. In a radio broadcast in 1931, the IMO Secretary General, Euripide Foundoukidis, talked about the forthcoming international meeting in Athens. In his speech, transcribed in the same edition No. 15 of Mouseiom magazine, he briefly addressed the Congress held in Rome the previous year, also to justify the need for a specific event to deal with architectural monuments, excluded from that meeting (as it was restricted to paintings and sculptures).Then, after brief news about the International Congress of Art History held in Paris in 1921—and which ended up debating aspects related to the preservation of these architectural monuments—Foundoukidis addressed the themes that would be discussed at the Athens Conference. Among these themes, which range from “administrative and legislative issues,” to the “comparative studies” of several national laws, “technical issues” concerning conservation and, even issues concerning the surroundings of properties (he centered his speech on matters related to vegetation), he drew attention to the last topic addressed, which is international listing (classement). On that matter, the IMO Secretary stated: Finally, some international issues can also be the subject of an exchange of views at the conference, like the new concept that has been emerging for some time now and that tends to consider certain artistic monuments as belonging to the common heritage of mankind. It seems there is a new principle of international law being formed in the artistic field, whose scope the future conference could be made to specify (Office International des Musées 1931a, 97).

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The theme is also addressed in the official publication of the event’s general conclusion held in five languages (French, English, German, Spanish, and Italian), more specifically in the “Report of the Chairman of the Executive Committee of the International Museum Office on the Work of the Athens Conference.” Jules Destrée starts his text precisely by addressing that subject. He said: Among the conclusions reached during the Athens Conference, there are some that constitute real innovations in the international order. Firstly, the admission of this new notion, throughout the Conference, according to which the safeguarding of the masterpieces by which civilization expressed itself in the highest degree is of interest to the community of peoples. This notion implies a restriction of the national property rights, with respect to that which is selfish. In addition, it should be noted that today, all countries seem to understand that they are not the only beneficiaries of the artistic wealth they possess. The Conference did not limit itself to stating this principle; it went further by providing a procedure capable of giving this international solidarity the opportunity to express itself in a concrete way. If the Assembly of the League of Nations grants its high consecration to this new principle, qualified institutions and groups may, therefore, submit requests to the intellectual cooperation organization that express their interest in the conservation of a given monument without this initiative being interpreted as an invasion of national sovereignty. The procedure proposed by the Athens Conference gives the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation the right to comment, following similar requests, on the appropriateness of the measures to be taken by the International Museum Office in each specific case. I think it would be superfluous to insist on the happy effects of an international collaboration conceived with this spirit (Destrée 1931, 10).

A little more than one-fourth of Destrée’s report on the Conference is devoted to the theme of “World Heritage” (23 out of 82 lines). He points out exactly how the question was developed in the Athens Charter, although the latter did not include the proposal for the creation of the international protection instrument (the listing) effusively defended by Foundoukidis in his speech at the Conference, as Passini affirms (Passini 2018b, 249) and that, objectively, it would imply a “restriction of the national property rights, with respect to that which is selfish,” pointed out in the report. Politically softer, the issue appears in its seventh and last item entitled “The conservation of monuments and international collaboration,” in sub-item “a) Technical and moral cooperation”: The Conference, convinced that the question of the conservation of the artistic and archaeological property of mankind is one that interests the community of the States, which are wardens of civilization, hopes that the States, acting in the spirit of the Covenant of the League of Nations, will collaborate with each other on an ever-increasing scale and in a more concrete manner with a view to furthering the preservation of artistic and historic monuments; Considers it highly desirable that qualified institutions and associations should, without in any manner whatsoever prejudicing international public law, be given an opportunity of manifesting their interest in the protection of works of art in which civilization has been expressed to the highest degree and which would seem to be threatened with destruction; Expresses the wish that requests to attain this end, submitted to the Intellectual Cooperation Organization of the League of Nations, be recommended to the earnest attention of the States. It will be for the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, after an inquiry conducted by the International Museums Office and after having collected all relevant

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information, more particularly from the National Committee on Intellectual Cooperation concerned, to express an opinion on the expediency of the steps to be taken and on the procedure to be followed in each individual case (Cury 2004, 16-17).

In the transcribed excerpt, it is possible to notice several of the situations mentioned by Destrée. Firstly, there is the presence of the very concept of “artistic and archaeological heritage of mankind” referring to those “works of art in which civilization has been expressed to the highest degree,” (Cury 2004, 16) a definition also present in the excerpt from Destrée’s report transcribed above. The procedure explained by Destrée in his report is also in the last three paragraphs of the transcribed excerpt, in which “qualified institutions and associations” can submit to the Intellectual Cooperation Organization for the League of Nations (as the group formed by the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation and the International Institute on Intellectual Cooperation started being called in 1931) “requests […] that express their interest in the conservation of a given monument, without this initiative being interpreted as an invasion of national sovereignty” (Destrée 1931, 10). Therefore, it would be the responsibility of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation, with the respective National Commission for Intellectual Cooperation as the official interlocutor, “to speak about the opportunity of the steps to be taken and the procedure to be followed in each particular case,” “after the investigation by the International Museum Office,” (Cury 2004, 17) as also explained by Destrée. However, instead of an instrument that restricts something like a “national property right,” the international document points out that the proposals concerning this preservation are recommended by the Intellectual Cooperation Organization “to the favorable attention of States,” (Cury 2004, 17), although it maintains the authority of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation in explaining the actions to be taken. Regarding the Resolutions approved and adopted by the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation on July 23, 1932, the very notion of “heritage of mankind” (“patrimoine de l’humanité”) appears in the text when the meeting of the International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation considers “the conservation of the artistic and archaeological property of mankind is one that interests the community of the States, which are wardens of civilisation” (Office International des Musées 1931b, 20). Regarding the approved recommendations that should be “kindly” sent to the member states of the League of Nations, there are two, and they directly mention two sub-items of item VII: the first one, mentioned above, referring to “technical and moral co-operation,” and the second one, referring to the “the role of education in the respect of monuments.” That States acting in accordance with the League of Nations Covenant should establish closer and more concrete co-operation with each other for the purpose of ensuring the conservation of monuments and works of art; That Member States should ask educationists to teach children and young people to respect monuments, whatever the civilisation or period to which they belong and that this educative action should also be extended to the general public with a view to associating the latter in the protection of the records of any civilisation (Office International des Musées 1931b, 24).

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In turn, it was the responsibility of the Assembly of the League of Nations to approve, on October 10, 1932, “the recommendations prepared by the Athens Conference concerning the conservation of historical monuments and works of art” and to entrust the Intellectual Cooperation Organization with the transmission of the recommendations to the rulers of the member states. The Athens Charter, the result of the Athens Conference held in October 1931, is considered, according to Jukka Jokilehto (1986, 401), the “first policy document accepted at an intergovernmental level, and thus marked the beginning of the formulation of international guidelines and recommendations aiming at the preservation of cultural heritage.” The presence of the notion of “heritage of humanity” in the aforementioned document reinforces the trajectory of the constitution and consolidation of that notion, already found in the sessions and resolutions of the First International Congress for the Protection of Works of Art and Monuments of 1889, in Paris, and it can be said that it takes on an official character for the first time in the Athens Charter. At the 1889 Congress, in addition to proposing the creation of the “international listing” instrument, Normand suggests the first building that could be subjected to such a procedure: the pyramids in Egypt. In 1931, although no asset was identified as a specific target of the process, it is impossible not to think of the Acropolis of Athens and, more specifically, the Parthenon, the object of a restorative intervention in that period. The possibility of using the international listing to resolve the tension created by the campaign for the return of the “Parthenon Marbles” raised in the text written by Gennadios cannot be ruled out, although Passini points out that this issue was never raised during the conference. She states that: … it seems likely that, at the insistence of Foundoukidis and Jules Destrée on the idea of a heritage of humanity and a supranational collective responsibility for monuments and works of art, there is at least one element of response to the decidedly national conception of historical and artistic heritage developed by Gennadios, among others (Passini 2018b, 252).

In 1870, the French architect and photographer Alfred-Nicolas Normand published a book entitled “L’Architecture des nations étrangères, étude sur les principales constructions du parc à l’Expositionuniverselle de Paris (1867)” in which he discusses the foreign pavilions presented at the aforementioned 1867 event in Paris, as the title itself suggests. He starts, precisely, with the set of Egyptian buildings which constituted a true “theme park” and says: Nothing in the world is more apt to make a big impression than the sight of ancient monuments in Egypt. The immensity of the general proportions, the accuracy of the scale of the details highlighted by a rich and harmonious coloring, the location, the atmosphere that surrounds them, the power of the ruins that still exist, everything produces a unique impression in the senses, whose unbelievable purity can only be counterbalanced by the Greek monuments. (Normand 1870, 3; emphasis added).

As I point out in a previously mentioned unpublished text (see note 1), Normand’s statement reinforced an existing perception, since the end of the eighteenth century,

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that the ancient Egyptian civilization had been the noble origin of Western civilizations. This hypothesis would be reinforced by another work published 3 years earlier, by the French naturalized Polish journalist and writer Charles-Edmond Chojecki, “L’Égypte à l’Expositionuniverselle de 1867,” in which, when discussing the same “Egyptian park” he states that: EGYPT is represented at the 1867 Universal Exhibition not only by its present, but also by its past. It had to be that way, since it is the cradle of the world, or at least it was its school in times before our classical antiquity: modern civilization comes from Rome and Greece; but the germ of the Roman and Greek civilizations came from the Nile (Chojecki 1867, 10; emphasis added).

In 1889, in Paris, in what was probably the first international meeting specifically intended for the preservation of historical and artistic heritage, the idea that there were “monuments of art [that] belong to the whole of mankind” was introduced, that is, those which can be considered its heritage. In this event, the instrument of “international listing” was also drafted, suggesting that the first building to be contemplated was the set of pyramids in Egypt. About four decades later, the Acropolis of Athens “haunted,” in a way, the discussion about the possibility of setting up procedures that would make the implementation of the notion of “heritage of humanity” possible. This was at the International Conference held in Athens, which dealt with themes similar to those of the 1889 Congress. From Paris to Athens, from the conception and vestiges of an ancient Egyptian Civilization to those of Ancient Greece, this is the path adopted for the formation and the beginning of the consolidation of the concept of “heritage of humanity.” That concept went through an extremely troubled course filled with great tensions, conflicts, and international agreements, such as World War I and the establishment of the League of Nations. However, another major world conflict, other international institutions, and a few more decades would all be necessary for us to witness the consecration of that concept.

References Barão GR (2014/1) Cultura e diplomacia cultural no século XXI: proposta de revisão do pensamento brasileiro de Relações Internacionais. Monções: Revista de Relações Internacionais da UFGD 3(5):74–102 Benjamin W (2012a) Experiência e pobreza. In: Magia e técnica, arte e política: ensaios sobre literatura e história da cultura, Walter Benjamin. Brasiliense, São Paulo, pp 123–128 Benjamin W (2012b) O Narrador: considerações sobre a obra de Nikolai Leskov. In: Magia e técnica, arte e política: ensaios sobre literatura e história da cultura, Walter Benjamin. Brasiliense, São Paulo, pp 213–240 Choay F (2001) A alegoria do patrimônio. Estação Liberdade/Editora UNESP, São Paulo Cury I (2004) Cartas patrimoniais. IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro Chojecki C-E (1867) L’Égypte à l’Exposition universelle de 1867. Typographie Morris & Compagnie, Paris. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k62144366.texteImage Destrée J (1931) Rapport du Président du Comité de Direction de l’Office International des Musées sur les Travaux de la Conférence d’Athènes. In: La Conservation des monuments d’art et

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d’histoire. [Conclusions de la Conférence d’Athènes, 21–30 Octobre 1931. Rapport à la Commission internationale de coopération intellectuelle. Résolutions de la Commission. Recommandations de l’Assemblée de la Société des nations.]. Office International des Musées (org.). Society of Nations, Paris, pp 10–12. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6524895f.texteImage Ducci A (2012) Europe and the artistic patrimony of the interwar period: the international institute for intellectual cooperation at the league of nations. In: Europe in crisis: intellectuals and the European idea, 1917–1957, org. MarkHewitson e Matthew D’Auria. Berghahn Books, New York, Oxford, pp 227–242 Dumont J, Fléchet A (2014) Pelo que é nosso!”: a diplomacia cultural brasileira no século XX. Revista Brasileira De História 34(67):203–221. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-018820140001 00010 Gagnebin JM (2006) Memória, história, testemunho”. In: Lembrar escrever esquecer, Jeanne Marie Gagnebin. São Paulo: Ed. 34, pp 49–58 Hobsbawn E (1995) The age of extremes: the short twentieth century 1914–1991. Abacus, London Jokilehto J (1986) A history of architectural conservation: the contribution of English, French, German and Italian thought towards an international approach to the conservation of cultural property. Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, Unpublished PhD Thesis, York, University of York Kant I (1903) Perpetual peace. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., London Kant I (2011) Idéia de uma história universal de um ponto de vista cosmopolita. WMF Martins Fontes, São Paulo Laqua D (2011/3) Internationalisme ou affirmation de la nation? La Coopération intellectuelle transnationale dans l’entre-deux-guerres. Critique Internationale 52:51–67. https://doi.org/10. 3917/crii.052.0051 Léon P (1916) La guerre et les monuments. Les Arts.154 (abr. 1916.):2–10 Leveau P (2011) Le problème de l’apolitique de la conservation-restauration. Conservation restauration des biens culturels 29:5–26 Mainetti V (2014) La coopération culturelle internationale et l’émergence du droit international de la culture. In: Alcuni aspetti della “dimensione culturale”del diritto internazionale ed interno: Profili di tutela e valorizzazione, org. Anna Oriolo e Anna Vigorito. Aracne, Ariccia, pp 171–221 Ministère du Commerce, de L’Industrie et des Colonies (1889) Exposition universelle internationale de 1889. Direcction générale de l’exploitation. In: Congrès international pour la protection des oeuvres d’art et des monuments. Fascicule no.1. Organization du Congrès. Impr. Nationale, Paris. May 1889. https://data.bnf.fr/fr/documents-by-rdt/12191328/360/page2. Accessed 20 April 2016 Normand A-N (1870) L’Architecture des nations étrangères, étude sur les principales constructions du parc à l’Exposition universelle de Paris (1867). A. Morel, Paris Normand C (1889a) Discoursprononcé a lóverture de premier congrès pour la protection des monuments et oeuvres d’art (Congrès de Paris 1889). L’Ami des Monuments. Paris, Tome 3(14):191–193. https://archive.org/details/lamidesmonuments14soci/page/n9/mode/2up. Normand C (1889b) Premières idées sur l’organisation de la Croix Rouge pour la protection des monuments en temps de guerre. L’Ami des Monuments. Paris, Tome 3(16):272–278. https://arc hive.org/details/lamidesmonuments14soci/page/n9/mode/2up. Olender M (2017) “Um courant sympathique”: primórdios da internacionalização da preservação do patrimônio cultural na segunda metade do século XIX. In: Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power, 189–211, org. Rodrigo Christofoletti. Editora Universitária Leopoldinium, Santos Olender M (2021) Which Egypt will answer?’ Some genealogical notes on world heritage. In: World heritage Patinas, org. Rodrigo Christofoletti and Marcos Olender. Springer, Berlin (Forthcoming). Office International des Musées (1931a) L’ativité de l’Office International des Musées. Mouseion, Revue International de Muséographie 15(III):91–98 Office International des Musées (1931b) La Conservation des monuments d’art et d’histoire. [Conclusions de la Conférence d’Athènes, 21–30 octobre 1931. Rapport à la Commission internationale de cooperation intellectuelle. Résolutions de la Commission. Recommandations de

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l’Assemblée de la Société des nations.]. Paris: Sociedade das Nações. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/ 12148/bpt6k6524895f.texteImage. Accessed 10 Feb 2016 Passini M (2018a) Le patrimoine à l’épreuve de l’histoire transnationale: circulations culturelles et évolutions du régime patrimonial pendant les années 1930. Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 137(2018a/1):49–61. https://doi.org/10.3917/ving.137.0049, Passini M (2018b) La Conférence d’Athènes sur la conservation des monuments d’art et d’histoire (1931) et l’élaboration croisée de la notion de patrimoine de l’humanité”. In: Le double voyage: Paris-Athènes (1919–1939), org. Lucile Arnoux-Farnoux and Polina Kosmadaki. École française d’Athènes, Athènes, pp 243–252 Renoliet J-J (2007) L’UNESCO oubliée: l’Organization de Coopération Intellectuelle (1921–1946). 60 ans d’histoire de l’UNESCO: Actes du coloque international. Paris: France, November 2005, Paris: UNESCO, 2007, pp 61–66. https://unesco.bibliomondo.com/ Valéry P (1919) The crisis of the mind. London, The Athenaeum, April, 11 and May 2, 1919. Crisis of the Mind - Wikisource, the free online library

Part II

Unfortunate Events of the Cultural Goods

Chapter 9

Political Issues of the Louvre’s Internationalisation Marie-Alix Molinié-Andlauer

Abstract This article focuses on the internationalisation of the Louvre since the 2000s. The Louvre is a major Heritage of the French Culture. With the British Museum in London, it is one of the most important universal Museums in the world. The French State, through successive governments, has mobilised the Louvre, that is, the institution, as an intermediary in international agreements. This museum and cultural institution then become a real stakeholder in international relations. Thus, we want to analyse issues and controversies surrounding the close relationship between the Louvre and the French State. The Louvre, a renowned French museum and heritage site, is now multi-spatial. This model responds in part to a request to the French Government to perfect the interplay of international influence. The Louvre’s internationalisation is thus understood not as the Louvre’s reputation on the international level, but as the use of this heritage in the international political strategies. By approaching this case in French international relations, we can, first of all, question the stakes of the transition from heritage to national branding. In other words, to understand how in contemporary literature, heritage is transformed not only as a tool to retrace the past of a society but also how it becomes an emblem that can be This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus–Revista de História - UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organised by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). Molinié-Andlauer—Ph.D. in geography from Sorbonne Université-Lettres and a researcher affiliated to the Research Unit “Mediation-Sciences of Places, Sciences of Links”, my research themes are articulated around two major themes: human geography and relations between sciences and society. Before preparing my thesis to understand the stakes of the internationalisation of a heritage such as the Louvre, I carried out several works in geography and sociology to question the representations and political stakes of bridges or to question the discourses of transhumanism in France. Several articles have been published alone or in collaboration, the main ones being: “From the Louvre Museum to the Louvre Territory?” published in Géographie et cultures, “L’OPECST au travail. Enquête sur la genèse d’un rapport”, in Histoire de la Recherche Contemporaine (with Emilien Schultz). Keywords: Heritage, Museums, Arts, Louvre, Territorial factory, Representations, Relationships, Epistemology, Territorial dynamics, Economy and territory, Geopolitical issues. M.-A. Molinié-Andlauer (B) Sorbonne University - Mediations, 28 rue Serpente, 75006 Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_9

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mobilised by states to claim a form of legitimacy from other states. The method bases essentially on interviews conducted within the framework of these. And it aims to answer two questions. What does the deterritorialisation of national heritage such as the Louvre produce in international relations at the Louvre’s scale, the city of Abu Dhabi and in relations between France and the United Arab Emirates, then the impact that the Louvre Abu Dhabi can have at the local and regional level. Keywords National branding · Geopolitical · Louvre · Heritage · Controversies

9.1 Political Issues of the Louvre’s Internationalisation The relationship between heritage and politics is not recent, since as Sébastien Jacquot explains (2012: 13) “Heritage is a vector of stakes both in its existence, in its definition, and its uses and addresses”. Heritage is what one inherits; the choice to conserve and preserve it is a political choice. The consensus in UNESCO’s definition of heritage shows that the common interest of humanity takes precedence over state and national decisions. UNESCO World Heritage or UNESCO World Heritage refers to a group of cultural and natural properties of outstanding interest for the common heritage of humanity, updated annually since 1978 by the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a specialized agency of the United Nations.1

This definition corresponds to a positive internationalisation of the controversial concept of the common heritage of humanity. In other words, it would allow an international understanding of the concepts of heritage and humanity. Nowadays, the stakes around heritage are, beyond conservation and preservation issues, strategic issues at an international level, allowing categorisation of conflicts (Melé 2005; Jacquot 2012). The three types of conflicts would relate to the “appropriation of heritage, the modes of patrimonialisation and conflicts in heritage spaces, putting the actors at the centre and notably the modes of regulation” (Jacquot 2012; Mélé 2005: 13). The interference in the way of preserving and patrimonialising can crystallise tensions that can impact on international relations. Indeed, for Koïchiro Matsuura (2006: 1045): It has become customary in the field of international relations to associate culture and politics”, as witnessed by the remarks made in May 2005 by the President of the Commission of the African Union (AU), Alpha Oumar Konaré, at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): “The cultural struggle is also a political project aimed at giving a social content to the Union and building up a body of influence around Africa”.2

However, while Heritage seems to be a subject of consensus since the 1970s, we have seen the circulation of some heritages, including museums, appear for economic 1 2

https://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/. Translation proposed by the author.

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and political reasons. Heritage and museums are part of the strategies of influence of the Western states, which respond to the expectations of developed or developing countries. This article aims to understand how the internationalisation of the Louvre Museum is manifesting itself at different levels. For this purpose, we will first establish the literature review, then we will discuss the main questions and the method. And finally, we will share the results of this research.

9.2 From Heritage to National Branding: Literature Review 9.2.1 Using Identity and Narrative in an International Context Museums are indeed institutions that lie between “nationalism and cosmopolitanism […] They are capable of representing an idea of the nation while at the same time telling a cosmopolitan, frictional discourse” (Ang 2016: 1). This ambivalence is visible in Gillen’s paper (2014) when he discusses the case of the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to explain the tension between the creation of a national narrative and the way the United States projects and shapes Vietnamese identity. This observation can be linked with Mitter analysis (2009). In her article, she highlights the behind-the-scenes of museums in China, also serving history and memory. Indeed, heritage and nationalism, as a political force, have connections (Allen 2010). In this sense, in Greece, the Ministry of Culture seeks to promote the Greek National narrative through heritage, which becomes an internationally recognised and valued brand. “The official promotion of heritage by a state may project a symbolic sense of ‘imagining’: with National identity within a multicultural and heterogeneous world” (Kavoura 2012: 69). “Museums preserved and constituted people past. They were places for the public to learn more about Nations’ histories and cultures” (Gervits 2011: 32). In some instances, the museum, as an institution, perfectly embodies the political stakes, especially when it comes to international visibility, cooperation, but also a certain hegemony in terms of culture (Grincheva 2020a). In another case, the internationalisation of Museums responds not only to the Museum’s concern to reach a wider public, but also to its ability to conform to world museum standards (Peyre 2018). For responding, significant financial resources and institutional support at different levels are required. The internationalisation of major museums is an opportunity for states to promote their culture and heritage in an international and diplomatic context. This is known as soft power or influence through the prism of culture when “nation-states have supported the international missions of museums to promote national cultural ideas and values abroad to pursue strategic geopolitical interests” (Grincheva 2020b: 89).

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The Guggenheim Museum presents on different continents, it embodies “the complex process of neoliberal globalisation and political decentralisation” (Grincheva 2020b: 89). This museum of contemporary art is governed by American law, allowing American museums to manage their collections. Besides, the Guggenheim collection is a private collection which is depending on insurance. It permanently deposits in locations other than the New York Museum. It is generally individual wills, often considered visionary, that bring institutions to reinvent themselves to correspond or initiate an impulse in a complex international context (Ritvala et al. 2017). Nowadays, some museums transform into a brand comparable to a multinational company negotiating to obtain this label in a new territory is a complex legal and political issue, which is the case of the Louvre, and especially the Louvre’s different levels of internationalisation from Paris to Abu Dhabi.

9.3 Connecting International Relations and Louvre’s Internationalisations By combining international relations and the internationalisation of the Louvre, it highlights different levels of decision-making. On the one hand, the Louvre Museum has its governance and depends on national or international networks: it gets a status Major International Museum (Molinié-Andlauer 2019). On the other hand, the Louvre internationalisation can also be a collateral effect of French State policies, since “cultural diplomacy has traditionally been a strategic instrument of national governments to achieve foreign policy objectives” (Grincheva 2020b: 89). One thinks in particular of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, it is a project jointly carried out by the French Ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs and the UAE Department of Culture and Tourism on the other hand (de Font-Réaulx 2016; Molinié-Andlauer 2019). But there are also more fleeting partnerships that are part of a cultural diplomacy project: this was the case between Japan and France (2018) or Iran and France (2018). The Louvre internationalisation bases on the provenance of visitors, the actions implemented (excavations, exhibitions), the partnerships established with other major museums (Louvre Atlanta between 2006 and 2009), the networks to which it belongs (experts) but also its “involvement” in France’s foreign cultural policies. The internationalisation of the Louvre may only be idealised, especially when the analysis is placed in a globalised context. It is a Western institution, initially unique in the World, and today, it follows the economic model of the Guggenheim, a private museum whose collections are not inalienable, as those of French museums can be.

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9.4 The Case of Louvre Abu Dhabi: Overview The case of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, opened in 2017, shows another involvement that of the United Arab Emirates in globalisation which now involves architectural projects that are increasingly extravagant and ambitious (Ajana 2015), to combine the past with the times to come (El Amrousi et al. 2018). In the last decade, scholars and policymakers have paid greater attention to the role of famous designers’ pieces of architecture not only in regenerating urban areas but also in defining a positive and communicative image in the global economic competition among cities […] this rationale assumes that the use of a well-known architect’s name can give a competitive advantage to a city in many ways (Ponzini 2011: 251).

Their objective was to create an Emirati museum with an evocative name for 30 years (2007–2037) to enable the Emirati government to promote Abu Dhabi as a destination with world-renowned brands. Couched within the entertainment and leisure package that visitors have come to expect in their totalising museum experience nowadays, this provides an interesting alternative to the sheer brawn of Guggenheim Inc. for the 21st-century art museum. There may be something here for institutions considering their own transformation, even if they don’t quite match the Louvre’s vital statistics or share its particular vision of the world (Stara 2015: 50).

But this case also shows on a regional and local scale how the establishment of a renowned museum transforms the surrounding area (Grincheva 2020b). Tensions may arise (the omission of Qatar on the map when the officials inaugurated the Louvre Abu Dhabi) but regional dynamics in terms of the attraction of the countries of the Arab-Persian Gulf also emerge. The progressive transformation of the United Arab Emirates into a tourist destination is, for example, boosting tourism in the Sultanate of Oman (Molinié-Andlauer 2019). By choosing the Louvre to complete the picture of this cultural cluster, the Emiratis are also betting on the value of the brand and its “reputation”.3 However, as T.L. Poulin points out, reputation is not just what the Emiratis are looking for, “as a cultural authority, but also around the tourism generated by the Louvre and the attention that would naturally arrive with the satellite of the Louvre” (Poulin 2010: 3). This identity participates to developing this country by proposing a discourse that serves the opening to the international. Indeed, the Louvre’s origin and early development promoted the country’s newfound freedom, equality, and wealth, offering to the French people cultural knowledge as well as the ability to identify themselves as members of this powerful nation (Poulin 2010: 1).

From the arid lands to the harsh climate of the Persian Gulf Region, it takes several stages to build the Louvre. On Saâdiyat Island, decision-maker plans a cultural cluster of international scope. They recruit the greatest architects and their workshops to 3

“Reputation can be defined as a shared, provisional and localised social representation, associated with a name and resulting from more or less powerful and formalised social evaluations” (Chauvin 2013).

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propose containers that are just as impressive as the development of the Emirati cities that defy time and gravity. What it represents plays a major role in the attractiveness of Abu Dhabi (Stara 2015). In this sense, this universal and Abu Dhabian museum “represents an experimental trans-disciplinary design that includes continuity and discontinuity from tradition” (El Amrousi et al. 2018: 1). The circuit subtly imposed by the museography also requires a diplomatic and political reading of this museum. It is a chronological approach of art, which innovate in the museum world. However, this vision is not entirely complete and accurate. A systemic analysis of the facts reveals that paradoxes emerge with this project, particularly in terms of branding and urban marketing (Ponzini 2011). The establishment of this museum in the United Arab Emirates thus enables both the French states to ensure a military presence in the Arab-Persian Gulf (Boulanger 2011) and the Louvre Museum to enter into new partnerships with the museums of this region. These internationalisations are therefore joint with international relations.

9.5 Research Questions and Methodological Approach 9.5.1 Research Questions: A Stakeholder for Itself and French State We saw from current readings that the Louvre is a museum that is becoming international at different levels. In this article, we will discuss beyond these analyses because we want to demonstrate that the internationalisation of the Louvre Museum links to the liberalisation of trade produced by globalisation and which serves – – – –

The economic interests of the French State and the Louvre Museum. France’s geopolitical strategy in the Arab-Persian Gulf. The influence and attractiveness of the United Arab Emirates in the world. The Louvre Museum’s international partnerships.

This strong link that existed for decades between the Louvre and the French states partly explains the museum involvement in National Cultural diplomacy. What it embodies and what it represents in the collective imagination, which often restricted to a few masterpieces, only fuels visitors desire to visit museum. It, therefore, attracts and promotes France abroad. However, since 1980 in France, the government reduce public subventions, especially for the art and the culture. It obliges museum to find other private resources to respond to the international requirements of international museums. The paradox occurs at the level of the French state when the latter mobilises the Louvre Museum for geostrategic and economic purposes; the financing of French culture and more particularly of a unique French heritage trades internationally. Thus, by locating the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, Emirati hope for a “transfer of reputation” (Chauvin 2013: 26) to appear in the world as a country attached to culture and turned towards the arts and knowledge. If we consider this, we see the possibility

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of a “Louvre effect” along the lines of the famous “Bilbao effect”. This translates into how the uniqueness of the Louvre, i.e. the heritage that it is and the inalienable collections that make up its identity, is mobilised to “act” on territory under construction. Its evocation is less formal, and the questions focus more on the future and the temporalities of the project’s implementation. What is its viability/cost and which management? What will be the impact on the image of the Louvre Museum in terms of reputation? This raises the question of what the deterritorialisation of the Louvre is producing for the benefit of international relations within a museum world that is undergoing a turning point in terms of the actual definition of the museum. On a more local scale, the question is to determine whether the Louvre Abu Dhabi establishment produces effects similar to the transformations of the cities of Bilbao (Guggenheim) or Liverpool (Tate Modern). Based on these findings, it must be assumed that: – The location of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi fundamentally redefines the Louvre museum and its influence. – The Louvre Museum offers its own museum and international model, different from the Guggenheim franchised model and independent of national and international policies. – The “reputation transfer” of the Louvre brand has been impacted by international perceptions of the UAE and French cultural policy management since the 1980s. – The very principle of universality associated with the Louvre is a geostrategic and controversial issue: The Louvre heritage is dissociated from the Louvre Museum.

9.6 Methodological Approach The methodology bases on fieldwork completed as part of a thesis conducted between 2016 and 2019. The resources are the semi-directive interviews conducted with advisors to the Louvre President-Director between 2017 and 2018. They were supplemented by interviews conducted at the Louvre Abu Dhabi and Agence France Museums in 2018. Plus, we worked on the archive to analyse the various reports written for the Louvre development abroad. These include the study of the Scientific and Cultural Project (SCP) of the Louvre Abu Dhabi (not available online), the activity reports of the Louvre Museum (2007–2017) and the 2007 intergovernmental agreement (decree n°2008–879).4 An in-depth reading of these documents provides an understanding of both the ambitions of the Louvre Museum to open up and be present on the international scene in the world of museums and the mobilisation of this museum by the French State as part of a diplomatic game of influence. We did observation during the study day “24 h … at the Louvre Abu Dhabi”, on 17 and 18 November 2018, for the first anniversary of the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which 4

Agreement “between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Universal Museum of Abu Dhabi, signed in Abu Dhabi on 6 March 2007”: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000019417311&dateTexte= .

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also provided an opportunity to understand the various French protagonists in the establishment of this museum in the United Arab Emirates. The purpose of this method is to understand the context in which the Louvre established abroad. More precisely, it leads us to see how this implantation profoundly transforms the Louvre Museum in Paris, the city of Abu Dhabi, and relations between France and the United Arab Emirates. More generally, we question the role of the museum in the twenty-first century on the territories.

9.7 Impact of International Relations at the Level of the Louvre and the City of Abu Dhabi: The Role of Influence by Culture and Heritage 9.7.1 Branding a City with a Unique Brand Museum: Regional Impact The story of the establishment of the Louvre Abu Dhabi has not been an easy one. Whether it was the Parisian Museum or the Agence France Museums, the question of setting up a Louvre in Abu Dhabi clearly shows how closely linked politics and heritage are in France. We can date back this link with all the work during 1980 in the museum: The Pyramid of Pei inaugurated in 1989, and the various shifts associated with the transformation of the Palais du Louvre into the Louvre Museum. The Louvre depends on the “fact of the Prince”, i.e. it embodies a symbolic power on which the various successive French presidents base their national and international policies.5 Originally it was a request from the Emirati people, which was astonishing and destabilising since no one had in mind what they wanted. They wanted to make a Louvre identical to the one in Paris, to build one from A to Z. At first, we thought they wanted some experts or opinions, but no they wanted to “have” a Louvre. The Louvre took responsibility for this, because it is a regalian tool at the service of the state, to respond as well as possible to their request.6

The Emiratis of Abu Dhabi wanted to distinguish themselves from what Dubai had to offer by accentuating their approach to the Culture, Heritage and History of the United Arab Emirates. Indeed, Dubai began its economic transformation some 20 years ago. The city began the urban and social transition from an economy based on the extraction of fossil fuels. This resource is becoming increasingly rarefied, so they change their economy to a tertiary economy linked to leisure and tourism.7 5

Interview with the scientific manager of the Centre Vivant Denon Vivant, Louvre Museum, conducted in March 2018. 6 Remarks by Jean d’Haussonville, Director General, Domaine national de Chambord, during the “24 h … at the Louvre Abu Dhabi”, 17 and 18 November 2018, auditorium of the Louvre Museum, “The Louvre Abu Dhabi, history of dialogue”. 7 Interview with the AFM’s scientific manager, conducted in March 2018.

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Similarly, the urban project of Abu Dhabi (Abu Dhabi 2030) is also based on resorts to international standards with beaches as far as the eye can see, restaurants, villas and museums, places of knowledge and learning. They are established on Saâdiyat Island, considered as the Cultural district of Abu Dhabi. In the 2010s, the intention is to move forward “by rake” to complete the projects of the Guggenheim, the Louvre and the National Sheikh Zayed Museum.8 The Emiratis are employing Frank Gehry to design the architecture of the Guggenheim, Norman Foster (Foster & Partners) for the Sheikh Zayed Museum, whose architecture is a reference to the emirate’s emblem: the falcon. But before knowing that the Louvre would be located near the other international museums, a request was made to the Jean Nouvel workshops to create this universal museum, wanted by the Emiratis, whose architecture would be a projection of what the West can have of the Arab world. From 2009 to 2016, the geopolitical context of the region is shaken by the Arab Spring. The Saâdiyat Island project is reviewed, the authorities choose not to rake ahead any further, i.e. one of the three major museums of the project had to be chosen and no longer envisage concomitant constructions. Preserving the Louvre as the spearhead of the Saâdiyat project made it possible to preserve both the exceptional character and the visibility expected by the Emiratis. Unlike other projects based on renowned museums (Guggenheim, Tate Modern, Hermitage), the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s project is to obtain a name strongly rooted in a city and a country. It is a heritage associated with the French centralised policy, since the Louvre Museum’s partnerships abroad have generally been limited in time (a few months to 3 years), and were not intended to lead to a more “sustainable” structure. Secondly, the territory itself, i.e. the city of Abu Dhabi, was not in economic decline but transformation inherent to the current context. That is why the cases of Bilbao, Liverpool and Lens are very different in many ways. What globalisation has produced in these territories is an abandonment of a single economic activity (mining, fishing) with no prospects for the inhabitants.9 It is because there is an urban project for the rehabilitation of the cities that the idea of betting on a cultural and museum infrastructure to transform them comes to mind. Although the time frame for setting up museums and their architecture differs between these three cities, it is nevertheless noticeable that for the Louvre Abu Dhabi the investment is massive in terms of museums. Saâdiyat Island will host not just one iconic museum, but two international museums and two other National museums run by starchitects. Thus, the development model of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi, although it stems from a bilateral will, is part of a larger project alongside the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Museum, the Maritime Museum and the Zayed Museum, which was supported by the British Museum (Fig. 9.1). The Louvre model in Abu Dhabi has to be understanding as National Branding but also as a marketing brand of a global whole to establish Abu Dhabi as a renowned

8

Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017. Interview with the scientific manager of the Centre Vivant Denon Vivant, Louvre Museum, conducted in March 2018.

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Fig. 9.1 Planning and development of the city of Abu Dhabi: a transition into a cultural cluster (realisation, M-A Molinié-Andlauer, 2018/2020)

tourist destination in the region. Since the liberalisation of trade and the democratisation of air travel, the cities of the Arab-Persian Gulf became international hubs, where passengers make stopovers. Kuwait, Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are airports that redistribute transit passengers between Europe and South East Asia. The goal of the United Arab Emirates was that, beyond transit, the country should be promoted and became attractive. Passengers would become tourists. Thus, an important communication was made in airports around the Louvre opening and its surroundings.10 This approach, which is very different from the communication of the Louvre museum in Paris, enabled the Parisian institution to demonstrate that these two museums, although the name and the experts may be the same, were very distinct entities with different prerogatives11 : – For the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the aim is to introduce a population to museum culture and attract visitors to the territory. Indeed, the events, workshops and conferences offered by the Louvre Abu Dhabi are equivalent to those of any museum; they tend to make it a cultural reference point for the city in the next 30 years of the intergovernmental agreement (2007–2037) that correspond to a generation. This 10 11

Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017. Ibid.

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generation will be able to be satisfied with a reputable museum and thus have access to the best of culture, the Louvre Museum.12 – For the Louvre Museum, this means managing visitor flows and continuing to promote the museum’s collections to different types of public.13 The Louvre becomes a multi-spatial brand. This new pattern contributes to its redefinition. The monetisation of the brand allows the Louvre to rethink its structure and the city of Abu Dhabi benefits from the reputation of the name “Louvre”. But what are the impacts of these actions?

9.8 French International Relations: The Impact of Culture and the Impact on Culture The signature of the bilateral partnership in March 200714 highlights the French cultural scene, the political stakes and the “international relations” dimension of this agreement (Des Cars 2009: 59).15 These polemics question the interest of the French State in the management and conservation of Heritage, particularly in terms of means (Cachin et al. 2006). They also highlight that international museums must respond to a geostrategic (we already saw the establishment of a French military base) and diplomatic state policy by taking a market value (cultural and university institutions, the Louvre and the Sorbonne). While in 2007, the Agence France Museums was created but was not yet mentioned, they introduced it to question the future of this project. They seek to “detail” the project, question the management and then present the repercussions in terms of the public. This agency, the only one of its kind at the time, acted as a link between French expertise and the various funding sources.16 The decrease in public subventions from the Ministry of Culture has made it necessary for the services of the Louvre Museum to resort to patrons and partnerships with private institutions and companies. Within the museum, this translates into the rental of spaces and events financed by

12

Jean-Luc Martinez, President and Director of the Louvre Museum, said “What must be pointed out is the confidence of the UAE authorities who believe that we are the best in our field”, during the “24 h … at the Louvre Abu Dhabi”, 17 and 18 November 2018, Louvre Museum Auditorium, “The Louvre Abu Dhabi, history of a dialogue”. 13 Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in July 2017 and reports 2014–2018. 14 Agreement “between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Universal Museum of Abu Dhabi, signed in Abu Dhabi on 6 March 2007”: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000019417311&dateTexte= . 15 Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017. 16 Agreement “between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Universal Museum of Abu Dhabi, signed in Abu Dhabi on 6 March 2007”: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000019417311&dateTexte= .

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large groups such as LVMH.17 The Louvre’s plan in Abu Dhabi provides a filigree opportunity to reconsider the French cultural landscape through the funding planned over 30 years.18 This funding will go partly not only to the Louvre Museum, but also the Ministry of Culture and the French State,19 since “the Emiratis are attracting France and the Louvre to show their interest in France”.20 Assisted by Agence France Museums to build up the Louvre Abu Dhabi’s collection, the staff has to manage the loans of varying lengths from the 13 French partner museums, then the frantic pace of the four temporary exhibitions produced each year, to attract the public again and again within the framework of the bilateral partnership.21 These experts enabled the Louvre Abu Dhabi teams to understand how the art market works. The rhythms of the Louvre Museum and the Louvre Abu Dhabi are different as well as their visibility. The transformation of the Louvre Museum now involves not only the actions of the Louvre Abu Dhabi but also those of the Louvre in Lens.22 This regional branch also responds to the internationalisation of the Louvre and plays a discreet role in international relations, as shown by the hosting of the exhibition on the margin of the signing of the partnership between Iran and France (2018). The impact of culture, in this case, is to develop international diplomatic relations, promote new cultures and benefit from an income. “The name of the Louvre is rented, but not the Louvre. The brand belongs to the French State, and it allows the Louvre to live and to compensate for the decrease in subsidies, we must not forget that the money comes to feed this republican heritage. France’s interest in having a Louvre in Abu Dhabi is financial. The gain is in the order of 1 billion euros, including 190 million for the organisation, 400 million for the brand and the rest for the expertise”.23 At a more local level, culture participates in the development and dynamism of territories. 17

Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017. Agreement “between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Universal Museum of Abu Dhabi, signed in Abu Dhabi on 6 March 2007”: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT0000194 17311&dateTexte= and interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017, completed by the interview with the AFM’s scientific manager, conducted in March 2018. 19 Remarks by Jean d’Haussonville, Director General, Domaine national de Chambord, during the “24 h … at the Louvre Abu Dhabi”, 17 and 18 November 2018, auditorium of the Louvre Museum, “The Louvre Abu Dhabi, history of dialogue”. 20 Statements made by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, former culture minister, as part of the 24 h … at the Louvre Abu Dhabi, 17 and 18 November 2018, auditorium of the Louvre Museum, “The Louvre Abu Dhabi, history of a dialogue”. 21 Interview with the AFM’s scientific manager, conducted in March 2018 and SCP of Louvre Abu Dhabi. 22 Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017, completed by the interview with the AFM’s scientific manager, conducted in March 2018. 23 Agreement “between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Universal Museum of Abu Dhabi, signed in Abu Dhabi on 6 March 2007”: https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT0000194 17311&dateTexte= = and interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017. 18

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However, international relations based on national branding also have an impact on culture, sometimes creating controversies.24 Thus, the controversies surrounding the internationalisation of the Louvre Museum are on several levels. They range from discussions about the inalienability of French museum collections and the Museum’s location within the capital to the transfer of powers to territories with a reputation of their own. Moreover, the controversies are also at the level of the debates that question the International deployment of the Louvre Museum to satisfy international relations between France and the United Arab Emirates. This attachment leads to questions about the role and challenges of heritage in the twenty-first century. The first point to be highlighted would be that in Paris, the Louvre Museum is not a part of the city: architectural speaking and in its representation. This hard link between the city and the museum, which the institution is aware of through its policies for welcoming the public, makes it necessary to rethink how the Louvre Museum could occupy the territory.25 But the way it settles on the territory cannot be achieved without the financial resources that accompany social and cultural projects, and expansion (including Louvre-Lens). Aware that this other Louvre abroad may be prejudicial to them, the Louvre Museum provides a highly political discourse centred on the orientations of the Parisian Museum and its regional branch. Actually, we are not looking, but if customers are interested, we will see. We weren’t applicants for the Louvre in Abu Dhabi that were the Emirati people who came to see us and wanted to have our expertise, it’s a co-construction process. Initially, their project was to have a pinacotheque with a few paintings and that’s it. We studied this together to end up with a universal museum project.26

In this equation, which includes the Louvre Museum, the French State and the United Arab Emirates, we can see that the French State’s stranglehold on “its” heritage serves above all as a strategy to influence and shield its international policy and de facto international relations. The Louvre, in addition to being a National Branding, became an international or even a universal branding. That bases on French know-how and its reputation, which now circulate and become appropriated by other instances. The impact on the culture of cultural diplomacy with the case of the Louvre shows that there is now a dissociation from what the Louvre is. A distinction has to be made between: – the Louvre Museum, which is dependent on its collections, – the Palais du Louvre, which is the heritage that cannot be relocated and – the Louvre brand, which is materialised by the circulation of expertise, a few masterpieces and universalist discourse in the sense of the museum’s accessibility and the period of the collections. 24

« In the controversy, “it is always a question of creating the conditions to take as a witness, or even as a resource, the public of a debate. This public can be virtual, or represent posterity or universality: the presupposition of its existence opens the space for the manifestation of truth”» (Fabiani quote by Lemieux 2007). 25 Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in July 2017. 26 Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017.

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9.9 Perceptions of the Louvre’s Influence on the Territories and as a Heritage Internationally renowned, the Louvre has 75% foreign visitors,27 making it the world’s leading museum in terms of attendance. What it represents abroad, i.e. art, culture, knowledge, the Emiratis are looking for it. The reputation of the Louvre Museum serves the territorial development of Abu Dhabi. Its establishment in the Middle East causes a shift in the focus of the institution, transforming this same reputation. The process of internationalisation reconfigures then, no longer starting from a single point of radiation (Paris), the Louvre as such is a polycentric network, whose different poles serve to enhance the reputation of the brand and the territories that host it. The international dimension is once again present, revealing a multi-spatial Louvre system. This politicised and conscious internationalisation triggers a recentralisation of the institution on its reference territory, which is Paris. In Abu Dhabi, the Louvre is at the heart of a gentrification project (El Amrousi et al. 2018). The aim is to build a “cosmopolitan” social space, which could lead to a “clash of cosmopolitanism” (Krebs and Mermier 2019: 295–296), as much ink has been spilt over its construction. The deployment in this region questions the global challenges. Some authors, who integrate a post-colonial approach, wrote that the establishment of a Louvre in this region is only a resurgence of a form of colonialism (Poulin 2010) by using the concept of “universal museum”. Indeed, we can note that it remains a “mission to cultivate the global populace in the old-fashioned manner of western art historical narratives—because the pieces may be global but ‘chronology’ or the idea of a universal ‘humankind’ are distinctly western concepts” (Stara 2015: 50). By introducing the Louvre Abu Dhabi as a universal museum, the message sent to the museum world from the French side is “we can shift our perspective on the world”28 and actively participate in rebalancing the circulation of works of art. For the Emirati people, what they want with this museum is the setting up of a lasting partnership is what the museum and French culture represent. So, we find ourselves faced with ambivalence in the speeches, which explains the tensions inherent in the creation of this Louvre in the United Arab Emirates. The new management of the Louvre Museum in April 2013 highlights and explains the developments that the Louvre must undergo. A more social museum, more refocused on its territory and attentive to visitors from Paris and Lens.29 But this refocusing on French territory was only possible, however, through its international deployment. The Louvre’s new geography is profoundly redefining the institution. The different Louvre offer new ways of experiencing the museum, which differs in every aspect from the Guggenheim model, which applies a systemisation of these different museums. The links between the three Louvres are changing the brand’s 27

“9.6 millions de visiteurs au Louvre en 2019”, https://presse.louvre.fr/96-millions-de-visiteursbrau-louvre-en-2019/. Trad. 9.6 million visitor to the Louvre in 2019. 28 Interview with the AFM’s scientific manager, conducted in March 2018. 29 Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in July 2017.

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reputation. Action at the Louvre Abu Dhabi or the Louvre-Lens has repercussions (positive or negative) on the Louvre Museum.30 The transfer of reputation operates in both directions and deserves to be more thorough afterwards. The links between the three Louvres are changing the brand’s reputation. An action at the Louvre Abu Dhabi or the Louvre-Lens has repercussions (positive or negative) on the Louvre Museum. The transfer of reputation operates in both directions and deserves to be more thorough afterwards. In this case, international relations result in the circulation of cultural goods, expertise and brand at short notice to serve other political agreements with the United States, Iran, Japan and United Arab Emirates. International relations related to the Louvre thus serve both the internationalisation of the museum and the internalisation of the French state.

9.10 Conclusions We made hypotheses at the beginning of the article that suggested that: (1) (2) (3) (4)

The relocation of the Louvre to Abu Dhabi would help redefine the Louvre Museum. The Louvre would present its model of a multi-spatial museum institution. That a transfer of reputation would be observable. The principle of universality would become a geostrategic and cross-cutting issue.

These hypotheses intend to answer the two questions concerning the interest of the Louvre deterritorialisation in international relations and the effects at the local level of the establishment of the Louvre in Abu Dhabi. Throughout the demonstration of this article, we were able to validate some hypotheses. The first one is validated even though the Louvre Abu Dhabi is recent. The intergovernmental agreement allows the Louvre Museum to obtain funding over 30 years, thus offsetting the decline in public subsidies. The Louvre Museum has been transformed by these means (restoration of rooms, works of art, partnerships, work in the reception hall, investment for the local public—digital and media actions). Secondly, the Louvre Museum is indeed presenting its model, since the Louvre Abu Dhabi is not a French museum, but an Emirati museum called “Louvre” for 30 years. For the time being, this partnership does not intend to be developed internationally. The effects may be similar to other pre-existing models of multi-spatial museums, but the initial requests are very different. The question of the transfer of reputation remains to be developed. In the very short time available for analysis, yes, we can see that there are reciprocity effects, but this analysis must be carried out over a much longer period to measure them truthfully.

30

Interview with advisor to the Louvre’s President-Director, conducted in September 2017.

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Finally, the question of universality and the model of the universal museum show the existing tension of this concept. It was not the aim of this article, but the current stakes around the restitution of works in their country of origin and the current critical literature on the concept of the universal museum clearly show a strong and oriented polarisation of what the term “universal” means. This bilateral agreement promoting the universal museum of the Louvre Abu Dhabi positions the United Arab Emirates as being in a logic of domination similar to the Western countries of the early nineteenth century. Here again, there are still many elements to be dealt with to deepen this subject. What we can retain, however, is that the deterritorialisation of the Louvre strengthens its international image while serving (geo)political and local interests in the development and transformation of a particular region and city. It also reflects in the question of the circulation of goods on different time scales (short and long). The lending of works is part of the diplomacy of the significant influence that France can afford. Finally, it translates into the transformation of heritage into a commercial and coveted object for countries whose cultural referential remains France.

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Official Report Decree n°2008–879, Agreement “between the Government of the French Republic and the Government of the United Arab Emirates on the Universal Museum of Abu Dhabi, signed in Abu Dhabi on 6 March 2007”. https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT0 00019417311&dateTexte=

Chapter 10

DA‘ESH’s Video in the Mosul Museum: Heritage Destruction or Heritage-Making? Jorge Elices Ocón

Abstract The destruction of statues in the Mosul Museum recorded by DA‘ESH should not be considered simple acts of vandalism and Islamic iconoclasm, but understood within the current debate on the redefinition of heritage, particularly monumental statues, questioned for representing a colonialist or autocratic past and attacked in the last years, during popular manifestations in Chile, the UK and the USA. DA‘ESH neither denies the notion of heritage nor abrogates it, but appropriates and transforms it. The actions and discourse of DA‘ESH share some significant elements with these recent attacks. In the video recorded, statues were turned into pieces, reidentified, relocated and displayed in public in all the media, conveying new and accurate meanings, according to DA‘ESH. Thereby, the video is a postmodern and digital contraversion of traditional heritage artefacts and sites and has to be considered in two different perspectives: as heritage destruction and as heritagemaking. Keyword Iconoclasm · Heritage · DA‘ESH · Islam · Destruction · Resignification · Statues On April 19, 2016, Boris Johnson, who was back then Mayor of London, unveiled a scale model of Palmyra’s Triumphal Arch in a ceremonial act performed in Trafalgar Square. The arch was an accurate replica of the original, destroyed earlier by DA‘ESH—the so-called Islamic State (IS)-, and the ceremony was conceived as an act in “solidarity with the Syrian people” and “defiance of the barbarians who destroyed the original of this arch as they destroyed so many other monuments and relics” (Brown 2016; Burch 2017). The context, elements, and words chosen as part of the act suggest that it was clearly ideologically founded (Shaw 2017, 340 and This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, no. 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). This work was supported by the FAPESP, under Grant 2018/15102-7. J. Elices Ocón (B) UNIFESP (Federal University of São Paulo), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_10

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356–357). The act not only symbolized the re-construction of the plundered classical legacy, but it also fits in an old orientalist narrative of a “civilized” West facing a battle or a crusade against “barbaric” Islam. The demagogic use of the words “barbarian”, “monuments”, and “relics” and the rhetoric of outrage against heritage destruction might seem to embody cosmopolitan principles, but in fact evoked a western discourse on heritage as an European legacy (Kamash 2017; Nitschke 2020), though built not over the actual vestiges of Palmyra, but on an artificial model and an act staged to the audience. The act in London stands out as a completely different performance to the one carried out by DA‘ESH a year earlier in the Mosul Museum: the destruction of statues recorded in a video, widely disseminated on the Internet since it was posted on YouTube on February 26, 2015 (Shaw 2015; Harmanshah 2015). In this short film, DA‘ESH argued and showed the destruction of statues and artefacts by several agents armed with sledgehammers, picks, and electric drills. The images outraged international media as well as scholars. The performance recorded was defined as a “war crime” and a “barbaric” “act of terrorism” (Charbonneau 2015; Shaw 2015, 73; Smith et al. 2016; Turku 2017, 135–168); however, the context, artefacts, and words chosen for the video reveal a scenography well-planned and a discourse ideologically founded, not so different to the act performed in London (Shaw 2017, 340). DA‘ESH evoked the idea of jihad and holy war against the crusaders, emulating iconoclastic attacks attributed to Abraham and Muhammad (Anonymous 2015, 22). DA‘ESH conceived the video as an act of defiance against their enemies and it has been considered by several scholars as an “artefact of ideological discourse” and as an “atavistic performance” and “re-enactment of the seventh century c.e. destruction of idols in the Ka’aba” (Harmanshah 2015, 173–174) as well as an “iconography of iconoclasm” and a “work of anti-art” (Shaw 2015, 75–76 and 81–82). Thereby, differences between the act performed in London and the destruction carried out by DA‘ESH regard supposedly to the notion of Heritage and the spectacle that both acts offer: at first sight, one is an act of cosmopolitism, restauration, and preservation of ancient remains, whereas DA‘ESH neglect and destroyed ancient statues in a spectacle of horror, terrorism, and iconoclasm, considering them just as idols of the J¯ahiliyya, the “Age of Ignorance” before Islam (Webb 2014). In this paper, I will pay attention to recent responses to heritage, such as the attacks towards statues that took place in June 2020 (Anonymous 2020a) and acts like the one described in London involving the Arch of Palmyra and the video recorded by DA‘ESH in the Mosul Museum. I will stress the similarities and differences between these acts to point out that DA‘ESH appropriates, challenges, and re-designates traditional western notions of museum, monument, and heritage. Rather than denying the heritage values of the statues and artefacts destroyed, these values constitute an essential part of the discourse and visual propaganda created by DA‘ESH. The video recorded is, in fact, not merely an iconoclast discourse based on the religious and political context in the Middle East, but a modern, radical, and alternative discourse on heritage, regarding what monuments should stand for and what memories and identities need to be preserved and venerated.

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To point out these ideas, I will consider a broader theoretical framework, including the notion of heritage as a cultural process or performance rather than a material artefact, monument, or place (Smith 2006, 44–84). The notion of Heritagization or Heritage-making, understood as the creation and re-creation of cultural, historical meaning and identity, is central to this paper, but I will also take into consideration studies on iconoclasm and public display of decay and mutilated statues in the Late Antiquity (Kristensen 2010), that have suggested that iconoclasm produces as much meaning as it destroys (Elsner 2003; Varner 2004; Kristensen 2015). Attending to this particular framework, I will argue that the video recorded at the Mosul Museum is a performed act of heritage-making and “re-designation” that appropriates traditional values of heritage, but also redefine its form, function, meaning, and status. From this point of view, DA‘ESH video might not be merely the latest act of heritage destruction and barbaric iconoclasm in the Middle East (Gamboni 1997; Kolrud and Prusac 2014) but a significant turning point that may explain recent responses and attacks towards heritage in an international scale.

10.1 “Western” World Heritage Before paying attention to the recent events involving statues and heritage and analysing the video of DA‘ESH, it is worth considering the very notion of Heritage, defined as a mental construct that attributes “significance” to certain places, artefacts, and forms of behaviour from the past through processes that are essentially political (Logan et al. 2016, 1). Heritage is, therefore, a product of modernity and capitalism, related to the presumed universalism of western culture and associated with white and European values, experiences, and sites. Its definition initiated through Hegelian historiography and modern collections of antiquities, considering the Greco-Roman past as the origin and mirror for the rationalism and progress that Europe supposedly represented in the world during the nineteenth century (Hall 2011; Brusius 2015; Logan et al. 2016, 2–3). Later, in the twentieth century, the notion of Heritage evolved to include new places and forms (Silverman 2016) and reached its modern institutionalization and internationalism with UNESCO’s adoption of the World Heritage Convention in 1972, which aimed to rewrite global history and construct universal and secular ideals (Smith 2006, 11–43 and 85–114; Betts 2015; Meskell 2018, 1–58; Rico 2019). The notions of “monument” or “relic”, as mentioned by Boris Johnson in the ceremony that unveiled the scale model of Palmyra’s Triumphal Arch in Trafalgar Square, are also intimately related to the definition of Heritage. F. Choay distinguished between a “monument”, built ex nihilo to bring the past into the present and preserve the identity of a community (ethnic, religious, national, tribal, or family), and a “historical monument” or “relic”, an artefact or ancient ruin that, according to the notion of heritage, is imbricated with a certain worldview (Weltanschauung) and acquires not only an aesthetic value as a “work of art” and a historical value, when set in a particular narrative of time, but also conveys other values and meanings

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usually related to history, memory, and identity (Choay 2017, 27–29). “Monument” and “relic”, however, require, at least theoretically, its unconditional protection and preservation, particularly historical monuments (Choay 2017, 26–27). Preservation, thereby, is also central to the concept of heritage, related directly to museums, as the institutions created for preserving and display selected “relics” to fit in the historicized enactment of national or European triumph. Preservation, however, is a concept currently in revision. Western heritage preservation notion in the nineteenth century neglected other non-European ways of preservation and engagement with the material past and usually included practices currently not accepted. Statues discovered, still preserving part of their original painting, were cleaned to appear as idealized white marble sculptures, whereas those already found mutilated in Late Antiquity were commonly repaired, replacing their missing parts, as the collection of replica appendages (ears and noses) in Copenhagen’s Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek art museum testifies (Brusius 2015,2017; Nalewicki 2018). The Middle East’s material culture has been traditionally a focus for heritage studies. The rise of heritage internationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries stressed the uniqueness and value of Middle Eastern material remains while neglected local cultural context and knowledge, depicted as unsophisticated and barbaric (Rico 2017,2019, 156–157). The remains needed to be properly preserved and the National Museum of Damascus and the Baghdad Antiquities Museum were founded under the supervision of the French and British protectorates, followed later by others museums, such as the Mosul Museum (Valter 2002; Bernhardsson 2005; Goode 2009). Tadmur/Palmyra was also recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980. The city illustrates, however, how hegemonic powers have shaped landscapes by transforming a culture marked by living economic, social, and cultural practices into one defined by the symbolism of heritage tied locally to a nation, and ultimately to a “western” world heritage (Shaw 2017; Abdul Samad 2020). The preservation of the Roman city was only possible by the erasure of intermediary traditions, the displacement of local communities, the destructions of their habitat, and the re-construction of an artificial city for modern tourists (Gillot 2010, Fig. 10.1). The notions of protection and preservation might seem inherently doing well by saving the past, but in fact imply its destruction (Baird and Kamash 2019). As a result, Tadmur/Palmyra is an idealized Roman city, perfectly preserved, “discovered” by western travellers and archaeologists, but also a highly contested political symbol associated not only with the authoritarian regimes of Syria and Iraq, since both regimes elaborated a cohesive national identity through affiliation with ancient civilizations and archaeological sites, but also to Western colonialism, culture, and values (Valter 2002; Bernhardsson 2005; Goode 2009; Al-Manzali 2016).

10.2 Heritage on the Spotlight DA‘ESH destructions are a direct response to the colonial and nationalist past of the Middle East (Jones 2018); however, this is not an exceptional and isolated response,

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Fig. 10.1 American Colony, Jerusalem, Palmyra (Tadmor): Street of Village in Temple of the Sun (c.1900–20), glass, dry plate negative

since several other groups and organizations have formulated similar critiques to the internationalization of the Eurocentric idea of heritage value and its colonial, racist, and nationalist background (Smith 2006, 35–42). Considering these subaltern and dissenting discourses, the UNESCO has tried to move away from this Eurocentric idea of heritage to one that recognises, protects, and promotes the diversity of the world’s cultures; however, heritage remains in the spotlight, and monuments and museums are no longer unconditionally or universally valued, preserved, and visited. Critiques seem to be connected to the fact that the focus of geopolitics has shifted away from Europe and USA into emerging countries and minority populations traditionally marginalized and excluded. Post-colonial and heritage studies have also evolved significantly since 1980s. It seems clear now that “Heritage” is an evolving concept, with changing forms and functions and no inherent meanings and values (Silverman 2016). Furthermore, new topics have been raised, both in the academia and in the media culture, regarding the use and abuse of heritage, politics of possession with regard to indigenous heritage, also considering “non-western” and local constructions of heritage value and the new disturbing scenarios molded

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by international relations, cultural diplomacy, mass tourism, war, and digital heritage (Battiste and Youngblood 2000; Logan et al. 2016, 4–21; Meskell 2018). Archaeological artefacts and sites are now considered as a field of battle to settle the sovereignty over a territory, as the case of Crimea illustrates, under dispute by Ukraine and Russia (Bonet 2020). Monuments and museums are also targeted. The president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, threatened to destroy Iran’s monuments as reprisal for any attacks on U.S.A. interest (Farnazeh 2020) and the recent re-conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque by the Turkish government in July 2020 has been considered as an historical re-enactment of Sultan Mehmed II’s conquest to reinforce a nationalistic and Islamic discourse and send a powerful message to European countries (Harmans.hah 2020). Even new initiatives, such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, seem to reinforce traditional “western” heritage narratives. The museum was funded in November 2017 thanks to the cultural cooperation between France and the United Arab Emirates (Fig. 10.2). It aims to celebrate the human universal creativity, from prehistory to the present, inviting us to see human society in a new light (Seisdedos 2017); however, it delves into the disconnection of the local population with those antiquities originally retrieved from Levant and Mesopotamia, hoping that works of art were capable of spreading certain values in the region (civilization, progress, democracy, secularism) to heal the wounds opened by DA‘ESH destructions (Vicente 2019; Wakefield 2021). The attacks against statues across the world in June 2020, in association with the racial protest of Black Lives Matter originated from George Floyd’s murder by a police officer, represent the very last episode of a history of iconoclastic violence towards monumental statues (Gamboni 1997; Kolrud and Prusac 2014).

Fig. 10.2 Visitors at the Louvre Abu Dhabi during the ceremonial opening of the museum on November 11, 2017. Photo by Karim SahibAFP. Taken from Vicente (2019)

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Though these attacks not always have a common background and present differences according to local contexts, most of them attend to the critiques regarding the “Western/Colonialist/White” character of heritage. These attacks defy the western notion of Heritage and redefine it in terms of memory, identity, and representativeness, claiming that each society has the right to establish what and how to remember from the past (Martínez 2019, 30 and 40; Cortés 2020). In Bristol (United Kingdom) the statue of Edward Colston, a seventeenth-century slave trader, was attacked in June 2020. In a symbolic way, the neck and feet of the statue were tied with ropes, it was dragged through the city and ended up being thrown into the river (Anonymous 2020b). Similar episodes of violence against statues and monuments erected in the last centuries, with these very same connotations, have been documented in South Africa (Tomlinson 2015; Marschall 2017); in Canada (RoseRedwood and Patrick 2020); in Spain, where far-right groups attacked monuments and statues representing medieval Muslim rulers and modern Catalan politicians (Solé 2017); or in India, where the acts perpetrated against the statues were figures from all political spectrum (Sharma 2018). It is also worth noticing that in several examples, iconoclastic attacks not only refers to demolition, mutilation, and partial or total destruction, but to what can be considered as interventions or transformations (by painting or setting new prompts elements and written slogans), leading to an actual re-identification of the statue or its actual substitution by a new and acceptable image. In Hong Kong, the manifestants erected a new statue to commemorate and represent their claims of liberty (Grundy 2019). In Chile, in the context of protests against the neoliberal system, several statues were painted and dressed in Mapuche clothes or covered with masks to hide their faces (Fig. 10.3), whereas others were mutilated, beheaded, and demolished (Huinca 2019; Onetto 2019; Gutiérrez 2019; Montes 2020). In Temuco (Chile), the statue of Pedro de Valdivia, the Spanish conqueror, was demolished by local Mapuche people, and later transformed and reidentified as “Valdivia impaled”, relocated and placed at the foot of a statue of Lautaro, the Mapuche leader who confronted the Spanish conquerors (Blair 2019; Martínez 2019, 32; Onetto 2019). Similarly, in La Serena (Chile), the protesters removed a monument to the Spanish conqueror Francisco de Aguirre and replaced it with a statue to Milanka, representing the woman in the Diaguita local culture (Anonymous 2020a; Montes 2020).

10.3 “Destroy. Destroy… Destroy the Idols” The Middle East has been traditionally at the centre of discussions of cultural heritage preservation, more significantly since in March 2001 the Taliban demolished the monumental Buddhas carved into the rock cliffs at Bamiyan in Afghanistan (Flood 2002, 655; Elias 2007, 12–29); however, the actions of attack and destruction of heritage and monuments are commonly considered in a different way as those actions carried out in other countries.

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Fig. 10.3 Detail of the statue of Mercury in the German Fountain in Santiago de Chile. On the chest has been written “The bullets will return”. Taken from Montes (2020)

As argued by T. Rico, heritage studies considering the Muslim world have been traditionally guided by outside agendas and academic debates have rather focused on the actions of plunder and destruction, on their perpetrators, or on the analysis of the way in which destruction is contextualized and justified on religious grounds, with more emphasis in defining the acts as terrorism, fanatism, or iconoclasm, than in paying attention to agency and local constructions of heritage value (Rico 2019, 150 and 156–158). Therefore, the recent destructions carried out by DA‘ESH stand out as the last and most radical episode of deliberate destruction of heritage in the Middle East. They have centred international media attention and academic debates, particularly significant in relation to the destructions carried out in Tadmur/Palmyra, described as “expressions of pure hatred and ignorance” (UNESCO 2015) or related to the video recorded in the Mosul Museum, condemned by the United Nations Security Council as “barbaric terrorist acts” (Charbonneau 2015). The video recorded by DA‘ESH constitutes then a significant document of analysis to understand the modern conception of heritage in the Middle East, depicting not only an act of

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destruction and image-breaking, but also image-making (Harmanshah 2015, 173; Flood 2016) and, as I will argue, heritage-making and re-designation. DA‘ESH video begins with a full-screen pan of the museum to the sound of Qur’anic recitation, showing the statues protected in plastic sheeting. An introduction is given by a preacher man with a coiffed beard, standing in front of a large statue of the Assyrian protective deity Lamassu. He starts by saying that “these idols behind me belong to people from the old times, who worshipped things other than Allah. All of these people, such as the Assyrians and Arcadians and others, had gods for rain, gods for war” (Smith et al. 2016, 177). He also invokes specific passages from the Qur’an referring to the destruction of idols by Abraham. Significantly, the video also shows some museum wall labels, written in Arabic and highlighting selectively in neon green a few passages that identify some of the reliefs as images of the Mesopotamian god Nergal and thereby, justifying their destruction as pagan depictions and idols. The man introducing the video concludes his introduction asserting that “since Allah commanded us to shatter and destroy these statues, idols, and remains, it is easy for us to obey” (Shaw 2015, 87). The main concern in DA‘ESH discourse and performance in the video is, therefore, idolatry (shirk), the worship of images or false gods as equals to Allah. In Dabiq, the English-language propagandistic magazine of DAESH, the destruction carried out at the Mosul Museum is also justified as an emulation of Prophet Muhammad acts after capturing Mecca in 630 AD, when, supposedly, he would have knocked down the idols housed in the Ka’aba (Anonymous 2015, 22). Statues are defined, therefore, as depictions of pagan deities and idols (as.nam) of the J¯ahiliyya, objects that should not be venerated but destroyed. However, DA‘ESH religious rhetoric hides also political and cultural concerns, referring to “idol” in a broad sense, including not only the literal worship of religious idols, but their veneration as cultural icons or symbols of a secular nation-state or civilization, similarly as argued by the Taliban in 2001 regarding the destruction of the Buddhas in Bamiyan (Flood 2002, 651–655; Shaw 2015). As already mentioned when referring above to Tadmur/Palmyra, the repressive dictatorships of the Ba ‘ath regimes in Iraq and Syria exploited Western narratives regarding artefacts and imagery of antiquity as World Heritage monuments and relics of universal value in an attempt to legitimize their rulership, build a sense of collective identity, and set the country within the western narratives on civilization and progress (Valter 2002; Bernhardsson 2005; Goode 2009). In the video, this archaeological and political background is clearly highlighted, emphasizing that the statues and artefacts destroyed were not visible during the lifetime of Muhammad, but extracted from the earth by “the worshippers of devils”, thereby connecting the archaeological findings and the museological display with a renewed western practice of worshipping (Shaw 2015, 75; Flood 2016, 122). In Dabiq, the article on the video is significantly titled: “erasing the legacy of a ruined nation” (Anonymous 2015). Thereby, DA‘ESH destruction and the video recorded at the Mosul Museum are a direct response to colonial and nationalist notion and use of heritage (Jones 2018), considering the museum as a temple and the statues as western “idols” (Shaw 2015).

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Fig. 10.4 DA‘ESH destroys Statues in Mosul Museum, YouTube video, published April 7th, 20–15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KELYkEkgU, accessed April 20th, 2015

After the introduction, addressing the political and religious arguments of DA‘ESH, the video shows also a slow-motion destruction of objects to a soundtrack of Qur’anic recitation (chapter, 21:58), invoking the acts of Muhammad (“he reduced them to fragments”), while the militants used the force of their bodies to topple the targeted statuary and crumble them to pieces with sledgehammers (Fig. 10.4). The DA‘ESH chant repeats: “Destroy. Destroy.... Destroy the state of the Crusaders. Destroy the idols and statues. Destroy the untruths of the Americans. The idols belong in hell” (Smith et al. 2016, 177–178). The final scene of the video depicts DA‘ESH performers employing electric drills to mutilate the faces of the Assyrian colossal lamassus at the gates of Nineveh, whereas the article in Dabiq expresses the hope that God “cleanse all Muslims’ lands of the idols of both the past and present” (Anonymous 2015, 24). The video is, therefore, much more than mere barbaric, ignorant, and propagandistic destructions. It is not only well-planned and performed, but also carefully founded on specific religious and political ideologies (Isakhan et al. 2018). When analysing the video, scholars have tried to quantify and qualify damage at the museum (Jones 2015; Harmanshah 2015, 171–173; Brusasco 2016) and have considered its nature as a post-modern digital artefact and considered it as a mediatic “spectacle” of violence addressed to local, regional and global audiences (Smith et al. 2016; Bearden 2016) and a “hyperreal reality show” that transforms an act of image-breaking into image-making carefully crafted to display an ideology (Harmanshah 2015, 173 and 175–176; Flood 2016, 120 and 123–124). Scholars have also pointed out the characteristics and complexities of DA‘ESH ideological discourse on iconoclasm, as it is represented and argued in the video. Some consider that the video is an example of

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Fig. 10.5 Abraham Destroying Idols, Al-Biruni, al-Athar al-Baqiya (The Chronology of the Nations), Tabriz, Iran, 707/1307-8, Edinburg University Library, Ms. 161, folio 88v

“Digitally Mediated Iconoclasm”, a recorded act of iconoclasm with a coherent theological framework, showing three stages of destruction (before, during, and after) (Isakhan et al. 2018), whereas other scholars understand that iconoclasm functions just as a rhetoric or historical reference and that the video is an “iconography” or “re-enactment performance” that assert and invoke a genealogy of historical events and obscure acts of iconoclasm as rightful legal precedents and justifications for their destructive acts (Flood 2002, 2016, 118; Harmanshah 2015, 174 and 176; Shaw 2015, 81–82, Fig. 10.5). Finally, the video has also been considered with its imbrications to the notion of monument, museum, and heritage, suggesting that it is a “work of anti-art” that parodies museum documentaries and celebrates the destruction of Western “idols” and hegemonic narratives regarding civilization and nation (Shaw 2015, 75–76 and 81). I will further develop these ideas and consider the video recorded at the Mosul Museum within the debate and critiques that currently surround the definition of heritage, showing that DA‘ESH neither denies the category of heritage nor actually differs much from those other acts and attacks involving statues and monuments mentioned above. As already highlighted, the destruction of antiquities in DA‘ESH’ video derives its powerful message from the relic-like status of antiquities, as well as from the international and political background behind the notion of heritage, applied to them. The video, as I will argue, is not just a mediatic spectacle of destruction and a re-enactment of iconoclasm, nor a “work of anti-art”, but a radical and subaltern discourse on heritage, that not only appropriates and states the traditional values of heritage in order to destroy it later but, at the same time, makes, redefines, and re-designates heritage in its form, function, and meaning. The video recorded in the

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Mosul Museum has to be considered then in two different perspectives: as heritage destruction and as heritage-making.

10.4 Destruction of a “Treasured Heritage” Heritage status is not denied, nor neglected by DA‘ESH, but more or less clearly mentioned and sometimes even openly stated. DA‘ESH declares that destroy heritage is one of their objectives in order to spread terror, humiliate both local and international community, and erase completely any alternative narrative on the heterogeneous past and present of the Middle East (Anonymous 2015, 22). Affirming the historical, economic, political, or emotional value traditionally attached to Heritage, according to a western point of view, is, thereby, essential to DA‘ESH purpose of destruction and each one of these aspects can be identified in their discourse. In the video recorded at Mosul, the man introducing the statues that will be later destroyed recognizes their historical value as representing the gods of Assyrians, Akkadians, and other ancient peoples. Information of its historical and archaeological context is not ignored, but highlighted in neon green in the museum panels or clearly stated when saying that statues and artefacts were dug out by archaeologists and “the worshippers of devils”. Destruction rather obeys to the fact that statues may be considered “relics” of an ancient legacy and monuments worth noticing; however, they represent idols and vestiges of the colonial and autocratic past of the region. Such considerations share several characteristics with those recent attacks against statues and monuments that took place in June 2020, already mentioned, where statues, despite being actually recognized as monuments, were also demolished or destroyed, since they represented conquerors, colonialist leaders, dictators, or black slave traders. DA‘ESH also recognizes the economic value of antiquities. The pieces destroyed in the video were selected to be destroyed because they resembled both the western notion of heritage and the DA‘ESH concept of the pagan idol; however, many other pieces in Mosul, Palmyra, or Niniveh were sold in market antiquities helping to fund DA‘ESH (Leroy 2014; Taub 2015). In the video, the narrator states that “we do not care [what people think] even if this costs billion of dollars” (Shaw 2015, 87), meaning that the destruction carried out in the video implies, in fact, an economic sacrifice. In Dabiq, the idea is also further developed since the sacrifice is considered worthy, because “[it] caused an outcry from the enemies of the Islamic State, who were furious at losing a ‘treasured heritage’” (Anonymous 2015, 22). DA‘ESH also understands heritage sites and monuments as political symbols of sovereignty and power together with other governments and political organizations. Heritage is also a weapon of war and targeted in military conflicts and diplomacy, as it is also the case in other military and political international conflicts regarding archaeological artefacts or monuments mentioned above (Turku 2017, 1–25; Bonet 2020; Farnazeh 2020; Harmanshah 2020). Heritage destruction by DA‘ESH acquires, however, a new dimension, since it constitutes a political act, a violent reprisal, and

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a declaration of war. From this point of view, DA‘ESH actions resemble later acts such as the ceremony carried out in Trafalgar Square, the attacks on statues in several countries, or the conversion of Hagia Sophia into the museum, also conceived as defiance acts and statements within the current cultural and political global context. The aesthetical value attached to a statue or monument, usually considered as a “work of art”, seems to be omitted by DA‘ESH in the video. As pointed out by W. Shaw, the video at Mosul parodies the museum documentaries, and the “expert” introducing the video and the artefacts offers Islamist rather than art-historical information (Shaw 2015, 81–82). It seems then that, for DA‘ESH militants, statues, considered as idols, should not be valued for its artistic significance; however, the notion of art and decoration is actually recognized by DA‘ESH, constituting a matter of concern, though their taste is rather radical puritanical. In April 2015, DA‘ESH militants decided to remove several Koranic inscriptions carved from Mosul’s mosques, pointing out that the decoration was an unnecessary ornamental frivolity (Flood 2016, 119). Artistic details, however, definitely matter to DA‘ESH and aesthetic values of heritage are not absent at all in the video, but rather conditioned to their religious agenda. As already stressed by several scholars, the video recorded in the Mosul Museum points out a carefully planned performance, where DA‘ESH militants play the role of clumsy and primitive iconoclasts while the video includes resonant scenes, words, and chants of Qur’anic recitation (Harmanshah 2015, 174). The video is conceived itself as an “spectacle” (Bearden 2016), as an “artefact” (Harmanshah 2015, 173 and 175–176; Flood 2016, 120 and 123–124), or as a “work of anti-art” (Shaw 2015, 75–76 and 81). It is definitely a work of art, as a modern “iconography” of iconoclasm (Shaw 2015, 82) or triumph that re-creates medieval Islamic depictions and descriptions of attacks against idols. The beauty and aura of protection involving the statues at the museum, as it appears firstly in the video, are an essential part of the performance. DA‘ESH men gently disrobe the statues from their plastic sheeting and, when destroying them, the video turns into slow-motion to re-create in the rape and death implied in the violence of the destruction (Shaw 2015, 81). Rather than denying their aesthetic value of the statues, the video itself embodied new criteria regarding the aesthetics of antiquities, questioning the white and spotless appearance of the statues, their physical integrity, and untouchable nature when display at the museums. The ritual of destruction and mutilation staged in the video also matches with several acts of statuary destruction taken place in June 2020. Like the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol (UK), tied with ropes, dragged through the streets, and finally thrown into the sea symbolizing the miserable fate of many of the African slaves or the statues in Chile, painted, disguised with masks and flags, or beheaded, DA‘ESH militants destroyed the statues with sledgehammers, picks, and electric drill, highlighting in slow-motion the precise moment when the statues collapsed. The rituals of destruction in the video are, thereby, a parody of those rituals performed in the museums (Shaw 2015, 88), and the very first act of this kind. The ritualized destruction carried out by DA‘ESH also functions as a way to form bonds between members of DA‘ESH and ensuring their allegiance (Shahab and Isakhan 2018), and

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are conceived as the physical destruction of the enemy. The video precisely underlines this idea, placing the statues in the same category along with the “states and the lies of the crusaders” (Smith et al. 2016, 177–178). DA‘ESH also subscribes and highlights the idea of heritage as representing merely Western images and values, completely disconnected, and with no meaning to the Middle East populations, quite similarly to the display of ancient statues conceived at the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum. DA‘ESH discourse, however, also recognizes that heritage is closely attached to memories, identities, and emotions that the monument brings to the present and revive. As heritage, statues and artefacts are, in fact, meaningful to the Middle East people, something that constitutes, in the eyes of DA‘ESH’ militants, a clear mistake that needs to be emended. In Dabiq, DA‘ESH states that the destruction carried out in Mosul and Niniveh: caused an outcry from the enemies of the Islamic State, who were furious at losing a ‘treasured heritage’. The muj¯ahid¯ın, however, were not the least bit concerned about the feelings and sentiments of the kuff¯ar, just as Ibr¯ah¯ım [Abraham] was not concerned about the feelings and sentiments of his people when he destroyed their idols (Anonymous 2015, 22).

DA‘ESH attempts to compare here their destructive actions to those performed by Abraham, adopting a tone of excuse, since the reference could also be read as a justification of the lack of DA‘ESH concern with their people feelings, accusing who regret having lost a “treasured heritage”, of being infidels (kuff¯ar), but revealing, perhaps unintentionally, that there is in fact an emotional bond between those ancient artefacts in Palmyra, Mosul, and Niniveh and the local inhabitants. Heritage value, therefore, is clearly stated by DA‘ESH. The statues in the Mosul Museum were not destroyed due to their heritage value to the international community, but despite this and because they were actually meaningful to the local population. Heritage destruction, significantly, brings out also emotional consequences. It is conceived as a sacrifice. Rather than denying heritage meaning for the local population, DA‘ESH video is an attempt to re-identify it, rewrite history, and transform statues and monuments into remembrance and veneration of the Abraham and Muhammad acts. The unconditional preservation of “relics” and monuments is a modern criterion on heritage, but here is subject to the need to correct history and make its remains represent something different, as it was also the case of the statues reidentified in Chile, painted and transformed in several ways. The statues, though completely fragmented in DA‘ESH video, still evoke narratives of remembrance and identity, as the main characteristic of a heritage artefact. DA‘ESH video, thereby, is not just about destruction and denial of heritage, it is above all about re-identification, heritagemaking, and an “authorized” re-designation statement. The video creates heritage and is itself a re-designated monument or artefact, an image valued for its aesthetical and historical value that revives certain memories and identities according to DA‘ESH political and religious agenda. I will now further develop these ideas.

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10.5 Heritage-Making and “Re-designation” DA‘ESH appropriates the traditional notion of heritage and understands it as old, aesthetic, material, Western, and valued statues and artefacts. However, when recording the destruction of statues at the Mosul Museum, DA‘ESH also creates heritage, understood as an embodied cultural process, an act or performance of meaning-making, according to the definition of Smith (2006, 44–84). As argued in her important book, heritage “is a moment of action, not something frozen in material form”, and it is not a single action, but “a range of activities that include remembering, commemoration, communicating and passing on knowledge and memories, asserting and expressing identity and social and cultural values and meanings” (Smith 2006, 83). Mutilation and destruction of artefacts, however, should also be considered as part of these processes of Heritagization or Heritage-making since iconoclasm produces as much meaning as it destroys. J. Elser has argued that “the act of iconoclasm while apparently a kind of visual defacement that effaces the memory of the destroyed may nonetheless preserve the memory of the condemned in the very act of obliteration” (Elsner 2003, 211). Destruction and construction are in fact related. Bruno Latour has employed the term “iconoclash” to refer to the contemporary image wars in the public and international sphere, characterized not only by their destructive nature, but also by being constructive (Latour 2002). Destruction is certainly an act of dammnatio memoriae, but it also implies translatio and transformation (Kinney 1997; Varner 2004). Mutilated and fragmented statues display in public actually convey meaning, as pointed out in Late Antiquity studies on spolia and statuary reception (Kristensen 2010,2015). As the statues reduced to fragments in the video, reduced to fragments, spolia are also fragments, and “as fragments, they are indices of lost and irreparable wholes”, opened to interpretation and new meanings, but still a “claim of simultaneous identities” (Kinney 1995, 57–58), perceived as belonging to specifics moments, persons and cultural identities the ancient people who built them, the western archaeologists who unearthed them, the contemporary people who valued as idols in Syria and Iraq and the DA‘ESH’s agents who destroy them, all recorded and preserved in the video. The video recorded, thereby, takes the form of destruction and obliteration, but is most of it about heritage-making, construction and setting of meaning. It delves in fact into the idea of a monument, of what is necessary or worthy of being remembered, emulated, venerated, and preserved, and what should be destroyed. The article published in Dabiq elaborates on this idea: The kuff¯ar had unearthed these statues and ruins in recent generations and attempted to portray them as part of a cultural heritage and identity that the Muslims of Iraq should embrace and be proud of. Yet this opposes the guidance of Allah and His Messenger and only serves a nationalist agenda that severely dilutes the wal¯a’ that is required of the Muslims towards their Lord. It was not the people of the k¯afir nations that the Prophet (sallall¯ahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) was instructed to revere and identify himself with. Rather, he was instructed to identify with and emulate the example of his father Ibr¯ah¯ım (‘alayhissal¯am) and those with him (Anonymous 2015, 22–23)

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As already pointed out by several scholars, the video is an performed reenactment of the iconoclast attacks attributed to Abraham and Muhammad, but in their violent engaging with heritage, DA‘ESH’s video also makes and negotiates heritage meaning. As argued by L. Smith “cultural meanings are […] created through doing, and through the aspirations and desires of the present, but are validated and legitimized through the creation and re-creation of a sense of linkage to the past. Heritage provides a mentality and discourse in which these linkages are forged and recast” (Smith 2006, 83–84). In DA‘ESH’s video, cultural meaning is created through destruction, brutal action of mutilation carried out with sledgehammers, picks, and electric drills, but set in the present and legitimized through the creation and re-creation of previously assumed acts of iconoclasm. Furthermore, the video shows how oral histories and traditions pass on. Old and new memories attached to the statues are recorded and preserved as recording, as an act of heritage management. The video should be considered, thereby, neither as a mere act of heritage destruction nor as an “anti-art work” that denies the status of Heritage, as suggested by W. Shaw (Shaw 2015, 75–76 and 81–82), but as a performance of heritage-making and a ritualized statement of heritage “re-designation”, opposed to the traditional and “authorized” accounts of heritage as it is usually recognized, listened, or recorded by UNESCO. DA‘ESH’s discourse is about the ability and authority to possess, control, and give meaning to the past. Thereby, the video at the Mosul Museum is not only an act of heritage-making, but it is also the management and institutionalization of new political orders and temporalities conceived as defiance against their enemies and restitution/restoration of their own memories and identities. The word b¯aqiya (“we remain”), as a graffiti painted in several ruins and columns at Palmyra (O’Connor 2017), highlights precisely the idea of resistance, restitution, preservation, and victory, as a new label to designates heritage. DA‘ESH’s act of “re-designation” of heritage implies altering the current status of these statues and monuments by crumbling them to pieces, but still preserving their values traditionally attached to them. Statues at the Mosul Museum still played a central role in the recorded performance, though they were no longer raised in pedestal and protected in plastic sheeting, but on the floor of the museum, turned into pieces. Significantly, however, the very notion of these fragmented statues and monuments as heritage is essential for the defiance message and “iconography” of DA‘ESH’s discourse. For that purpose, heritage cannot disappear completely nor be sold in the illegal market of antiquities, but be relocated, reidentified, and displayed in public. Thereby, O. Harmans.hah seems accurate when suggesting that “the Assyrian and Parthian sculptures in Mosul were destroyed (if they were indeed destroyed) for the sole purpose of producing the video” (Harmanshah 2015, 175). DA‘ESH’s aim was not the destruction of heritage itself, but the construction of meaning. Destruction is understood as a sacrifice in order to settle who has the power or the “responsibility” to define and “speak for” the past, to amend and set the true meaning given to the statues, and create a discourse intended to a local and international audience.

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10.6 Conclusions The destruction of statues, sites, and museums carried out by DA‘ESH’s, as the video recorded in the Mosul Museum, should not be considered simple acts of vandalism or iconoclastic actions based on its radical interpretation of Islam, but understood within the current debate on the redefinition of heritage, particularly of statues, questioned for representing a colonialist or autocratic past that is no longer considered worthy of being preserved and remembered. Heritage destructions, such as the iconoclastic actions against statues carried out in recent years in various countries, seek to rewrite memory and identity, establishing a new relationship between society and heritage. DA‘ESH neither denies the notion of heritage, nor abrogates it, but appropriates and transforms it. Statues were turned into pieces, reidentified, relocated, and displayed in public, available to all media, as spolia, as part of a new artefact or monument that conveys new and accurate meanings, according to DAESH. The video is a post-modern and digital contraversion of traditional heritage artefacts and sites, in order to convey a particular message. The question of what exactly DA‘ESH “did”—subjectively and culturally—at the video recorded in the Mosul Museum, thereby, has to be considered in two different perspectives: as heritage destruction and as heritage-making. DA‘ESH’s militants were not only destroyers, but also agents in the mediation of the meanings of heritage. The video, as a heritage discourse, statement, and artefact itself, had probably more influence in the international debate on heritage and its unconditional preservation than what has been recognized so far. The similitudes between the act performed and recorded in the Mosul Museum share significant characteristics with later acts, such as the ceremony of unveiling of the scale model of the Arch of Palmyra in London, the re-conversion of Hagia Sophia as a mosque, and the attacks towards monumental statues in Chile, UK, and U.S.A. Those were also acts of re-enactment of previous acts, performance of heritage-making according to new meanings and statements of “re-designation” of heritage, reaffirming western notion of heritage as in Trafalgar Square or in the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum or as new artefacts and monuments that represented and preserved alternatives memories and identities—as the examples of statues in Chile or more recently, the statue of Edward Colston, temporaly on display again in a Bristol exhibition almost exactly a year since it was toppled during a Black Lives Matter protest, placed lying down and still showing the remains of paint (Gayle 2021). There is, however, a notable difference between those mentioned actions and those carried out by DA‘ESH in the Middle East. Their actions are designed to spread terror in the population, they are not occasional, but perfectly planned with the sole objective of destroying everything that does not meet their criteria. DA‘ESH’s reading of history is one-sided, it does not seek to represent a marginalized community or build a more diverse, complex narrative in line with the reality of the events, but rather seeks to impose a distorted, twisted, and simplistic discourse. Its destruction is actually a true genocide (Bahrani 2017), as DA‘ESH’s militants aim to exterminate any human

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or material evidence corresponding to other communities (ethnic, religious, national, tribal, or family). They do not only intend to destroy or rewrite the icons and places of memory of the past, but they yearn to cleanse the Islamic world of any vestige that speaks of an existence other than their own (“May Allah cleanse all Muslims’ lands of the idols of both the past and the present”, Anonymous 2015, 24). It is not a discourse of justice, but of hate, and it does not seek only the death of statues, but that of people and cultures.

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Logan W, Kockel U, Nic Craith M (2016) The new heritage studies: origins and evolution, problems and prospects. In: Logan W, Kockel U, Nic Craith M (eds) A companion to heritage studies, pp 1–25. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Malden Marschall S (2017) Targeting statues: monument “vandalism” as an expression of sociopolitical protest in South Africa. Afr Stud Rev 60(3):203–219 Martínez J L (2019) Entre estatuas y memorias. Rompiendo una(s) historia(s) de lo nacional. In: Artaza P, Candina A, Esteve J, Folchi M, Grez S, Guerrero C, Martínez JL, Matus M, Peñaloza C, Sanhueza C, Zavala JM (eds) Chile Despertó. Lecturas desde la Historia del estallido social de octubre, pp 28–42. Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile Meskell L (2018) A future in ruins: UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace. Oxford University Press, Oxford Montes R (2020) Las protestas de Chile cuestionan la historia oficial de las esculturas. El País Nalewicki J (2018) What a cabinet of fake noses tells us about how art preservation has evolved. Smithson Magaz Nitschke JL (2020) Colonial past and neocolonial present: the monumental arch of Tadmor-Palmyra and So-called Roman architecture in the near east. In: Nitschke JL, Lorenzon M (eds) Postcolonialism, heritage, and the built environment. new approaches to architecture in archaeology, pp 73–90. Springer, New York Onetto M (2019) La caída de Pedro de Valdivia: por una nueva historia, por un nuevo patrimonio. El Mostrador O’Connor T (2017) DA‘ESH executed muslims for ‘turning back on islam’ in Palmyra. Newsweek Rico T (2017) Heritage studies and islam: a crisis of representation. Rev Middle East Stud 51(2):183– 187 Rico T (2019) Islam, heritage, and preservation: an untidy tradition. Mater Relig 15(2):148–163 Rose-Redwood R, Patrick W (2020) Why activists are vandalizing statues to colonialism. The Conversation Silverman N (2016) Heritage places: evolving conceptions and changing forms. In: Logan W, Kockel U, Nic Craith M (eds) A companion to heritage studies. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Malden, pp 29–40 Smith L (2006) Uses of heritage. Routledge, London Smith C, Heather B, de Leiuen Ch, Jackson G (2016) The Islamic State’s symbolic war: Daesh’s socially mediated terrorism as a threat to cultural heritage. J Soc Archael 16(2):164–188 Seisdedos I (2017) El Louvre Abu Dabi ve la luz en el desierto. El País Shahab S, Isakhan B (2018) The ritualization of heritage destruction under the islamic state. J Soc Archaeol 16(1):79–93 Sharma LK (2018) Statues are not safe in India. OpenDemocracy Shaw WMK (2015) Destroy your idols. X-Tra Contemp Art Q 18(1):73–94 Shaw WMK (2017) In Situ: the contraindications of world heritage. Int J Islam Architec 6(2):339– 365 Solé A (2017) Ataque ultra al monumento a Rafael Casanova. El Nacional. Cat Taub B (2015) The real value of the DA‘ESH antiquities trade. New York Times Tomlinson S (2015) Memorials to British colonials attacked across South Africa as protesters demand statues honouring ‘racist’ figures from its past are removed. Dailymail Turku H (2017) The destruction of cultural property as a weapon of war. Springer, Berlin UNESCO (2015) Director-general condemns the destruction of the arch of triumph in Palmyra. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Valter S (2002) La construction nationale syrienne. Légitimation de la nature communautaire du pouvoir par le discours historique. CNRS, París Varner ER (2004) Mutilation and transformation: “damnatio memoriae” and Roman imperial portraiture. Brill, Leiden Vicente A (2019) ¿Qué busca Francia al exportar sus museos?. El País

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Wakefield S (2021) Cultural heritage, transnational narratives and museum franchising in Abu Dhabi. Routledge, Oxford/New York Webb P (2014) Creating Arab origins: muslim constructions of al-J¯ahiliyya and Arab history. Unpublished PhD dissertation. University of London

Chapter 11

The Protection of Cultural Property in the 1954 Hague Convention Fernando Fernandes da Silva

Abstract This article describes various aspects related to the historical development of the international protection of cultural property in wartime, the importance of 1954 Hague Convention and the current individual criminal responsibility: Ancient Rome period, the Doctrine of International Law of the Modern Age period, the first codifications of laws and customs of war during the nineteenth century—Lieber Code (1864), the Brussels Conference (1874) and the Hague Peace Conference (1899 and 1907)—the codification sponsored by the League of Nations, the codification carry out by UNESCO and the 1954 Hague Convention and its First and Second Protocols (1954 and 1999), and the individual international criminal responsibility established Rome Statute of International Criminal Court (1998). Keywords International public law · Cultural property · Cultural heritage · The 1954 Hague convention · The individual international criminal responsibility

11.1 Introduction One of classic themes addressed by International Law is the protection of cultural property during armed conflicts. Since the times of Ancient Rome, the protection of cultural property has been a relevant issue, one marked by numerous debates. However, starting from the Modern Age and throughout the development of International Law by its founders, the theme of international protection of cultural property acquired special attention thanks to the work of United Nations Education Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO) and of the International Community. This year, we are celebrating 67 years of existence of the Hague Convention (1954), the first international convention adopted exclusively for the protection of F. F. da Silva (B) University of São Paulo, Butanta, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] Sorocaba Law School, Sorocaba, Brazil Institute of São Paulo (IASP), São Paulo, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_11

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immovable and movable cultural property in peacetime and wartime—one of the most important works of codification sponsored by UNESCO. In this regard, this article describes various aspects related to the historical development of the international protection of cultural property in wartime, as well as some aspects of the Hague Convention (1954) and its First and Second Protocols (1954 and 1999). Our aim is to highlight the advances of this codification, especially individual criminal responsibility established by the Second Protocol (1999) of the Hague Convention (1954) and the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court (1998). I would like to express my thanks to professors Rodrigo Christofoletti and Maria Leonor Botelho, who offered me the opportunity to write this study in the book International Relations and Heritage: patchwork in times of plurality.

11.2 Ancient Rome Ridha Fraoua argues that plunder was enshrined in Ancient Roman Law, and particularly at the time of Emperor Justiniano, in accordance with the principles quae ex hostibus capiuntur, jure gentium statim capientium fiunt and si quid bello captum est, praeda est, non postliminio redit (Fraoua 1985, 35), i.e. being justified by the submission of the enemy to slavery and the loss of his property. In this regard, Hugo Grotius identified the distinction between plunder or pillage and booty, even though these terms are used synonymously. The pillage was understood as the military troops’ right to seize all the properties of the enemy that they could carry them following the conquest of a country, town or battlefield. Pillage was either permitted by the commander of the military troops or merely a consequence of the voluptuousness of troops without any command. Pillage was allowed for the benefit of the soldiers. Hugo Grotius said that booty entailed the seizure of properties for the Roman public treasury, to be sold at auction and subsequently distributing the income for the benefit of Roman society (Grotius 1925, 680–682).

11.3 A General Overview of the Classic Doctrine of International Law The protection of cultural properties during armed conflicts is a recurrent matter among the writers on international law in the Modern Age (1453–1789). This is known as the classical period of International Law, frequently characterized by the development of its theoretical foundations. Influenced by the Renaissance movement, the writer Albérico Gentili (1552–1608) devoted a specific chapter to the theme works of art, becoming the first Western writer on international law to adopt this denomination (Nahlik 1967, 73). According to Gentilli’s teachings, “the cause of

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war must be fair and suitable, and the war must start and carry on with justice, hence sacred objects must be protected in occupied territories” (Jote 1994, 44). Other writers influenced by the Renaissance movement as well salvaged historical studies from Greece and Ancient Rome, as well as biblical scriptures, to address issues related to cultural properties. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), according to De Jure Praedae Commentarius (1604), argued that God’s will mandated the protection of people and the punishment of transgressors (Grotius 1950, 30), meaning that some wars are undertaken according to the will of the Father (Grotius 1950, 31). This constitutes the foundation for waging a just war. In other words, sustained by many scriptural passages, Hugo Grotius argued that the fair war is based on divine law or human law that respect divine law Grotius 1950, 40). Thus, Hugo Grotius maintains the lawfulness of booty whenever it results from the fair war, once the objects lawfully acquired as booty are classified res nullius, allowing for a transfer of ownership to its first possessor. Furthermore, Hugo Grotius maintains that, according to all laws, including lines of thought originating from pagan thinkers— those belonging to the ancient period of Greece and Rome—the lawfulness of booty is universally accepted and, hence, all objects withdrawn from the enemy during a war are converted to the confiscator’s property (Grotius 1950, 43–58). Samuel Pufendorf (1632–1694) highlights that, in wars undertaken by states, mercenaries and soldiers are individuals who act on behalf of the state and submit to its orders. As such, these individuals collect payments of debts for their state: the uncontested war author and supreme authority (Pufendorf 1934, 1310). On the other hand, once the citizens are summoned to military service and simultaneously required to pay taxes, such citizens may earn profits with support from supreme authority. In this regard, citizens summoned for military service can receive a salary from the public treasury, take a share in the wealth of the booty, or the state can appropriate the booty to decrease the financial burden or taxes on the citizens in due course (Pufendorf 1934, 1311). Hence, Pufendorf maintains the lawfulness of booty when it is the result of sponsorship. At the end of the eighteenth century and in mid-first half of the nineteenth century—possibly influenced by the French Revolution (1789) which valued individual property rights—some writers on international law were entirely against the destruction of cultural property. Indeed, they granted to mankind the title of that right. Emerich Vattel (1714–1717) argued on the principles that justified the right of the belligerent to appropriate the enemies’ property for himself, with the aim of making the enemy weaker and eliminating any possibility of resistance (Vattel 1758, 291– 295). At the same time, Vattel argued for the possibility of softening the loot through the mercy of the belligerents, saying, in particular, that temples, public buildings and any structures of remarkable beauty must be spared in “the name of mankind’s honor” (Vattel 1758, 293). In summary, Vattel defends mankind’s interests above those of belligerent states, which is to be respected on the battlefield. In Latin American, Andrés Bello (1781–1865) analyses some aspects of war and some possibilities related to belligerents plundering the properties of their enemies. He defends that belligerents must respect the conservation of temples, palaces, graves,

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national monuments and archives, i.e. all “public buildings of utility and adornment”. In conclusion, all properties whose destruction does not bring advantages to the belligerents should be preserved (Bello 1954, 228).

11.4 The First Codifications The first Industrial Revolution brought out great technological advances and the invention of weapons with greater destructive power, such as battleship and the machine gun. As a consequence, war and many kinds of armed conflicts became highly destructive and the economic costs of recovery for countries and territories rose sharply. Since then, starting in the nineteenth century, we come across the first works seeking to limit the conduct of belligerents during war and placing limitations on plunder and the destruction of cultural property. The first example of such codification was the Lieber Code (1864), a military instruction handbook for the American army, drafted by the Secretary of State of War, Francis Lieber; this code set a standard for subsequent codifications that followed during the nineteenth century. The code was influenced by the developments in the military regulations of France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Russia and Spain. According to Article 35 of the Lieber Code: classical works of art, libraires, scientific collections, or precious instruments, such as astronomical telescopes, as well as hospitals, must be secured against all avoidable injury, even when they are contained in fortified places whilst besieged or bombarded.

Another important initiative was the Brussels Conference (1874), convened by the Emperor of Russia, Alexander II, and with support of Henri Dunant—one of the founders of the Red Cross (1863). The main purpose of Brussels Conference (1874) was to adopt an international convention covering the rules and customs of land warfare. Nevertheless, the states did not ratify the project, and, as such, it was adopted as a non-binding source of International Law, namely, a declaration: The Brussels Declaration (1874). Many articles of Brussels Declaration (1874) address the protection of private and cultural property, such as a prohibition on the looting, destruction and dilapidation of historical monuments and works of art (art. 8); a prohibition on the looting or destruction of enemy property, unless for compelling military reasons (art. 13, “a”); a prohibition on pillaging towns taken by the victorious troops (art. 18); a prohibition on confiscating private property (art. 38) and a formal prohibition on pillage (art. 39). It is worth mentioning that “buildings dedicated to art, science, or charitable purposes, hospitals, and places where the sick and wounded are collected provided they are not being used at the time for military purposes” (art. 17). Therefore, it is a “duty of the besieged to indicate the presence of such buildings by distinctive and visible signs to be communicated to the enemy beforehand” (art. 17). The third important attempt at codification concerning the protection of cultural property in times of war was the creation of The Laws of War on Land, Oxford

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Manual, adopted by the Institute of International Law at Oxford in 1880. According to the Oxford Manual (1880), pillaging and destroying private or public property was prohibited, unless for “an imperative necessity of war” (art. 32), as was the seizure of “institutions devoted to religion, charity, education, art and science” (art. 53).

11.4.1 The Hague Peace Conference (1899 and 1907) At the end of the nineteenth century, the most important initiative for codifying the customs of war and adopting rules regarding the protection of cultural property was set out during the Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907). This codification involved the protection of the civilian population and private property and applicable regulations governing the conduct of neutral parties and belligerents. Three conventions were adopted in 1899 and 13 were adopted in 1907. The Hague conventions did not make any reference to the expression cultural property, but rather to properties submitted to a legal regime: the enemy’s property, public and private properties, and privileged properties. In this regard, privileged properties enjoyed privileged treatment to justify their protection, such as hospitals, edifices devoted to charity and historic monuments. Hence, historic monuments, works of art and works of science are considered privileged properties on account of their intrinsic characteristics.

11.4.1.1

Some Protection Measures

The Hague Conventions prohibited the pillage of towns or places, “even when taken by assault”, during wars on land in accordance with conduct involving hostility and occupation (articles 28 and 47, Annex to the Hague Convention IV, 1907— Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land). Similarly, in the hostility status, the appropriation of “institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences” was prohibited as well as any seizure or destruction of historic monuments and works of art (art. 56, Annex to the Hague Convention IV, 1907—Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land). Traditionally, it is worth remembering that pillaging refers to the trafficking, theft, misappropriation or plunder of work of arts, sacred or religious articles, or movable property in times of war. The Hague Conventions also expressly protected the conservation of immovable cultural properties, focusing protection on assumptions of an attack and bombardment. In this regard, in the event of land warfare, two obligations must be fulfilled for the protection of cultural properties: the belligerent party must adopt all necessary measures “to spare, as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religion, art, science, or charitable purposes” and historic monuments, as long as they are not used for “military purposes”; and the besieged belligerent must “indicate the presence of such buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be notified to the enemy beforehand” (art. 27, Annex to the Hague Convention IV, 1907—Regulations

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Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land). In the event of bombardment of undefended towns and ports by naval forces, a rule similar to Hague IV was adopted, starting that it was “the duty of the inhabitants to indicate such monuments, edifices, or places by visible signs, which shall consist of large, stiff rectangular panels divided diagonally into two coloured triangular portions, the upper portion black, the lower portion white” (art. 5, Hague Convention IX Concerning Bombardment by Naval Forces in Time of War).

11.4.1.2

Some Matters on the Sanctions of the Hague Conventions

In cases of a rule violation to its regulations, Article 3 of Hague Convention IV stipulated that the belligerent party would be ordered to pay compensation. In this regard, the belligerent party should indemnify his enemy for the damage or destruction of cultural properties. Particularly, the regulations set out in Hague Convention IV stated that the “destruction or wilful damage” of historic monuments, works of art and science were forbidden “and should be made the subject of legal proceedings” (art. 56). However, the articles 3 and 56 neither named the belligerent responsible for the sanction (e.g. the army, troops or soldiers) nor did it specify any kind of sanction. Additionally, Hague Convention IV and its regulations were not clear on criminal conduct or criminal sanctions, facts that made it unviable to determine criminal liability—even impossible during that period of International Law.

11.5 The Codification Sponsored by the League of Nations During the First War (1939–1945), many cultural properties were destroyed, especially through the introduction of new technologies and military weapons such as war tanks, submarines and warplanes. Examples here include the bombardment of Rheims Cathedral’s and the burning of the Library of Louvain by the German military forces in 1914 (which was founded in 1426 burned by German troops in the same year). In this context, it is worth also mentioning the Roerich Pact (1935) and the Treaty on the Protection of Artistic and Scientific Institutions and Historic Monuments, sponsored by the Pan-American Union, applied both in times of war and in peacetimes. These events influenced the League of Nations to set up a Committee of Experts—composed of Mr. Gouffre de La Pradelle, Mr. N. Politis, Mr. Charles de Visscher, Mr. F. Moineville and Mr. G.J. Sas—with the intention of drafting an International Convention for the Protection of Historic Buildings and Works of Art in Time of War. Unfortunately, the conference that was convened to deliberate on this proposal did not take place due to the Second War (1939–1945).

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11.6 The Codification Carry Out by UNESCO Like the First War, the Second War (1939–1945) was characterized by the destruction of cultural properties. Infamous stories of looting practiced by the Nazi military forces about. This includes the notorious actions of the E.R.R. (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg)—a kind of Nazi High Command headed by Alfred Rosemberg—created in 1940 to promote Nazi propaganda and to destroy, seize and withdraw cultural properties of occupied territories for export to Germany. A research institute was later created to foster scientific studies on cultural properties plundered to benefit the Nazi regime and to obtain economic advantages. This led Nazi leaders such as Alfred Rosemberg, Hans Frank, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and Artur Seyss-Inquart to be convicted of war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal, specifically for their involvement in the destruction and plunder of cultural properties (Gonçalves 2001, 343–347). On the other hand, the historic cultural city of Dresden was completely destroyed by American and British aerial bombings (1945). Another important historical event was the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with weapons of mass destruction used by the American forces (1945). These events first influenced conceptions surrounding the importance of human beings and humanity as subjects of International Law, which are to be valued and respected. In the early years after the war, the International Community approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). In 1945, the International Community created the United Nations Education Science and Culture Organization (UNESCO), an intergovernmental organization linked to the United Nations System (1945), the function of which is to “maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge […] by assuring the conservation and protection of the world’s inheritance of books, works of art and monuments of history and science, and recommending to the nations concerned the necessary international conventions” (art. I, 2, “c”, UNESCO Constitution 1945). Since then, UNESCO has taken on the role of protecting the cultural heritage of mankind through various actions, such as by sponsoring international conventions, including the Hague Convention (1954) and its protocols.

11.6.1 The 1954 Hague Convention and Its Protocols Nowadays, the main treaty addressing the protection of cultural heritage is the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (the Hague Convention, 1954), complemented by First (1954) and the Second (1999) protocols to this convention. The 1954 Hague Convention introduced several advances compared to other international experiences or international

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conventions, such as Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Roerich Pact (1935). The 1954 Hague Convention was adopted exclusively for the protection of immovable and movable cultural property in peacetime and wartime. Indeed, its preamble states “that such protection cannot be effective unless both national and international measures have been taken to organize it in time of peace” and that the parties “undertake to prepare in time of peace for the safeguarding of cultural property situated within their own territory…” (art. 3). This is a real codification of the protection of cultural property in armed conflicts, distinctive from the Hague Conventions 1899 and 1907, in which the protection of cultural property was peripheral. The primary focus of the 1954 Hague Convention is the protection of cultural heritage “of great importance for all peoples of the world” and the cultural heritage of all mankind (preamble). In the other words, this does not merely constitute a protection of the state’s cultural properties, as legally regulated by the Hague Conventions 1899 and 1907 and other similar conventions. Thus, the scope of application of the 1954 Hague Convention is broad, as its provisions are applicable in the event of international armed conflict and non-international armed conflict (articles 18 and 19). In this sense, the 1954 Hague Convention represents a global convention, i.e. any state may ratify it. The 1954 Hague Convention introduces the term cultural property, a genre that covers several categories of property, including historical, archaeological and paleontological. This characteristic also increases the scope of application of the 1954 Hague Convention, as, according to the teachings Stanislaw E. Nahlik, the term cultural property “is the common denominator on everything that must be protected” (Nahlik 1967, 21). Guido Carducci highlights that the 1954 Hague Convention establishes uniform treatment of properties, regardless of their legal status, as opposed to Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 which prioritized the protection of private property over public property (Caducci 2002, 333).

11.6.1.1

Cultural Property in the 1954 Hague Convention

The 1954 Hague Convention establishes three kinds of criteria for defining cultural property that deserves protection (art. 1). The first criterion comprises a wide variety of cultural properties, particularly “movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people”, for the purpose of making the scope of protection broad. They are examples here which include “monuments of architecture, art or history”, “archaeological sites” and “works of arts”, among others. The second criterion comprises two categories of buildings: the first relates to buildings naturally designed to house and exhibit movable cultural properties, such as “museums, large libraries and depositories of archives”, and the second covers buildings or any kind of construction that, in the event of armed conflict are designed to shelter movable cultural property; in both cases, movable cultural property is defined according to the first criterion. The term “centers containing monuments” comprises urbans districts

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or entire towns containing a great number of historical or artistic monuments, such as Rome, the old city of Jerusalem and the historic centre of Quito.

11.6.1.2

The Protection of Cultural Property in the 1954 Hague Convention

The 1954 Hague Convention provides a general rule of protection of cultural property. According to that convention, the term protection of cultural property “comprises safeguarding and respect for such property” (art. 2). The term safeguarding comprises all the measures adopted by High Contracting Parties to ensure the conservation of cultural property against acts of destruction or acts of plunder and illicit appropriation. In its turn, respect comprises all the forbidden conducts of destruction of cultural property, i.e. the High Contracting Parties must refrain from acts in violation of Hague Convention (1954)’ provisions. According to the Jiri Toman teachings on term respect detailed regulated in the art. 4: This paragraph express recognition of the principle of respect as one which already exists in international conventions and in customary law and represents a dedicate of the universal conscience This respect extends to both movable and immovable cultural property as defined in Article 1 of the Convention (Toman 1996, 68–69).

Other provisions establish the details of protection measures of cultural property, for example, the High Contracting Parties shall place “a distinctive emblem” in the cultural property “to facilitate is recognition” (art. 6). In accordance with the provisions of articles 16 and 17, the emblem “shall take the form of a shield, pointed below, persaltire blue and white” and it is intended for identifying “immovable cultural property under special protection”, improvised refuges and “the personnel engaged in the protection of cultural property”, among other purposes. In 1999, it was approved the Second Protocol (1999), also applicable to the international armed conflicts and non-international armed conflicts. Mary Phelan points out that the Second Protocol (1999) represents an advance in relation to Hague Convention (1954), because introduces several obligations addressed to the High Contracting Parties for the protection of cultural property in peacetime, for example, preparing inventories, fire emergency plans, transport of cultural properties for the suitable locations and designation of competent authorities by the protection of cultural property (art. 5, “caput”, Second Protocol, 1999) (Phelan summer 2000, 697–698). The Hague Convention (1954) also establishes special protections for a “limited number of refuges” designed to shelter movable cultural property during an conflict armed and “centers containing monuments and other immovable cultural property of very great importance” (art. 8, 1), provided that they located “at an adequate distance from any large industrial center or from any important military objective” (art. 8, 1, “a”) and provided that they “are not used for military purposes” (art. 8, 1, “b”). Cultural properties registered in the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection are considered to be deserving of special protection. Hence,

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the following refuges and cultural properties are currently registered: a) Refuges: the Alt-Aussee refuge for cultural property (Austria), Zentraler Bergungsort (“Central Refuge”) Oberrieder Stollen (Germany), the Zab refuge for cultural property, the Zod refuge for cultural property, the Nef refuge for cultural property, the Ngh refuge for cultural property, the Paaslo refuge for cultural property and the St-Pietersberg refuge for cultural property (Netherlands); b) Centre containing monuments: the Ancient Maya City of Calakmul, Campeche, the Pre-Hispanic City of Chichén Itzá (Mexico), the Archaeological Site of Monte Albán, the Pre-Hispanic City and National Park of Palenque, the Archaeological Zone of Paquimé, Casas Grandes, El Tajín, the PreHispanic City of Teotihuacán, the Pre-Hispanic Town of Uxmal (N.B., along with the three archaeological satellite towns of Kabah, Labná and Sayil), the Archaeological Monuments Zone of Xochicalco (Mexico) and Stato della Città del Vaticano (Vatican State). Cultural properties under special protection enjoy immunity from “any act of hostility directed against such property”, excluding in cases of the military use of such property or of “its surroundings for military purposes” (art. 8, 5, and art. 9). The Second Protocol (1999) to the 1954 Hague Convention also provides for special protection, i.e. enhanced protection (art. 11), of the cultural properties that satisfy the following criteria: “it is cultural heritage of the greatest importance for humanity”; “it is protected by adequate domestic legal and administrative measures” and “it is not used for military purposes (…)” (art. 10, “a”, “b” e “c”). The High Contracting Parties is responsible for submitting to the Committee for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict any cultural property that deserves enhanced protection upon registration in the List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection in order to ensure immunity “by refraining from making such property the object of attack” (art. 12). In 2018, the Committee decided to add the Monastery of Geghard and the Upper Azat Valley (Armenia), Tugendhat Villa in Brno (Czech Republic) and Villa Adriana (Italy) to the List.

11.7 Individual Criminal Responsibility The 1954 Hague Convention obliges the High Contracting Parties undertake to take all necessary steps to adopt criminal jurisdiction for imposing fines upon persons who have violated the provisions of the convention (art. 28). The Second Protocol (1999) grants each of the High Contracting Parties the criminal jurisdiction “to establish as criminal offences under its domestic law”, complemented by the general principles of International Law and its rules, if any person intentionally commits the following acts: (a) making cultural property under enhanced protection the object of attack; (b) using cultural property under enhanced protection or its immediate surroundings in support of military action; (c) extensive destruction or appropriation of cultural property protected under the Convention and this Protocol; (d) making cultural property protected under the Convention and this Protocol the object of attack; (e) theft, pillage or misappropriation of, or acts of vandalism directed against cultural property protected under the Convention (art 15).

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Additionally, the Second Protocol (1999) grants each of the High Contracting Parties the competence to establish its jurisdiction over criminal offences, as set forth in art. 15, in the following cases: “(a) when such an offence is committed in the territory of that State; (b) when the alleged offender is a national of that State; (c) in the case of offences set forth in sub-paragraphs (a) to (c) of the first paragraph of Article 15, when the alleged offender is present in its territory” (art. 16). Here, individual criminal responsibility shall not affect the responsibility of the High Contracting Parties “under international law, including the duty of reparation” (art. 38, Second Protocol, 1999). In this respect, the Second Protocol (1999) maintains the reparation or, in some cases, the restitution of cultural properties illicitly appropriated, a tradition custom International Law since Westphalia Conference (1648). In addition to the Second Protocol (1999), the International Community approved the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) that creates International Criminal Court (2002), an organization bound to the United Nations System (1945). According to the provisions of Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998), many criminal offences against cultural properties are classified as war crimes, including: (a) “Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” (art. 8, 2, “a”, iv); “Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives” (art. 8, 2, “b”, ix) and “Pillaging a town or place, even when taken by assault” (art. 8, 2, “b”, xvi). Additionally, other offenses classified as war crimes include “violations of the laws and customs applicable in armed conflicts not of an international character” according to articles 8, 2, “e”, iv and v, of the Rome Statute. It would be important to highlight the Al Mahdi’ case here: in 2015, Mr. Al Mahdi, one of the leaders of Ansar Dine, an orthodox Islamic group linked to AlQaeda of operations in Mali and head of the customs brigade Hesbah, was charged by the International Criminal Court for heading the attack and the destruction of ten historical and religious sites and mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali, between 30 June 2012 and 11 July 2012. On 27 September 2016, the International Criminal Court sentenced Mr. Al Mahdi to 9 years of imprisonment for having committed war crimes in accordance with articles 8, 2, “e”, iv, and 25, 3, “a” of the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court (1998). We have transcribed this first article as follows: Intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals and places where the sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not military objectives.

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11.8 Final Analysis Efforts taken by the International Community to establish the international protection of cultural property have been steadily advancing over time: from the Modern Age (1453–1789) up to the end of Second War (1939–1945), there were no clear guidelines in place for this issue. Starting with the creation of UNESCO until the present, the International Community has established clear commitments for ensuring the international protection of cultural property in wartime, recognizing mankind as a real subject of International Law and hence the title of the right of cultural heritage. In this regard, the 1954 Hague Convention, beyond establishing the liability on the part of states for damages caused to the cultural properties, has opened up the possibility of establishing individual criminal responsibility. To this end, the International Community approved the Second Protocol (1999) of 1954 Hague Convention and the Rome Statute of International Criminal Court (1998), thereby increasing the scope of responsibility of the international protection of cultural heritage. Unfortunately, the International Community continues to lack additional protection strategies in the face of so many armed conflicts that have been waged in recent years, including the civil war in Iraq and Syria.

References Bello A (1864) Derecho Internacional. Venezuela, Caracas: Ministério da Educação/Comissão Editora das Obras Completas de Andres Bello, 1954 (reedição da obra publicada em 1832, 1844 e 1864) Carducci G (2002) L’Obligation de Restitution des Biens Culturels et des Objets d’Art en Cas de Conflit Armé: Droit Coutumier et Droit Conventionnel Avant et Après La Convention de La Haye de 1954—L’ importance du facteur temporel dans les rapports entre les traités et la coutume. R.G.D.I.P. Tome 104. Pedone, Paris Fraoua R (1985) Le Trafic Illicite des Biens Culturels et Leur Restitution. Éditions Universitaires Fribourg Suisse, Switzerlan Gonçasves JBG (2001) Tribunal de Nuremberg 1945–1946: A Gênese de Uma Nova Ordem no Direito Internacional. Renovar, Rio de Janeiro e São Paulo Grotius H (1925) De Jure Belli Ac Pacis (Libre Tres) (trans by Kelsey FW, Boak AER, Sanders HA, Reeves JS, Wright HF, Scott JB). At the Clarendon Press, Oxford; Humphrey Milford, London Grotius (1950) De Jure Praedae Commentarius (Commentary on the law of prize and booty) (Williams GL, Zeydel WH). In: Scott JB (ed) The classics of international law. At the Clarendon Press, Oxford; Geoffrey Cumberlege, London Jote K (1994) International legal protection of cultural heritage. Juristförlaget, Stockholm Nahlik SE (1967) La Protection Internationale des Biens Culturels en Cas de Conflit Armé. Recueil des cours de L’academie de Droit International de la Haye. Tome 120, vol I. pp 64–163. A. W. Sijthoff, Leyde, Netherlandes Phelan M (2000) Cultural property. Summer 2000. The international lawyer, vol 34, no 2, pp 697–698. American Bar Association, USA Pufendorf SP (1934) Jure Naturae et Gentium—Libri Octo (The Law of Nature and Nations—Eight Books) (trans by Oldfather CH, Oldfather WA). In: Scott JB (ed) The classics of international law, vol 2. At the Clarendon Press, Oxford; Humphrey Milford, London

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Toman J (1996) The protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict. Dartmouth Publishing Company, Aldershot Vattel E (1758) The law of nations or the principles of natural law (Books, I, II, III, IV), vol III. The classics of international law

Chapter 12

From Construction to Restitution: Some Trajectories of New Zealand’s Cultural Heritage Manuel Burón

Abstract Cultural heritage and the different materials that it is made of, as well as the meanings that we give them, are not static: they change over time and, in their exchange, draw interesting trajectories on the map. Through the study of the construction, exchange, exhibition, reclamation and restitution of New Zealand’s heritage we will analyse the capricious but significant paths that cultural heritage has taken throughout history. The main interest of this chapter is to analyse how the recent demands for heritage repatriation represent a new chapter in the long history of meaning that we give to certain objects. We would like to emphasize how the repatriation of different materials has become an important tool in present-day diplomatic relations. Keywords Cultural heritage · National construction · New Zealand · M¯aori · Toi moko

This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, no. 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). M. Burón received his Ph.D. in Contemporary History from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) and has been a visiting scholar at several universities in the South Pacific and Latin America while researching topics related to the study of museums, heritage, nations and indigenous communities. His most recent publications include the book El patrimonio recobrado. Museos indígenas en México y Nueva Zelanda [Recovered heritage: Indigenous museums in Mexico and New Zealand] (Marcial Pons, 2019). The author dedicates this chapter to Professor Conal McCarthy and Annie Mercer, who kindly welcomed him at the Victoria University of Wellington (Te Herenga Waka). M. Burón (B) Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_12

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12.1 Introduction In recent years, the social sciences have paid increasingly more attention to heritage. From different points of view and under the influence of trends such as museum and heritage studies (Smith 2007), material culture studies (Appadurai 1986), and the actor-network theory (Latour 2005), the beginnings of a field of study that has opened interesting horizons for analysis in the field of history and cultural studies have been outlined. By focusing on the artefact, on the set of cultural materials that we call heritage, and on its significance throughout history, different historical and cultural realities clearly emerge. These realities surround the artefact and give it meaning. The very definition of what we consider to be heritage has changed substantially in recent years. Previously thought of as a simple cultural emanation—like a legacy that travels capriciously through history—currently, it is nothing more than a construction—one tied to the modern political nation with its characteristic qualities of substantialization, self-affirmation, and political projection, which modern heritage is presumed to have. In the wake of studies about national construction (Gellner 1983; Hobsbawm 1991), a possible definition was established that was not based on culture or heritage as a given, essential or immanent reality. As with the nation, historiography unveiled the political artefact that heritage possessed: communities did not bequeath heritage, they built it. The supposed legacy that constituted heritage was not more than the present choice of a set of materials from among all the materials of the past to satisfy a series of political, economic, and cultural intentionalities (Graham and Howard 2008, 2). It was but part of the same process that illuminated the imagination of nations and the invention of traditions (Anderson 1983; Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983). Once the political mechanism of heritage has been unveiled, we can use it as a historical source of great prestige. We can learn a lot about a time and a society if we pay attention to the materials and traditions they are characterized by and those they consider to be foreign; to how they are displayed; to which of them are concealed or excluded; and to which of them, among all, are chosen as ambassadors to represent and symbolize the nation. This selection is not a natural or fixed process but one that responds to the negotiation or confrontation between different groups or political projects, to the imposition and legitimization of elites or minorities, to the appropriation of different communities’ materials and traditions, and, in short, to the different contexts that follow. An important part of that reasoning—to which we perhaps do not pay enough attention—which constitutes the entire heritage construction process, will not be displayed internally by nations but externally. Like the nation, heritage was also organized and built opposite other heritages—opposite the neighbour, the metropolis from which it broke away, or the religion it did not practice—following the logical reasoning of every identifying desire. This chapter briefly analyses the case of New Zealand and seeks to highlight some of the aspects that characterize patrimonial relationships between different territories

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and communities: M¯aori and Europeans, a metropolis and its colonies, or nationbuilders and collectors. Where a nation previously did not exist, a heritage had to be formed that stood out within the general framework of the British Empire’s dominions. Some elements were favoured: mainly the natural exuberance and originality of the M¯aori culture. Through trade, the exhibition of some materials, and the concealment of others, New Zealand was shown to the world (particularly, to its British mother country). It counteracted its distance and isolation from the West it claimed to belong to, attracted immigrants, and inserted its products into the international market. We have chosen two objects to illustrate this process as they were two of the main ambassadors in the construction process of a national identity and image: the toi moko, or preserved M¯aori heads, and the large collection of ornithological samples (the extinct moa, the rare kiwi, and the beautiful tui, among many others). The preserved M¯aori heads allow us to glimpse the variable way in which one object can be viewed throughout history, thereby demonstrating the tensions and contradictions that every heritage construction process entails: from sacred object to coveted commodity or from grotesque ethnographic curiosity to the subject of pure diplomatic demand. Once collected with pleasure, today they are hidden away. They first represented the territory’s exoticism and M¯aori savagery, only to be forbidden in a supposedly British and civilised New Zealand. While their production and trade responded to one of the most deeply rooted M¯aori traditions of the past, today the appeal for restitution is among the M¯aori people’s main demands. Always among the most requested objects for exhibition by ethnography museums around the world, today they are bypassed as proof of a shameful colonial past. Therefore, they pose ethical dilemmas in the delicate museological field of displaying human remains (Martínez et al. 2014). However, at the same time, they also pose aesthetic dilemmas as they are extremely valuable artistic artefacts that preserve some of the islands’ oldest cultural designs and expressions. Finally, the preserved M¯aori heads have been involved in significant episodes of cultural contact and have served as an odd instrument for international relations. The same is true for ornithological study and collection: from taxidermy and trade to the fierce protection and conservation of the natural habitat. New Zealand’s ornithological wealth—an Edenic echo—was proof of natural abundance and exuberance, harmless to the visitor or migrant (and not dangerous like that of its Australian neighbour and rival could be). The kiwi became a symbol of the austral nation, as well as proof of its wealth and of New Zealand’s isolation, and originality which has survived despite the threat of invasive species. It is the national essence that has managed to withstand colonization, acculturation, and the destruction of the environment —usually by foreigners. It would be interesting to test how every change to the islands’ political context resulted in a perceptible decline in the amount of meaning given to its heritage (James Clifford would call this a ‘taxonomic moment’). New Zealand transformed from an unknown territory to a British colony; in 1907, it became a dominion and from there an alleged autonomy with respect to the metropolis (under the Statute of Westminster in 1947); finally, in 1973, it achieved de facto independence (Belich 1996, 2001). We could claim that all these historical milestones carved out profound

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changes in heritage. Different understandings played out that appear to trace a sort of round-trip path when grouped together: trade, collection, exhibition, demand, and restitution. The nineteenth and part of the twentieth centuries can be thought of as a period of creation, exchange, and patrimonial appropriation. A parallel can be drawn to both national and colonial developments: a global, Eurocentric process of readjusting and demarcating the cultural materials of the past according to the interests of modern political nations. But while in the previous century patrimonial logic between nations was mainly a centripetal force, from the second half of the twentieth century—as a result of processes such as decolonization, the rise of identity politics and the so-called crisis of the nation-state—this phenomenon suffered a kind of regression. Not only nations but also the communities within them whose cultural materials helped to create a national story demanded a good part of the heritage that had abandoned their borders legally or illegally (Burón Díaz 2019). If collection and trade (and perhaps looting) defined heritage in the nineteenth century, repatriation and restitution defined a good part of the patrimonial logic of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The analysis presented in this chapter has been done through a wide range of documentation as required by the long-term approach: from primary sources, such as diaries and chronicles, in order to delve into the origin of the construction of a New Zealand identity and collection to journalistic sources in order to track changes in the perception of heritage. We have also included interviews conducted today with some of those most responsible for the current policy for the exhibition and restitution of New Zealand heritage, such as indigenous leaders, directors, and curators at some of the largest museums. We argue that, much like its construction, the restitution of heritage—in vogue in recent decades—is not simply a correction of its use or ownership—a return to its essence—but a further display of the historical–contextual endowment of its meaning, one that, in addition, is not exempt from international and diplomatic interests. In other words, if patrimonial construction and collection were deeply political processes, cultural heritage restitution is as well; thus, it can be considered as both a phenomenon characteristic of our time and an important tool for international relations.

12.2 Toi Moko: A Brief History of the Fascinating Artefact M¯aori cultural heritage is perhaps one of the most well-known in the South Pacific and all of Australasia. It was first discovered by the historic expeditions of Captain Cook and later by a network of collectors that were supplied with objects acquired by sailors and merchants; it was later popularized through the ‘exhibitionary complex’ of the great British exhibitions of the nineteenth century (Bennett 1988); finally, it was organized into a distinctive and sovereign national narrative. Therefore, the creation of a genuinely New Zealand heritage was a long and complex process that began in the shadow of the British Empire and, tending towards progressive independence, was not achieved until well into the twentieth century. Contrary to what one might

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think, M¯aori, the people native to the islands, were not oblivious to the creation of a national heritage but sought to be involved. Using their cultural materials as a symbolic loan to the nation, they sought to gain political space unprecedented among indigenous communities in the nineteenth century (McCarthy 2007). Among the many objects that had previously introduced New Zealand to the world, the preserved tattooed heads were some of the most significant and requested. What were these heads known as toi moko in the M¯aori language? It is well-known that, in New Zealand cultures, the acquisition, possession, and even display of human remains were common on the islands before the Europeans’ arrival. For the M¯aori, the production and use of the preserved heads undoubtedly responded to a complex system of thinking characterized by—among many other things—the power of sympathetic magic, which is able to be removed, enlarged, or contaminated by myriad methods (mana); by atavistic proscriptions that must be observed (tapu); and by a system of ritual and reciprocal obligations, such as friendship or revenge or between individuals and tribes (utu). The M¯aori of New Zealand had many funerary rites, a symptom of the diversity and dialectics that existed between tribes, or iwi. These rites included the ritual of temporarily leaving the corpse, cremation, burial, secret burial (undoubtedly to avoid the spurious magical use of the deceased’s remains), and, of course, the complete or partial conservation of human remains through various methods: koiwi (bone carvings), whakapakoko (mummified bodies), and toi moko (preserved heads)1 (Macmillan Brown 1907, 69–70). Since the eighteenth century, when Cook’s expedition gave numerous specimens to the then nascent British Museum, these artefacts were all collected as curiosities. The preservation of human remains in the M¯aori culture could also be due to several factors, which is the reason for the more classic division between the different types of preserved M¯aori heads. First, an enemy’s head could be cut off and preserved as a war trophy to thus defame and deride it (foe toi moko). Actually, what we call mockery played a central ritualistic role for the M¯aori, intended to break the magical-religious forces in their favour. Edward Tregear, one of the first anthropologists to analyse the M¯aori, described how the women placed these heads close to where they worked to mock them while they were weaving and how they were also placed in visible public places so passersby could do the same (Tregear 1904, 372). In reality and paradoxically— though far removed from the role they would later acquire in museums—toi moko were created to be displayed. The M¯aori also preserved the heads of their loved ones to remember them or worship them. This is the second type, known as kin toi moko. Tregear affirms that this was much less common, although not unusual: ‘It has been incidentally mentioned that the heads of men fallen in battle were preserved and dried. Generally these heads were those of enemies, but under certain circumstances the custom was extended to the mortal remains of friends’ (Tregear 1904, 371). Finally, the last kind of toi moko, 1

Simpson (2001, 178–179) proposes a method of classifying the collection of human remains that serves the collectors’ interests: there would be archeological collections of bone materials, physical anthropology collections related to evolutionary theories and ethnographic artefacts, or ‘curiosities’, collections.

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which is particularly interesting to our study, was acquired and produced expressly to be traded with the Europeans (trade toi moko). Thus, we find ourselves before an entangled object—much like Thomas or Gruzinski—able to summarize many of the contradictions of the context in which it was shaped.2 In a way, the trade toi moko came to establish relations and trade between Europeans and M¯aori. Since then, the preserved heads have been pierced by different meanings: ethnographic curiosity and attraction to the grotesque in the case of Europeans, the sacred but also the lucrative in the case of the M¯aori. The tribes of New Zealand soon discovered that out of all of their possessions, the Europeans most desired the preserved heads. The heads allowed them to acquire more of the objects that the M¯aori in turn needed from European ships: first, metal objects and then, guns. Furthermore, European sailors, attracted by their exoticism, discovered an irreplaceable souvenir of the antipodes in the M¯aori heads. These sailors provided collectors with a piece that would undoubtedly be among the most sought after by museum visitors. In truth, the European obsession with human remains came from the desire to confirm that which was already believed: the cruelty and the practice of anthropophagy by the ‘savages’ on the islands in the antipodes. This belief was one of the most compelling elements of the publishing success that the voyages of Cook, Bougainville, and Lapérouse experienced: ‘At this sight [of a human body] we were struck with horror, though it was only a confirmation of what we had heard many times since we arrived upon this coast’ (Cook 1842, 165). It was the botanist Joseph Banks who acquired what would become one of the main objects and symbols of a culture that the world had now discovered: the first preserved M¯aori head. The English took special care to follow the path of dismembered bodies and bones stripped of their meat until arriving at their desired loot: But (…) where are the heads? Do you eat them too? Of the heads, said the old man, we eat only the brains, and the next time I come and will bring some of them to convince you that what we have told you is truth (…) In the morning of the 20th, [January 1770] our old friend kept his promise, and brought on board four of the heads of the seven people who had been so much the subject of our inquiries: the hair and flesh were entire, but we perceived that the brains had been extracted; the flesh was soft, but had by some method been preserved from putrefaction, for it had no disagreeable smell. Mr. Banks purchased one of them, but they sold it with great reluctance, and could by any means be prevailed upon to part with a second; probably they may be preserved as trophies, like the scalps in America. (Cook 1842, 166)

How could one resist the grotesque seduction of such a peculiar object? Was there any specimen in the world that was more attractive or exotic to the European public? After Cook and Banks, many Westerners continued arriving at the islands: explorers, whalers, and lumberers. The trade and acquisition of the limited number of heads 2

Nicholas Thomas refers to entangled objects as objects capable of ‘breaking up us/them appositions’ seeking ‘a kind of symmetry between indigenous appropriations of European artefacts and the colonial collecting of indigenous goods’ (2009, 5). By contrast, Serge Gruzinski (2005) defines inert attractors as objects capable of broadening perspectives that break with the static view of cultures—understood as clearly defined totalities—and that emphasize the contact zones, the shared intermediary spaces that appear.

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became widespread during the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is important to understand that the history of the New Zealand toi moko is not accessory or episodic but that it is a large part of the tensions caused by collecting; in a way, it established relations between the indigenous people and the Europeans. In the nineteenth century, New Zealand was largely characterized by the Musket Wars, a series of intertribal wars, between 1807 and 1837. One of the main objectives of these wars was to acquire the material needed to make toi moko from the enemy. Thus, the tribes could obtain the desired muskets, which allowed them to prevail over the other tribes.3 In turn, the tribe that had more muskets could obtain more heads and, therefore, once again, more muskets. This violence was an unstoppable and vicious circle that reached its peak between 1820 and 1831 and resulted in the spread of these artefacts through display cases around the world: In former days the preparation of heads was very general; they were done for sale to the Europeans, and so great was the demand, that many a murderous attack has been made solely to obtain heads for the market; and those who were the most finely tattooed, were chiefly sought for. How many of the sins of these savage islanders have been participated in by their European visitors! (Taylor 1855, 154)

Ultimately, the preserved M¯aori heads were both a conveyor belt between the islands and Europe and a kind of bargaining chip in the colonization of the territory. A thin thread wound its way around the world between display cases, cabinets of curiosities, ships, and M¯aori villages where cruel wars, unscrupulous merchants, and genuinely curious collectors made up a kind of purely colonial Kula ring. However, in the 1830s, the trade and collection of such objects became a real problem in the islands’ administration, as well as a poor ambassador for creating a friendly and attractive image of a territory that had begun to take the form of British dominion. In 1831, the export of heads was banned as it was deemed an ‘inhuman and very murderous’ business (Robley 1896, 179). With the desire to pacify the territory and attract migrants, the grotesque and savage image that New Zealand had possessed since the ill-fated arrival of Abel Tasman became unfitting. In the span of a century, due to the new context of colonization, the heads, which had at first been sacred objects, became commodities and then proscribed objects. This was not the final semantic shift that the heads experienced. The ban on the trade of preserved heads, though prompt, did not prevent their exchange from continuing throughout the nineteenth century. It largely abandoned M¯aori villages and merchant ships and moved to cabinets of curiosities, where the barter continued between museums or when collectors arrived on the islands. By then, the M¯aori heads had already become a recognizable and unique object in Western ethnographic museums.4 Consequently, even today, there are around two hundred 3

‘The easiest way to access the much-needed muskets was to sell Toi moko. Whereas a ton of dressed flax, which was laborious to make, could be traded for one musket only, selling one Toi moko netted multiple muskets and ammunition’ (O’Hara 2012, 12). 4 During the first period from 1770 to 1830, toi moko could be found in institutions such as the Royal College of Surgeons, the South Kensington Museum, the British Museum in London, the Auckland Museum and the Christchurch Museum in New Zealand, the Halifax Museum in York, the

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toi moko specimens in the world (and many more k¯oiwi tangata, or human remains of all kinds). Paradoxically, the number of these heads in New Zealand remained low. It is estimated that there were barely more than ten in the 1930s. This is not surprising if we consider the fact that the construction of heritage and the creation of museum institutions on the islands occurred well after the arrival of foreign collectors as well as the ban on trade and production imposed by Governor Darling in 1831. In short, as often happens in formerly colonized territories, in New Zealand, the nation is subsequent to the collection of many of its cultural materials. As we will see, this will have important repercussions on New Zealand’s relations with overseas countries regarding its heritage.

12.3 The Reischek Affair: The Rise and Fall of a European Collector While the trade of preserved heads was a delicate, early episode in the history of New Zealand heritage, a new object emerged as the most desired on the islands: its birds. Due to its isolation, New Zealand lacks a significant mammal population, which has resulted in a great variety and number of birds; the absence of predators resulted in the most unique species. In short, New Zealand is a true ornithological paradise.5 Given that a significant amount—at least qualitatively—of the first Westerners to visit the islands were naturalists, New Zealand birds were also an early object of desire. With time, some of the most unique species—mainly the kiwi—became national symbols (and even the unofficial demonym of the islands). As people native to the islands, the M¯aori also had something to say regarding the early attention their territory’s birds aroused in Europeans. We encountered several sources that reflect the strong reservations some tribes had about the European’s strange fondness for hunting in order to acquire certain specimens: Their veneration [of the M¯aori people] for certain kinds of birds is evident from the following circumstance. Some of the gentlemen, of a shooting party, happened to kill several kingfishers; whilst on this excursion, and just as they had brought down one of those birds, they met Orea and his family walking with captain Cook; the chief took no notice of the bird, but his fair daughter lamented the death of her eatooa; her mother, and most of the women, seemed also grieved at its fate; and on stepping into the boat, Orea himself desired them, Cambridge Archaeology and Ethnology Museum in Plymouth, the Ethnological Museum of Berlin, the Gottingen Museum, or the Ethnology Museum in Florence according to the most well-known nineteenth-century study on the subject by Horatio Robley (1896, 183). 5 One of the most well-known New Zealand ornithology treaties of the nineteenth century begins, ‘It has been remarked by a celebrated naturalist that “New Zealand is the most interesting ornithological province in the world” and in a qualified sense this is no doubt true. The last remnant of a former continent, and, geologically considered, probably the oldest country on the face of our globe, it contains at the present day the only living representatives of an extinct race of wonderful Struthious birds’ (Buller 1873, iii). Geology was also a great attraction for the first collectors on the islands, until they realized that other goods on the islands (anthropological and biological) were in danger of disappearing due to the changes that colonization introduced.

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with a serious air, not to kill the king-fishers and the herons, allowing them, at the same time, the liberty of killing any other sorts of birds (Hawkesworth 1778, 166).

While it was custom for the M¯aori to preserve the heads of enemies fallen in combat, it was custom for nineteenth-century Europeans to hunt and preserve different bird specimens. Nevertheless, the Victorian era was the golden age of taxidermy. In this context, New Zealand specimens were very much in demand and the islands were considered a required destination for ornithologists at the time. New Zealand, which in 1847 was a territory dependent upon but separate from Great Britain, again exploited this interest. In the national and imperial showcase of international exhibitions, the austral country presented both its cultural (essentially M¯aori) and natural (mainly ornithological) wealth to the world. New Zealand, a remote territory isolated from the West like no other, had an explicit policy of gaining visibility through its heritage. The presence of artefacts—and occasionally live specimens of both animals and the M¯aori themselves—was a constant that began to define New Zealand globally. Although the expansive patrimonial cycle that defined the nineteenth century reached its peak with the international exhibitions, the first restrictions were imposed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Heritage reflected the emerging nationalist assertion in the country as protection laws began to restrict the export of M¯aori artefacts. In 1901, the M¯aori Antiquities Act banned the export of M¯aori artefacts though not the trade of such objects. Thus, a much more regulated patrimonial diplomacy began between museums and academics, whose objective was to reunite a broad collection of objects from diverse cultures in the austral country. This was nothing more than an attempt to bring the faraway world closer and contain it in New Zealand; however, to achieve this, the country had to detach itself from some of its most unique cultural material. For example, in 1901, the Dominion Museum and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg exchanged M¯aori objects for ancient coins. In 1936, a curator of a museum in Moravia went to New Zealand on a diplomatic visit to make a peculiar trade: mammoths for M¯aori objects.6 Thomas Cheeseman, senior curator at the Auckland Museum from 1874 to 1923, carried out the intense task of patrimonial diplomacy with foreign institutions: a wide variety of fauna specimens, ethnographic objects, and human remains left the islands in exchange for specimens 6

‘I’m interested in living things, in customs and modes of life. I’m not collecting fossils. There are many Maori objects which my museum would like, and we ourselves have many things which do not appear in the museums of New Zealand, particularly mammoth remains’ (Auckland Star, 7-XII-1935, 7). To that, Dr. Pospisil added a critique of the Dominion Museum in which the former universalist conception of collecting appears—that is, the museum should contain the world: ‘I would not call the Dominion Museum a very strong one in an educative sense. There is practically nothing in mammals, nothing much of Africa or Asia, and very little of prehistoric man. Considering the small population of the four centres in New Zealand, the combined collection would be excellent if it could be grouped, and added to considerably in respects in which it is now lacking. New Zealand of course, has not the funds to send expeditions, or pay for expensive excavations, and has to depend for its exhibits on the work of other nations. It is a wise policy to concentrate on Maori and Polynesian exhibits, as the country cannot afford fairly complete exhibits from countries such as Africa and Asia’ (Auckland Star, 15-II-1936, p. 16).

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that could not be found in New Zealand (mainly mammals but also non-native bird species (Gill 2006, 135–136). But perhaps Andreas Reischek is the most characteristic example of this period. In the 1880s, Reischek, a renowned collector, was attracted to the islands by their ornithological wealth.7 He amassed a considerable collection of objects related to New Zealand, which included both taxidermic and M¯aori artefacts (numerous taonga and also human remains, including several toi moko). In reality, Reischek represented a stereotype of men at the end of the nineteenth century: he collected and dissected everything. By the end of his life, the number of specimens he had amassed amounted to 1200, of which 460 were from New Zealand (Kolig 1986, 56). Although Reischek’s main interest in New Zealand was its birds, he also studied the M¯aori. He developed such excellent relationships with the M¯aori that he had the honour of receiving ‘the gift of a hula’s feather in a casket, used as a pass to carry him everywhere throughout the King Country at a time when no other white man was admitted there’ (New Zealand Herald, 17-V-1930, 14). King Country was a region in the western part of New Zealand’s North Island then considered to be an exclusively native territory. At the time, the terrible New Zealand Wars (1845–1872), in which the M¯aori displayed some of the most notable examples of indigenous resistance, were still recent. Perhaps the fact that Reischek was a foreigner played in his favour, and the M¯aori used him as a diplomatic piece against the British. How did the German naturalist amass his collection? Some objects, including valuable taonga, were gifts offered as a result of his friendly relationships, others were obtained with only the owner’s consent, and still others were bought from the M¯aori (sometimes at very high prices). But he also excavated or directly looted M¯aori sites and burials that were tabooed—that is, clearly forbidden by indigenous customs. This was the source of a large part of the controversy that erupted more than half a century later. As a fully independent country, New Zealand would not tolerate that relics, skulls, and adornments obtained between 1879 and 1880 had left the country in the ways described by Reischek in his memoirs: In 1875, old settlers in the northern part of the North Island told me that when they first came to New Zealand some fifty years before, they used to find mummified bodies in holes and also in trees, preserved in a sitting position (…) I searched hill and wood, high and low, for signs of these mummies, but for a long time had no success. It was in Aratipu, in some hidden caves, that I found for the first time the remains of mats, a mouldering stretcher, articles of adornment, single skulls, and bones—but no mummy! Only at last, when I got right into the heart of Maoriland, the King Country, did I succeed in finding any. 7

In reality, the powerful Austria of the nineteenth century and New Zealand had previously established relations based on collecting. In 1858, a scientific expedition sent by Emperor Franz Joseph I reached Auckland. One of the geologists of the expedition, Ferdinand von Hochstetter, remained on the islands at the request of the Kiwi government in order to study the carbon deposits surrounding Auckland, the most important city in the country and part of the South Pacific. In turn, two Maori embarked on the expedition’s vessel, the Novara, bound for Austria. Hochstetter returned to Austria where he continued developing his interest in research in New Zealand; he also became the director of the State Museum in Vienna. While there, his colleague on the islands Sir Julius von Haast inquired about an assistant to work in the newly founded Canterbury Museum in the city of Christchurch. Hochstetter then sent a young taxidermist named Andreas Reischek (Te Ao Hou, X-1958, 38).

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Two Maoris, who had already become sufficiently Europeanized to be willing to renounce their national and religious principles for gold, led me one night to a cave near Kawhia. There I found four mummies, of which two were in a state of perfect preservation. The undertaking was a dangerous one, for discovery might have cost me my life. In the night I had the mummies removed from the spot and then well hidden; during the next night they were carried still farther away, and so on, until they had been brought safely over the boundaries of Maoriland. But even then I kept them cautiously hidden from sight right up to the time of my departure from New Zealand. Now both these ancestors of the Maori adorn the ethnographical collection of the Imperial Natural History Museum at Vienna. (Reischek 1930, 214–215)

In effect, out of all the pieces that made up Reischek’s enormous collection, two mummified bodies, an adult and a child, taken from a cave in Kawhia stand out. It was a clear example of desecration and cultural heritage looting. However, this was not at all apparent at the time. In the late nineteenth century, New Zealand authorities were mainly concerned with taking sufficient care of a figure as important as Reischek, who they probably hoped would serve as an ambassador around the world. The New Zealand Herald narrated his departure: It is almost incredible that the officials of the Auckland Museum could allow him to leave us without recognizing, in some practical form, the valuable services rendered by that gentleman during the years in which he has made New Zealand his field of enterprise (…) this gifted naturalist has done more to enrich the ornithological branches of New Zealand Museums than any one else in the colony. (New Zealand Herald, 15-II-1889, 3)

In fact, if the presence and departure of the Austrian researcher triggered a public debate, it was not about the theft of specimens but rather about his mishap when packing and sending the materials to Europe. In fact, in 1888, the loss of one of the suitcases that held the samples was discussed in the press in a tone of national shame. It is shocking to realize that the government of the colony was on the verge of indemnifying the collector for the loss; it even formed a parliamentary committee to investigate the loss of the specimens. The committee concluded that ‘the Austrian naturalist—whose six months of toilsome labour in the wild regions of the West Coast of the South Island was brought to naught through the destruction of the collection which had been shipped on board the Government steamer Stella—has no claim against the colony’ (Auckland Star, 23-VIII-1888). Was it a time and a place in which the collection and relocation of specimens were more a reason to be proud than offended? Certainly. But it was not ignorance or naivety that made Reischek an admired and respected figure in New Zealand; it was his utility. At a time when New Zealand sensed its distance, its smallness, and its economic dependence on its mother country and the world, Reischek served the colony’s interests by acting as an ambassador of its wealth and traditions. Even in 1936 after publishing his memoirs, a New Zealand newspaper spoke highly of him: ‘For his brief yet energetic career in our valleys. Reischek should be remembered by this and other generations as an old-timer whose courage in the back-country was tested and never found to have been wanting, and whose devotion to his work was intense’ (Press, 28-XI-1936, 17). Reischek did not do anything illegal (as we have seen, heritage protection laws did not yet exist in New Zealand), and by no means did he do anything unusual for an

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Image 1 Menu for the solemn reception held by the New Zealand Parliament for the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall in 1901. Plants, the large moa bird and M¯aori decorations illustrate part of the New Zealand image. Heritage was an essential diplomatic tool in the nineteenth century. Eph-A-ROYAL-1901-2-front, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand

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archaeologist at the time; however, he clearly violated the M¯aori custom. Reischek had desecrated the tombs of his host’s ancestors; and, thus, had offended the New Zealand nation. Although this was true, on the contrary, it is also true that Reischek’s appreciation for the M¯aori culture and the good relationships he developed with the M¯aori differentiated him from other collectors at the time (Kolig 1986, 62–63). In his memoirs, one can even perceive a certain anti-colonialist element, which was hard to come across in those days even in New Zealand: ‘…wherever the white man goes, a part of Nature must die’ (Reischek 1930, 63). Another paradox is that a large number of the specimens amassed by Reischek ended up in the New Zealand national museum (the then Dominion Museum). In effect, Reischek assisted in the beginning to construct heritage on New Zealand soil by highlighting and cataloguing its biological and cultural wealth. However, another large part of his specimens ended up in the Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum in Vienna. After World War II, the demand for cultural heritage restitution exploded. The nineteenth-century practice of collecting soon became a national controversy and a diplomatic dispute.

12.4 No Kiwi for Mr. Churchill: One Heritage for One Country It is well-known that the world wars had important consequences for large social groups and territories throughout the world. Everything had changed for the colonies, the indigenous, and the women who had fought and worked on equal terms with the metropolis or with their fellow citizens. Cultural heritage was no exception to this change. A more solipsistic conception, and perhaps less cosmopolitan and—more importantly—less colonial, began to make its way into the heritage conceptualization processes. Something had begun to change regarding the theft, the collection, and even the exoticization of the country’s treasures. Much like M¯aori objects and the preserved heads earlier, the capture and collection of birds began to be restricted. The species’ conservation, the rejection of the term ‘curiosity’, and a now thoroughly nationalist heritage discourse began to gain ground in public opinion: It was customary 50 years ago to think and write of New Zealand birds in terms of the rare and unusual. Much was made of the percentage of flightless species; kiwi, weka, and kakapo, were figured and described both here and abroad, and an unnecessary number of these unfortunate birds were killed to fulfil the demands of a trade in skins. The trade is dead now, fortunately, but from other and less traceable causes the flightless birds continue to decline in numbers. (New Zealand Herald, 26-XI-1938, 18)

Reischek’s shady methods came to light in this new context, thus awakening a bitter controversy in the public opinion of New Zealand, which was still inflamed by the nationalist fervour of World War II. The Reischek affair attracted the whole country’s attention, and both M¯aori leaders and New Zealand’s own Parliament began to raise their complaints in a united and decisive national action. They focused on the way in which the pieces were stolen—which they knew due to the naturalist’s

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own account—although, considered within the wider context, the mere existence of large collections of New Zealand heritage outside of the country’s borders was now condemned. New Zealand’s inferior situation relative to Great Britain or Europe, whereby a naturalist was received with pride and joy on the islands, seemed to be a thing of the past: Unless it has been destroyed by war, the largest and best collection of New Zealand ethnographical and zoological objects in Europe lies in the State Natural History Museum of Vienna. It contains unmatched Maori carvings and other works of native craft of types unknown in the Dominion [Museum], none of which have been permitted to leave the country. Some part of the collection, more particularly ethnographical specimens, were obtained by downright theft and by other methods hardly less ethical. (Auckland Star, 8-IX-1945, 8)

Marked by the end of World War II, the context had clearly changed. Under British command, New Zealand had faithfully helped to free Europe. It was especially insulting to New Zealand’s national pride that Austria—one of the main causes of the conflagration in New Zealand’s opinion—would keep a heritage that was not its own. A New Zealand newspaper at the time declared: ‘Surely, the Government will fail in its duty if it does not try to bring back to the Dominion that part of the collection which, with unblushing candour, was described as rich booty by Andreas Reischek, the German-Austrian [sic] who gathered it?’ (Ibid. 8). In addition, the anti-Germanic tone of many opinion columns at the time confirms that it was a matter of national pride and international relations: One sees the typical German romanticist blindness in the way he thus describes the desecrating wrong done to a fine people who trusted him, allowed him to roam without restraint in their tribal preserves. Not a disquieting thought at what he had done; merely pleasure at a slim and dishonest trick. After all, what he did worked out all right. (The Germans of this generation would be a happy people had Hitler’s scheme worked). (Auckland Star, 8-IX-1945, 8)

The conflict had awakened a dormant nationalism in Australia and New Zealand, two territories that until then had been removed from international affairs and occupied by pressing internal matters so as to develop an identity separate from a mere British imitation. Now, in the treaties that followed the war, New Zealand dared to put the demand that Austria returns the objects of cultural heritage stolen by Reischek on the table. As early as 1946, an Australian newspaper fuelled the controversy: The story goes back a long way. An Austrian naturalist named Andreas Reischek wormed himself into the good graces of King Country Maoris and was permitted to enter that sacred territory—the first white man permitted to do so. He bribed two Maoris to show him a cave where prominent chieftains were buried in a mummified form. Returning in the dead of night the Austrian made a selection of a few bodies and many skulls, succeeded in getting them surreptitiously out the King Country and NZ and thence to Vienna. Reischek went to New Zealand in 1877 and it was in 1882 that the theft was made. It was a deep insult to the Maori King and chiefs at the time and still rankles in their descendants to-day. (Smith’s Weekly, 27-IV-1946, 11)

This repatriation effort—quite unheard of at the time—was not successful. In its efforts to bring about the return of the objects from Vienna, the prestigious Polynesian

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Image 2 After World War II, New Zealand national sentiment increased exponentially, which was quickly reflected in the conception and protection of heritage. An extract from a New Zealand newspaper in 1946 reports on popular refusal to continue using New Zealand heritage, birds and M¯aori ‘curios’, for diplomatic ends. Ashburton Guardian, 5-IX-1946, n. 278, 5

Society did not find all the support it needed. Soon after, in 1948, William Oldman’s significant collection of toi moko was purchased in order to be repatriated (Neich and Davidson 2004). The projection of heritage began to change from centrifugal to centripetal—that is, from allowing, encouraging, and even using heritage diplomatically as symbolic capital in foreign relations to first restricting its export and then leveraging its repatriation as a diplomatic demand. This change even affected relations with Great Britain, which is made clear by the following anecdote: at the end of World War II, the opportunity to send a kiwi, New Zealand’s singular bird that had become a national symbol, to Winston Churchill arose. There are few material gestures that could be more meaningful. In effect, it represented part of the country’s essence. It was a kind of austral ‘panda diplomacy’ that never came to fruition. It encountered such great opposition that not only was it rejected but it accelerated the ban on exporting kiwis as well as all types of M¯aori objects and relics (Norther Advocate, 5-IX-1946, 5). ‘No live kiwi for the private zoo of Mr. Churchill or for anyone else will leave New Zealand’, the then minister of internal affairs, Bill Parry, declared when banning the export of M¯aori objects.8 8

The M¯aori Antiquities Act was introduced in 1901, but certain exports were allowed and even encouraged in order to exchange objects with overseas museums. At the conference of New Zealand museum authorities in 1926, it was concluded that ‘exports should be allowed under supervision, partly to facilitate exchange with foreign museums and partly to encourage Maoris in the pursuit of their old-time crafts’ (Auckland Starr, 3-XI-1926, 3). Some heritage objects had already been returned, always for diplomatic reasons, from London to Wellington. For example, in 1934, the British Museum exchanged (the word returned was not yet used) three important pieces with what was then known as the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

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The export of New Zealand cultural heritage around the world, a flow that had been dominant during the nineteenth century, was essentially stopped. There remained one last stop on this patrimonial round trip. Collecting became demand which then became successful restitution. One can argue that some of the most constant diplomatic efforts carried out by New Zealand since the late twentieth century were aimed at cultural heritage restitution. Starting in the 1970s, in a climate of disconnection with Europe and recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples, New Zealand began to achieve the return of their objects of cultural heritage.

12.5 From Creation to Restitution: The Return of Cultural Heritage as an Indigenous Demand and a Diplomatic Tool We have seen how the collection of natural specimens and indigenous objects was a constant throughout the history of European expansion in the world. In the late twentieth century, those collections, amassed over several centuries at the convergence of such different trajectories, began to be questioned and scrutinized. A new and final change resulted in many of New Zealand’s significant objects no longer being contemplated as grotesque specimens, ethnographic objects, or national symbols but as proof of colonial rule that had to be overcome. The looting and appropriation of cultural heritage would not have responded only to isolated actions carried out by unscrupulous foreign collectors. The very construction of New Zealand’s heritage could be considered an act of dominance in itself, one specifically directed against indigenous populations. Ultimately, collecting became a correlate of colonialism. The current M¯aori senior curator of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa described part of the national collection: ‘[m]any of the collections hold stolen property, hold treasures that they acquired at gunpoint. I guess they were also cause acquired during warfare, they were confiscated and prizes of war’ (Interview with Rhonda Paku 1-XI-2012). However, to arrive at this Copernican twist in the appreciation of M¯aori heritage, an important twist in the country’s history and politics had to occur. In the 1970s, several phenomena converged. Australia and New Zealand viewed Great Britain’s entrance to the European Union as a betrayal by their mother country, which signified the effective end of their dependence on the former metropolis. Furthermore, the M¯aori indigenous movement intensified: protests such as the Land March (1975) and the occupation of Bastion Point (1977) denounced the marginalized situation of the M¯aori in New Zealand society. This gave way to a kind of new national agreement in which the M¯aori culture had a preeminent role, including in the field of museums, where indigenous curators became more and more common. The Waitangi Tribunal started a process of historical restitution to indigenous populations, which included a formal request for forgiveness by Great Britain, the return of land to the tribes, and even official recognition of the M¯aori language and ceremonies. This, of course,

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had repercussions on the way in which national heritage was contemplated. To begin with, the British element, previously a central component of New Zealand’s national essence, now became irrelevant and also perceived as foreign. As in all independent countries, the Kiwi identity began to define itself and to separate itself from the metropolitan cultural element, turning its gaze towards the indigenous soul of the country. As a well-known M¯aori intellectual noted: ‘we don’t continue to validate Captain Cook as the discoverer of New Zealand’ (Interview with Te Taru White 19-XII-2008). As a symptom of change, it became awkward to display certain M¯aori objects. As catalysts of a large part of the tension in New Zealand’s history, toi moko were the first objects in which the new context was noted; gradually, they were no longer displayed. In 1986, one of the most well-known specimens on the islands was withdrawn for conservation and cultural reasons (Whanganui Chronicle, 12-V-1986). The same institutions that, only a few decades earlier, had expended so much effort to acquire and display that object now hid it. Dion Peita, one of the most well-known M¯aori experts in museums, describes the moment when it first became uncomfortable and inappropriate to display human remains, Well, you had the old Carnegie cases, usually you had numerous archaeological slash ethnographic material thrown in there, dusty, not really appealing but at the time I suppose with any job you are quite interested in the Indiana Jones way of doing things. There were a couple of, well, at the Auckland Museum they called it the “Hall of Men” and in it there was a sarcophagus, and right next to it was a small pot that contained a foetus, and you could see these remains (inaudible) inside that pot always amazed me. Every visit to the museum I had to see this. But after a while as I became a performer, I noticed that this was withdrawn from the “Hall of Men” for reasons I don’t know but no doubt was due to not offending a group in society. (Interview with Dion Peita 7-I-2009)9

In New Zealand, the reorganization and reinterpretation of cultural materials on display was radical (McCarthy 2004), but it was no less so outside of the country. A word became common in the museum field and in disputes between nations: restitution, or repatriation. It could be understood as ‘[t]he return of an object of cultural patrimony from a museum collection to a party found to be the true owner or traditional guardian, or their heirs and descendants’ (Legget 2000, 29).10 The cultural heritage restitution process gave rise to diplomatic work as active as it had been during the period of international collecting a century before, if not more, by portraying the issue as historical restitution and an amendment to colonialism. This 9

Interview conducted by Conal McCarthy. Repatriation was especially concerned with the relocation of human remains; both the display and possession of such objects were considered to be inappropriate. In 1989, the Policy of Human Remains was adopted by the so-called New Zealand National Museum Committee (a year before the United States’ Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990, which served as a model for many subsequent policies). Senator Daniel Inouye, one of the legislators responsible for this crucial law, explains: ‘When human remains are displayed in museums or historical societies, it is never the bones of white soldiers or the first European settlers that came to this continent that are lying in the glass cases. It is Indian remains. The message that this sends to the rest of the world is that Indians are culturally and physically different from and inferior to non-Indians. This is racism’ (as cited in Butts 2002, 58).

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work was done through a remarkable new institution that sought to draw attention to the New Zealand nation: the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (1998). Of course, the museum’s contents were not entirely new; an entire section was dedicated to displaying the country’s natural wealth (known as Papat¯ua¯ nuku, or Mother Earth), especially—naturally—the birds. Another section was devoted to M¯aori culture, and a third less attractive section was dedicated to the Pakeha, the M¯aori word to refer to the European people. The museum’s true innovation was the way in which it was managed. M¯aori heritage was handled almost exclusively by the M¯aori tribes; it was treated and displayed according to their cultural protocols. This included human remains in particular, and the M¯aori had exclusive authority [kaitiakitanga] to handle the remains of their ancestors. Of course, an important function of the museum was to seek the repatriation of those ‘cultural treasures’ (taongas) that should have never left the islands and that, it was thought, belonged to the tribes. An entire department was exclusively responsible for repatriating human remains, paying special attention to the preserved heads, no longer thought of as artefacts but rather considered to be t¯upuna (ancestors). Diplomatic efforts on the matter of heritage were no longer aimed at reuniting a significant collection of objects of all types and from all places, but they set out to bring back all the tribal (and national) objects that should have never left the islands. New Zealand’s cultural heritage—toi moko included—began a return journey that may be seen as an allegory of a symbolic and patrimonial decolonization. The new national museum’s Karanga Aotearoa Repatriation Program was responsible for locating heritage objects and, through diplomatic work guided by the M¯aori, achieving their repatriation. The museum’s previous M¯aori director (Kaihautu), Rhonda Paku, explains: ‘Because what we do at the moment, is we are funded to provide a Repatriation Program, but it is only for the return of skeletal and human remains, and M¯aori, Moriori human remains, no one else’s human remains; and that was a project that started many years ago’ (Interview with Rhonda Paku 1-XI-2012). Since then, a multitude of remains has been repatriated ‘in a cooperative, low profile manner there, while in most other parts of the world it attracts high publicity, debate and antagonism’ (Hole 2006, 3). In fact, on a diplomatic visit to Vienna, the New Zealand government again tried to bring back Reischek’s collection. Again, it was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, in 1985, one of his famous ‘mummies’ was returned (O’Hara 2012, 16). Then the following question, which was a genuine cultural dilemma, arose: What should be done with the preserved M¯aori heads once they had been returned? Were they human remains that should be buried and thus destroyed? Or, considering the skilled tattoos and the complex preservation process, were they artistic objects that should be preserved but not displayed due to their delicate nature? In the museum, areas halfway between museum space and religious sanctuary, called w¯ahi tapu, were prepared. These were sacred places where artefacts were received and treated with the utmost respect of a burial place. Again—as in the Tawhia caves where Reischek entered a century before—these were strictly taboo areas where the entrance was limited even for the kaitiaki, or the M¯aori in charge. ‘We’re going through here for our ancestral remains, it’s just next door. And it’s space that’s prohibited. It’s only for the team that’s responsible for the repatriation

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program. Anyone else who wishes to go into that space, or feels they need to go in there, has to apply and get approval to go in there. So even if I need to go in there to examine something [inaudible] I apply to the manager’ (Interview with Rhonda Paku 1-XI-2012). Careful investigations into which objects left the islands, retracing the path they had once followed, are conducted in order to determine the final resting place of each recovered or repatriated piece: store it, bury it, or return it to the tribe. Was this new cultural policy, in terms of historical restitution, an amendment to the construction of national heritage, and a renouncement of its diplomatic role? No, at least not if we pay attention to one final specific case concerning the return of several toi moko from the French city of Rouen in 2011. The return of these objects was particularly significant for several reasons: it was the beginning of a French foreign policy—one that continues today—that used cultural heritage restitution as a central tool in its foreign relations. The policy had the clear objective of cleaning up the country’s external image, which had been too closely related to colonialism. It was especially aimed at two main areas of influence: the Sahel and the South Pacific (Sarr and Savoy 2018). Furthermore, the return of the toi moko established a legal and diplomatic precedent in France, a country particularly protective of what they make public, including their heritage. In fact, it was the first of many objects of cultural heritage returned by France, which set a consequential precedent. Originally, France—rightly so—considered the toi moko as not only human remains but also cultural objects which, therefore, belonged to the French nation. However, something made Nicholas Sarkozy’s France change its restrictive heritage policy. Thus, an ad hoc legislative change designed specifically for this artefact was introduced. It ruled that ‘les têtes maoriesconservées par des musées de France cessent de faire partie de leurscollections pour être remises à la Nouvelle-Zélande’ (Ley n. 2010-501, 18-V-2010). Two years later, on 23 January 2012, France’s minister of culture, Frederic Mitterrand, gave a solemn speech in the Musée du quai Branly regarding the repatriation ceremony of the twenty toi moko that had been returned up to that time. He declared that these artefacts would no longer be considered collector’s objects and facilitated laying them to rest in sacred places. These repatriations were applauded by UNESCO and, according to Mitterand, demonstrated France and New Zealand’s participation in a common intercultural dialogue. Why did France introduce an amendment to its own legislation and agree to return those precious antiquities and human remains to the M¯aori tribes? Is this an example of historical restitution—that is, the return of cultural heritage to its original state by restoring it to its legitimate owners—or simply another diplomatic act in which heritage is used as a tool for foreign relations? Is it an unusual and definitive act of restitution or simply a new aspect of patrimonial construction? From France’s point of view, returning objects of cultural heritage has proved to be one of the most effective tools of soft power in the areas where it is a regional power: the Sahel (the important example of the artefacts from Benin) and the South Pacific (mainly the toi moko). We must not forget that France is New Zealand’s neighbour via the autonomous territories of French Polynesia. Moreover, we must recognize that the French power did not have a great image in the Pacific after the Mururoa nuclear tests and especially

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after the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the famous Greenpeace ship. It was an incident and a stain on France comparable to that of Argelia with respect to Africa. It was the first terrorist attack on New Zealand soil, and it was described as a blatant act of state terrorism. The return of cultural artefacts thus resulted in the projection of an external image removed from any colonial attachment. After the incident at the Port of Auckland, France designed a strategy to that effect and created the New Zealand– France Friendship Fund, which supported the restitution process of the toi moko from Rouen, among other things (Dias 1989). If collection diplomacy encouraged the export of such objects, restitution diplomacy restored them. Nevertheless, one could argue that the objects that were returned had little to do with those that left the islands two and a half centuries earlier.

12.6 Conclusions Throughout this chapter, we have analysed the routes traced by certain objects in history. Successive political and international contexts have shined a light on them in various, sometimes antagonistic, ways. It is still surprising to realize how artefacts can be contemplated in many different ways throughout time and space despite their invariable material quality; it is as if their meaning depended on the diverse relationships between people and territories like the exchange rate of ancient coins. The M¯aori and the European nations appear to contradict themselves historically through these materials, alternatively trading and reclaiming, fabricating and burying, and collecting and returning. However, this is but one of the most unique aspects of heritage: lability. Cultural heritage is never just material; we attribute different meanings to it based on the context, interests, and attributions of the time. Thus, heritage has been used as a fundamental tool for diplomatic relations; given that it symbolizes different desires and satisfies diverse needs, it regulates contact between cultures and nations. However, the observer does not then fall into either the most sterile relativism or the most immobile cultural essentialism. On the contrary, it is the expert’s work to highlight the divergent and never definitive meanings that have been attributed to certain objects in history by revealing the uses for which it was created, the desires hidden by their collection, and the interests concealed by their restitution.

References Anderson B (1983) Imagined communities. Reflection on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso, London Appadurai A (1986) The social life of things. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Belich J (1996) Making peoples. A history of the New Zealanders. from polynesian settlement to the end of the nineteenth century. Allen Lane Penguin Press, Auckland

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Belich J (2001) Paradise reforged. A history of the New Zealanders. From the 1880’s to the year 2000. University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu Bennett T (1988) The exhibitionary complex. New Form N 4:73–102 Buller WL (1873) A history of the birds of New Zealand. John Van Voorst, London Burón Díaz M (2019) El Patrimonio recobrado. Museos indígenas en México y Nueva Zelanda. Marcial Pons, Madrid Butts DJ (2002) M¯aori and museums. The politics of indigenous recognition. Doctoral thesis, Massey University, Palmerston North Cook J (1842) The voyages of captain cook round the world, vol I. William Smith, London Dias N (1989) ‘Séries de Crânes et armée de squelettes: les collections anthropologiques en France dans la seconde moitié du XIX siècle’, Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris. Nouv Ser 1(3–4):203–230 Gellner E (1983) Nation and nationalism. Basil Blackwell Publishers, Oxford Gill B (2006) The Cheeseman-Giglioli correspondence, and museum exchanges between Auckland and Florence, 1877–1904. Arch Nat Hist 37(1):131–149 Graham BJ, y Howard P (2008) The ashgate research companion to heritage and identity. Ashgate, Aldershot Gruzinski S (2005) Entre monos y centauros. Los indios pintores y la cultura del renacimiento. Nuevo Mundos, Mundos Nuevos. Bibliotèque des Auteurs du Centre. http://nuevomundo.revues. org/617 Hawkesworth et al (1778) New discoveries concerning the world and its inhabitants. Part I. J. Johnson, London Hobsbawm EJ, Ranger TO (1983) The invention of tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Hobsbawm EJ (1991) Naciones y nacionalismo desde 1780. Crítica, Barcelona Hole B (2006) Loose notions about heads: the repatriation of human remains in New Zealand. MA archaeology dissertation, Birkbeck College, London Kolig E (1986) Andreas Reischek and the Maori: villainy or the nineteenth-century scientific ethos? Pac Stud 10(1):54–78 Latour B (2005) Reassembling the social. An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford University Press, Oxford Legget J (2000) Restitution and repatriation: guidelines for a good practice. The Museum and Galleries Commission, London McCarthy C (2004) From Curio to Taonga: a genealogy of display at New Zealand’s national museum, pp 1865–2001. Doctoral thesis, Victoria University, Wellington McCarthy C (2007) Exhibiting m¯aori: a history of colonial cultures of display. Te Papa Press, Wellington Macmillan Brown J (1907) Maori and Polynesian. Their origin, history and culture. Hutchinson & Co, London Martínez M A, Bustamante J, López J, Burón M (2014) Las controversias de los materiales culturales delicados, un debate aplazado pero necesario. Ph Investigación 2:1–30. http://www.iaph.es/ revistaph/index.php/revistaph/article/view/4022 Neich R, Davidson J (2004) The oldman collection of Maori artefacts. The Polynesian Society, Auckland O’Hara C (2012) Repatriation in practice: a critical analysis of the repatriation of human remains in New Zealand museums. Master’s thesis, Victoria University of Wellington Reischek A (1930) Yesterdays in Maoriland: New Zealand in the eighties. Wilson and Horton, Auckland Robley H (1896) Moko; or Maori tattooing. Chapman and Hall, London Sarr F, Savoy B (2018) The restitution of African cultural heritage. Toward a new relational ethics. Report sent to the President of the French Republic, 23-XI-2018 Simpson MG (2001) Making representations: Museums in the post-colonial era. Routledge, New York

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Smith L (2007) Cultural heritage: critical concepts in media studies and cultural studies. Routledge, London and New York Taylor R (1855) Te Ika a Maui: Or New Zealand and its inhabitants. Wertheim and Macintosh, London Tregear E (1904) The Maori race. A.D. Willis Printer and Publisher, Wanganui

Chapter 13

The Demand for Restitution of Cultural Heritage Through Relations Between Africa and Europe Karine Lima da Costa

Abstract This article aims to analyze the question of the restitution or repatriation of cultural heritage, especially the artifacts from sub-Saharan Africa from the publication of the Savoy-Sarr Report, completed in 2018. We’ll look at the case of the Benin Bronzes, taken from Africa in the nineteenth century and currently distributed in different museological institutions, mainly in France and England. Thus, we hope that the reflections mentioned here may inspire other possibilities in relation to the restitution of cultural heritage. Keyword Cultural heritage · Repatriation · Restitution · Benin bronzes

13.1 Introduction The modern notion of the concept of heritage in the West was consolidated as of the end of the eighteenth century, and the constitution of modern national states (Lowenthal 1998); however, it is known that its meaning is older and can be found even in tribal societies (Gonçalves 2007). However, the category of heritage is still thought from an individualized perspective that brings it closer to the idea of ownership, which is not uncommon, since the concept of heritage leads us to the Roman notion of pater familias, that is, “[…] a set of assets (heritage), which must be kept in the family and passed on to future generations” (Costa 2018, 101). This sense of heritage promotes a series of rivalries and disputes, of which cultural heritage is not alien: While cultural heritage incorporates different values and can be used to serve different economic, social and political objectives within development contexts, the past becomes a cultural exchange currency at the moment when it becomes essential to human experience: there is an interesting causal link here to be analyzed. The heritage of peoples and their past: beacons for understanding the present (Christofoletti 2017, 5).

Examples of these disputes are found in museological institutions, conceived through the junction between power and memory, since the etymology of the word K. L. da Costa (B) State University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_13

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refers to the ancient temple dedicated to the nine muses, daughters of Zeus, the god of authority and power and Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. Thus, in the analysis of the emergence of museums, we distinguish the focus of each institution on the exaltation of the power of memory or in the appeal to the memory of power: “recognizing that there are relations between power and memory implies politicizing memories and forgetfulness” (Chagas 2009, 44). Like Western heritage, Africa also has a lively and diverse cultural heritage, be it material or immaterial, although its tangible and intangible heritage is often inseparable (Keitumetse 2016). This multiplicity can be found in the arts, beliefs and crafts that come from their ancestors and that are still recurrent in some ways of doing and living. However, in addition to this material wealth, African countries have a much older historical tradition than European countries, which led to plunder and looting, especially during the colonial period. At that time, the exercise of the power of one nation over another (or over others) developed, too, through scientific and cultural dominance, in which diplomacy played an essential role. The appropriation, transfer and subsequent exhibition of documents, objects, monuments and even remains are examples of this type of domination, such as the spread of fairs and universal exhibitions throughout the nineteenth century. Through foreign eyes, the world was represented as an object in these exhibitions, just as so-called ethnographic objects were shown in the nascent Western museums to illustrate “[…] the stages of socio-cultural evolution and the routes of cultural diffusion” (Gonçalves 2007, 16). By identifying the shape and material composition of each object produced, one could verify the techniques employed and the degree of knowledge of the different social groups. According to the reflections of the german philosopher Walter Benjamin (1987), the past is not an inert thing that happened a long time ago and that can no longer be invoked or even modified; on the contrary, he demonstrated that we can use this same past to build new perspectives on the present, aiming at its transformation. In this sense, we note the importance of post-colonial (or decolonial) criticism of deconstructing narratives that have been naturalized over time, because it helps us to rethink how this past was treated and presented. The theoretical principles of post-colonial criticism were developed through cultural and literary studies during the 1960s, and later were propagated in other areas of knowledge, such as History, Anthropology, and Philosophy, among others. Bringing to light other possible conceptions and narratives, this perspective “[…] resists the search for holistic forms of social explanation. It forces a recognition of the more complex cultural and political boundaries that exist at the apex of these often opposing political spheres” (Bhabha 1998, 241–242). In the hope of supplanting hegemonic forms of analysis and representation of other peoples, its critics sought to interpret their own historical processes, in which the relationship with cultural heritage was also contemplated: Deprived of material heritage by imperial and post-imperial plunder and purchase, nonWestern cultures that have internalized Western values also deprive themselves of alternative modes of construing their particular pasts (Lowenthal 2004, 302).

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It was this conjuncture that made it possible for some communities to demand the return of examples of cultural heritage from various territories and which are currently outside these locations, especially under the guardianship of cultural and museological institutions. They are objects, monuments, works of art, and even human remnants that were taken in different circumstances. In the last few years, we have seen an increase in the discussion around these requests, which gave rise to the international movement around the repatriation of cultural heritage. Legally, the return of these goods can be challenged by means of the notions of return, restitution, or repatriation (Kowalski 2005), terms that vary according to each author—some are often used interchangeably. The return is linked to objects that were moved from their original territories during the colonial period or when they were exported illegally (Cornu, Renold 2010). Restitution also refers to a scenario of expropriation illegal and is suitable for the return of looted or looted objects, especially during periods of war and occupation: “restitution is either unilateral (based on laws or administrative rulings) or bilateral (negotiated with or without mediation or referred to arbitration)” (Cornu, Renold 2010, 10). The difference is that the restitution provides for a recipient who can be identified and the return presumes a territory. Repatriation can be seen as a form of restitution, either to a country or to a requesting community (Cornu, Renold 2010) or more clearly as the return of something that is outside their country of origin, although for some it may also be about returns between institutions in the same country (Prott 2009). The issue of repatriation is quite complex. However, its resolution is not restricted to the legal sphere. In some situations, the process as a whole is mediated by organs such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which are fundamental organizations in fostering this type of dialogue. Created after the Second World War to ensure cooperation between different countries, Unesco works through five specific programs: Education, Natural Sciences, Human and Social Sciences, Culture and Communication and Information.1 It is important to highlight that UNESCO works in harmony with the dynamics of international events and, therefore, prioritizes the insertion of contemporary themes in the construction of its agendas, seeking to contribute to cooperation between peoples and the promotion of peace. In addition, it is inserted in the scope of international organizations of a global character, having been formed out of the manifest and formalized interest—by means of an international treaty—by its States parties (Christofoletti 2017, 3).

During the General Conference of UNESCO in November 1970, the discussion on the return of cultural heritage took a significant step forward with the adoption of the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which in 2020 completed 50 years. Even though the convention started in 1972 and is not retroactive, this issue raised the debate to the international community, as well as the delay on the part of 1

Available at: https://nacoesunidas.org/agencia/unesco/ Accessed on: April 09, 2020.

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some countries to ratify it, as was the case of France (1997), of the United Kingdom (2002), Germany (2007), and Belgium (2009).2 Six years later, the question of illicit appropriation of cultural heritage was discussed by experts in Venice, due to the lack of specific international procedures to deal with this type of demand. Thus, in 1978, the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin or its Restitution in case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP) was officially created, of a consultative (and permanent) nature to mediate bilateral and multilateral negotiations between its Member States. The cases that can be analyzed by the committee include appropriations made during the colonial period or during periods of occupation and also the illicit trafficking in cultural heritage.3 The committee’s performance enabled the return of more than twelve thousand pre-Columbian artifacts to Ecuador in 1983, after 7 years of discussions; the return of seven thousand cuneiform tablets from Germany to Turkey in 1987; a Makondé mask that was returned to Tanzania by the Barbier-Mueller Museum in Geneva in 2010, after 4 years of negotiations; among other cases.4 The Intergovernmental Committee only acts after unsuccessful attempts at negotiation between the interested parties and the requests must be submitted through a specific document—Standard Form concerning Requests for Return or Restitution5 —with a minimum period of 6 months before the next ordinary session that takes place every 2 years. The fields specified in the document include the description of the object; the location where you are currently located; the requesting country; the legal status; the state of conservation; references and documentation; information about the form and the period in which the object left the place of origin; and a history of previous negotiation attempts. The committee specifies that only one object must be requested at a time in each form and if it is a collection, it must be treated as “an entity.”

2

“França vai devolver 26 obras de arte ao Benin.” DW Brasil, 24/11/2018. Available at: https:// www.dw.com/ptbr/fran%C3%A7a-vai-devolver-26-obras-de-arte-ao-benin/a-46433723 Accessed on: June 20, 2020. 3 Information available on the official UNESCO website: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/cul ture/themes/restitutionof-cultural-property/intergovernmental-committee/historical-background/ Accessed on: June 20, 2020. 4 Available at: http://www.unesco.org/new/fr/culture/themes/restitution-of-cultural-property/com mittessuccessful-restitutions/ Accessed on: June 20, 2020. 5 The form was prepared by the Committee in January 1981 and must be completed by both interested parties.

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13.2 Rise of Debate in Europe At the end of January 2020, bill 5/XIV/1 on the amendment of the state budget was approved in Portugal, by the then deputy of the Free party, Joacine Katar Moreira.6 In it, Article 203—A proposed a “Program for the Decolonization of Culture” through the allocation of government funds to the General Directorate for Cultural Heritage (DGPC). These funds should be used for the organization of a multidisciplinary commission that will define the guidelines “[…] for the recontextualization of the collections of museums and national monuments” (Moreira 2020, 2). The idea of recontextualization is due to the new narratives of political, institutional and knowledge decolonization, which now aim at “[…] the decolonization of knowledge and culture for an effective decolonization of western societies” (Moreira 2020, 1). As a suggestion, the document cited Portuguese institutions such as the National Museum of Ancient Art, the National Museum of Ethnology, National Archaeology Museum, and the Belém Tower and the Jerónimos Monastery, with an emphasis on restructuring narratives about the colonial slavery past. In addition to these guidelines, the proposal foresees a listing of all the works and monuments that are currently found in Portuguese archival and museological institutions and that were removed from their former colonies. This inventory does not necessarily represent the return of cultural heritage, but it aims to facilitate the identification and subsequent complaint by interested countries. Joacine Moreira is of Guinean origin, graduated in History and with a doctorate in Social Studies. Among the causes defended by the deputy are the fight for the environment and the fight against racial prejudice. She says that the issues of restitution of cultural heritage need to move toward their institutionalization, since there is still a lot of resistance on this point: “[…] these proposals aim to institutionalize, nationalize and politicize the discussion about the decolonization of knowledge, culture, the imaginary, and so on” (Moreira 2020). Although your proposal seems a little ambitious, she argues that the act of restitution itself is not the main objective of her initiative, but an expansion of this discussion within the scope of the Portuguese national heritage, in order to think of other ways of looking at this heritage also considered the fruit of the violence and spoils perpetrated by Portuguese colonialism.7 The ideas defended by Congresswoman Jociane Moreira certainly had an influence after the statements of French President Emmanuel Macron on the return of works of art and objects Africans who are currently in France. During a long speech at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso in late November 2017, the president claimed that he could not “[…] accept that a large part of the cultural heritage 6

Since the beginning of February 2020, her position in the party has been that of a non-registered deputy, that is, she is no longer part of parliament, as her confidence has been withdrawn after a series of disagreements with the party. Available at: https://expresso.pt/politica/2020-01-31-Livre-retira-aconfianca-politica-a-Joacine-Katar-Moreira.-Hoje-nao-e-umdia-feliz-para-o-Partido Accessed on: April 09, 2020. 7 Interview by Joacine Moreira to DW, published on February 4, 2020. Available at: https://www. dw.com/pt-002/deputada-joacine-katar-moreira-n%C3%A3o-desiste-da-descoloniza%C3%A7% C3%A3o-do-conhecimento/a-52250095 Accessed on: April 09, 2020.

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of several countries africans is in France8 .” The speech “À L’Afrique” inaugurated Macron’s trip across the African continent, with the objective of strengthening diplomatic relations between the continent and France and touched on essential points such as culture, education, politics, economics, and security, among others. Macron used key points in his rhetoric to approach his listeners, especially by emphasizing the recognition of the multiplicity and diversity of the African continent. He stated that his generation does not know Africa “[…] as a colonized continente,” but which recalls, above all, Nelson Mandela’s achievements and pan-African solidarity: I will not be on the side of those who see Africa as a continent of crisis and misery, but I will not be on the side of those who exalt an enchanted Africa, an Africa suddenly adorned with all its virtues and raised as a model. (...) I will be on the side of those who have a lucid look. Those who believe that Africa is neither a lost continent nor a saved continent. I believe that Africa is simply the central, global, essential continent because this is where all contemporary challenges collide.9

In the educational field, Macron highlighted the importance of access by African students and researchers to the same manuals and content available to the French, as well as the reception of “new talents” with opportunities to study and work in different areas in France and vice versa. As he headed toward the end of the speech, the president expressed his willingness to return—temporarily or permanently— African cultural heritage present in European museums and collections, in up to 5 years: “african heritage should be highlighted in Paris, but also in Dakar, Lagos, Cotonou, this will be one of my priorities” (Macron 2017). For the realization of this opportunity, Macron defined the creation of partnerships that involve different professionals between curators, historians, and museologists, in order to curb illicit trafficking in objects and works of art, facilitated by both Europeans and Africans. This also involves the safety of these works and the expansion of African themes that are exhibited in European museums, as these generally present and extol Africa’s ancient history, but they leave little room for its contemporary history. This step was accomplished through a report commissioned by Macron to the French art historian, Bénédicte Savoy, and to the Senegalese economist, Felwine Sarr. The document entitled “La restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationnelle” (The restitution of African cultural heritage. Towards a new relational ethic) it was delivered in November 2018, and recommended the permanent return of around ninety thousand artifacts from sub-Saharan Africa, most are hosted at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac Museum in Paris, specialized in ancient non-European cultures. The Savoy-Sarr report predicts that the restitution processes will go through three phases, in which the first (from November 2018 to 2019) contemplated the delivery of 8

The full speech of the French president can be consulted on the Jeune Afrique website. Available at: https://www.jeuneafrique.com/497596/politique/document-le-discours-demmanuelmacron-a-ougadougou/ Accessed on: April 10, 2020. 9 Idem.

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the document and a list of possible countries that could be interested in the return, such as Benin, Senegal, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Mali, and Cameroon, in addition to pointing out some specific artifacts. The second phase, scheduled to take place between spring 2019 and November 2022, recommends carrying out inventories of French public museums on African works of art and the digital sharing of this information through a database accessible to all. It also suggests holding workshops and creating commissions composed of French and African representatives from each country interested in restoring cultural heritage to discuss the procedures to be followed. The third phase should cover the returns and is expected to start in November 2022, with no date for completion. According to the report, the refund recognizes the illegal ownership of the object in question, regardless of the time that has passed: To openly speak of restitutionsis to speak of justice,or a re-balancing, recognition, of restoration and reparation, but above all: it’sa way to open a pathway toward establishing new culturalrelations based on a newlyreflected upon ethical relation (Sarr, Savoy 2018, 29).

The position of the French president and the initiative of the report were extremely positive points for the continuation of this discussion, especially as it contemplates the works and objects that left their countries during the colonial period, in which there is a gap in the supporting documentation that ensures legality or illegality of transit of these properties. The road to travel until the realization of refunds is long and the difficulty in carrying out these actions comes up, mainly, in legal issues, whether national or international. In the French case, there is legislation that makes their public collections imprescriptible and inalienable (Sarr, Savoy 2018). Although this law was annulled during the French Revolution and is still contested by some people, it returned in the course of the nineteenth century, and is used as the main claim for the French refusal about restitution, as was the case with the return of bronzes from the Benin, a year before Macron’s proposal. The case of these artifacts is at the center of the debate. It is a set of sculptures that were commissioned by royalty and portrayed the history of the ancient Edo Kingdom, local name of the group that, in the West, was conventionally called Benin: “since the first contacts between the Edo and the Portuguese in the late fifteenth century, the Edo has generally been referred to in the West with the names ‘Bini’ or ‘Benin’” (Lundén 2016, 2). This region corresponds to the current location in southern Nigeria. In 1897, the capital of the Kingdom was occupied by British military troops and integrated into the British colony of Nigeria, at which time many artifacts were taken as spoils of war and removed from Africa. Later, several museums acquired items from this vast collection, the British Museum with the majority, consisting of about 700 objects (Lundén 2016), but the institution accounts for 900 objects. Among them, we highlight the head of Queen Mother Idia, an object that together with the Rosetta Stone and the Parthenon Marbles represents symbols of cultures of great importance for the museum’s collection—and which are also among the official requests for returns made by Egypt and Greece, respectively. In total, it is estimated that the Benin collection is made up of more than a thousand pieces sculpted in bronze, wood, and ivory. Currently, these objects are

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divided between ten Western museological institutions in Germany, the Netherlands, England, and the United States. In Africa, some Nigerian museums house part of the collection, in which many pieces were acquired through commercial transactions between the British Museum and the Nigerian government, in 1950s. For their beauty and technique, these sculptures have become known worldwide as unique examples of Benin’s art. However, for the Edo people the pieces had spiritual significance: they performed ritualistic functions and ornamented ancestral altars inside the palace of the oba (king) and in the homes of more affluent people (Lundén 2016). The object above is one of the most significant in the collection, both for the British Museum and for Nigerians. Queen Idia’s ivory mask came to be requested in the 1970s, for the celebration of an African festival (FESTAC—World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture), but the loan application was denied. According to the British Museum, the object is too fragile to travel, although it claims that many pieces are regularly loaned to foreign institutions.10 In this way, local sculptors made a replica of the mask for the festival, since his image had become a kind of “symbol” of the event.11 Successive denials of borrowing and/or returning certain artifacts by the British Museum can be found on the museum’s official website, with allegations that the institution has legally acquired these objects and that their display to thousands of people is granted free of charge. Regarding the way of acquiring the artifacts, the institution justifies the domination of commerce on the Nigerian coast during the nineteenth century, and recognizes the violence, looting, and plunder against the Kingdom of the Edo12 : “the imperial narrative interferes with the Benin cultural narrative and, on a macro level, with the development of Nigeria’s post-independence narrative” (Kiwara-Wilson 2013, p. 394). The English institution is not the only one that makes use of the free speech and wide access to knowledge of different cultures. In 2004, the magazine ICOM News published a document entitled “Declaration of the Importance and Value of Universal Museums” (DIVUM), signed by directors from nineteen European and North American institutions. The document highlights the importance of the “universality” found in these museums and opposes the return of the collections, since their acquisition occurred at different times and conditions than the current ones (ICOM, 2004). Obviously, these and other claims contained in the document are contested by many African intellectuals, such as the kenyan archaeologist George Abungu, who questions the idea of the centrality of universality, stating that every museum “[…] 10

Available on the British Museum website: https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-mus eumstory/objects-news/benin-bronzes Accessed on: August 09, 2020. 11 Information available at: https://www.redbull.com/br-pt/dudus-playlist-festac-77 Accessed on: August 09, 2020. 12 The museum claims that while numerous public statements are made by Africans, it never received a formal written request for the return of the Benin collection. Available at: https://www.bri tishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/objects-news/benin-bronzes Accessed on: August 09, 2020.

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must have something special that makes it universal value for humanity” (Abungu 2004, 5). In 2010, the working group “The Benin Dialogue Group” was created, with representatives from Nigeria and some European museums to reinforce collaborative actions that make it possible to borrow and rotate works of art, in addition to the creation of the Royal Museum of Benin, scheduled to open in 2021. The idea is that around 300 items will be present at the museum’s long-term exhibition. In 2018, the group signed an agreement with the British Museum to borrow some of these objects for a temporary exhibition in the new Nigerian museum, which generated dissatisfaction on the part of some Africans: “since when looters or their successors lend the stolen objects to the owners instead of returning them in a simple and correct way?” (Opuku-Agyemang 2017). Kwame Opuku-Agyemang also made harsh criticisms of DIVUM, considering it an “arrogant imperialist project,” which does not give up the mistakes made during the colonial period (Opuku-Agyemang 2013). In his perception, the loan of the artifacts may indicate an advance, but also a great setback: “we must be aware that, when accepting a loan of looted artifacts from Benin, one can consider that someone recognized the property or property rights of museums on artifacts” (Opuku-Agyemang 2017). Although some of these Western museums appeal to the issue of spreading knowledge through the display of their collections, they ignore the fact that the African heritage is still alive and present in the transmission of traditions between descendants and their ancestors: Africa needs not only apology and forgiveness, but that these priceless African cultural treasures—artworks, icons, relics—be returned to their rightful owners... [T]he African art that has found its way into the galleries of former European colonial powers and the homes of the rich in North America, Europe, and elsewhere has deep cultural significance. These works form an integral part of defining our identity and personality as family, as African family. We talk to them. They talk to us. We touch them at certain moments of our lives, from birth through life to death. It is through them that the living spirits of our people, of our history, of our culture interact and interface with us. They are not there, hence the void in our minds and in our hearts. We continue to cry for them to come back home, to complete that cultural, spiritual space (Gurirab apud Kiwara-Wilson 2013, 1).

Museums are not the only current holders of works of art and objects captured during the colonial period. In 2015, an initiative by the grandson of a British captain repatriated Nigeria two bronzes that were obtained by your grandfather during the British occupation of Benin, in the nineteenth century. When Mark Walker inherited them in 2013, he opted for repatriation, as he would not want the objects to be sold at an auction after his death and his children showed no interest in keeping them in the family. After contacting the Richard Lander Society, Walker traveled to Nigeria in 2014, and handed them over to the great-grandson of the king deposed by his grandfather at the time of the invasion13 —an unusual attitude on the part of the holders of such artifacts and that was highly celebrated by Nigerians. Your grandfather’s diary was also donated and contains images and texts that narrate the 13

Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31605284 Accessed on: May 03, 2020.

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British’s violent onslaught in the former Kingdom of Benin, as well as the looting undertaken by them. This return and the signaling of other restitutions a source of pride for many descendants of the former artisans who currently live in the same region, such as Eric Ogbemudia: “I never saw these pieces live, I never touched or felt them. We only saw them in catalogs. It is very revolting and very sad14 .” He follows tradition and still produces bronze pieces in his workshop located on Igun Street, one of the places where the pieces were made in the thirteenth century, considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The French government recently announced that it will return to Benin 26 objects that were taken by the French army in the 1890s, the first refund announced after the publication and dissemination of the Savoy-Sarr report. In addition to the ethical and legal issues surrounding these requests, there are also symbolic, philosophical, and relational implications, as “[…] restitutions open up a profound reflection on history, memories, and the colonial past” (Sarr, Savoy 2018, 29). Thus, even though many of the requests will not be answered, they invite us to reflect on the past and sensitive stories that have not yet been overcome. Many African writers criticize the disparity between the importance that Europeans attach to objects of African culture and treatment toward individuals, especially African migrants: The immediate paradox here is that, whereas objects from theperiphery were welcome in the centre, people were very much not. Since the independence of West African countries throughout the late 1950s and early ’60s, the retention of objects and the simultaneous rejection of people has become ever more fraught. Young undocumented migrants from former French colonies stand metres away from the Musée du quai Branly—Jacques Chirac, a museum in Paris full of their inaccessible patrimony. The migrants are treated with contempt while the objects from their homelands are cared for in museums and treated with great reverence. The migrants will be deported but the objects will not be repatriated. The homeland is therefore only home to objects, not people (Joy 2019, s.p.).

Another criticism directed at European museums that hold a large number of objects from other countries is the real importance that these artifacts acquire in these institutions. To what extent are they valued because they represent a different culture and not because they exalt national history itself (full of unequal conflicts and struggles)? If African objects are so important to England or France, what is left for African countries? (Costa 2019).

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Report entitled “Europe is going to return works of art from colonial times to Nigeria,” published by DW on November 14, 2018. Available at: https://bit.ly/3vGOvSi Accessed on: April 09, 2020.

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13.3 Final Considerations Discussing the circumstances of the removal of these objects and works of art from their homelands in previous centuries helps us to perceive the maintenance of discourses that still remain established in the great museums classified as “encyclopedic,” that is, those dedicated to the representation of cultures different. After all, do visitors to the British Museum have access to the information contained in the former British soldier’s diary when making their visit to the African Art section? And in the Parthenon Marbles exhibition, do we find any subtitles referring to the debates on Greece’s requests for repatriation? Does the room that houses the Rosetta Stone make any mention of the removal of monuments and objects during Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Egypt? Is the incursion of the French army into North Africa understood as an invasion or considered just an “expedition”? This and other information are extremely relevant and need to be presented in the museum’s expographic speech: “in its avoidance of exhibiting the Western self it falls within the mainstream tradition for museum exhibitions which habitually refrain from putting the Western white male self on display on the same terms as it displays its various others” (Lundén 2016, 443). These questions are indispensable in the discussion about the repatriation or restitution of cultural heritage. However, the claims must be looked at in the light of the present and the conceptions of the contemporary world: who is making these requests? What are the justifications? How will the repatriation process be carried out? Where will these objects be allocated? What measures will guarantee its conservation? Should objects really be exposed to the whole world? If these doubts are not exhaustively discussed among stakeholders, a coherent resolution for Africans will not be reached: “until the Benin people regain control of the past, the information that accompanies the exhibited objects and the characterization of their importance will always be favorable to the imperial past” (Kiwara-Wilson 2013, p. 396). At the end of January 2020, Britain confirmed its departure from the European Union (EU) after joining 1973, an episode that became known as Brexit.15 This action was a precursor, since it was the first time that a country left the EU. In February 2020, the EU decided to include in the negotiations a clause on the reevaluation of British conduct in relation to the return of cultural heritage that were illegally removed from their places of origin and are now being claimed.

15

Abbreviation for “British exit,” which will become official on December 31, 2020. Information available at: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/internacional-46335938 Accessed on: April 21, 2020.

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This caveat rekindled a debate that has spread publicly since the 1980s, when the then Minister of Culture of Greece, Melina Mercouri, filed an official request to return the sculptures that make up the Parthenon Marbles, taken from Athens and acquired by the Museum British in the early nineteenth century.16 Obviously, the British did not agree with this idea and reaffirmed that the marbles legally belong to the museum, as already reported. Although many believe that the new clause in the document refers to the old feud between the British and the Greeks—also because its inclusion proposal came from Greece, in together with Cyprus, Spain, and Italy—others argue that this concern is consistent with the EU’s stance on the damage caused by illicit trafficking or even the destruction of cultural heritage, regardless of the country.17 There is a lot of talk in cases that have not been (and may never be) resolved, but through the examples that have already been resolved, we realize that dialogue and cooperation between those responsible for safeguarding cultural heritage are the most fruitful means for a final outcome in claims about cultural heritage. Obviously the return of scattered antiques does not represent an end, but as expressed by Savoy and Sarr (2018), talking about restitution of works of art means opening the way for a new chapter in history, so that it can be rewritten in another way, with new characters and new outfits, as happened with the New Zealand Maori who chose to leave some of their artifacts abroad “[…] so as to enhance international awareness of Maori identity” (Lowenthal 2004, 309). These are new ways of relating to cultural heritage that the problem of repatriation calls for, because when we talk about restitution we are also talking about diplomacy. These forms should not be limited only to permanent returns, but to loans, cultural exchanges, circulation of works—something that is already part of the daily life of many museological institutions, but which are limited by the lack of agreements and cooperation between the agents involved. Repatriation and/or restitution also refer to a change in attitude toward the treatment and understanding of cultural heritage, which must consider something that, at times, seems to be overlooked in this process: its collective meaning.

16

The discussion around the return of the sculptures has been taking place in Greece since the First World War; however, it was after Mercouri’s performance that the debate expanded in the country (Kynourgiopoulou 2011). 17 Information available at: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/elgin-marbles-clause-brexit-negotiati ons-1780794 Accessed on: April 21, 2020.

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Fig. 13.1 Collection of the British Museum, “Representation of Queen Mother Idia.” https://com mons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:British_Museum_-_Room_25_(18020107461).jpg Accessed in: 16 mar. 2021

References Abungu GHO (2004) The declaration: a contested issue ICOM news, Focus Benjamin W (1987) Magia e técnica, arte e política: Ensaios sobre literatura e história da cultura. São Paulo: Brasiliense Bhabha HKO (1998) Local da Cultura. Belo Horizonte: UFMG Chagas M (2009) Memória e Poder: dois movimentos. Caderno De SocioMuseologia 19(19):43–81

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Christofoletti R (2017) Patrimônio como esteio das Relações Internacionais: em questão o soft power. 1º Simpósio Científico ICOMOS Brasil, Belo Horizonte, Brasil Christofolletti R (2017) O tráfico ilícito de bens culturais e a repatriação como reparação histórica. Em Bens culturais e Relações Internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power, Rodrigo Christofoletti, 113–131. Santos (SP): Editora Universitária Leopoldianum Cornu M, Renold M-A (February 2010) New Developments in the Restitution of Cultural Property: Alternative Means of Dispute Resolution. Int J Cult Prop 17(1):1–31. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0940739110000044 Costa, Karine Lima da (2018) “A quem pertence o patrimônio cultural? Propriedade em debate”. Tempos Históricos, 22: 100–119 Costa, Karine Lima da (2019) “Caminhos para a descolonização dos museus: a questão da repatriação das antiguidades egípcias”. Tese de doutoramento, Florianópolis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina Gonçalves JR, Santos. (2007) Antropologia dos objetos: coleções, museus e patrimônios. Garamond, Rio de Janeiro Joy, Charlotte. “African art in Western museums: it’s patrimony not heritage”. AEON, 20 de fevereiro de 2019. Keitumetse, Susan Osireditse. African Cultural Heritage Conservation and Management: Theory and Practice from Southern Africa. Suíça: Springer, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-320 17-5 Kiwara-Wilson S (2013) Restituting Colonial Plunder: The Case for the Benin Bronzes and Ivories. DePaul Journal of Art, Technology & Intellectual Property Law 23(2):375–425 Kowalski W (2005) Les divers types de demandes de récupération des biens culturels perdus. Museum Int 57(4):92–110 Kynourgiopoulu, Vasiliki. “National Identity Interrupted: The Mutilation of the Parthenon Marbles and the Greek Claim for Repatriation”. In: Contested Cultural Heritage: Religion, Nationalism, Erasure and Exclusion in a Global World, org. Helaine Silverman, 155–170. New York: Springer, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7305-4_7 Lowenthal, David. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511523809 Lowenthal D (2004) “Conclusion: archaeologists and others”. In: The politics of the past, orgs. Peter Gathercole, and David Lowenthal, 302–314. London and New York: Routledge Lundén S (2016) Displaying Loot: The Benin Objects and the British Museum. Gothenburg University, Gothenburg Moreira JK (2020) Proposta de Lei n.º 5/XIV/1 - Aprova o Orçamento do Estado para 2020. Lisboa Opoku-Agyemang K (2013) Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums: Unique Failure of an Arrogant Imperialist Project. Modern Ghana, 27 de janeiro de 2013, Feature Article Opoku-Agyemang K (2017) European museums to ‘loan’ looted Benin bronzes to Nigeria? Pambazuka News, 27 de abril de 2017, Democracy & Governance Prott LV (2009) Witnesses to History: a compendium of documents and writings on the return of cultural objects. UNESCO, Paris Sarr F, Savoy B (2018) Restitution report 2018.com. http://restitutionreport2018.com/sarr_savoy_fr. pdf

Chapter 14

Mapping Cultural Heritage in the Bi-regional Relations Between Europe and Latin America: Case Studies Vitória dos Santos Acerbi

Abstract This article aims to identify and discuss the role and place of cultural heritage in the international bi-regional relations between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. Thus, using a theoretical framework of the concepts of heritage diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations, it analyses non-exhaustively projects, programmes, partnerships, working documents, reports, communications and agreements in force, thus fostering international relations through cultural heritage. This panorama of the international relations between the regions involving cultural heritage has some specific objectives. First, to identify the main principles, purposes and narratives regarding cultural heritage as an object/arena of foreign relations. Secondly, to outline the profile(s) of the actions undertaken in the domain, their focuses and objects, how they vary across the governance levels involved and/or have changed over time. Thirdly, to identify the actors involved in such actions/policies. Lastly, to identify the impact of such actions, as for generation of value, tourism, engagement, public image and relations between the people. Keywords Cultural heritage · International cultural relations · Heritage diplomacy · Cultural diplomacy · Europe–Latin America bi-regional relations · EU-LAC relations

14.1 EU-LAC Bi-regional Relations and Heritage in International Relations Dating back to the colonial times (sixteenth–nineteenth century) to reach currently a complex arrangement, the bi-regional relations between Europe and Latin America have been the object of extensive academic attention and political efforts in recent years (Sanahuja 2015; Ruano 2018; Haider and Batalla 2020). They are commonly Master in International Relations from the Universidad de Salamanca, Spain V. dos Santos Acerbi (B) Master in Latin American Studies at the Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_14

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described in the frame of multilevel interregionalism (Ayuso 2018), comprising relations carried out mainly on three widely identified and discussed areas—political dialogue, economic association and development cooperation (Ruano 2018, p. 27). At the bi-regional continental level, Europe and Latin America interact as two regional blocs in the frame of a bi-regional relation. It was first kicked off in the 1970s, with the first inter-parliamentary meeting between the European Parliament and ParLatino. In the 1980s, it was further developed with the San José Dialogue, when the EU supported the processes of peace and democratic stabilisation in Central America. In the 1990s, it was given the current contours, when the dialogue between the European Community and the Rio Group was institutionalised and gave way to the EU-LAC summits between the heads of State and the government of countries. These were the predecessors of the current European Union-Community of Latin American States (EU-CELAC) summits and strategic bi-regional association framework, after the institutionalisation of CELAC as a political instance of integration in Latin America (Sanahuja 2015, p. 28; Ruano 2018, p. 10). Despite this relatively long history of bi-regionalism, the EU-(CE)LAC biregional relations are commonly said to not yet have reached their full potential. A “relationship-fatigue” is currently experienced due to a lack of strategic purpose and concrete results to show, after three decades of many declarations, summits and plans of actions with too many broad objectives, encompassing a wide range of areas and topics, but focussing and giving structures, purpose and concrete means to none specifically (Sanahuja 2015, p. 23). Conversely, the bi-regional relations carried out at the city or local level have given fruitful results over the decades, although either discontinued or irregular in time due to budgetary constraints or little recognised by scholars, who only recently began to look at the international relations carried out at local level, generally speaking, and concerning the Euro-Latin American case, specifically (Haider and Batalla 2020; Koch 2015). Concerning areas of relations, the political dialogue carried out above all in the summit diplomacy that has prevailed in the EU-(CE)LAC relations experiences the aforementioned “fatigue”, triggering political and academic calls for renewal (Fontanelles 2020; Sanahuja 2015) and the cancellation of the IV EU-CELAC Summit, supposed to have taken place in 2017, in El Salvador. The economic association, despite its relevance for both sides, seems to be considered as not yet having reached its full potential and being hampered by important issues, such as the increasing presence of China as an economic partner to both regions, unequal environmental standards in the production of goods and the protectionist stance of some countries in relation to some areas (the European ones regarding agriculture, the LAC ones as concerns their industry, generally speaking) (Ruano 2018). The development cooperation venue of the relation may be described as the most consistent one over time with visible and convincing fruits (Sanahuja 2011). On the other hand, it has been considerably diminished in 2014, as of the “graduation” of many LAC nations from low-income countries to middle-income countries, which makes them no longer entitled to receive such aid from the EU. Additionally, many LAC countries do not wish to nurture a relationship with Europe based solely on these

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lines and have a view of developing more South–South, South–North or triangular cooperation, building a less asymmetrical international partnership (Sanahuja 2015). Less attention, however, has been paid to the cultural dimension of these relations, with few studies recently bringing it into focus (Bonet and Schargorodsky 2019; Crusafon 2015). Within this field, an even lesser degree of interest has been shown to cultural heritage in the EU-LAC relations, which can perhaps be explained by the (i) the newness of the definition and consolidation of heritage as a part of international relations studies (Christofoletti 2017) and (ii) the scarce dialogue that makes, on the one hand, researchers in political science and international relations feel distant to the area of history and heritage and on the other, scholars dedicated to heritage studies rarely venture into its international uses in governance and relations (Winterc 2016, p. 17). It is, nonetheless, paramount to explore this research gap, for the rising relevance of culture, generally, and heritage, specifically, in international relations. In our growingly globalised, digitally and physically connected, post-industrial, service-based world, more sectors within governments and societies are able to operate internationally, among them, the cultural ones, and culture has gained over time a mobilisation power in society and a privileged place in the lives of people (Serodes 2007, p. 196). In this sense, cultural heritage is an important element in the building of our multilevel (personal, familial, communal, regional, national) identities and identifications. It is a venue for the knowledge of history, it inspires and engages people, being a potent driver for tourism, cultural and creative industries. In short, it is an asset for cultural diversity, creativity and intercultural dialogues; for education and development; for cohesive and inclusive societies; for employment and economic growth. Additionally, it is an important source of soft power in international relations, when the values it projects are shared with the international community to generate goodwill, appeal and attraction (Christofoletti 2017). Also, it is very impregnated with, and a powerful vector of, relations in aspects of harder political domains such as historymaking, identity, sovereignty, territory (Meskell 2018, p 226), as well as peace and war, reconciliation and reconstruction, international partnerships in a wider sense, as in economic and political alliances and integration. This is due to the fact that “it represents a peoples’ history and culture, and because it speaks to a sense of identity or belonging upon which a community, nation or State is founded. This makes it a powerful bargaining chip in a diplomatic setting” (Clarke 2018a). As both Europe and Latin America have been losing relevance globally, with both Asian emerging countries as well as the remaining American superpower, be it in the cultural or political, economic, development cooperation spheres, it is important to analyse and invest in every possible venue for the expansion and deepening of the global presence of both Europe and Latin America, and for the strengthening of ties between them. Hence, this article aims to identify and discuss the role of cultural heritage in the bi-regional international relations between Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean, focussing mainly on the action put forward from Europe towards Latin America. Specifically, the objectives are to (i) identify the main principles, purposes and narratives regarding cultural heritage as an object/arena of foreign relations, (ii) to outline the profile(s) of the actions undertaken in the domain, their focuses and

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objects, how they vary across the governance levels involved and/or have changed over time, (iii) to identify the actors involved in such actions/policies, (iv) whenever possible to identify the impact of such actions, as for generation of value, tourism, engagement, public image and relations between the people. To do this, the methodology used shall be a black letter and critical analysis, following Jagielska-Burduk and Stec (2019), and the examination of texts, institutional bodies and programmes involved in external action and cultural heritage management, following the studies organised by Bonet and Schargorodsky (2019) and building upon them. The theoretical frameworks of the study are the concepts of cultural heritage (CH), international cultural relations (ICR), cultural diplomacy (CD) and heritage diplomacy (HD) (Winter 2015, 2016; Clarke 2018a, b). Cultural heritage is understood here as the objects, places and practices of a group that have been continued over time and that are recognised as a representation of their knowledge, values, behaviours, traditions, history and, as such, are deemed as worthy of being valued, respected, protected and transmitted to future generations (Harrison 2013; Blake 2000; Hobsbawn and Ranger 1983). International cultural relations is considered as the “circulation of symbolic representations, practices, ways of living and objects across the borders” (Frank 2012, p. 373). Cultural diplomacy, for the purpose of this study, is exactly this, with the peculiarity of being carried out with the purposeful aim to represent a certain group of people before another, carrying certain conceptions of culture and acting to pursue objectives, as varied as they may be (Frank 2012, p. 373). Last but not least, heritage diplomacy can broadly be defined as “a set of processes whereby cultural and natural pasts shared between and across nations become subject to exchanges, collaborations and forms of cooperative governance” (Winter 2015, p. 1007). The study seeks to contribute to the research gap identified by analysing the presence of cultural heritage in the bi-regional relations between Europe and Latin America, focussing on the part driven by the former towards the latter at the biregional level. The corpus of analysis shall be action with cultural heritage at their centre, not on broader cultural programmes or financing schemes that also include cultural heritage, among other sectors such as cultural and creative industries. The mapping will be divided into two parts, related to the two strands of relations identified. The next section will examine CH action in the EU-LAC bi-regional relations carried out at the bi-continental or State level, where the two continents interact as regional blocs, addressing each other as a region through their bi-regional integration instances and member countries. The following section will analyse the bi-regional cultural, heritage diplomacy/relations from Europe to Latin America taking place at local and city level, where the interaction occurs through regional programmes addressed to cities and regions or through city networks with members of both regions. Finally, the concluding remarks will analyse briefly and broadly the actions identified, in order to sketch the overall interpretations of the panorama of cases, indicating the main trends perceived in relation to the four above-mentioned specific objectives.

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This article means not to be an exhaustive, complete or definitive study, in an area still to a large extent unexplored by literature, but rather to initiate a critical mapping, in an exploratory exercise of analysis, to be continued, improved and expanded by further studies.

14.2 Cultural Heritage in the EU-LAC Bi-regional Relations at State Level When it comes to European multilateral action in the cultural field in general, and in heritage specifically, two actors take the central stage (Smith 2020). The first is the Council of Europe (CoE),1 an intergovernmental organization founded in 1949 to uphold unity, democracy, human rights and rule of law in the continent, economic and social progress. It devises and monitors the implementation of texts and programmes and provides a space of dialogue, exchange, analysis and decision-making between the European States, civil society and experts (Smith 2020; de Jesus 2008). Regarding culture, it has an explicit remit to pursue its aim to achieve unity also by action in cultural matters, being the promotion of European cultural identity and diversity one of its core missions thereto related (Smith 2020; de Jesus 2008). Concerning cultural heritage, some of the conventions2 that it produced set blueprints for Europe and the international community as a whole. One of these is the Faro Convention of 2005, a framework convention “for the identification and management of all forms of cultural heritage” (Smith 2020, p. 916). Its wide resonance and importance derive from the fact that it recenters the discourse and practice of heritage, shifting its focus from its intrinsic existence and protection needs to its connection with people, human values and rights, the key role in sustainable development and in building peaceful, democratic societies (Smith 2020). The second key actor is the European Union (EU),3 which has only supporting competences in culture and thus can only assist, coordinate or complement the action of the Member States to contribute to the “improvement of the knowledge and dissemination of the culture and history of the European peoples; conservation 1

The CoE has currently 47 members: Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Republic of Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, San Marino, Serbia, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom. 2 The entirety of the Declarations, Recommendations and Key-texts of the CoE concerning culture and heritage can be found here: https://www.coe.int/en/web/culture-and-heritage/texts-ofreference. 3 The EU has currently 27 members: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

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and safeguarding of cultural heritage of European significance” (Birle et al. 2019, p. 88). Despite this limitation in legal competences, it has a considerable role in cultural affairs. And although less experienced than the CoE in cultural policy, the EU is better placed in terms of budget, structure and competences to carry out ICR, since it can represent the Member States internationally and sign agreements with third countries with full legal personality (Smith 2020). In 2007, the Commission put forward its first major policy document in the field of culture, the “European agenda for culture in a globalizing world” (EC 2007), in place until 2017, aligned with the 2005 CoE Faro Convention, focussing on the socio-economic aspects of culture and CH as assets. For the first time, the external aspect of EU cultural action is mentioned as one of the three priorities, “the promotion of culture as a vital element in the Union’s international relations”. Replacing this one, the 2018 New European Agenda for Culture (EC 2018) has a still more marked orientation to heritage as a resource, with an instrumental approach to it rather than one based on its intrinsic value (Smith 2020, p. 924; EPRS, 2019) and it further underlines the role of culture in external affairs. This remains the third goal of the EU action on culture, to strengthen the EU ICR, via three strands, among the reinforced international cooperation on cultural heritage. This cooperation on CH is also one of the three priorities of the Document of the European Commission (EC) and the European External Action Service (EEAS) on an EU Strategy for International Cultural Relations (EC and HR 2016), the guideline of the union’s exterior cultural action. This cooperation is envisaged in three main venues: research on CH, the combat of illegal trafficking of CH and the protection of threatened CH. This convergence of the documents show that there is a political will of the EU towards the promotion and protection of cultural heritage in the continent as well as the cooperation on it to foster partnerships (Birle et al. 2019, p. 88), and that this will comes first from a push from a cultural policy view, and later from one of diplomacy and foreign relations, within the structures of the European Union, being hence an “internal policy with newly emerging external engagement” (Damro et al. 2017, p. 117). However, in relation to the object of our analysis, CH in the EU-LAC relations, an analysis of these documents demonstrates that the priority of the EU cultural external action is in its neighbourhoods—to the East, in the South of the Mediterranean, in the ACP (Asia, Caribbean and Pacific, former colonies) countries, with whom it strongly nurtures ties of development cooperation deriving from former colonial relations, and, more recently, in the rising Asian countries, Latin America not being mentioned specifically in either of the three documents (Birle et al. 2019). Thus, we have been able to map only two projects that tackle cultural heritage in the bi-regional EU-LAC relations. The first follows the discussed trend of an outward projection of initially intra-European policies. Launched in 1987, the Council of Europe cultural routes4 awards this title to routes that follow a historical path or are newly created, focusing on a topic which is shared between several European

4

https://www.coe.int/en/web/cultural-routes/home; home.

https://www.coe.int/en/web/cultural-routes/

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countries and speaks of European values, history, art,5 being managed by one or several civil society organizations (CSO), with a potential for multilateral cooperation and shared action in priority areas (scientific research, sustainable development, heritage conservation, youth exchange, etc.). Based on a participative approach, reinforcing cultural cooperation between distinct sectors (CSO associations, universities and research groups, professional categories), promoting social cohesion and cultural ownership, while fomenting tourism leads to the discovery of places that are symbolic for European history and culture. In short, it is a programme that fosters social cohesion through heritage, as well as its protection and promotion by an active engagement of those managing the routes and those visiting them. In 2010, an Enlarged Partial Agreement (EPA) was signed and enabled the routes to be extended beyond the European continental space, to include, for instance, Latin American places. This was done to allow closer cooperation between States manifesting an interest in the development of cultural routes. The EPA, hence, reinforces the role of cultural routes as instruments for international cooperation (Severo 2017, p. 140), redefining them as: cultural, educational heritage and tourism cooperation project aiming at the development and promotion of an itinerary or a series of itineraries based on a historic route, a cultural concept, figure or phenomenon with a transnational importance and significance for the understanding and respect of common European values (art. 1, Council of Europe 2013).

The expansion to include non-State Party Members included Latin American spaces, as in the case of “the European Routes of Emperor Charles V, whose network counts members in Panama; the Réseau Art Nouveau Network, with members in Cuba, and Le Corbusier Destinations, including members in Argentina” (Dominioni 2020, p. 3). This is an example of heritage diplomacy started inwardly and continued abroad, to promote links between countries and peoples, to boost the sentiment of belonging to Europe and ownership to European cultural operators and citizens in relation to their history and heritage. The inclusion of Latin American places is an act of heritage diplomacy that brings the European cultural legacy in these countries to the fore, and consequently, the common history and shared values between the regions (Dominioni 2020, p. 3). Furthermore, it is a means of cultural cooperation— since the expertise and funds of the CoE Cultural Routes that come alongside the title of Cultural Route to help maintain the LAC places included in the routes—and influence, in the sense that it shows Latin Americans a successful model of heritage diplomacy, that could be further developed in other endogenous projects (Dominioni 2020, p.3). The second project that falls under the scope of this study is the EULAC Museums6 project—Museums and Community: Concepts, Experiences and Sustainability in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, designed under the auspices of ICOM— International Council of Museums, in 2014, carried out alongside it and the EULAC 5

Examples are Santiago de Compostela Pilgrim route, industrial heritage, Jewish heritage, prehistoric heritage, thermal waters, ceramic, art nouveau routes. 6 https://eulacmuseums.net/index.php.

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Foundation, and funded by the Horizon 2020 EU Research and Innovation mechanism between 2016 and 2021 (Eulac Museums 2021a). Of a quite different nature to the inclusion of Latin American spaces in cultural touristic routes of an eminent European character, this project consists of a consortium of scholars who sought to carry out a comparative analysis of small to medium-sized rural museums and their communities in the EU and LAC regions, and to develop associated history and theory. Hence, it involved museum professionals and a total of 102 community museums, in Scotland (with 8 museums involved), Portugal (43), Spain (8), France (1, in Guadeloupe, one of its territories in the Caribbean), Peru (8), Chile (24), Costa Rica (4) and the West Indies (6, in the countries of Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Jamaica, Cayman Islands and Barbados) (EULAC Museums 2021b). The axis that organises the project is the participants’ common work on, and commitment to, community museology. All the museums, higher education institutions taking part in the project7 and scholars involved have as a focus the ecomuseums or community museums. These are small and medium-sized, oftentimes rural museums, that exist to be a place of memory to allow underrepresented, marginalised communities to articulate their narrative, institutionalise their histories and stories, being protagonists of history-making. They ultimately contribute to environmental sustainability, enforcement of diversity and inclusivity, community empowerment and cohesion by boosting the communities’ self-consciousness and self-initiative. The project aimed to map (i) the possible definition(s) of “community museums” and “sustainability” in the bi-regional context; (ii) the most important changes that small-scale museum communities are experiencing in EU and LAC; (iii) the most cutting-edge initiatives of museums to promote social inclusion and cohesion in each region; (iv) how small-scale regional museums can gain agency in promoting best practices amongst museums and policymakers on a global stage (Eulac Museums 2021a). The project was expressly designed to address eight of the ten critical issues consisting of priority areas in the EU-CELAC Action Plan (2013–15),8 in the realm of small, local museums and their communities. The work was divided into eight different Working Packages,9 each coordinated by one of the partner higher education 7

University of St Andrews, Scotland. International Council of Museums (ICOM); National Museum of Archaeology, Portugal; Austral University of Chile; National Museum of Costa Rica; University of the West Indies, Jamaica; Pontifical Catholic University of Peru; University of Valencia, Spain. 8 1. Science, research, innovation and technology; 2. Sustainable development; environment; climate change; biodiversity; energy; 3. Regional integration and interconnectivity to promote social inclusion and cohesion; 4. Migration; 5. Education and employment to promote social inclusion and cohesion; 6. The world drug problem; 7. Gender; 8. Investments and entrepreneurship for sustainable development. The two key areas not mentioned are 9. Higher education and 10. Citizen security, although it could be argued that by promoting the collaboration of the higher education institutions listed in the previous note, the project is helping to build capacity, deepen relations, show a successful example of joint work in this respect as well. The absence of any direct culture in this joint EU-CELAC action plan is worthy of note, pointing out its condition of a non-priority area. 9 WP1: Coordination and Project Management (led by USTAN); WP2: Technology and Innovation for Bi-Regional Integration (led by MNA/DGPC); WP3: Chile Case Study (led by UACh); WP4: Museum Education for Social Inclusion and Cohesion (led by USTAN); WP5: Innovation and

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institutions, focusing on either a specific issue within the general objectives of the project or on a cross-cutting capacity needed to train the actors involved and for the smooth running of the project. Among the outcomes of the project, there are academic and dissemination products that have been produced through actions very much benefiting and putting in the centre of the conversation the museums, communities and peoples involved. In academic terms, scholars’ interviews, scholarly articles and books were published,10 with analysis of the exchanges promoted and lessons learned, with the contributions from the bi-regional studies, youth exchanges, experiences to the concepts that are key to this community-based museology and its paradigmatic examples. As for research-based dissemination products, virtual museums11 and a YouTube channel12 were set up and inventory programmes resulted in virtual databases, collecting data of all museums involved in the project,13 of both intangible and tangible heritage,14 in both regions, which allow anybody to have online access to them. This project is an example of the multidimensional presence of heritage in international cultural relations anchored in research-led objectives and is based on cooperation that works bottom-up in practical, discursive and conceptual terms. In practical terms, the main operators are professionals working in the participating community museums, contributing to the knowledge-making of the research initiative, allowing the underrepresented communities in EU and LAC to have their place in history, and contributing to environmental sustainability and community empowerment while building a common knowledge space on the subject between the regions. In discursive and conceptual terms, it is not knowledge from the Western traditional intellectual centres that is applied, transferred and transformed to the field in non-Western spaces, but rather a horizontal dialogue between it and one that emanates from the experience of these communities and their institutions, shaped in an alternative model to the traditional museum. It is based on the conception that “Europe has much to learn from Latin America and the Caribbean in this regard” (Eulac Museums 2021b) and on a project ethos of “equal sharing of concepts, experiences, and sustainability surrounding museums and communities in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean” (Eulac Museums 2021a). By contributing to the visibility, empowerment, development of the regions and countries involved, being centred in a museological praxis imagined and developed by the communities themselves, Eulac Museums is a project that has a very modern profile, profoundly based on horizontal cooperation, on a promising conception of international cultural relations that does not showcase one party’s (in this case, Europe) culture to the other (here, LAC), but foster ties Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Museums (led by UVEG); WP6: Peru Case Study (led by PUCP); WP7: Exhibiting Migration and Gender (led by UWI); WP8: Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation (led by MNA/DGPC). 10 They are available at: https://eulacmuseums.net/index.php/resources/detail-4. 11 https://eu-lac.org/virtual-museums/; https://www.eu-lac.org/vmcarib/. 12 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN8SSB51YZ15-8Fc_8CTUlw. 13 https://eulacmuseums.net/index.php/museums-database. 14 https://eulacmuseums.net/index.php/tangible-intangible-database.

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and bonds on the commonalities existing between one and this other, here, community museums, and on enhancing the other’s culture itself (Goff 2013; Mark 2009; Mitchel 1986; Arnt 2005). The non-direct involvement of international organisations (the EU’s presence is as a funder, ICOM and EULAC Foundation are supporting the work that scholars, museums and communities do) and national governments is also a trait that may have allowed for more ownership and better legitimacy and acceptance of those involved (Kersel and Luke 2015, p. 79; Goff 2013, p. 10).

14.3 Cultural Heritage in the EU-LAC Bi-regional Relations at Local and City Level Concerning EU-LAC bi-regional relations in the cultural sphere, those carried out at the city or local level deserve mentioning when it comes to heritage diplomacy and heritage centrality in cultural relations. Cultural heritage is present (1) in development cooperation programmes targeted at cities and having them as main agents on the ground and (2) in a network connecting member cities of both regions, based on a joint project between the regions. In the first venue of international relations carried out at the local level, development cooperation programmes such as the URB-AL take the central stage. The programme was initiated in 1995 by the European Commission within the framework of the regional development cooperation with Latin America, as an initiative of horizontal decentralised cooperation. It had local authorities of the EU and LAC as well as other actors in the urban sector as the protagonists to work towards a better level of social cohesion in society within the local, regional and provincial spheres in Latin America (EC 2015, p. 14). The first two phases of the programme, URB-AL I (1996–2000, with 14 million euros) and URB-AL II (2001–2006, with 50 million euros), functioned with thematic networks, each one having a city as the respective coordinator (Rothfuß 2006, p. 60). Among the thematic networks (8 in the first phase15 and 14 in the second16 ), there was one exclusively dedicated to the Conservation of the historic urban contexts, with Vicenza, in Italy, coordinating it (Rothfuß 2006, p. 62). This longstanding focus on the recovery, preservation, protection and enhancement of historic centres arguably points to two important aspects of the action, in the frame of a development cooperation programme. On the one hand, it shows its underlying character as a 15

1. Drugs in cities (coordinating city: Santiago, Chile); 2. Conservation of the historic urban contexts (Vicenza, Italy); 3. Democracy in Cities (Ville d’Issy-les-Moulineaux, France); 4. The city as promoter of economic development (Madrid, Spain); 5. Urban social policies (Montevideo, Uruguay); 6. Urban environment (Malaga, Spain); 7. Management and control of urbanisation (Rosario, Argentina);8. Control of urban mobility (Stuttgart, Germany). 16 9. Local financing and participatory budget (Porto Alegre, Brazil); 10. Fight against urban poverty (São Paulo, Brasil);11. Lodging in the city (that was not carried out, since it did not get applications); 12. Promotion of women in the decision-making local instances (Barcelona, Spain); 13. City and information society (Bremen, Germany); 14. Citizen security in the city (Valparaíso, Chile).

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foreign policy instrument, in the sense that it promotes social and cultural ties based on the colonial shared past of the continents, thus investing in the identification of the LAC participants with their countries’ European ties. On the other hand, especially if we compare it with the other thematic networks and read them as indicatives of the development challenges of the cities, the choice of this theme evidences a notion that the maintenance of cultural heritage in people’s surroundings is important to their quality of life. In other words, an environment that is not decayed and does not feel decadent but is kept in a good state, “alive”, drives social well-being, favouring social cohesion. The third phase, URB-AL III (2007–2013, with 64.4 million euros) changed its format and privileged not thematic networks but territorial projects, run under the coordination of three regional offices (Andean zone, Southern Cone and Central America, Mexico and Cuba), with the overview of the Office of Coordination and Orientation (OCO) working as strategic head for the projects, offering support in three different areas: consultancy and technical assistance, training and exchange of experiences, communication and visibility (OCO 2013). Of the 20 projects, three can be identified as tackling issues related to heritage enhancement, protection and conservation. The first is the Turistic Borders Project, in the Andes, coordinated by Frosinone, in Italy, that acted to develop social cohesion, inclusion and development by supporting sustainable tourism in Argentinian-Bolivian, Argentinian-Peruvian border areas, zones well defined through the common territory, cultural heritage and identity across the borders. The project implemented routes of ethno-ecotourism, supporting a touristic approach based on sustainable management of the environment and on the cultural identity of its people (OCO 2013, p. 19–23). The second is the URB-AL Pampa Project, in the Southern Cone, coordinated by Borba, in Portugal. It aimed to better the quality of life in environmentally protected zones in the borders between Uruguay and Brazil, to “create new sources of income and strengthen existing ones that contribute to the territorial and cultural improvement and the protection of natural resources” (OCO 2013, p. 49). This was done, among other actions, by fostering or boosting local policies for the enhancement and promotion of cultural and touristic heritage (OCO 2013, p. 49). Last but not least, the Habitar Goes Project, also in the Southern Cone, under the supervision of Montevideo, in Uruguay, sought to boost social and territorial cohesion via the regeneration of rundown central areas, with citizens’ participation. This included restoring built cultural heritage and strengthening or recovering cultural identity and historical memory of the places and the people (OCO 2013, p. 77). The shift from a thematic network expressly centred on urban historical heritage conservation to a presence of heritage approaches in projects primarily focused on the concretion of sustainable development goals such as sustainable tourism, crossborder cooperation and territory management to improve life condition is very significant. It shows concretely the above-mentioned recentering of European discourse and practices towards cultural heritage from an emphasis on built heritage and its intrinsic value to an instrumental perspective, centred on unlocking the socio-economic potentials of it as an asset and on the cultural meaning of it as a human right, promoter of

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intercultural dialogues, peaceful and democratic societies. Consequently, it marks a shift from a development cooperation action targeted at heritage, to have spillover effects in communities, to one that aims to strengthen communities, which is to be achieved, among other actions, through the efficient handling of cultural heritage. This is a good example of cultural heritage in international cultural relations, in a broader sense, in our view falling out of the categories of cultural or heritage diplomacy. Finally, in the second venue of bi-regional relations carried out at the local level, we have a city network that could be classified also as a development cooperation project. URBELAC is the Urban European and Latin American and Caribbean Cities Network, created in 2010, by the Interamerican Development Bank (IDB) and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO), due to their intention to invest in regional and local governments as promoters of sustainable developments and to assist them to face the challenges that this central role entails, in terms of harmonising social development, urban productivity and environmental protection in the context of an increasing urban population across the two regions (EC 2014, p. 4). This is achieved through round tables, working groups, continuous exchanges between administrations of the participating cities, field visits, newsletters and electronic information flow (EC 2014, p. 6). Being a city network created by these two regional international agencies and with work on the ground developed by its member-cities,17 it can be classified under the umbrella of bi-regional cooperation programmes from Europe targeting LAC and involving cultural heritage management at the city and local level. This aspect is present in two of the three working axes of the last identified phase of the programme (URBELAC II)18 : the axis 1, management model in specific areas and the axis 3, Tourism. The first one has allowed member cities to support each other in management projects of their respective historic centres, involving the cities of Edinburgh, Cuenca, Mar del Plata and Venice, led by the supervising city of La Laguna. The second one has, as the main activity carried out, defined a model to assess the positive and negative impacts of tourism on the social and economic tissue of historic centres, with the supervision and participation of the same cities as the first axis, with the addition of Oporto and Málaga (EC 2014, p. 13). The trend of including cultural heritage in a framework of cooperation for the capacity building of administrations to work for the well-being and development of communities is in this network confirmed and furthered. Furthermore, the excellent results achieved—in terms of achieving the initially set goals, engaging people and engineering ownership in local administrations, leaving a legacy as to policymaking 17

The last mapping of the participating cities (2012)—which are not permanently in the project, changing with its phases and working axes—has pointed out: Cochabamba (Bolivia), Cuenca (Ecuador), Manizales (Colombia), Mar de Plata (Argentina), Pereira (Colombia), Edinburgh (UK), La Laguna and Malaga (Spain), Oporto (Portugal) and Venice (Italy). 18 We chose not to include the URBELAC I in the analysis because none of its working pillars, nor its deriving identified projects included primarily or secondarily on cultural heritage, being centred at (i) environmental sustainability and climate change, (ii) sustainable urban development, and (iii) fiscal and governance sustainability (EC 2014, p. 5).

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and governance and management in the participating cities (EC 2014)—similar to the URB-AL programme (OCO 2013)—confirm that acting at local level maximises the local ownership and direct involvement both of the technicians, experts and public managers who carry out the initiatives, and of the beneficiary citizens, key factors of success of any international (cultural) relations strategy of one country or region towards another, and any of the public policy execution.

14.4 Analysis and Concluding Remarks This study has aimed to analyse the international relations between Europe and Latin America carried out around the axis of cultural heritage, through the conceptual lens of heritage diplomacy, cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations. The mapping carried out identified the projects in which these relations happen, their profiles, objects and objectives, their merits and limits, the actors responsible for them. It enables us to outline some main traits of these relations, albeit in a non-exhaustive, exploratory characterization. First, in general, it is possible to conclude that the presence of cultural heritage in the EU-LAC bi-continental relations and in the bi-regional ones carried out at the local level does not happen in a long-term solid strategy revealing a cultural/heritage diplomacy/relations perspective of Europe towards Latin America, with an identifiable overall profile and goal according to, and towards which, the different programmes and projects act. Rather, it is based on punctual programmes and projects that do not result in permanent foreign policies, and that do not necessarily relate to each other in objects, methods and participants. Furthermore, these programmes and projects have a limited duration in time, determined to a great extent by the financing possibility envisioned from the regional or interregional structures within which they happen. This points to the fact that heritage diplomacy and heritage-based international cultural relations are by no means a priority in the foreign action in the axis Europe-Latin America and that there is not yet a defined strategy in this realm, which is only newly emerging. The recent emergence of this area in the EU-LAC biregional international relations may be one of the factors that also explain the scarce bibliography on the matter—reason for which many of the references here cited are institutionally derived and offer rarely critical perspectives and information on concrete results, which would allow for a deeper assessment of the impacts, strengths and weaknesses, rooms for improvement of these heritage-centred initiatives. Secondly, these programmes and projects seem to be greatly determined by the actors that conceive them and carry them out. The Council of Europe, which is a European intergovernmental organisation that works for European unity, development and democracy act towards this goal also through heritage in the Cultural Routes, programme which is extended to third countries and which highlights cultural significant aspects of European identity and history. EULAC Museums, which exerts cultural relations through heritage in a project which is research-led in goals, profile and methods, aims to produce and spread access to knowledge, both physically

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and digitally, through bi-regional collaborative work and horizontal dialogues, in a multistakeholder approach involving and impacting sectors of societies so different as the youth, academia and traditional communities. The decentralised cooperation programmes carried out at the local level in URB-AL, coming from the European Union, targeted at, and concretised alongside, Latin American city partners highlighted first the built cultural heritage issued of Euro-Latin American colonial ties, and secondly focused more on the local communities. Throughout its trajectory, however, they reasoned and acted responding to the standards, (foreign and cultural) policy strategies, heritage management principles set at the European level, as well as to the language, methods and overarching principles of global international partnerships for the concretion of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A similar comment can be made to the city network URBELAC developed through the joint funding of the EC and the IDB. It responded to common challenges faced by cities in both regions, boosting the exchange of good practices, experience and professionals in the framework of the achievement of social and economic goals, translatable into SGDs. Thirdly, the pulverised nature of the programmes carried out does not allow us to spot remarkable differences in profile, methods and the pattern of results achieved in the cultural heritage action between the two regions at the two different governance levels examined. This may point to a lack of agency of the city network URBELAC and local governments involved in URB-AL since they respond to policies, views and objectives of the foreign policies of their leading countries/regional organisations. Or it may mean that heritage diplomacy and cultural heritage in the international cultural relations between the regions have more common than different traits across bi-continental and bi-regional level carried out at local and city level. Fourthly, regarding commonalities, one common trait stands out in the examination of these four mapped projects. All of them are carried out in a framework of cultural cooperation. The Latin American countries and cities are not merely the object/target of the actions, receiving exhibitions, products, narratives through European cultural heritage but rather participants, actively organising, taking part in and executing the initiatives, that involve LAC museums, city centres, places alongside their European counterparts. This may be explained by the need for legitimacy, acceptance in diplomacy and international cultural relations in a post-colonial world of decolonial turns empowering global southern countries, wishing to engage internationally in a sovereign stance and on equal footing to northern-rich countries, former colonisers (Bonet and Schargorodsky 2019). Last but not least, a significant change in time can be observed in the programmes and projects here examined. In the earlier initiatives, the intention was to build ties and develop LAC society based on the promotion, protection and enhancement of LAC cultural heritage of European origins. The more recent initiatives, on the contrary, sought to understand LAC’s multidimensional cultural heritage management and characteristics, to learn the lessons communities, public managers and cultural operators had to offer, to assess their main challenges and to help them face them.

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The Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe were launched in the 1980s. At the time, the aim of the institution with its cultural programmes was to strengthen European common identity; at present times, on the contrary, the strategy is to foster a sense of belonging to Europe by highlighting its diversity (Smith 2020). The extension of these routes to Latin America, although recent, brings with it their original purpose to the LAC continent. Hence, it is a transatlantic EU-LAC heritage diplomacy initiative based on conceptions of “shared history and culture” between the regions, thus emphasising the European heritage presence in Latin America. The first two phases of URB-AL acted on a similar overarching principle, although focusing on development, being not heritage diplomacy, in our view, but an example of ICR around heritage, of a primarily European character. The EULAC museums, the last phase of URB-AL and the URBELAC network, were started in the 2010 decade and worked with Latin American community museums and cities in their own right, hence working cooperatively with Latin Americans and with Latin American heritage. The first project was a knowledge production-led initiative that was carried out in a horizontal manner. The second was a development cooperation programme aiming to support communities through the unleashing of the social and economic potentials of cultural heritage. The third was a city network that helped cities in both regions tackle common multidimensional challenges through heritage. This may be formerly explained by the shift in emphasis of cultural heritage management and policies at the EU level in the 2000s from things (built heritage in its own right and value) to people (both tangible and intangible heritage in their social and economic values to society and in their character of human rights). Additionally, the recent gradual development of the EU’s strategy, both in culture and in international cultural relations, has been guided by a conception not of a showcasing strategy, traditionally related to cultural diplomacy, of impressing the other with one’s own culture, but of building ties and good relations through collaborative work, the valorisation of the other’s culture and the identification of common points. This may be derived from an understanding that this is most effective to build solid bridges between people and countries through cultural diplomacy (Goff 2013; Mark 2009; Mitchel 1986; Arnt 2005), possibly even more so in the sensitive field of North–South relations between regions that were former colonisers and colonised, respectively. Thus, this analysis suggests that the EU-LAC bi-regional relations carried out via cultural heritage are (1) not yet consolidated in a broad foreign, cultural action strategy, be it of cultural or heritage diplomacy or of international cultural relations, but rather made through punctual projects and programmes; (2) arguably to a great extent determined by the precise actors, within the bi-regional relations, that devise and manage the projects and programmes, if intergovernmental organisations, academic scholars, specific regional agencies; (3) not significantly different when carried out at bi-continental level or bi-regional level with cities and local governments as protagonists; (4) arguably very similar in relation to methodology, privileging cultural cooperation around heritage; (5) changing in time, responding

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to global and regional changes in social sensitivities and conceptual understandings of cultural heritage, its management and international cultural relations.

References Ayuso A (2015) La Asociación UE-CELAC y la revisión del concepto de interregionalismo multinivel. Comentario Internacional. Revista del Centro Andino de Estudios Internacionales 15:177–207 Arndt RT (2005) The first resort of kings: American cultural diplomacy in the twentieth century. Potomac Books, Inc., Washington D.C Birle P, Góbel B, Krusche J (2019) The cultural dimension of European Union-Latin American relations through the lens of cross-cutting issues of mobility, inequality, diversity and sustainability. In: Bonet L, Schargorodsky H (eds) The challenges of cultural relations between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean. Quaderns Gescènic. Collecció Quaderns de Cultura n. 5, Barcelona, pp 85–108 Blake J (2000) On defining the cultural heritage. Int Comp Law Q 49(1):61–85 Bonet L, Schargorodsky H (eds) (2019) The challenges of cultural relations between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean. Quaderns Gescènic. Collecció Quaderns de Cultura n. 5, Barcelona Christofoletti R (org) (2017) Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Editora Universitária Leopoldianum: Santos. 466p Clarke A (2018a) Heritage diplomacy. Australian policy and history. https://aph.org.au/2018/10/ heritage-diplomacy/ Clarke A (2018b) Heritage diplomacy. In: Handbook of cultural security. Edward Elgar, pp 417–436 Council of Europe (2013). Resolution CM/Res(2013)66 confirming the establishment of the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes (EPA). https://search.coe.int/cm/Pages/result_ details.aspx%3FObjectID%3D09000016805c69ac Crusafon C (2015) EU cultural cooperation with third countries: the Cases of Latin America and the Mediterranean. In: Psychogiopoulou E (ed) Cultural Governance and the European Union, protecting and promoting cultural diversity in Europe. Springer, London, pp 225–236 Damro C, Gstöhl S, Schunz S (eds) (2017) The European union’s evolving external engagement: towards new sectoral diplomacies? (1st ed) Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315169958 De Jesus J (2008) Cultural heritage, impact assessment and the Council of Europe Conventions. In: 28th annual conference of the international association for impact assessment, Perth, Australia Dominioni S (2020) Cultural routes of the Council of Europe: providing a unique platform for shared European history and heritage. EULAC Foundation Newsletter 03/2020. Cultural heritage in the European Union, Latin America and the Caribbean, pp 2–3 EULAC MUSEUMS (2021a) EULAC relations and our project. https://eulacmuseums.net/index. php/detail-1 EULAC MUSEUMS (2021b) Museums. https://eulacmuseums.net/index.php/project-en/mus eums-pt-2 European Commission (2007) European agenda for culture in a globalizing world. COM, 242 final. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52007DC0242&from=EN European Commission (2014) URBELAC Network of European, Latin American and Caribbean cities for integrated and sustainable urban development 2010–2013. https://ec.europa.eu/reg ional_policy/sources/cooperate/international/pdf/idb_urbelac_en.pdf European Commission (2015) Partners in development. European Union–Latin America and the Caribbean development cooperation guide. Update 2015. Brussels/Luxemburg. https://ec.europa. eu/europeaid/sites/devco/files/ebook_pdf.pdf

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European Commission (2018) New European agenda for culture. COM, 267 final. https://eur-lex. europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52018DC0267&from=EN European Commission and High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (2016) Towards an EU strategy for international cultural relations. Joint communication to the european parliament and the council. JOIN (2016) 29 final. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legalcontent/EN/TXT/%3Furi%3DJOIN%3A2016%3A29%3AFIN15/01/2019 European parliamentary research service (2019) A new European agenda for culture. At a glance. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2019/633140/EPRS_ATA%282 019%29633140_EN.pdf Fontelles JB (2020) América Latina-Europa: la “otra” relación transatlántica. Análisis Carolina 51:1 Frank R (2012) Culture et relations internationales: les diplomaties culturelles. Pour l’histoire des relations internationales. Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, pp 371–386 Hobsbawn E, Ranger T (eds) (1983) The invention of tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Gardini GL, Ayuso A (2015) EU-Latin America and Caribbean Inter-regional relations: complexity and change. Atlantic Future Working Paper, 24:1–24 Goff PM (2013) Cultural diplomacy. In: Cooper AF, Heine J, Thakur R The Oxford handbook of modern diplomacy. Oxford University Press, Oxford Harrison R (2013) Heritage: critical approaches. Routledge Haider W, Batalla IC (eds) (2020) Revisiting bi-regional relations: the EU-Latin American dialogue and diversification of interregional cooperation. EULAC Foundation, Hamburg Jagielska-Burduk A, Stec P (2019) Council of Europe cultural heritage and education policy: preserving identity and searching for a common core? Revista Electrónica Interuniversitaria de Formación del Profesorado 22(1):1–12 Kersel MM, Luke C (2015) Civil societies? Heritage diplomacy and Neo-imperialism. In: Koch F City-regions and their role in the Euro-Latin American relations, Reg Stud Reg Sci 2(1):363–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/21681376.2015.1053515 Meskell L (ed) Global heritage: a reader. Wiley, pp 70–93 Mark S (2009) A greater role for cultural diplomacy. Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael, pp 1–51 Meskell L (2018) A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, world heritage, and the dream of peace. Oxford University Press, Oxford Mitchell J (1986) International cultural relations. Allen and Unwin/British Council, London OCO (2013) Main achievements and impacts of the URB-AL III Programme projects. Barcelona. https://issuu.com/urbal3/docs/resultados_e_impactos_urb-al_iii.en/89 Rothfuß R (2006) Transnationale Städtenetzwerke als Instrument interkommunaler Kooperation im Zeitalter globaler Vernetzung: das europäisch-lateinamerikanische Städtenetzwerk URB-AL. PhD Thesis, University of Tübingen. 365p. https://d-nb.info/983670773/34 Ruano L (2018) Dealing with diversity. The EU and Latin America today. Chaillot papers. EU Institute for Security Studies. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union Sanahuja JA (2015) The EU and CELAC: reinvigorating a strategic partnership. EULAC Foundation, Hamburg Sanahuja JA (2011) La política de desarrollo de la UE y América Latina: Estrategias e instrumentos de cooperación para la asociación birregional. Cuadernos Cealci 12:1–82 Serodes F (2007) Le nouveau rôle diplomatique informel des institutions culturelles. In: Tobelem JM, dir., L’arme de la culture. Les stratégies de la diplomatie culturelle non-gouvernementale, Paris, L’Harmattan, pp 194–216 Severo M (2017) European cultural routes: building a multi-actor approach. Museum Int 69(1– 2):136–145 Smith RC (2020) Europe. In: Francioni F, Vrdoljak AF (eds) The Oxford handbook of international cultural heritage law. Oxford University Press, USA, pp 908–930

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Winter T (2015) Heritage diplomacy. Int J Herit Stud 21(10):997–1015 Winter T (2016) Heritage diplomacy: entangled materialities of international relations. Future Anterior: J Hist Preserv Hist Theory Criticism 13(1):3–17

Part III

Soft Power As a Key?

Chapter 15

Three Themes in Transition: Soft Power, Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Goods, and the Cartography of World Heritage Sites Rodrigo Christofoletti Abstract A wide range of historical examples is designed to illustrate the effects of soft power on the preservation of cultural heritage in the context of international relations, but the essential focus of this text falls on three special areas: (a) criticism of cartography represented in the list of world heritage sites and of world heritage sites linked to UNESCO; (b) the growing action around illicit trafficking and the repatriation/return of cultural goods, as well as the universe of the so-called illicit criminogenic collectables; (c) the mapping of other actors in the production, maintenance and management of heritage with the increasing presence of themes that address “Africanities”, “Asianities”, “Latinities”, and “Orientalisms” (so little explored by our researchers, given the hegemony of the Europeanist/American vision), themes resulting from the dialogue between multiple areas of knowledge and the concept of soft power. Thus, the text faces a central task to show that the connection between cultural heritage, international relations, and soft power is relevant and, therefore, seeks to document significant examples for this purpose, choosing Brazil as a comparative field with international examples. Given the importance built around this category of analysis, it seems appropriate to offer research possibilities on the functioning of soft power (concept questioning on the margins of history), thus providing a conceptual basis and rigorous methodological approaches on its aegis. Keywords Traffick illicit of cultural goods · Cartograph of UNESCO · Mapping of other actors This paper is financed by National Funds through the FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project UIDB/04059/2020. Cultural Heritage Professor at the graduation and post-graduation in History at Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Minas Gerais, Brazil. Leader of the research-group Heritage and International Relations (CNPq). Collaborator of the Transdisciplinary Research Centre “Culture, Space, and Memory” (CITCEM-FLUP). Doctorate in History, Politics, and Cultural Heritage by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV-CPDOC). Acts on the interface between History and International Relations focusing on cultural heritage. R. Christofoletti (B) Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Minas Gerais, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_15

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15.1 State-of-the-Art: Soft Power at the Margins of History “What I call Attraction may be performed by impulse, or by some other means unknown to me. I use that Word here to signify in general any Force by which Bodies tend towards one another, whatsoever be the Cause.” (Isaac Newton)

In international politics,1 power is considered a means and an end through which a relation of domination of one party over the other is developed, which guarantees one of the parties the possibility of determining the behaviour of the others in pursuit of its interests. The definition serves as a stimulus to broaden our understanding of the proposed object. By its very nature, soft power2 is a relative and intangible concept, inherently difficult to quantify. The relational character of soft power gives rise to a substantially complex comparative plane, in which transnational comparisons become complicated and difficult. Moreover, what is loved in one country may be repulsed in another. Sometimes resisted by commentators who see soft power only as a powerful current for the maintenance of the North American status quo,3 the concept needs to be understood in its entirety and cannot be understood in a naive way. In confluence, there is a long list of human endeavours that first come to mind when thinking of modern diplomatic concerns: economics, military affairs, crime, health, environment, terrorism, among others. On the other hand, the generic theme of international cultural heritage has hardly been seen in the list of such diplomatic concerns. The importance of its knowledge is obliterated by other issues of greater general interest, such as contemporary humanitarian crises (refuge, civil wars, and field experiences), new trends in foreign policy, contemporary urgent issues, global politics, negotiations, and conflicts, among other topics considered more burning 1

This research is a corollary of the project “Heritage and International Relations”, registered with CNPq, which began in 2018 and which investigates approaches to the preservation of cultural heritage at the interface between History and International Relations. 2 Throughout the twentieth century, some of the best-known examples of contemporary soft power are: the Russian ballet, the North American, and Indian film industries, French fashion, and the impact of lesser-known manifestations such as the Japanese culture of manga, anime, and games, Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas, some musical genres such as Bossa Nova and Tango and even African and Chinese arts, etc. (Christofoletti, 2017, 14). 3 Some of the critics of the concept popularised by Nye are quite vehement: Niall Ferguson argues that the problem brought about by soft power is that it would be a kind of “velvet glove concealing an iron hand”. Ferguson, “Think Again: Power,” p. 21. In his turn, Kostas Ifantis, on a comparable note, argues there seems to be a tendency to call anything attractive, “soft power”. Kostas Ifantis, “Soft Power: Overcoming the Limits of a Concept,” in Routledge Handbook of Diplomacy and Statecraft, ed. B. J. C. McKercher (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), p. 445. (Apud: Ohnesorge, 2020, 96).

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issues. This means that cultural heritage still seeks a more forceful mention in the literature of diplomacy and by extension, international relations. Although there is the perception that this is an abstract theme, there is, in direct proportion, a propositional agenda in the case of the preservation of cultural heritage and it is in this agenda that this research is inserted. The broadening of the spectrum of themes related to the cultural universe, especially cultural heritage, has moved on to broader issues, such as the debate on trafficking and repatriation of cultural goods; the wave of destruction of heritage sponsored by radical ethnic and religious groups around the world; the increasing protagonist dimension of immateriality in the universe of cultural goods; the presence of other actors in the production, maintenance, and management of heritage, as well as the intensification of comparative studies between UNESCO’s member states: result of the recent dialogue between various areas of knowledge and the concept of soft power.

15.2 What is Soft Power? 15.2.1 How Have History, International Relations, and Heritage Incorporated It? In the Western world, despite the expansion of discussions on cultural heritage reaching several areas, the practice of preservation policies and the use of cultural assets as examples of these policies remain scarcely studied. In this scenario, the central theoretical framework of this research discusses the concept of soft power, propagated4 by the American theorist Joseph Nye Jr., who recovered arguments from classical realism related to the capacity of conviction, persuasion, attraction and organised them under a new theoretical framework. In the early 1990s, the term “soft power” came to be used by academics like Nye (1990, 134) as the ability to influence other people to do what you want through attraction rather than coercion. Thus, soft power would be the cultural, ideological, and political identity that derives from a kind of cooperative behaviour, i.e. that premise constitutes an integral part of the notion of soft power. Craig Hayden, for instance, has simultaneously identified that the “potential of culture, political ideals and the legitimacy foreign policy” would form the three constituent resources of soft power (Craig, 2012, 29). Culture has often been considered one of its main pillars. At the same time, however, it has also been observed that culture does not lend itself to clear analytical determinations: questions 4

Together, Nye’s work on soft power serves as a parti pris and theoretical-conceptual reference for the project at hand. Although introduced into international relations discourse by Joseph Nye after the end of the Cold War, soft power picks up on an age-old tradition. The concept of soft power still raises a high degree of discussion about its supposed imprecision requiring a complete re-examination by the historiography that studies it. For further information on the subject, see Ohnesorge, 2020, 91.

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of definition, origin, transmission, reception, and long-term impact remain unclear, after all, “culture” is notoriously a difficult word to define as it is imbued with many shades of understanding. Indeed, in human sciences, “culture” is perhaps as contested and controversial a concept as “power”; consequently, we can understand culture as “a broad concept that means many different things to different people” (Tommler, 2014, 67). To understand the interface between cultural heritage and international relations, the expression “soft power” helps us scrutinise paths that are still scarcely trodden. In international politics, power is considered a means and an end through which a relation of domination of one party over the other is developed, which guarantees one of the parties the power to determine the behaviour of the others in pursuit of its interests (Ferguson 2003, 18). This definition serves as a leitmotif for understanding the role of cultural heritage preservation in international relations. Hand in hand with the increase in perceived interest in the existence of soft power, the visibility of this topic in the academic world is growing as much as in the practice of the political arena. In line with these sentiments, one can say that there is probably no broader and better-accepted concept among policymakers in international relations than that of soft power.5 The term soft power, therefore, has been applied in various understandings, some of which have taken unrecognisable forms compared to the concept. Joseph Nye himself recently admitted as much: “over time, I realized that concepts like soft power are like children. As an academic or public intellectual, you can love and discipline him as a young man, but as they grow up, they move away and look for new companies, good and bad. There is not much you can do about it” (Nye 2015, 14). We understand that the use of the concept of soft power in the struggle to preserve cultural heritage is in line with this simple observation. In this case, like a poet who finishes a poem, a composer who finishes his lyrics or a painter who finishes his work, the creation no longer belongs to the creator, as it will undergo re-appropriations in its trajectory as art. The concept of “soft power in cultural property” is one such possibility of appropriation regarding this very flexible concept. It is from this limiting aspect that we set out to contextualise the object in question. In his early writings on soft power, Nye argued that “the universalism of a country’s culture and its ability to establish a set of favourable rules and institutions that help govern areas of international activity are critical sources of power” (Nye 2004, 234). For this reason, soft power tends to arise from resources such as cultural and ideological attraction, as well as the rules and institutions of regimes, as if it were the ability of a nation to structure a situation so that others develop preferences or define their interest in a way that agrees with its precepts. At a multilateral level, efforts to institutionalise new preservation practices have been made on a larger scale since the mid-1970s, emanating mainly from UNESCO. Some documents have underpinned these efforts, such as the Convention on the 5

A Google search substantiates these widely shared estimates, as the term “soft power” generates 4,730,000 results with the search engine overall, 187,000 on Google Books, 149,000 on Google News, and 104,000 with Google Scholar (Su Changhe Apud Ohnesorge, 2020, 30).

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Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970), the Convention concerning the protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972), the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001), the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005). The large-scale use of these legal mechanisms of preservation has enabled the creation of a trend: cultural heritage as a key to new socio-historical-cultural approaches that have been deserving of constant updating by scholars. Due to this character of “thematic novelty”, there are still few systematised studies in the field of history on the connection between international relations, cultural diplomacy, and cultural heritage and there is currently no consensus on the definition of this new domain. However, what is noticeable is that this new field has acted in the understanding of varied themes, functioning as ambassadors of new world demands. From here other objects of study derive, not yet incorporated by the area, such as the large-scale understanding of major sporting events, such as the World Cup, the Summer and Winter Games and the Olympics; football as a mark of an increasingly globalised soft power; major artistic and music festivals around the planet and those of lesser expression, given that they are regional, as they often make the identity of peoples practically unknown to the mainstream explicit; languages and their borders; the dynamics of the hierarchisation of themes and criteria enshrined by UNESCO’s advisory bodies; these themes, which are fundamental, but on which we will not dwell in this research. They serve as footprints on the path towards our object. A wide range of historical examples are drawn to illustrate the effects of soft power on cultural heritage preservation within international relations, but the essential focus of this paper falls on three particular areas: (a) the critique of the cartography represented in the UNESCO-linked World Heritage and World Cultural Heritage List6 ; (b) the growing action around illicit trafficking and repatriation/return of the cultural property, as well as the universe of so-called illicit criminogenic collectables; (c) the mapping of other actors in the production, maintenance, and management of heritage with the increasing presence of themes that address the “Africanity”, “Asianity”, “Latinity”, and “Orientalism” (so little explored by our researchers, given the hegemony of the European/US perspective), themes resulting from the dialogue between multiple areas of knowledge and the concept of soft power. Thus, this text faces a central task to show that the connection between cultural heritage, international relations, and soft power is relevant and therefore seeks to document significant examples to this end, choosing Brazil as a comparative field with international examples. Given the importance built around this category of analysis, it seems appropriate to offer research possibilities on the functioning 6

In very general terms, the concept of World Heritage or even World Cultural Heritage (the former used more often to sanction material heritage and the latter to distinguish immateriality) has gained relevance and faced clashes and debates in recent decades. For further information on the distinction refer to: Introdução. In: Christofoletti, R. and Olender, Marcos (Org.), World Heritage Patinas: action, alerts, and risks. Switzerland. Springer, 2020.

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of soft power (a concept questioning on the margins of history), thus providing the conceptual basis and rigorous methodological approaches under its aegis.

15.3 Why Developing This Project Within the Field of History? 15.3.1 Between Cultural History and the History of Present Time The drawing of a line capable of aggregating and summarising the positioning of culture in relation to its heritage will always be unfinished work, given that the work may contain several chronotopes within itself7 (Pasini, 2012, 26). Given the basic assumption of this demand, why is the presentation of this project sustained within the framework of history and not rather international relations, cultural diplomacy, or applied social sciences? Why circumscribe this research to the precepts of historiography? What epistemological beacons underpin this investigation in the domains of history? A possible answer would be: it is a question of ethos. From where you speak. It is understood that over the last two decades all the intellectual production I have produced has been within the field of history, and above all, in the intersection between cultural history and the history of the present time, the latter being quite experienced in offering shelter to frontier and related areas. This itinerary ended up building a natural bridge between the historiographical study itself and the investigation of areas bordering history, such as international relations, cultural diplomacy, studies of preservation of cultural heritage in the international sphere, and, therefore, we seek to bring this approach closer to those of cultural history and history of the present time. For historians linked to the cultural current, the motto of their analysis studies the mechanisms of production of cultural assets, a somewhat vague conceptualisation, but which ends up broadly defining this historiographical field, leaving its borders open, which, in a dominantly specialised universe, could sound like conceptual carelessness. However, the object of study of cultural history naturally leads to its very essence, a space of perpetual transformation and constant adaptation, an inherent characteristic of culture. Nevertheless, even though this approach constitutes an interdisciplinary field comprising multiple dimensions; theoretically, considering the understanding of contemporary reality permeated by the cultural matrix, there is a need to punctuate its field of study more precisely. In reality, the concept of cultural history is extremely malleable, circumscribed to specific contexts, and it cannot be

7

The Italian writer Roberto Pasini (1958) proposed the term “chronotope” to represent a particular spatio-temporal context. It seems appropriate to the proposal of this project since the assimilation of the concept of soft power responds to the demands of this space/time frontier.

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otherwise since culture is in perpetual transformation, constantly adapting itself to new circumstances. The approach of this research is based on the assumptions listed by Ariès (1995), Revel (1999), Chartier (1988), Burke (2001), Certeau, (1980), White (1995), Ginsburg (1989), and Darton (2014). The same cultural history that appeared as a militant willing to shake up the precepts imposed by the dominant historiography until then, trying to respond to several captious questions, typical of our time, draws attention to the fact that the signs of its understanding are better noticed in the labyrinths and between the lines, than in the text itself. It is in the labyrinths that they are best felt, perceived, and brought into being. This perception was fundamental for the development of this research proposal which aims, on the one hand, to broaden the historiographical knowledge of a field still under construction, and on the other hand, to propitiate the widening of the possible frontiers of the domains of history and some related areas. On the other hand, the deepening of the discussions about the relations between past and present and the break with the idea that identified the historical object only to the distant past, (defined as something totally dead and unable to be reinterpreted in the function of the present), opened new paths for the study of history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The expansion of debates about memory and its relations with history as an object of research offered the key to the new intelligibility of the past. Despite this growing and permanent interest in the present and the affirmation of this new field of work, the so-called history of the present time faces challenges to legitimise itself for not having a more precise definition of its object, its methodologies, and the limits of its investigation (Ferreira 2018, 85). Although a consensual definition has not been fully established to date, the denomination formulated by François Bédarida (1993), Histoire du temps présent, is the one that seems to best meet the requirements. “The very notion of ‘present time’ has undergone transformations in its multiple aspects and its relations with contemporaries, testimonies, actors, social demand and other disciplines”8 (Bédarida, 1996, 218). From this debate, a relevant issue that emerged was the claim that “present time” constitutes a singular scientific field by its very definition. The first difficulty is that the historical period in question is defined by moving beacons. So what chronology, what key and recognised event should be adopted as the starting point of the history of the present time? For some, it is the period dating back to the last great rupture; for others, it is the time we live in and remember, or the time whose witnesses are alive and can supervise the historian and put him or her in check (Voldman, 1993 apud Ferreira, 2005, 86). It was from this perspective that Bédarida stated that the “history of the present time is made of provisional dwellings” (Bédarida apud Ferreira, Amado, 1996, p. 221). And this means that its turnover is very fast, and it constantly rewrites itself, using the same material, through additions, revisions, and corrections. Another singularity of the present time is the appreciation of the event, the contingency, and the acceleration of history. In-depth dialogue with this current is accomplished through the writings of Bédarida (1996), Voldman (1993), Ferreira (2000 and 2018), Chauveu (1999), 8

Loose translation.

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Rousso (2000), and Hosbawm (1993). The theoretical toolkit suggested, thus, fits the purposes of this research, which will transit between cultural history and the history of the present time, allied currents in the understanding of the dynamics of the contemporary. In line with the assumptions of these historiographical currents, the analytical dimension that conceives cultural heritage and soft power as living categories, in constant transformation, has enabled the notion of heritage as an expanded synonym, making the theoretical-methodological affiliations that mark this work clear: Riegl (2006), Babelon and Chastel (1994), Le Goff (1984), Jeudy (2005), Choay (2010), Poulot (2009), Fonseca (1996), Meneses (2005), Arantes (2005), and Chuva (2017). In turn, contemporary scholars from different areas, who deal with cultural heritage as soft power, have become active interlocutors in this research: Basu and Modest (2015), Harrison (2002), Huntington (1991), Lane (2013), Leke and Kersel (2012), Mark (2009), Meskell (2012, 2018), Winter (2014), Macclory (2010, 2018, 2020), Christofoletti (2018a, 2018b, 2020a, 2020b), Ballerini (2017),9 Ohnesorge (2020) and, especially, Nye (2004, 2011a, 2016, 2020), to mention only the most accessed authors who smoothly move through the discussion on the performance of soft power in the interface with other related themes. It is in the wake of the discussions encompassed by these authors that we intend to work on the proposal. In order to understand the research panorama and the themes related to the universe of cultural heritage preservation highlighted in this project, it is fundamental to circumscribe the three themes that will be analysed in the light of the concept of soft power. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, classical themes studied within the scope of internationalism, such as the polarity of the international system, balance of power, security, among others, have given way to other theoretical lineages, which have multiplied their productions on more reactive to contemporary reality themes, such as human rights, the environment, and diversity. In this scenario, cultural and heritage preservation issues came to the fore as a result of international security concerns. In response to a pluralisation of views on heritage preservation and increasing multilateral nature of the protagonists of these debates, the three selected topics, besides representing the emergence of crucial themes for the delimitation of soft power in the globalised world, are connected by the universal demand of memory preservation, precisely because it is believed that it is necessary to master the polysemy of memory to understand the personal and collective relationship with heritage. In short, memory mechanisms have been associated with heritage from early on, a link that precedes and accompanies the evolution of the nomenclature itself. It is ancestry and the right to memory that sustains the action of soft power, and this, in a boomerang effect, assists in the maintenance of policies of memory and identities around the planet. Criticism of the cartography is represented in the UNESCO-linked World Heritage and World Cultural Heritage list; the growing action around illicit trafficking, recovery/repatriation/return of cultural assets and the presence of (extra-state) actors 9

Refer to https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/amp/ilustrissima/2018/05/soft-power-da-cultura-tam bem-e-arma-de-paises-colonizados-diz-autor.shtml.

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in the management of heritage with the increasing presence of themes which escape hegemonic Europeanism and Americanism, form the thematic tripod approached in this project. The increased relevance of these themes is in line with the changing configurations noted in international relations. Stemming from this shift is what Joseph Nye identifies as two different but interdependent dimensions: the transition of power between states and a diffusion of power from all states towards non-state actors. New protagonists emancipate themselves on this board, some of whom we intend to analyse in this text. As the new century unfolds, the X-ray of these power relations reveals new actors, spaces, and representations. Cultural heritage has become an increasingly important actor/theme in multilateral dialogues and, as such, is part of the broadening of actions within international relations. From this, other objects of study derive, still scarcely incorporated by the theme, the marks of an increasingly multilateral soft power. As it can be noted, all the themes listed in this project made sense in a world without social restrictions, compulsory isolation, and the battle against a lethal virus. The topics listed in this project had a meaning and were inserted in a reality prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, which still ravages the planet. The concerns, needs, and objects responded to a complex world, but whose rules of the game were all known. Now, considering this new alignment, everything changes, including the preservation of heritage and international relations. For this reason, we believe that this research can collaborate to bring both worlds together: that of previous concerns and that of new needs. We cannot predict the future of the universe of heritage preservation in the world, but there are signs of a considerable change in public policies, funding, and the projection of new rules for a game that we still do not know how to play. It is motivated by this new reality that we present this proposal having the expectation that international relations will never be the same after the pandemic as the horizon and, by extension, the universe of heritage and its management will also not be as before. Finally, this project can generate new approaches and close comparative gaps, enabling a more vertical understanding of the dilemmas, actions, and behaviours of multilateral actors in the treatment, use, and questioning of the concept of soft power. The result of this understanding is the formulation of a double questioning: how can this concept be made operational and how can the impact of soft power on cultural assets be empirically studied? Taken as a whole, a kind of “taxonomy of the concept of soft power” (Ohnesorge, 2020, 37), the literature on the concept provides a comprehensive understanding of the operation of the concept. The broad use of the concept of soft power requires further specification, as any term that becomes increasingly comprehensive tends to lose its analytical validity. Soft power is an analytical concept, not a theory. This suggests that terms such as “concept”, “idea”, “phenomenon”, and “notion” in relation to soft power are better accepted than the idea of “a theory of soft power”. In this sense, this taxonomy would be useful to variations and empirical implications, thus making future soft power studies more structured and comparable. The present study seeks to collaborate in part with this taxonomic exercise through the analysis of three complementary themes, detailed below.

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15.4 The Three Focal Points of Analysis: World Heritage; Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Assets, and the Emergence of New Protagonists in the Preservation of Cultural Heritage (a) Examples of soft power in world heritage mapping “In the global information age, victory depends not on the defeating army, but on the defeating history. This statement conveys the usefulness of soft power and the importance of effective communication, a winning global narrative. The big challenge is to overcome the first obstacle to use of soft power: identifying its sources. Cultural assets are a vector to be analyzed (not the only one), but an essential vector” (Jonathan Macclory - 30 Softy Power, 2018)

The epigraph is revealing. Among the various potential domains for measuring soft power in the world, the world of cultural heritage preservation is an essential vector. According to the list created by the British entity Soft power 30, which compiles and analyses a list of the 30 most influential countries with soft power action in the world (https://softpower30.com), Brazil finds itself in 29th place in 2020. It has been 23rd in 2015, 24th in 2016, and since 2017 has settled at the second-to-last place in the ranking. Over the past four years, since the degree of influence that one country’s soft power exerts over another has been measured, the variation in Brazil’s ranking has been permanently weakened.10 In 2014, under the echo of the most recent Labour governments that leveraged Brazilian soft power to visible international levels, the measurement of Brazilian soft power reached its best index. Six years later, the country has experienced the corollary of the internal political crises that have befallen it, a direct response to what the Brazilianist Keneth Maxwell predicted in an article in the newspaper Valor Econômico: “The country has completely lost its soft power.”11,12 Was the Brazilianist correct in his assertion? “The successive decline in the Soft Power 30 ranking suggests that the time is coming for Brazil to stop taking its global weight and excellent brand recognition for granted,” the study says. These specific soft power resources, however influential, underline once again the fact that soft power (especially in contrast to hard power) is not exclusively in government but, on the contrary, it is deeply rooted in civil society. Culture is often more attractive than politics. In relation to empirical analyses examining the influence of culture as soft power, the diffusion of an actor A’s culture can be considered an important indicator (Nye 2004, 18). This certainly contributed to Brazil’s position 10 Refer to: https://brasilianismo.blogosfera.uol.com.br/uol_amp/2017/07/17/brasil-desaba-em-ran king-global-de-soft-power-e-se-torna-penultimo-colocado/. About the ranking, refer to: softpower30.com. 11 Loose translation. 12 Refer to: Valor Econômico, 23 June 2020. Available at https://valor.globo.com/live/noticia/2020/06/19/pais-perdeu-completamente-seusoft-power-diz-brasilianista-kenneth-maxwell.ghtml. (accessed June 27, 2020).

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in the ranking having this dimension. On the other hand, what is the weight that the preservation of culture, and by extension of cultural heritage, has in the methodology of this ranking? What does the variation or permanence of such positions suggest? A universe of interpretations can be assessed; however, the precise measurement of the soft power resources in these countries is fundamental to its understanding. That is the aim of the Soft Power 30 Index—the world’s most insightful benchmarking of global soft power. The index combines objective data and international research to create a clearer picture of global soft power. This index recognises and embraces the diversity of the several elements that make up a country’s sources of soft power and sheds light on a variety of different platforms, programmes, institutions, and engagement tactics that help generate and harness a country’s soft power. It is in this direction that this research is aligned. In a comprehensive way, for Europeans, the preservation of cultural heritage appears as a recent need in the history of territorial policies and is presented as a system of recognition of their cultural identity. Brazilians, initially emulating European discussions, have, since the last quarter of the twentieth century, pointed out traces of similar concern, typifying and recognising their concepts on the various assets existing in their territory. A relevant impact factor in measuring this ranking is the UNESCO World Heritage List. The World Heritage Declaration is a distinction granted by the institution to properties with characteristics of exceptional value that make them unique in the world. The mindset and the mode of acting of each moment are reflected in archaeological remains, in monuments, in the so-called historic centres, or in the landscape that the results of human labour have shaped over time. This legacy from the past is what allows us to understand the decisive lines that built our culture, with all its ancestral influences and roots. We should note that the declaration of World Heritage is not an end in itself, but the beginning of a path of responsibilities and commitments aimed at maintaining the outstanding universal value13 of these expressions for future generations. By the second half of 2021, of the 1.154 (one thousand one hundred and fifty four) heritage sites listed by UNESCO in 161 countries, 23 are in Brazil.14 Compared to many central European countries, Brazil is far behind. However, in Latin America, Brazil has the second-largest list, only behind Mexico. This numerical difference 13

Outstanding universal value means cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional that it transcends national borders and is of inestimable value for present and future generations. Therefore, the protection of this heritage is of utmost importance to the entire international community. Refer to: https://www.portopatrimoniomundial.com/criterios-classificacao-do-patrim onio-mundial. 14 At the 44th expanded session of the World Heritage Committee, held in Fuzhou (China) (online) from 16 to 31 July 2021, the list of world heritages was expanded after a year of interruption in WHC – World Heritage Center/UNESCO meetings , due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 23rd Brazilian World Heritage Site, endorsed at this meeting, is the landscaped site of Roberto Burle Marx, in Rio de Janeiro, the first modern tropical garden to be inscribed on the World Heritage List. In terms of geographical representation, the countries with the highest number of inscriptions on the World Heritage List are: China (56), Italy (56), Spain (49), Germany (48) and France (46).Conversely, there are at least 25 Member States that do not have any inscribed Property. See: https://whc.UNE SCO.org/en/list/.

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does not mean that one country cares about or interprets its heritage better than the other, but it does indicate that public preservation policies and soft power experiences can broaden the horizons of understanding of heritage and thus dilate its potential as a catalyst of memories, histories, and public policies. In the context of the World Heritage sites list managed by UNESCO, the increasingly frequent rotation of representatives of States Parties from different parts of the world (not only from the regions established as economically developed) and the expansion/capillarisation of the map15 of the sites awarded the World Heritage label around the world are, in the same way, significant examples of the expansion of soft power as an instrument of power, although, for some, a more balanced and representative World Heritage list seems to be a mirage as long as the bulk of the classification processes depend fundamentally on the role of national states and as long as world heritage is excessively glued to an image of symbolic distinction—an important resource of places seeking to become more competitive and media-friendly. More recently, however, observers of international politics have suggested important changes in interpretations of what has been happening in regional and global culture flows. Perhaps most notable, and of particular relevance here, is the rise of East Asia and developing countries in Latin America as cultural exporters, which helps to call into question the ever-criticised westernisation of the globe’s northernmost meridians. Another relevant aspect to note concerns the existence of political and economic disputes that justify the omission of cultural danger, the discrepancy in the treatment of the assets at risk and the presence of political and financial interests in the safeguard campaigns. In parallel to UNESCO’s own disclosure of the various heritage sites accredited and legitimised by the agency, there has also been an exponential growth in criticism of what some specialists call the “sectoral privilege” of some heritage sites to the detriment of others which, consequently, are not listed. It is a fact that heritage sites that can be considered as world heritage, which have a uniqueness that distinguishes them, and which make a decisive contribution to humanity, are not just those delimited by the lists of a multilateral body such as UNESCO. The imperative tone of this statement must be understood. Heritage is everything that its peoples elect as significant. This research is not indifferent to this sectorisation of the labels of the so-called universal values, which give substance to world heritage sites: we are attentive to this complex and contradictory nature of heritage sites and their managers. For this reason, it does not emulate naïve propaganda about the panacea represented by UNESCO. These rankings are particularly interesting as a tool to measure influence, especially when the topic is the cultural issue and, within it, the specificity of cultural 15

In the early years of UNESCO, elitism and patriarchy also permeated the organisation which was mostly composed of North American or European individuals and only exceptionally of female figures. Today, the body has a more gender-balanced composition, but continues to perpetuate discrepancies regarding geographical representativeness. Most of its contributors are European and, in addition, a large proportion of Member States have never had representatives on the World Heritage Committee, as participation in the annual meetings requires a financial framework that not all countries can afford (Meskell, 2018, pp.76–81; 95–102).

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heritage preservation. This is a cut that hopes to broaden the knowledge about the international preservation policy of the various multilateral actors involved in the universe of cultural assets as a soft power agent, taking Brazil as a starting point. Due to changes in global politics in recent years, the importance of soft power has taken on an unexpected new dimension. With the new liberal order, a phase of uncertainty begins, in which, in the worst-case scenario, soft power will become a critical concept in maintaining the world as it is today. For this reason, the discussion on soft power must redirect attention to the core concerns of global affairs, of which the maintenance of world heritage and demands for preservation are pressing examples in the state of global order. However, if on the one hand, we are critical of an increasingly less capillary approach and enthusiastic about an expansion of the cartography of representations on the map of the heritage present in the world heritage lists, on the other hand, we understand the essential role played by the entity, which in recent decades has extended its presence in regions of the globe where the acronym UNESCO represented nothing before. In order to get an idea of the scope of the world/world cultural heritage sites accredited and financed by the multilateral organism, there are currently about two dozen different platforms of projects and programmes for the preservation of world heritage sites being financed. The rapid growth of World Heritage assets has led to the trivialisation of the title and the dilution of protection hierarchies. Alongside this corollary, the spread of gentrification phenomena, property speculation, the substitution of services, and excessive tourist flow has been observed in UNESCO-labelled assets. Therefore, if on the one hand we are concerned with the spaces of ancestry built on outstanding universal values, on the other we are also motivated to scrutinise the intricacies that make heritage a desire for consumption and/or stimulate criminal acts. The trafficking of collectable criminogenic16 is a prime example of this concern. (b) Illicit trafficking of cultural assets and modalities of return/repatriation Official memoranda issued by UNESCO’s Executive Board signal concern about the volume of trafficking in cultural assets and works of art around the world. This form of international trafficking has grown aggressively, thanks to its great financial return and the lack of proper legislation in several countries, which facilitates its process of entrenchment. The cultural heritage is being dilapidated by a multimillion-dollar trafficking system, and documents from international organisations estimate that the trafficking of art and heritage is at the top of the list of the world’s biggest traffickers, second only to the smuggling of drugs, weapons, and human beings. Although trafficking in cultural assets has gained space in academic texts, alongside other forms of trafficking, there is no exact legal definition of the acts that this term penalises. The broad definition of trafficking can be considered as any movement, transport, import, export, maintenance, or trade of cultural assets carried out in violation of the rules

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Term commonly used in the legal area to encompass objects trafficked and with collectible value, obtained by illicit means.

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governing the possession or circulation of such assets or their status (Christofoletti 2017, 345). Understanding this missive helps to understand how the illicit trafficking of cultural assets is today the third most important in financial volume in the world, moving more than 6 billion dollars in the last decade, according to the FBI, Interpol, UNESCO, ICOMOS, and WCO.17 In this sense, the policy of repatriation of trafficked assets is a challenge for contemporary states, which is why it is important to study this issue. The systemic and very well-articulated gearing that characterises the scheme of trafficking in cultural assets ranges from theft from museums, monuments, religious sites, archaeo-paleontological, and other private and public spaces of preservation; illicit excavations (including underwater ones); subtraction of artefacts and works of art during armed conflicts and military occupations; illicit export and import of artefacts; illegal transfer of ownership of diverse cultural assets; production, exchange and use of forged documentation; even trafficking in authentic or forged cultural assets itself, with special attention to human remains treated as musealia18 (Cury 2020). All these actions have been fought in recent decades, a factor that helps to raise the profile of endangered cultural assets around the world. The research in this field addresses this modality of illicit trafficking, suggesting that the international trafficking route of cultural assets has one of the least studied capillarity points in Brazil. One of the main differences between the illicit trafficking of cultural assets and the rest of the trafficking actions is the issue that, for this type of criminal action, a great deal of historical and cultural knowledge is required. The fact that trafficking of cultural assets/patrimonies deals with an essentially cultural issue sponsors the entry of different combat associations in the fight against the crime, as well as individuals, who create means to propagate information about trafficked works. But it is not only illicit trafficking that shapes the illicit market of cultural assets. The Internet itself is today an expanding space for this practice. At the other end of the equation, there are several types of databases on cultural assets. While all of them are used as information channels for the prevention of trafficking in general, others are more specifically for combating the trafficking of cultural assets. First, it should be stated that there is a wide range of databases, both public and private, that identify and list the cultural assets of a state, community, 17

The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) is responsible for police cooperation in several countries; the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is responsible for guardianship and certification of world heritage; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigates and combats violations of federal crimes; the International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) has the fight against illegal trafficking of cultural assets as its mission; and the World Customs Organisation (WCO) denounces illegal trade by offering support to customs administrations. 18 Loaded with colonialism in the constructions of museality and musealisation, these ethnographic objects have a trajectory that needs to be studied. What for the museum is a “thing” or object, for the indigenous people is a human being, according to the visions and indigenous voices brought into the article, which reinforce a vision of spirituality.

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museum, and so on, as well as databases with the stocks of products of a particular species. There are also some databases on “national treasures” or, more broadly, cultural properties, classified as “under protection”, being listed, for instance, as part of a list of heritage sites at risk. This entire dataset is of interest to us insofar as it can identify the asset that has restrictions. They are, therefore, tools for the knowledge of assets. Several countries are on the lookout for the illicit trafficking of cultural assets. Switzerland, Italy, and, more recently, the United States have already initiated measures to ensure that auction houses report purchases over 10,000 dollars in cash, however, a significant portion of the countries still disbelieve that this modality of trafficking has such a great influence. Interpol revealed that the most affected countries currently are: Germany, France, Italy, and Russia. Brazil already appears on the list of countries on the rise, currently between eighth and tenth place on the list of countries in which the illicit trafficking of cultural assets most impacts the economy.19 Although it is not the task of this text to cover the subject in all its extent, it seeks to situate the subject in a historical perspective, to illustrate the foundations of what is currently known about the illicit trafficking of cultural assets, as well as the increasingly reported returns or repatriations of works and assets carried out by the countries of protection to the countries of origin. We can state that Brazil has a dense tradition on the subject, accentuated in recent decades by the country’s entry into the not so selective group of States that head the list of those most vulnerable to the trafficking of cultural assets. More effective legislation and new inter-institutional mechanisms are possible ways for Brazil to solve the chaos of illicit acts that multiply each year more quickly. In this area, in connection with the trafficking culture network and the collaboration with the research group of the British researcher Donna Yates,20 currently linked to the Maastricht University (Netherlands), we seek to concentrate our efforts on mapping case studies that investigate the physical and contextual changes that the illicit criminogenic collectables undergo during the trafficking process in three transnational criminal markets: sacred collectables, rare bibliographical works and palaeontological elements, modalities which are most commonly practised in the Brazilian illicit market. Trafficking transformations goes beyond the boundaries of conventional criminology, proposing an innovative object-centred understanding of trafficking networks and exploring the ultimate question: how do objects enable crimes? As in the group coordinated by Yates, it is also sought here to shift research from organised crime, from the network of criminals, to follow the objects of desire. Previous approaches 19

The transnational bodies currently active in fighting trafficking of assets (Interpol, UNESCO, FBI, ICOM, and WCO, alongside private institutions under international law) head a list of similar organisations. The Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA) and Culture Trafficking, two research and outreach organisations that promote the study and investigation of crime and the protection of cultural heritage, are relevant here. All these organisations help to map out the routes and areas of activity of international gangs specialising in trafficking and, for this reason, they will be the interlocutors of this study. 20 Refer to: https://traffickingculture.org/people/dr-donna-yates/.

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to investigating trafficking cast trafficking as an interface between organised crime (people who move objects) and white-collar crime (wealthy people who receive commodities). Using a multilocational ethnography technique, to investigate the influences and transformations of trafficked criminogenic collectables in international illicit markets, we seek, through data collection in various locations along trafficking routes, the networks they create and the people they influence, thus constituting a narrative, a biography of trafficking. This will reveal the hidden life of illicit commodities before their appearance as objects of visible consumption in public markets and hold out the prospect of destabilising existing assumptions about the formulation, maintenance, and disruption of transnational criminal networks, transforming our understanding of organised crime.21 We are also interested in scrutinising other related sub-themes such as art theft; border policing strategies; art napping—theft of artworks which usually involves million-dollar negotiations between thieves, museums, and insurers; securitisation strategies (in archaeological sites, museums, galleries, auction houses, fairs, private individuals, churches, among others); organised crime and cultural heritage; motivations of offenders; forgery; vandalism; iconoclasm; art market effects and responses; restitution/repatriation; and underwater heritage protection and implications of COVID-19 on cultural heritage protection. The ends of this rope represented on the one hand by the network of trafficking and on the other hand by the concentration of actions such as the recovery/repatriation/return of trafficked assets appear on this list of preservationist actions as a fundamental asset that can make the colonising countries serious examples of historical appreciation and a broad understanding of the concept of the sovereignty of the colonised peoples. It is precisely the crossing of abysses and borders that has mobilised UNESCO to seek diplomatic solutions to strengthen the fight against the illicit trafficking of cultural assets. But let us not be naïve: we must ask ourselves, on the one hand, who is interested in the dilapidation of our assets and, on the other, what is the moral cost of weakening the wheels of trafficking? Brazil is one of the actors invited to seek answers to these questions and this project replicates this need. (c) New protagonists, old challenges Perhaps one of the most relevant changes regarding the broadening of topics related to the preservation of cultural heritage is the need for the expansion and multiplicity of emerging actors. This topic has become much discussed, resulting from the declining importance of nation-states as traditional actors in international relations (Nye 2004, 113). The entry of other actors in the international scenario, including international organisations, terrorist networks, large companies, and even individuals, highlights 21

In line with the project funded by the European Research Council: Trafficking transformations: objects as agents in transnational criminal networks coordinated by Donna Elizabeth Yates, affiliated to the Maastricht University - Netherlands. This project studies how objects influence criminal networks, with a particular focus on objects such as antiquities, fossils, and rare wildlife, with a focus on the transnational illicit trade in cultural objects.

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this observation, which has become common since the accelerated advent of globalisation in the early 1990s. The broadening of the themes related to the universe of cultural heritage has made it possible to understand the protagonist dimension of the immateriality of cultural assets; the presence of other actors in the production and management of heritage; the increase of (sustainable or predatory) tourism modalities in World Heritage Sites; the intensification of comparative studies between states by international bodies; the criteria used for the selection, reception, accession, and safeguarding of policies on cultural heritage; the expansion of studies on heritage brought by waves of immigration, as well as the increasingly multifaceted performance of issues related to cultural diplomacy. States, non-state actors, great powers, rogue states, terrorists, non-governmental organisations, and transnational or multinational companies are part of the actors associated today with the international system. These are joined by international organisations that have started to see the heritage from a broader perspective, including it in the agendas that make up global governance. Whether it is related to the idea of sustainability, the fight against extremism, or policies around access to citizenship and tradition, cultural heritage has come to play a relevant role, with an advance in the presence of preservation bodies at international policy negotiating tables. However, at a time when we are witnessing the worst cultural heritage crisis on a global scale since the Second World War, with the crimes perpetrated by fundamentalist radicals, reputed as war crimes, two other examples cause astonishment and discomfort: the exemption of obligations of some states part of UNESCO, which have disengaged (the example of the United States and Israel)22 opening financial holes in the institution’s coffers and affected by the lack of funding, UNESCO’s capacity for action is increasingly reduced to being subordinated to the interests of the largest contributors who end up influencing both budgets and programmes (Meskell 2018, pp. 76). The same happens with the vagueness of the very post-COVID-19 pandemic dynamics that puts all the cards on the table so far in check. Although such actions have gained viability in the last decade, these examples intensify the challenge of preservation and understanding the actors at stake only as tips of the iceberg. The role of cultural dissemination and preservation entities; actions to preserve museums and archaeological sites; topics related to cultural diplomacy; tourism; geopolitics; comparative studies between Brazilian and foreign counterparts; and the various examples of heritage preservation actions, such as soft power, will be privileged in this approach. In the end, it is intended to demonstrate that the various actors in heritage preservation not only exert soft power, but also promote cultural diplomacy on an international level, knowledge exchange, and creative leadership. On the other hand, the pluralisation of heritage narratives, which act as ambassadors for new global demands, has created increasingly contesting expressions 22

Currently, the official UNESCO-linked World Heritage website runs systematic fund-raising campaigns focusing on private donors, especially individuals. Something unimaginable decades ago. This change in fund-raising is probably a mechanism created by the entity to minimise the losses caused by the exit of the USA and Israel from UNESCO (as they did in 1984), which certainly impacts the funds, ideology, and geopolitics of the multilateral institution.

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about the eurocentric legacy in the conduct of policies considered to be homogenising the preservation of the world heritage. In Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, criticism of the hegemony of these policies has given rise to distinctive and emancipatory preservation actions, with the increasing presence of themes that address a decolonial interpretation of UNESCO’s actions (Quijano 2019, and Amaral 2015). With the incorporation of new perspectives and pluralised protagonists, the appropriation and conservation of heritage now play an important role in cultural diplomacy, raising its status from a mere diplomatic strategy of good neighbourly relations to an elaborate soft power tactic in different countries. The enlargement of international actors, as well as their local demands and needs, have become relevant, given the emergence of the decentralisation of existing protagonists. In view of this new rearrangement of the world cartography, heritage has become an increasingly important theme in multilateral dialogues and, as such, has been expanding its influence at a global level. These are only some examples of the domains that bring together these new actors and their discourses that walk a tightrope, having to balance between the need to maintain their local assets and survival in the face of the trampling of the globalisation of customs, marked sensitively by the cultural imposition of the countries that hold economic power. As the pull forces in world politics continue to gain importance, they provide a valuable asset to a wide audience by deepening the understanding of how soft power assists in decoding preservationist actions when faced with a reality of global connectedness and tensioned pluralisms. Facing these new challenges, this text signals the need to deepen the three corresponding themes, seeking to broaden the dimension of its less studied topics, which puts us in a privileged position, since, correlating this triad to the urgencies of a world in full transformation, we can collaborate so that in the future losses23 and damages are minimised in the universe of cultural heritage preservation. The domains of history are privileged spaces to mediate this dynamic, whose interdisciplinary vocation will favour the clearest mapping of its frontiers. In order to realise and illustrate the effects of soft power on the dynamics of cultural heritage preservation from the analysis of these three areas: (a) criticism of the geopolitical cartography represented in the UNESCO-linked World/World Cultural Heritage list; (b) the growing action around the illicit trafficking/return of cultural assets; and (c) the presence of (extra-state) actors in the management of heritage sites with the increasing presence of themes that escape from hegemonic Europeanism and Americanism the approach should unveil an in-depth analytical commitment that will allow more precise understanding of each of the studied realities. The increase of the field of history as a privileged forum of analysis on policies for the preservation of cultural assets, through the understanding of soft power, the observation of the practice of diffusion of Brazilian soft power in contrast to foreign countries in the 23

Refer to: COSTA, Inês de Carvalho. O sentimento de perda. Patrimônio Mundial—casos de estudo dos principais riscos para os bens culturais. Dissertação de Mestrado. Programa de Mestrado em História de Arte, Património e Cultura Visual. Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto— FLUP—CITCEM. Orientadora: Profª Drª Maria Leonor Botelho. 2020. Dissertation assessed by me on 22 July 2020.

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area of preservation of cultural heritage, enhancing Brazil as a comparative field and the contribution of analyses of case studies (national and international), linked to the list of geopolitical concerns in the contemporary scenario, will jointly seek a more accurate apprehension of the potentiality of soft power as a factor of impact on the preservation of cultural assets.

15.5 Concluding Remarks 15.5.1 Proposals for Tackling the Three Transitional Themes Recently, comparative works oriented by me at every level of training24 have been mobilising studies in the scope of this triple theme, which motivated the proposal of comparison between the dynamics adopted by Brazil and foreign countries in recent decades. The organisation of publications, the organisation of events, and participation in collaborative networks made it possible to scrutinise the three themes that have motivated my incursions into the area. It is perceived that the understanding of the transition alluded to in this text could be further enhanced as the scope of the concept of soft power potentially expands. For this reason, this approach offers an innovative perspective, grounded on a crucial phenomenon in understanding soft power as a legitimate object of the history of the present time. It is important to point out that the gaps in the understanding of soft power as a mechanism for the preservation of cultural heritage is one of the main reasons for the search for sources/bibliographies that enable a more expressive portrait of this process in the face of a transnational circularity and that such gaps can only be filled in through research in the field of history. In order to execute actions that privilege examples of soft power as an instrument of cultural heritage preservation in the three selected themes, it is necessary to build a framework that subsidises these three signal categories. The aim is to identify how each of these indicators influences the permanence or ephemeral nature of the cultural heritage preservation policies around the world, having soft power as a vector for action, to subsidise the subsequent steps and the feeding of the content of a database that enhances research in the area. A step that may complement the identification of examples of soft power is the documentary and bibliographical survey on the three domains to be studied (criticism of the World/World Cultural Heritage list; illicit trafficking of cultural assets; multilateral actors of preservation). Despite having consolidated an accumulation of sources in the collection of previous research, there are references and documents that need more accurate treatment. There are, on the other hand, also new sources that need to be compiled and analysed with greater precision. Special attention should be given to documents of international circulation 24

Currently, I supervise 18 students (Scientific Initiation, Master’s, PhD, and Post-doctoral). The complete list of orientations is available in the curriculum lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/310188549 6629084.

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published or under the custody of UNESCO, with its representation in Brazil, as well as documents under the custody of IPHAN.25 With the documents collected and the bibliography updated, the material must be catalogued and organised for analysis. In this same process, the theoretical-methodological issues should be deepened, through a permanent and continuous reading of the literature on such themes, seeking to relate the documentation raised to the categories of analysis under construction. Subsequently, the systematisation, organisation, and analysis of data will enable the enrichment of the sources and bibliography, followed by a new organisation of the data. After these stages, the final analysis of all the potentiality of the themes will result in the writing of reports, articles, books, arrangement of thematic meetings and symposiums, as well as the creation of databases in which both the sources and the products will remain available as an open repository of information for the development of subsequent research. The academic production on the relationship between soft power and the preservation of cultural heritage is interdisciplinary in nature and much information is scattered in a few theses and dissertations that do not deal solely with this central object, which will require a comprehensive tracking and reading of the set of academic productions available in the legal depositories of Brazilian and foreign university institutions.26 Finally, we seek to cross-check the collected material and establish connections with the analytical categories derived from the bibliographical research and the signalling categories of the three selected themes. Combined with the survey, reading, transcription, digitalisation, and documentary organisation, which will result in a broadened and vertical understanding of the data learnt, enabling a more accurate comprehension of the universe of cultural heritage on an international scale, taking Brazil as a point of contrast.

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The abundance of digital sources on the subject is a huge asset in times of lockdown, during which libraries and archives find their access greatly reduced. For research purposes we used several digital platforms such as: Research Gate, Academia.edu, UNESDOC, UNESCO Archives, BNF Data, Council of Europe online archives; UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICOM, ICCROM platforms, as well as other international organisations. We consider primary sources: Charters; Conventions; Declarations; Treaties; Decree-laws; Recommendations; documents nominating assets for the UNESCO Lists; reports on monitoring missions of the assets; reports on the state of conservation of cultural sites (SOC); management plans; official charts; and maps. 26 Significant data released by me in books organised in 2017 and 2021: (Christofoletti, R. Patrimônio e Relações Internacionais: o Soft Power como espelho das relações internacionais. Santos, Leopoldianum, 2017, p. 23) and (Christofoletti, R. and Olender, Marcos. World heritage pátinas: actions, alerts, and risks (Springer, 2021) indicate the gap between the demand and the set of productions on the theme in Brazilian academia. Therefore, updating the mapping of this set of theses and dissertations is a central part of the in-depth appropriation of the theme.

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Nye J (2004) The decline of America’s soft power: why Washington should worry, Foreign Aff 83(3):18 Nye J (2015) Think again: soft power. Foreign Policy http://foreignpolicy.com/2006/02/23/thinkagain-soft-power/ (accessed February 13, 2015) Nye JS (2004) Soft power: the means to success in world politics. Public Affairs, New York, p 2004 Nye JS (2011a) Bound to lead: the changing nature of American power. New York Nye JS (2011b) The future of power. Public Affairs, New York Nye JS (2016) Soft power: the means to success in World politics Nye JS (2017) Soft power: the origins and political progress of a concept. Palgrave Communications, vol 3. https://www.nature.com/articles/palcomms20178. Accessed 14 Jun 2020 Nye JS (2020) Do morals matter? presidents and foreign policy from FDR to Trump. Kindle Ohnesorge HW (2020) Soft power. The forces of attraction in international relations. Global Power Shift. Switzerland. Springer Park A (2012) Oxon. Routledge, New York, NY, pp 113–128 Pasini R (2012) Che Cos’è l’Arte? Verona: QuiEdit Pollak M (1989) Memória, esquecimento e silêncio. Estudos Históricos, Rio De Janeiro 2(3):3–15 Poulot D (2009) Uma história do patrimônio no Ocidente, séculos XVIII-XXI: do monumento aos valores. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade Rémond R (1995) L’histoire contemporain. In: Bédarida, François (Org.). L’histoire et le métier d’historien en France — 1945-1995. Paris: Éd. de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, p. 247-252 Revel J (1999) Jogos de escalas: a experiência da microanálise. FGV, Rio de Janeiro Riegl A (2006) O Culto moderno dos monumentos: sua essência e sua gênese. Translation Elaine Ribeiro Peixoto e Albertina Vicentine. Goiânia: Ed. Da UGG Rousso H (2000). L’histoire du temps présent, vingt ans après. Bulletin de l’IHTP, n. 75 Snow N (2009) Rethinking Public Diplomacy. In: Snow N, Taylor PM (eds) Routledge Handbook of Public Diplomacy. Routledge, New York, pp 3–11 Soft Power 30: softpower30.com Solomon T (2014) The affective underpinnings of soft power. Eur J Int Rel 20(3):720–741 Trafficking Culture: https://traffickingculture.org/ Trommler F (2004) Culture as an arena of transatlantic conflict. In: The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–1990: A Handbook, Volume II: 1968–1990, ed. Detlef Junker, associated editors Philipp Gassert, Wilfried Mausbach, and David B. Morris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) Varella FF et al (2012) Tempo presente e usos do passado. Editora Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro Vigevani T (2006) Novos temas nas Relações Internacionais: as teorias explicativas Voldman D (1993) La place des mots, le poids des témoins. In: Institut d’histoire du temps présent. Ecrire l’histoire du temps présent. Paris: CNRS Editions, pp 123–132 White H (1995) Meta-história: a imaginação histórica do século XIX. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de São Paulo. www.academia.edu/2455769/AGreater_Role_for_Cultural_Dip lomacy Yates D (2016) Anonymous swiss collector. http://www.anonymousswisscollector.com/bio. Accessed 20 July 2020 Yates DE (2015) Illicit cultural property from Latin America: looting, trafficking, and sale. In: Desmarais F (ed) Countering illicit traffic in cultural goods: the global challenge of protecting the world’s heritage. ICOM, Paris, pp 33–45 Yates DE (2020) Transformações do tráfico: objetos como agentes em redes criminosas transnacionais. Project financed by European Research Council. Coordination: Donna Elizabeth Yates, Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands

Chapter 16

War Trophies and Diplomatic Relations Bruno Miranda Zétola

Abstract War trophies are a very specific category of heritage since they are military artifacts obtained on the battlefield and whose cultural value is conferred after their apprehension. Dating back to classical antiquity, the act of obtaining and displaying war trophies has never been considered an international crime. Its implications for international relations, however, can be significant, depending on the valorization of the artifact made trophy by the historiographical narratives of the societies that lost it or that conquered it. This article examines the singularities of the war trophy as cultural heritage and its relevance to diplomatic relations. Based on three case studies, we point to possible paradigms for using this type of heritage as a foreign policy resource. Keywords Heritage · War trophy · Diplomatic relations In the field of cultural heritage, one of the least debated, and yet, most eloquent categories for international relations is that of war trophies. The obtainment and exhibition of war trophies are symbolic practices that have been used throughout history for the construction of narratives of legitimation of power. Since antiquity, military campaigns have been crowned with triumphant returns from armies carrying, among the booties, elements clearly identifiable to the army of the subjugated nation, as an unquestionable proof of their military supremacy. War trophies are therefore characterized as a place of collective memory that symbolizes and reinforces essential values for a given society, such as patriotism, republicanism, and sacrifice (Nora 1993). There are cases of trophies that receive the status of the cultural heritage of the winning nation, given the projection they have acquired in the historiography of the society to which they have joined. In other cases, the appreciation of the trophy for the society that lost it may generate This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). B. M. Zétola (B) University of Parana, Curitiba, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_16

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a possible diplomatic conflict with the state that has come to detain it. There are also cases in which the trophy is re-signified, becoming a votive monument for both ex-belligerents. Although contemporary international legislation condemns the removal of cultural assets by combatants in armed conflicts, war artifacts gathered by the winning state as symbols of their achievements do not fall under any legislation regarding military conduct or protection of heritage. In this way, the practice of retaining and displaying war trophies persevered through the march of time and is still recurring throughout the world. This article aims to examine the importance of war trophies on the agenda of contemporary diplomatic relations. It starts with a conceptual approach, based on epistemological, legal, and historical approaches, in order to understand the uniqueness of this type of heritage. Then, three emblematic cases where war trophies were protagonists in the agenda of diplomatic relations are discussed, each with a different outcome: their voluntary repatriation, as a sign of political approximation; its unilateral demand, as a way of generating a new fact on the bilateral agenda; and its valorization as a binational monument, in order to build a narrative of concord and conciliation between two ex-contestants. The choice of these cases is due to the relevance that such trophies have gained in the diplomatic agenda of the countries involved and their typological representativeness for diplomatic relations. Thus, regardless of their cultural value, what matters here is above all to examine possible paradigms for the use of war trophies as an instrument of diplomatic action in the contemporary world.

16.1 War Trophies: A Specific Category of Heritage The war trophy is a cultural heritage that is distinguished by three elements: it is a military artifact that is not characterized as a historical object a priori; it was apprehended on a battlefield, not looted from a palace, church, or museum; and it went through a process of transculturation, that means it acquired a new meaning for the society to which it came to belong. According to Isidoro de Sevilla, one of the greatest etymologists in the Antiquity, the word trophy derives from the Greek “tropé”—the return and flight of the enemy. For this reason, the general who put an enemy to flight was worthy of a trophy (Reta and Casquero 1982, 182). It was the second-highest honor that a public man could expect to receive from his state for his achievements in arms; being just below the triumph, a ceremony reserved for those who totally annihilated the enemy army. History shows that the first trophies were made of military equipment from the subjugated enemy. These warlike artifacts arranged as monuments could stay on the battlefield or return with the winners, always with the purpose of remembering a victorious military campaign. It is, to some extent, a spoil of war, but of a very particular nature. To consider them as a mere booty or even as reparation for damage to the conflict would be to reduce these assets to an economic perspective, subtracting

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all the cultural value that characterizes it as a trophy. On the other hand, they might be considered as goods whose cultural character is defined a priori since they are warlike equipment snatched from a battlefield, and not historical or artistic works. It should be noted that the definition of cultural goods usually covers more than works of art, including any artifact that expresses the way of thinking and being of a people, historically and anthropologically. However, even in this expanded conceptualization of “cultural goods”, weapons of war cannot fall into that category, since, during the armed conflict, they are not seen as cultural goods even by the country that built them. What makes it possible to characterize the war trophy as a cultural heritage and at the same time differentiate it from the other items of a war collection is precisely its imagery, which will give it a posteriori cultural or affective value. As a symbolic element, the trophy only makes sense within given social imagery properly structured in relation to intelligible references for most of society. As Baczko suggested, symbolic goods, which any society manufactures, have nothing of ordinarily and do not actually exist in unlimited quantity. Some of them are particularly rare and precious. The proof of this is that they are the object of fierce struggles and conflicts and that any power imposes a hierarchy on them (Baczko 1985, 289).

This is the reason most war trophies consist of equipment or military symbols of the opponent, the epitome of its military power and, therefore, intelligible to almost any social group. Its removal from the vanquished nation is not intended to contribute to the treasury of the winning nation or its fighters, but rather to publicly manifest a military victory or to recall a heroic warlike episode. It is, therefore, a powerful ideological instrument once, by exercising the function of a place of memory, it allows to make intelligible the construction of a laudatory narrative of a nation’s weapons achievements. Because it is linked to the field of ideologies, the war trophy does not have an absolute value per se; its appreciation depends, to a large extent, on the set of values and references of the society from which it was removed and which it will become part of. In this perspective, it is natural that war trophies are sometimes more valued by defeated nations, in the light of the symbolic and affective value that they devote to them than by the winners; however, in other cases, if the phenomenon of transculturation of the good, that is, of its resignification and valorization by the society to which it came to belong.1 The construction of an a posteriori narrative, associated with ritual practices of incorporating this good into the new society, can contribute to dissociate the object from its previous meaning and give it a new meaning. There are three main stages that allow this transculturation and reframing. The first stage takes place in a strictly military context. Flags and cannons play an active role in battles, such as weapons, 1

Christofoletti reflection on the repatriation of cultural artifacts assets is interesting on this subject, pointing out that “although much attention is paid to the act of repatriation itself, the return of the item does not always cause a commotion or retains greater meaning in the countries and / or cultures that produced it; sometimes even falling into the limbo of oblivion and even becoming inaccessible to the public”(Christofoletti 2017, 124).

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signaling, and encouragement devices. Once captured, they pass into the hands of the foreign commander and the next stage of the transculturation process begins, with their removal to another country in a civil context. By physically moving objects and exposing them in new public contexts, such as a palace, church, or arsenal, objects form connections with society or with social groups. The last step is the patrimonialization of objects. After singularization and ritual display, the goods are handled, stored, and registered according to a museological perspective, in order to insert themselves as relevant pieces for a broader narrative, generally a proud one, of a certain society (Tetteris 2014, 33). It is through the execution of these rituals, which can be military parades, political propaganda, musealization, and toppling, that identity of heritage is conferred on a war artifact, removing it from the battlefield and assimilating it as a monument, from a certain historiographical and museographic narrative. In such cases, it is possible that its symbolic value for the country that takes the trophy will be greater than for the country that loses it.2 In either case, the function of the trophy as an intelligible resource of memory is clear, allowing to overcome the barrier of time and make weapons made on battlefields perennial. Thus, according to the appreciation of this good for the winning or defeated society, the war trophy may, according to the flavors of the time, be used both as an element of approximation and of friction in the relations between these societies.

16.2 War Trophies: A Historical Approach In the social imaginary of the classical world, war trophies functioned simultaneously as a historical as well as a religious monument. The Greeks believed that just as the gods directed and influenced human lives, they also decided the results of conflict and, therefore, considered it their duty to thank them. The trophy served not only as a celebration of victory but also as a votive offer. It was, at the same time, the visible symbol of military success and public, thanks for the assistance of the gods. One of the first reports regarding war trophies is found in the Iliad when Ulysses and Diomedes kill Dolon (Homer 2020, 10.465–68). They take off their armor, hang it in a tamarisk bush, and then say a prayer to Athena, who helped them in the battle. In the beginning, the trophy generally took the form of weapons and armor plundered from the defeated enemy, hung or nailed to the trunk of a tree or pole. It was organized in the form of a figure, probably representing a victorious warrior or a deity helping in the battle; built immediately after the end of a battle; usually at the point of the first contact, or at the place where the defeated army turned to flee, living up to the 2

An example would be the capture of the Nazi flag of the 148th German Infantry Division by Brazil in the context of World War II. Currently exhibited at the Marechal José Machado Lopes Museum, it is the only flag of its kind captured by the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, which makes it a relevant element in the military history of Brazil. For Germany, either because of the number of similar items it has in its collections, or because of the place it occupies in German historiography, its display in a Brazilian museum is of little relevance.

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etymology, that is, referring to the turning point of the battle, when one side achieved a decisive advantage over the other (Novakova and Salyova 2019, 192). As time passed, the trophies began to be taken back to the cities of the winners, in order to both capitalize politically on the military conquest and to thank the gods in local temples for the good fortune obtained on the battlefields. The Delphi sanctuary is an emblematic example of this double perspective on the spoils of war—the weapons deposited there allowed, in a public and perennial way, to transmit a message of success for the contemporary era and for future generations, who thus found a focus to admire and honor the courage of their ancestors and pay due tribute to the gods. The Romans emulated this Greek cultural trait and took it in their conquests throughout Europe. If in the republican period the Roman army burned enemy armaments as a form of offering to the gods for good auspices, in imperial times the spoils of war will be used in the making of votive monuments. In these cases, in addition to thanking the gods, the trophies served to convey the auctoritas of the triumphant general to the populus, army, and senate (Rich 2013). Medieval Christianity maintained the structure of this classic ritual of pagan triumphs, of offering the deity a tangible proof of recognition for the protection received during combat, although coated with a varnish of Christian doctrine. In this way, triumphant entries into civic spaces were gradually replaced by ecclesiastical processions, with churches and basilicas being the primary place to ask for and thank for the success of arms (Zétola 2006). Until the nineteenth century, there are records of trophies deposited in churches, such as the Invalides (France) and São Domingos (Argentina). Historical processes such as the consolidation of national states, Protestant reforms, the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution gradually relativized the role of religion in the Western social imagination, with impacts on the tradition of offering to the other world in tribute to the glories of arms. Indeed, it was not because of a religious issue, but because of an exercise of power that Napoleon had the Austrian cannons captured at the battle of Austerlitz melted to have the famous Vendôme Column erected, in order to compete for a second time for the memory of the battle, already so full of affective meanings for overlapping the joy of the conquest with the commemoration of the first anniversary of the coronation of Napoleon (Stoiani 2002, 162). In the same way, the annual ceremony held by the governor of Rio de Janeiro during colonial times, in which the French flags taken from the French privateer Duclerc were exhibited and tied to the tail of horses, as part of a staging of a combat simulation, had a more political than religious value (de Lagránge 1967, 60). Despite this change from the religious to the civic-ostentative axis, the decline of the Age of Empires and the rise of nationalist projects gave the theme of war trophies a renewed vigor in the nineteenth century. It is for no other reason than a spirit of patriotic exaltation that an influential Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in his book “Efemérides Brasileiras”3 tries to mitigate the losses of trophies suffered by the Empire in the various platinum campaigns. In North America, some examples are the infantry taking the Texas flag “New Orleans Gray” by the Mexican infantry at the battle of El Alamo in 1836; and the taking of the Mexican pavilion by American 3

(Garcia 2012, 168; 36; 89).

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troops from Chapultepec Castle in 1847. In Spanish America, after the unsuccessful British invasion attempts in the early nineteenth century to the Viceroyalty of the Silver, the Spanish captured a series of flags that are still exhibited today in the city of Buenos Aires. On the Asian continent, a well-known example is that of the bells of the churches in Balangiga, used as a signal for a surprise Philippine attack and later taken as a war trophy by the Americans in the war between the two countries. And for the African continent, one may remind that the famous bronzes of Benin would have been taken to London as a war trophy by the English in the context of the conflicts that occurred in the city in 1897. At the same time, in the aftermath of the unprecedented looting by Napoleonic troops, the nineteenth century also witnessed the emergence of the first laws regarding the protection of cultural heritage. If looting is to be defined as a crime, the practice of seizing enemy military equipment, including those that become captor state war trophies, continued to be considered a legitimate and acceptable act in international armed conflicts. The principles of repatriation inaugurated by the Duke of Wellington would later integrate into one of the first codifications regarding the preservation of heritage in times of war—the Lieber Code, commissioned by the US President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Elaborated by political scientist Francis Lieber, who had fought in Waterloo for the Prussian army and accompanied riots in the French capital by Napoleonic troops, the Lieber Code was the first legal text to establish as a rule the long-standing practice in armed conflicts according to which a party to the conflict can seize military equipment belonging to an adverse party such as war booty. In this perspective, the Lieber Code determines that, “according to the modern law of war”, all booty belongs to the government of the apprehender and not to the individual who apprehends him.4 From the perspective of heritage, it recommended to preserve the integrity of classic works of art, scientific collections, and technical instruments (Art. 35) but allows them to be taken as an estate for the benefit of the winning nation, as long as they are not offered for sale (Art. 36). It seems little, but the historical and artistic value of heritage was recognized for the first time ever. The Lieber Code, due to its pioneering spirit, had a strong influence on the international documents that emerged in the following years, proposing rules for armed conflicts. In the Brussels Declaration (1874), there is a condemnation of the practice of destruction of cultural assets (Decl. Brux. Art. 8); in the 1st Hague Convention (1899), the neutrality of cultural goods is declared, “as long as they are not used for military purposes” (Conv. The Hague, I Art. II, 27 and 56), which obviously excludes war trophies; and in the II Hague Convention (1907), the practice of plundering is condemned (Conv. The Hague II, IV. 47), but it expressly establishes what are the assets that can be seized by an enemy state occupation army: “Money, funds and securities that are strictly owned by the State, arms deposits, means of transport, and supplies, in addition to all movable property belonging to the State that can be used for 4

Cod. Lieb. 45. The principle will be reflected in several contemporary military manuals, including the Brazilian Military Penal Code, which admits capital punishment to military personnel who may loot occupied territory. (Art. 406).

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military operations” (Conv. The Hague II, IV, 53). The Hague Convention contractors not only considered the seizure of enemy military equipment legal but also have an understanding broad of what could be considered booty of war, contemplating any assets of the opposing State, not only those seized on the battlefield. Another relevant document for the development of the concept of protection of cultural heritage in armed conflicts was the Roerich Pact, approved at the VII Pan American Conference in Montevideo (1933). This is the first legislation to protect cultural heritage to which many of the American countries have been submitted, through the internalization of the treaty (Guedes 2018). Its essence was to declare neutrality and to make identifiable, in times of war, “historical monuments, museums and scientific, artistic, educational and cultural institutions”. The document did not address the issue of armaments and war artifacts, as it did not consider them as potential cultural heritage. Shortly thereafter, the Second World War would deflagrate one of the moments of greatest apprehension and mobility of war trophies in history. Around the world, thousands of goods were taken, especially from the Axis powers, and integrated into collections of museums in order to constitute narratives that value the sacrifice of their combatants and their native ideals. A paradigmatic example of the use of war trophies in this period is the Compíègne armistice wagon from the First World War. Hitler demanded that the French capitulation be signed in the same wagon that, years before, had witnessed German surrender. Used as a powerful vehicle for transmitting German military hegemony and the subjugation of French forces, the wagon was taken to Germany as one of the main Nazi war trophies. Once the conflict is over and the previous conventions revealed ineffective, the international community would point to cultural understanding as one of the priority elements on the multilateral agenda. The 1949 Geneva Convention and the 1954 UNESCO Convention are the fruits of this post-war spirit of harmony.5 The 1949 Convention legitimizes the seizure of opponents’ military equipment, by stating that prisoners of war will be able to keep their personal items, “except weapons, horses, military equipment” (Art 18, par. I.). Furthermore, it provides that position and nationality badges, decorations, and articles that have an essentially personal or sentimental value cannot be removed from prisoners of war (Art 18. page 3). The text of the Hague Convention of 1954, for its part, presents a renewed proposal for the protection of cultural heritage, but it is absolutely indifferent to the practice of apprehending war artifacts by the winning armies. This type of property is not included in its extensive Article 1, which lists a series of assets that could be classified as cultural heritage. In Article 14, which states goods that would enjoy immunity from capture, there is also no reference to include any war trophy. The two additional protocols that were added to the Convention, which still constitute the main international legislation for the protection of cultural heritage, also scarcely touch on the theme of war booty,

5

Not by chance, the preamble to the 1945 UNESCO Constitution identifies that “ignorance of each other’s ways of life has been a common cause, throughout human history, of suspicion and mistrust among the peoples of the world, causing wars”.

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not condemning the practice of capturing opposing military property (Henckaerts 1999). A new milestone for the trajectory of the protection of cultural heritage is the UNESCO Convention of 1970, concerning measures to be adopted to prevent the compulsory export and transfer of ownership of cultural goods, arising directly or indirectly from the occupation of a country by a foreign power. This is perhaps the normative act that comes closest to the issue of requests for repatriation of war trophies in contemporary legislation, due to the fact that assets related to military history and events of national importance clearly appear as a type of amenable asset of protection by the Convention (Art.1 Alin. b.) It would be an exaggeration, however, to affirm that such a norm prevents the practice of apprehending and displaying war trophies. As the Convention deals with goods related to military and national history, this presupposes a certain historical distance in order to be able to categorize those artifacts as goods relevant to the history of a particular country. Divergent understanding could imply that a state could declare its entire arsenal of war cultural heritage in order to prevent it from being taken over by the opposing army. This reasoning was already present, moreover, in the 1954 Convention, which determines that assets used for military purposes cannot be protected (Conv. The Hague. 1954. VIII, b.) The most recent international legislation on the subject is possibly UN Security Council Resolution 2347, unanimously approved on March 24, 2017 (UNSC R. 2347/2017). The document is interesting because it is the first time in history that a UN resolution covers the entire variety of threats to cultural heritage, without any geographical or authorship boundary related to crimes against heritage. The text includes two of the main results of an important international conference on the theme held in Abu Dhabi in 2016: the creation of an international fund and the organization of a network of safe places for cultural goods in danger. The resolution encourages states to make efforts to protect their own assets through secure and identifiable inventories and deposits (Page 16). Evidently, a military artifact could not receive such status, as it was used directly on the battlefield. Thus, by exclusion, this document also considers the practice of apprehending war trophies in contemporary conflicts to be legitimate. Finding no impediments in international law, the practice of apprehending and displaying war trophies persists over the course of time and persists as one of the traits enduring cultural aspects of Western civilization. What has evolved significantly has been the distinction between the seizure of cultural assets or individual property of combatants, considered as looting, of those public assets of military use by the opponent, which can be removed from the battlefield for the security of the troops. When examining recent British warlike actions, this distinction can be seen very clearly. On the one hand, there are records of British fighters who faced martial court for retaining privately owned assets of Iraqi soldiers (Nightingale 2013). On the other hand, the display of the flag of the so-called Islamic State at the Imperial War Museum in London demonstrates that the practice of obtaining war trophies to glorify a state’s military campaigns remains current (Imperial War Museum 2019, 20).

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If the act of apprehending and displaying war trophies cannot be considered an international offense, this does not mean that such practice cannot generate demands, controversies, friction, signs of goodwill, and approximation between two ex-contestants. Some recent cases help to reveal the relevance and topicality of the topic for international relations.

16.3 The Unilateral Return of War Trophies: The Case of the Mexican Flags Taken by Napoleon III One of the most unusual military adventures of the nineteenth century, which proves that magical realism could not have had a better birthplace than Latin America, was the invasion of Mexico by French troops to bring a Habsburg archduke to power. As is well known, the Mexican state was bankrupt after the war against the United States (1846–48) and a severe civil conflict (1857–61), which led President Benito Juárez to declare a moratorium on the foreign debt. It was the pretext that Napoleon III needed to support the project of conservative elites to establish the Second Mexican Empire. After an ephemeral tripartite alliance with the Spaniards and the British has been ill-fated, the French went solo in this colonialist enterprise, which ultimately aimed to establish a French protectorate in Mexico to expand the area of influence for their products and, at the same time, support the administration of the Antilles and other French colonies in America, ensuring the stability of the supply of raw materials to France. After the epic Mexican victory at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862, the French sent reinforcements for the Mexican campaign and took over the strategic city in 1863, paving the way for Maximiliano I’s victory and enthronement. It is in this context that French troops seize numerous war booties, including three trophies highly esteemed by Mexicans: the banner of the “Primer Regimiento de Caballería de Durango”; the flag of the “Second Batallón de la Guardia Nacional de San Luis Potosí”; and the banner of the “Lanceros de Aguascalientes” (Colunga Hernández 2004). The flags, deposited at the Invalides Museum in Paris, represent significant symbolic elements for Mexican history since they were standards of armies constituted with strong popular appeal and that represent the struggle in the name of the republican and nationalist ideal. A newspaper of the time described the relevance of the relics: They saw the Chinacos, the Zacapoaxtlas and a whole people of republican affiliation fight fiercely, who rose up in outrage to reject the foreign monarch who wanted to impose on them by force. They saw how the men fought for the integrity of the territory and were finally captured, far from Mexican soil, they learned of the sad history of Cerro de las Campanas and the final triumph of Mexico and they learned of Benito Juárez’s motto: “Respect for the rights of others. is peace” (El Nacional 1964a).

In March 1964, the flags were repatriated with pomp and circumstance by the government of General De Gaulle. It was the first time that France voluntarily returned war trophies taken to a country. The analysis of the international situation at the time

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helps to understand how the return of this heritage was used as an efficient symbolic element not only for bilateral relations but also for French foreign policy. Marked by the search for the restoration of the French “grandeur”, De Gaulle’s foreign policy identified a space for autonomy in the bipolar order, which could be occupied by diplomacy that referred to the universalist vocation and the civilizing mission of France (Vaïsse 1998). The General’s “tour” through Latin America, in 1964, can be understood as part of his project of a “third way”, mobilizing, in the countries he went through, crowds tired of the promises never realized of a more effective economic cooperation with the U.S.A. From a Mexican foreign policy perspective, two factors seemed to limit the projection of more autonomous diplomacy, consistent with its condition of a regional average power—the natural proximity to the United States; and the Cuban Revolution of 1959, which made Latin America one of the poles of bipolar rivalry. In this context, Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos soon understood the risks arising from the possibility that the United States would use international tensions to reinforce its dominance over Latin American countries. In this perspective, the dynamism of its foreign policy can be explained as a tactic aimed much more at obtaining a minimum margin of diplomatic autonomy in the face of American hegemony than the desire to constitute a regional leadership of a third way in the bipolar world (Loaeza 1990). This diplomatic discomfort of the regional average power was echoed in the discomfort of the global average power, with a coincidence of perspectives between Mexico and France. In the same way, De Gaulle’s visit to Mexico was carefully prepared to generate signs of empathy for this third way that France sought to lead. With a view to creating a positive predisposition to French interests in Mexico, days before De Gaulle’s arrival, the French ambassador proceeded with the repatriation of the flags taken as a war trophy by Napoleon III’s troops exactly one hundred years ago. The ceremony took place on the morning of March 5, 1964, at the National Palace, with the protagonists being President López Mateos and the French ambassador, Raymond Offroy, in the presence of high authorities of the Mexican government and the diplomatic corps. The following day, the newspaper El Nacional reported the ceremony as follows: The scene is impressive, touching. Many boys and men witness with tears in their eyes. Silence is made again, when the last note of the National Anthem is heard. And that is when Ambassador Offroy takes the flag of the 2nd Battalion of the National Guard from the French military man who carries it and hands it over to President López Mateos. In doing so, he says: «Mr. President: on behalf of the government and the people of the French Republic, I have the honor to present you with the Flag of the Second Battalion of the National Guard of San Luis Potosí», López Mateos visibly satisfied, received it and, in turn he said: "In the name of the people of Mexico, I receive this glorious flag, which is reintegrated into the homeland." Then, when placing it in the hands of Infantry Lieutenant Colonel Jesús Castañeda Gutiérrez and, while he is holding it, the first magistrate takes one of the tips of the labarum and kisses it. (El Nacional 1964b).

The Mexican flags already had a destination designated by the government—the National History Museum, located in Chapultepec Castle. The war trophies covered

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this path along the main avenues of the capital in an epic manner, receiving fervent tribute from the public who solemnly saluted the passing of the flags. The efficiency of the ceremony prepared by the French and Mexican authorities is reinforced by the authorities’ speech. The Mexican Secretary of Education, for example, did not fail to reiterate the French generosity in the act of returning the flags and what this meant for the rapprochement between the two countries: the return of the flags lost during the intervention, honors both the government that returns and the government that receives. From the Museum of the Invalids where they remembered past struggles, these flags come today to the Museum of Chapultepec, where they will testify for the good of generations to what extent the friendship of two free peoples is their best victory (Nov 6, Novedades, 1964).

In the words of President López Mateos, the French initiative was a gesture of “proven French chivalry”, which seemed so moving that it led him to affirm that this repatriation erased “from the whole incident that, in the end, could disturb the firm Mexican friendly” (Tiempo 1964). The flags would be part of an exhibition whose title is very symptomatic of the political uses that can be attributed to the war trophies—“La Patria Recobrada”. It would not be an exaggeration, however, to suppose that this willingness to forget the old French interventionist adventures aimed to counteract the current American hegemony. The return of war trophies represented French self-criticism for its adventure in nineteenth-century imperialism, constructing a narrative of concord, respect, and friendship between peoples, which allowed him to oppose the American imperialist position of the twentieth century. The rapprochement between the two countries, marked by the emblematic rituals of returning trophies and the visit of De Gaulle, meant for both countries a test of autonomy for their foreign policies within the framework of a bipolar world. But for the French side, the gains were perhaps more evident,6 and De Gaulle would not fail to register his optimism with the prospect of the French diplomatic “grandeur” when saying goodbye to his ambassador in Mexico: “Plantez-mois un drapeau français ici, aux portes des États-Unis” (Offroy 1987, 27). Initiated with an impact on the imaginary caused by the return of Mexican flags by France, the diplomatic offensive would end with the idealized return of the French flag itself to Mexico. The Franco-Mexican case suggests that the return of war trophies can serve as an efficient diplomatic strategy for the political approximation or distention between two states.7 If the trophy has a low symbolic value for the state that took it, but high for the state that lost it, its return does not imply greater controversies or losses for 6

The visit to Mexico culminated in the formation of a Joint Cooperation Commission and a joint communiqué expressing ideals in very prudent language that would not irritate the United States (Loaeza 1990, 312). In part, one of the concrete achievements of this rapprochement with Mexico was that, two years later, the country gave French entrepreneurs the construction of the capital’s metro line and this happened despite all the obstacles that the United States had. 7 Another example of this use of trophy was the return of the Balangiga bells by the USA, in late 2018. In this case, it is a diplomatic gesture from Washington toward the Philippines, at a time when Philippine President Rodrigo Duarte was showing signs that he wished to establish a preferential relationship with Beijing.

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the construction of collective memory and national military narratives, in comparison to the significant ones diplomatic gains. As these are extremely limited imaging resources, there are few countries and few opportunities for war trophies to be used as vectors for the consolidation of diplomatic relations. Thus, regardless of the greater or lesser loss to national historiographical narratives, their repatriation in favorable contexts constitutes an unrivaled tool available to some countries’ diplomacy.

16.4 The Unilateral Demand for War Trophies: The Case of the El Cristiano Cannon The late nineteenth century was a time of exacerbated nationalism for the countries of South America, which experienced two total wars that left deep scars on their societies. It is natural that, in this context, the theme of war trophies has gained special attention on the part of the government from the region. In the context of the War of the Triple Alliance, one of the most emblematic trophies is an item that rests discreetly in the courtyard of the Brazilian National Museum of Brazil. It is a huge piece of artillery, somewhat disproportionate as if done in a hurry. Between machine guns taken from the Nazis in World War II, and flags lost to Argentines in the platinum campaigns, no war trophy is as relevant to Brazilian historiography as this piece—the Cristiano cannon.8 In the theater of operations of the Triple Alliance War, one of the greatest difficulties to be overcome by the allied armies was the fortress of Humaitá, which barred the passage through the Paraguay River to Asunción. In view of its strategic position, the Paraguayans armed the fortress with more than 180 cannons, some of which were so large that received names, such as Criollo, General Díaz, Acá-berá, and El Cristiano.9 The pride of the Paraguayan army, El Cristiano weighed 12 tons, was manufactured in 1867 and it is said that its raw material would have been the bronze of the bells of the Paraguayan churches. It is engraved “from Religion to the State”, to remember that this weapon whose dull and abrupt sound announced war, would have its origin in sacred instruments that before called the faithful to moments of meditation and peace. Although there was a shortage of ammunition for the operation of an artillery piece of this caliber, El Cristiano was part of the battery of the Fortress of Humaitá so that Paraguayan historiography celebrates its participation in the battle of Curupaiti, perhaps the greatest Paraguayan victory in the War. The passage from Humaitá claimed thousands of lives on both sides of the conflict, so the efforts and sacrifices 8

Although technically a howitzer, in all official texts and communications the artifact is described as a cannon, denomination that will be followed in this study. 9 On the subject, Doratioto comments that, during the conflict, “many cannons were manufactured at the Ibicuí smelter, some of large caliber, all under the supervision of English engineers. (…) Since then, he used the work of common prisoners, and his first director was the Englishman Godwin, and later he started to produce war material. In late 1866, twenty prisoners of war were forced to work at the foundry. Of the cannons produced in Ibicuí at that time, the three largest were Cristiano, General Díaz and Acá-berá”. (Doratioto 2002, 259).

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of the combatants were not forgotten by future generations, the commanders of the allied forces retained, and shared war artifacts captured on the battlefield as memory elements. Among these artifacts was the cannon El Cristiano. The seizure of trophies in this war was not an exclusive practice of the Brazilian side. It is currently on display as a trophy at the Vapor Cué museum, the Brazilian ship Anhambai, captured by Paraguayan forces when they invaded Mato Grosso do Sul, in addition to the wreckage of the ship Rio de Janeiro.10 On the Allied side, troops from the three countries seized booty and trophies on the battlefields. Gradually, a large part of the seized goods was returned, with Uruguay being the pioneer in this gesture, followed by Brazil and Argentina (Brezzo 2013).11 In the case of Brazil, the return of booties and trophies extended to the twentieth century. Getúlio Vargas was the first Brazilian president to visit the neighboring country and was responsible for canceling the war debt and returning the Act with which, in 1844, the Brazilian government recognized Paraguay’s independence. In 1975, during the visit of President Ernesto Geisel, the “Golden Book”, offered by the ladies of Asunción to Solano López, was returned. In 1977, the then ambassador to Asunción, Fernando Ramos de Alencar, handed over to the Paraguayan government several pieces for use by the Marshal and his family. In 1980, President Figueiredo handed President Stroessner a series of documents and pieces that were kept in custody by the Brazilian government, such as documents from the National Archives of Paraguay, a saber and a sword by Solano López and personal objects of his family (Jornal de Brasília 1980). The theme took on a particularly relevant dimension in the 1970s, largely as a result of the Itaipu enterprise, which increased the bilateral relationship. It is from that time a Bill of Law by Deputy Ítalo Conti offering the Paraguayan people what is missing for the full distinction between the two countries: the return of war trophies. Only in this way, we will give the neighboring and friendly country the great proof of our sincerity and, above all, of our respect, both for the confidence that we have, in the advantages and benefits of a common future, and for the human solidarity that we had, in the past, in its supreme moment of misfortune” (Congresso Nacional, PL 1820, 1976).

Confusing booty with war trophies, the proposal was negatively appreciated by the Brazilian chancellery: For all reasons, I consider Mr Ítalo Conti’s project to be unfounded, unfortunate and inopportune. The subject is delicate and cannot be treated amateurishly in an exclusively emotional 10

Regarding the theme, Doratioto recalls that a sergeant became the first black officer in the history of the Paraguayan army, thanks to his habit of beheading and retaining the heads of Brazilian combatants as war trophies taken to the battlefields (Doratioto 2002, 201). Although the use of human remains as war trophies has been recurrent throughout history, it does not fall within the scope of this article, as it is not a heritage. 11 In the Brazilian case, Doratioto comments that, since the end of the nineteenth century, a commission is made of positivists and whose objective was to defend the return to Paraguay of the trophies won by Brazil and obtain the forgiveness of the war debt. Paraguay, in the context of a historical revisionism, aimed to hold the monarchic regime responsible for the conflict, with a view to extolling the Republic (Doratioto 2012, 88).

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aspect. (...) A law in the sense desired by Mr Conti would, in practice, act as an instrument of permanent pressure to be used by the interested foreign Government to the detriment of the unequivocal right to decide on the opportunity of measures of this kind, which peacefully is incumbent upon the Executive. I must point out, on the other hand, that in dealing with this matter, it is necessary to clearly define what war trophies are. The author of the draft law, does not do so and inadvertently considers as such the “Golden Book” recently returned by the President of the Republic to the Paraguayan Government and which, not falling into that category of goods, was simply “on deposit” with the Brazilian Government (Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Memorandum ARC 1976).

From the perspective of the Itamaraty, the distinction between the war trophy and the other relics of which the Brazilian Government was the depositary was very clear. There is also a fear that the legislation could interfere with the executive’s autonomy in establishing foreign policy in the case, serving as ammunition for foreign interests, which denotes a clear understanding of the possibility of using war trophies as an instrument of foreign policy.12 It is interesting to note that, at that time, El Cristiano was not listed on inventory lists by Brazilian authorities as a war trophy, nor was it the object of any demand for repatriation on the Paraguayan side. When producing information about which “relics that the Brazilian government was depositary” and which “war trophies” had, the following items were identified: at the National Historical Museum of Rio de Janeiro: sword that wielded Solano López at the time of his death, broken at the end and authenticated by photos in the neighboring capital; tricolor band from Marechal (Banda); Brazilian decoration awarded by D. Pedro II; personal watch; campaign clock (sun); a seal (command seal); two flags, one taken in Corrientes and the other in Establecimientos; “Golden Book” containing signatures by ladies of Paraguayan society, including Madame Lynch; and possibly jewelry found at the Government Palace, attributed to the parent of the Paraguayan leader. National Library of Rio de Janeiro (Manuscript Section): the Public Archive including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay, at the Army Museum (Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca): tricolor band and kepi, at the Cruz dos Militares Church in Rio de Janeiro: war flags. Among the goods mentioned, two - the Public Archive of Paraguay and the "Golden Book" have special historical significance and estimated value for the Guarani people. Both pieces cannot, according to legal concept, be characterized as war trophies, having not been won on the battlefield by the Brazilian armed forces in the Paraguayan War. Thus, the Brazilian Government is only a depository for those assets, unequivocally owned by the Government of the sister country (Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Information to the President of the Republic. No. 304 11/11/1975).

If the cannon El Cristiano was not on the list of Brazilian military trophies, neither will it have been the object of demand, either by civil society or by the Paraguayan government. In this regard, it is curious to note that, in an editorial that called for Brazil to return trophies from the War, the Paraguayan newspaper La Tribuna reported that El Cristiano had already returned to Asunción, when Perón returned to that country 12

The bill was resubmitted in 1979 and, despite being approved by the Chamber of Deputies, was eventually rejected by the Senate, largely because of its innocuousness, in view of the return of a significant part of the estate on the occasion of President João Figueiredo’s visit to Paraguay (Federal Senate. Official Letter No. 460. June 7, 1983).

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the trophies seized by Argentina, which indicates that there was, at that time, low historiographical concern regarding the trajectory of the cannon (La Tribuna 1974). The issue of repatriation of war trophies between the two countries was relatively dormant during the 1990s and 2000s. In the years 2010, the issue comes back to the fore as a relevant element of the bilateral agenda in the Paraguayan perspective. Some analysts point out that, among the factors that led to the election at that time, cultural elements stand out, such as the affinity between the two governments on shift and the proximity of the bicentenary of Paraguay.13 There are, however, those who point out that the theme of repatriation is related to the dynamics of Paraguayan domestic politics, and that the election would aim to create a new fact on the political agenda.14 A third interpretative strand, of a historiographic nature, points to the fact that the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner would have succeeded in conveying a powerful nationalist discourse of cult to the facts and characters of the War, which would have been criticized during the period of democratic transition, but would gain force again in the late 2000s.15 Regardless of the motivation for the request for repatriation of the trophy, the demand created a new fact on the bilateral agenda, with sufficient political relevance to make the Minister of Culture of Brazil send a letter to the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) proposing its unveiling for later return. The topic was discussed at the 65th IPHAN meeting, in November 2010, in which different perspectives on the topic emerged. For the international advisory of the Ministry of Culture of the time, Gestures of goodwill, constructive gestures contribute to alleviate certain wounds of the past that may, eventually, give rise to small political projects. (...) I would still remember the bicentenary of Paraguay, in two thousand and eleven. (...) At that moment, Brazil wants to be the friend, it wants to be the partner, it wants to be the country that makes gestures of good will, of greatness in relation to Paraguay. It is in this sense that we defend the return of the cannon. (...) For Brazilian museography or even the memory of the war, I do not believe, as the Minister does not believe, that the cannon is so valuable. (…) Now, for Paraguayans, 13

An eloquent manifestation of this perspective was that of the international advisor to the Ministry of Culture of Brazil at the time, who pointed out that the two countries were experiencing a moment of narrowing in bilateral cultural relations, in a way that the ministers of Culture “came to the conclusion that it would be excellent for the deepening of our good relations and cooperation to return the cannon in the context of the bicentenary of Paraguay” (IPHAN 2010, 4). 14 On this hypothesis, one can mention the position of Isabel Fleck, for whom the theme “reappears in Paraguayan politics whenever relations with Brazil are not going well. (…) After Paraguay was suspended from Mercosur because of Fernando Lugo’s lightning impeachment last year, President Federico Franco returned to the theme on March 1, the date on which the country pays homage to the fallen soldiers in the greatest war in the history of South America” (1864–70) (Fleck 2013). On the subject of the use of trophies as a resource for Paraguayan domestic politics, Doratioto states that, in the context of heightened internal tensions that would lead to the resignation of President Guggiari and the Chaco War, one of the elements that could have contributed to strengthen his image together public opinion was the return by Brazil of the Paraguayan War trophies. However, at that time the return of the trophies was not viable, due to the opposite reaction not only of public opinion, but, still, of the Brazilian military (Doratioto 2012, 368). 15 On the subject, an elaborate critique of traditional historiography is that of Guido Alcalá (2018, 75), and Herib Campos (2012).

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it has a very big meaning, based on the claim that it originated from melted bells. It has an affective, symbolic value for Paraguayans, although the concrete historical basis of this symbolism can be questioned. The cannon represents a lot for those who have little. We have a lot and we can have the greatness of being generous in that moment (IPHAN 2010, 9).

From the perspective of General Synésio Scofano Fernandes, representative of the Cultural Foundation of the Brazilian Army, What is at stake is the significance of the El Cristiano object and I dare say that it is extremely significant and important in our society. Its symbolic importance for many segments of Brazilian society is evident. It is enough to consult the media to verify the innumerable positions contrary to the provision of returning the Cannon to the Paraguayans, strong and defended positions with consistent arguments, coming from intellectuals, cultural entities, representatives of civil society entities and military segments. There are petitions in the media against this measure. Why this preventive reaction with an act considered, but not yet done? What’s driving it? Because El Cristiano has a strong symbolism that affects, even today, different segments of our society. (...) El Cristiano does not belong only to us Brazilians, who live our days, but is inextricably linked to the three thousand Brazilians who died, almost 150 years ago, in Curupaiti. Dead because the Brazilian nation needed that sacrifice, at that moment, no matter what interpretation is built in relation to the conflict, which in fact occurred (IPHAN 2010, 15).

The cultural heritage specialist Luís Phelipe Andrès, on the other hand, considered that Whatever the final solution, if the cannon is on one side or the other, there will always be some strong discontent from significant parcels. Brazil was able to build a binational company in a field that I also consider quite complex, that of commercial relations that are difficult to reconcile; a large undertaking - a hydroelectric plant - has been completed and is functioning. So, in our small field of culture, why don’t we create a binational organization? A museum common to both countries, which had this cannon and other pieces as a collection, as was mentioned by Councilor Synésio Scofano Fernandes, and which in that space common to both countries would henceforth constitute a historical memorial that would also gather documents resulting from a conflicting scenario, always difficult to be solved without any of the parties feeling harmed. It would be the creation of a common space between the two nations, close to the border, or on the border, and it would not be so difficult for two countries that are committed to harmoniously coexist (IPHAN 2010, 21).

Among the theses presented, the one that ended up prospering at the time was the non-return of “El Cristiano”. As a result, the topic remains latent on the bilateral agenda, being raised with some frequency by the Paraguayan side. Regardless of whether there is a right or wrong narrative,16 its mere demand generates a theme in the bilateral relationship, subject to different perspectives of analysis and to which Brazil must respond, even if in the negative. Should Brazil demand the return of 16

Adler Castro points out that an element that could contribute to this place of memory being an element of more fruitful reflection would be its better contextualization in the National Historical Museum. Its current caption informs only that it is a howitzer cast in Paraguay and used against Brazilian battleships. In this sense, he suggests that, to assist in a more valuable narrative of heritage, “the ideal would be an objective text, which would allow the visitor to establish his own value judgments on the subject, running away from all preconceived and, therefore, prejudiced ideas, of “Right” and “wrong”, “good” or “bad". (Castro 2014, 121).

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the trophies retained by Paraguay, it would likewise create a new theme in bilateral relations, leaving Paraguay to respond to this Brazilian demand. The case of “El Cristiano” is particularly interesting because it is a heritage that means much more than a weapon for both countries. For Paraguayans, it represents the perseverance of their people in the war, reaching extreme attitudes, such as melting the bells of the churches of Asunción to build a weapon in defense of a national ideal. The cannon, for the Paraguayan narrative, is not presented as a symbol of the country’s defeat in the war, but rather of the resilience and perseverance of a society that has been consumed to the last consequences around a cause that was presented to them as just and inescapable. For Brazil, “El Cristiano” means a relic of a landmark episode in national history, which recalls the saga of soldiers who fought bravely for the interests of their nation. Over 150 years in Brazilian territory, it went through a process of transculturation that made it a place of memory, in which the sacrifice of thousands of lives lost in the fight to restore regional peace is remembered. The case of “El Cristiano” represents, therefore, an example of a trophy valued at the same time by the society that lost it and that received it, and whose demand creates a new theme on the bilateral agenda, which demands repeated attention from the two chancelleries. As a place of memory alluding to human sacrifice from side to side, El Cristiano is equally legitimate for both countries, and it is difficult to reach a consensus on the place where the piece will be exhibited. It was in an attempt to escape this dichotomy that counselor Luis Phelippe Andrès, at the aforementioned IPHAN meeting on the topic, suggested as a consensual solution the valorization of the trophy as a binational heritage. An interesting model in this direction is the case of the monitor Huáscar, a Chilean trophy in the Pacific War, which is transformed into a binational sanctuary through an interesting narrative that aims to honor the combatants of both countries and soften the scars of war.

16.5 The War Trophy as a Binational Monument: The Case of the Monitor Huáscar Anchored in the Chilean naval base of Talcahuano is a yellow and white ship, whose modest size contrasts with its enormous importance in the history of Peru and Chile. This is the monitor “Huáscar”, ordered to be built by order of the Government of Peru to the English shipyards Laird Brothers, in 1864, to fight alongside Chile against Spanish restorative forces. However, the ship would effectively start operating years later, precisely against the Chilean armed forces, in the context of the Pacific War, a confrontation that bled the continent from 1879 to 1883. Although Huáscar is the second vessel of its oldest type in the world on display, it is not historical curiosity that is the reason for the thousands of visits it receives every year. It is the emotional charge that has been transmitted to Chileans and Peruvians for almost 150 years that makes it such a valued cultural heritage.

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Commanded by Admiral Miguel Grau Seminário, patron of the Peruvian armed forces, Huáscar was responsible for numerous victorious campaigns against the Chilean navy, much better equipped than the Peruvian. Despite the cunning of its commander and crew, the monitor Huascar was finally captured in the Battle of Angamos, a naval combat that resulted in a balance of 33 dead, including Admiral Grau himself. Despite the extensive damage suffered in combat, its vital parts have not been affected so that it can be towed to the port of Valparaíso, where it has been completely repaired and integrated into the Chilean Armada. From that moment on, the monitor Huáscar became legally a Chilean ship, under the concept of prey of war. She served the Chilean Armada until the end of the nineteenth century, performing important achievements, especially in the Pacific War, when two Chilean commanders died in military operations aboard Huáscar. Its use by the Chilean armed forces would have opened a process of transculturation of heritage as a relevant element also in Chilean history so that the monitor, after its decommissioning, was transformed into a floating naval museum of the Chilean Navy. It was restored twice, first in 1933 and then between 1971 and 1972. In 1995, the World Ship Trust awarded it the “Maritime Heritage Award” for outstanding restoration work, making it one of 30 historic ships worldwide to receive such a distinction. It is interesting to note that the Chilean Armada started to convey the idea that Huáscar would be “not only a relic, but a floating sanctuary for the Glories of the Sea of Chile and Peru” (Armada de Chile undated). In this perspective, it is stated that “the restoration was carried out always thinking of the glories lived by the Chilean and Peruvian Armed Forces, this is how the Commander’s Chamber installed the portraits of Arturo Prat, Miguel Grau and Manuel Thomson, the three Commanders who died on its decks” (Armada de Chile undated). Despite Chilean efforts to promote it as a sanctuary dedicated to the dozens of sailors of the two nationalities who perished in it, many see it primarily as a blazing trophy that avoids healing the wounds opened in the Pacific War. In a recent statement about this heritage, the director of the Naval Museum of Peru, Rear Admiral Francisco Yabar, expressed that For us, the Huáscar represents the ship whose crew fought heroically in the War of the Pacific under the command of our greatest national hero, who is the great admiral Miguel Grau. Huáscar and its crew are one thing for us, it is Peru in the sea ... Peru, the fighting spirit, the heroism of the sailors to defend their homeland. (Gozzer 2019).

For his part, the current commander of Huáscar points out that The Huáscar, for Chile, is a very important symbol because this is where one of the greatest heroes in our history, Arturo Pratt, died, and we keep it that way and keep it as a great symbol that all Chileans can come to (Gozzer 2019).

For this reason, there were those who suggested that the ship should be sunk to stop being an element of contention between the two countries. Among the defenders of such a fate were none other than the ex-Peruvian chancellor, Antonio Bellaunde (El Comercio 2016) and the Admiral Luiz Giampietri, Peruvian vice president from

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2006 to 2011, who considers this to be the best way to eliminate the discomfort Huáscar causes in the relationship between the two countries: Grau and Pratt died in Huáscar. I think it would be necessary to complement and finish what the original crew of that ship wanted to do. Once Grau died, people tried to sink him. I think that would be a good end for Huáscar, to sink it. That would help eliminate possible discrepancies between the two countries and give him a common grave where they both died (El Comercio 2010).

Despite continuing to arouse passions and controversies from side to side, there seems to be a movement of Chilean-Peruvian conciliation to end once and for all the raids arising from the Pacific War, of which Huáscar is one of the most intelligible symbols. A move in this direction occurred in 2010 when Chilean Defense Minister Jaime Ravinet made statements to the Peruvian press, suggesting a possible return of the monitor to Peru as a gesture of goodwill to overcome the old differences (RPP 16/8/2010). Although the majority reaction of Chilean parliamentarians and politicians was one of total rejection (La Tercera 2010), Minister Ravinet’s statement is eloquent about the Chilean awareness of the importance the ship has for Peruvian society. The influent Peruvian newspaper La República took a stand against the idea, making the distinction, so often ignored, between trophy and booty of war: “The Huáscar is a war trophy. On the other hand, the documents and historical monuments that Chile stole during its occupation are a loot”. And making the words of a renowned Peruvian historian, who regrets the devaluation of the deeds of arms by his fellow citizens, conclude: Do we want a war trophy? Let’s get the Covadonga out of the Chancay sea, that was our trophy, obtained by just three Peruvians after a strategic explosion. Just when we were at the worst of the war. It was sunk by three brave men, whom no one remembers, and to whom we do not pay any honor thinking of a ship that they beat us. (La República 2010)

A similar situation occurred years later when a large part of the Peruvian Congress signed a petition requesting the return of Huáscar to Peru, on loan, on the occasion of the country’s bicentenary (El Comercio 2016). The proposal was rejected by the Peruvian executive and suffered harsh criticism from the press. In an editorial in the main periodical of the country, the ex-chancellor Jorge Colunge once again recalled the distinction between trophy and booty of war. The ill-fated proposal of almost half of the members of the outgoing Congress to ask Chile to “borrow” the Huáscar on the occasion of the bicentennial, immediately found the objective opposition of two former foreign foreign ministers and of some newspaper articles that were pronounced in the same direction. A different reaction to such nonsense could not be expected. (..) Huáscar became a museum that for Chile is a sanctuary, where homage is paid to the naval glories of both countries, enhancing a spirit of veneration to those who offered their lives for their homelands. Thus, the Huáscar is not just a war trophy. And on our part, the image of the monitor should not lead us to exacerbated nationalism or senseless xenophobia, but it should lead us to respect our dead and to know our history. A very different thing, however, are the looting and pillaging actions that occurred during the occupation. Actions that in his time were not only regulated by military criminal codes, but international law had already assimilated emphatic doctrine and express indication of

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various crimes that were developed from 1863 until culminating with the so-called Oxford Manual of 1880. In This classic compendium of Law is classified as war crimes numerous acts of pillage and robbery, such as those perpetrated on the Palace of the Exhibition and the numerous works of art in Lima, the National Archive, the Astronomical Observatory of Lima, the National Library, the May 2 monument, the physics and chemistry offices of San Marcos, the Pedro Ruiz Gallo clock and even the animals in the zoological garden and other objects of high scientific and artistic value (Colunge 2016).

It is interesting that the editorial of the ex-chancellor very clearly traces the differences between looting and the spoils of war, a practice that is even predicted in the Peruvian military code itself (Peru. Ministerial Resolution 49/2010.100). As in the adventurous return of the ship to Peru by unilateral Chilean decision, in 2010, it is also clear on this occasion that, for Peruvian opinion-makers, the greatest offense against the country’s dignity is not the existence of a Peruvian ship as a trophy in Chile, but the extensive looting practiced by the Chilean army in the occupation of Lima. In this perspective, a gesture that may have helped to calm relations between the two countries in relation to the memory of the Pacific War was the return of part of the books subtracted from the National Library of Peru. In 2007, President Michele Bachelet returned 3788 books that were in the National Library of Chile. Ten years later, a new contribution with 720 books, including true bibliographical jewels, reinforced this gesture of approximation. Part of the collection was declared a national cultural heritage, with the following claim alleged by the National Library of Peru: “This declaration as a Cultural Heritage of the Nation is the result of the effort of Chile and Peru to overcome the political-military differences produced outside of them years old. This is the only case of restitution in South America” (Biblioteca Nacional del Perú 2019). It is interesting to note that the declaration does not hide the political attractor of the Pacific War, but presents it in an optimistic perspective, in which the desired reconciliation movement outlined by the Chilean government stands out. Another element that may have helped to heal the wounds of the war was the favorable sentence to Peru in the process arbitrated by the International Court of The Hague regarding the controversy over the limits of the territorial sea and the exclusive economic zone of the two countries, a dispute still arising from the War of the Pacific. Peruvian success in the dispute, concluded in 2014, was considered an important diplomatic victory for the country, allowing a reprieve from the narrative of Peru’s complete military defeat during the conflict. Thus, in the case of Huáscar, there seems to be a progressive understanding regarding the destination of the heritage. Due to the maturity of the two societies, the growing flow of trade and people between the two countries, and a conciliatory gesture from the winner, who proposed to convey the idea that a war trophy can be a binational sanctuary, the case of monitor Huáscar points out for the possibility that war trophies kept by the winning countries, as they are part of their national histories, without this being a conflictive factor with the countries that lost them. If the narrative that this is a binational sanctuary is successful, it would be possible to

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conjecture the hypothesis that, in the future, the ship that fought for Peru and Chile will become an element of approximation and harmony between the two.

16.6 Final Remarks Unlike cultural goods and booties taken in armed conflicts, war trophies are still the subject of few studies in the fields of History, International Public Law, and International Relations. Its continuity as one of the most long-lived traits of Western culture, its legal peculiarity, and its multiple implications for the contemporary diplomatic agenda suggest that the topic should soon receive more attention from experts. Without pretending to exhaust the different uses and meanings that can be given to war trophies from the perspective of international relations, the present study sought to point out some preliminary ideas on the subject, with a view to initiating a typology of use of this artifact in the field international relations. Whether to neutralize the enemy’s attack, to incorporate it into their own armed forces or to compose a museum’s collection, the taking of military assets from opponents in armed conflicts finds full legal support in the current international compendia, both from the perspective of acts of war, as well as the protection of heritage. In this way, the seizure, maintenance, exhibition and even the return of goods as a war trophy is the subject of the domestic legislation of each country. More than that, it is an issue related to national historiographical narratives, deflagrated from public processes for the construction of social imaginary and collective memories. As a place of memory, war trophies are a cultural object, which relates collective memory to the identity of the social group. In this perspective, the trophies are a highly appreciated category of cultural heritage, as they have a relevant image value. As Christofoletti pointed out, With the appropriation of cultural heritage for commercial and political purposes within the economies of all parts of the globe, heritage conservation now plays an important role in cultural diplomacy, elevating its status from a mere diplomatic strategy of good neighborly relations to an elaborate tactic. of soft power in different countries around the globe (Christofoletti 2017, 20).

In effect, according to a given narrative or social imaginary, objects can serve different purposes and integrate new meanings, moving between the categories of “sacred” and “merchandise” very quickly. Consequently, even after the resignification and transculturation of war trophies from battlefields to museums, the narratives around them are always under construction. By rearranging exhibitions, adding or deleting information to the catalog, being refunded, demanded, ostensibly displayed, a trophy can serve multiple internal and foreign policy interests.17 If Steven Pinker’s hypothesis is correct and the world is more and more peaceful (Pinker 2011), with fewer wars between states, this will impact not only on the number 17

A good study of the potential for uses and reframing inherent in war trophies over time is that of Jonathan Vance regarding cannons seized by Canada in the First World War (Vance 1995, 55).

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of existing trophies but, above all, on the way the trophies will be re-signified for internal and foreign policy purposes. More than proposing the supremacy of one country over another, the value of the war trophy will increasingly reside in its potential for use as a state’s soft power, that is, in its ability to convey an ideal, to signal a gesture, reinterpret history. The return, demand, display, or reframing of a trophy can, for example, serve to reinforce a country’s alignment with a certain ideal, support its geopolitical repositioning, or contribute to self-criticism, promoting ruptures with old paradigms. “Whoever controls the past, controls the future; whoever controls the present, controls the past” (Orwell 1949)—the Orwellian approach to history allows us to understand the trophies as a powerful material fragment of the past, a heritage that symbolizes and reinforces essential values for nations, and that allows to reconstructing in the flavors and moods of each era, different narratives about the past.

References Alcalá G (2018) Imágenes de la Guerra de la Tríplice Alianza. Diálogos 10(1):105–115. https://doi. org/10.4025/dialogos.v10i1.122 Armada de Chile (undated). Monitor Huáscar. Accessed in 14/5/2020 https://www.armada.cl/arm ada/tradicion-e-historia/unidades-historicas/h/monitorhuascar/2014-02-13/155207.html Baczko B (1985) A Imagina¸cão Social. In: Einaudi E (ed) Anthropos-Homem, vol 5. Casa Nacional da Moeda, Lisboa, pp 283-347 Biblioteca Nacional del Peru (2019) Public Note NP N° 205-2019. November 14th. 2019 Brezzo L (2013) La devolución de los trofeos de guerra. El Lector, Asunción del Paraguay Campos HC (2012) Consideraciones sobre lo heroico y el establecimiento del Día de los héroes en Paraguay. Identidad e Historia. Pensamientos Del Bicentenario 1(2012):55–71 de Castro AHF (2014) O poder político vem do cano de uma arma. 90 Anos do Museu Histórico Nacional Em Debate (1922–2012) Christofoletti R (2017) Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Leopoldianum, Santos Colunga Hernández, MdeÁ (2004) “De trofeos de guerra a mensajeros de paz. Diario de Campo, 64: 34–36 Colunge J (2016) “El Huáscar y el derecho internacional”. El Comercio, May 25th. 2016. Congreso Nacional, Law Project 1820/1976 de Lagránge LC (1967) A Tomada do Rio de Janeiro em 1711 por Duguay-Trouin. Imprensa Nacional, Rio de Janeiro Doratioto FFM (2002) Maldita guerra: nova hist´oria da Guerra do Paraguai. Companhia das Letras, São Paulo Doratioto FFM (2012) Relações Brasil-Paraguai: afastamento, tensões e reaproximação. FUNAG, Brasília El Comercio (s.a.) June 13th., 2016 El Comercio (s.a.) August 20th., 2010 El Nacional (s.a.). March 5th., 1964a El Nacional (s.a.) March 6th., 1964b Fleck I (2013) A honra por um canh˜ao. Folha de São Paulo Garcia R (2012) Obras do Bar˜ao do Rio Branco: Efem´erides brasileiras. FUNAG, Brasília

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Gozzer S (2019) Huáscar: la fascinante historia del barco que divide a Perú y Chile desde hace 140 años (y qué tiene que ver con la Guerra del Pac´ifico). BBC, October 15th. 2019. https://www. bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-49968056 Guedes MTF (2018) A proteção dos bens culturais em tempos de guerra e de paz: a participação brasileira na Conferência de Haia, no Pacto de Röerich e na Convenção de Haia. Anais do Museu Paulista 26(19): 1–31. doi:https://doi.org/10.1590/1982-02672018v26e19 Henckaerts J-M (1999) New rules for the protection of cultural property in armed conflict. Int Rev Red Cross 81(835):593–620 Homer (2020) Iliada. Vieira, Trajano (org.). Editora, São Paulo, 34 Imperial War Museum. Annual Report and Accounts (2018–2019). Disponível em https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data /file/819427/IWM_Annual_Reports_and_Accounts_2018-2019.pdf IPHAN. Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico Nacional (2010) Ata da LXV Reunião do Conselho Consultivo do Patrimônio Cultural. November 4th., 2010 Jornal de Brasília (s.a.). April 10th. 1980 La República. (s.a.). September 5th., 2010 https://larepublica.pe/archivo/482938-donde-debe estarel-huascar/ La Tribuna. (s.a.). August 6th., 1974. La Tercera (s.a.) https://www.latercera.com/noticia/alusion-de-ravinet-a-posible-devolucion-del huascar-a-peru-abre-debate-entre-parlamentarios-2/ Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Informação ao Presidente da República. n. 304. 12/11/1975. Ministério das Relações Exteriores. Despacho ao Memorandum ARC/34. March 31st. 1976 Loaeza S (1990) La Visita Del General De Gaulle a México: El Desencuentro Francomexicano. Foro Int 31(2):294–313 Nora P (1993) Entre memória e história: a problemática dos lugares”. Projeto História 10:7–28 Nightingale D (2013) Bulford Military Court Centre. Sentencing remarks of HHJ Jeff Blackett. July 25th. 2013. Available at https://web.archive.org/web/20130823050521/, http://www.judici ary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/130725-nightingale-sentencing-remarks.pdf Novakova L, Salyova R (2019) Celebrating victory: art and war booty in Classical Greece”. Ilria Internacional Revie 9(2):191–201 Novedades (s.a.) March 6th. 1964 Offroy R (1987) De Gaulle et l’Am´erique latine. Espoir 61(1987):27–57 Orwell G (1984) Secker and Warburg, London, 1949 Pinker S (2011) (2011) The better angels of our nature. Viking, New York Reta JO, Casquero M (eds) (1982) San Isidoro de Sevilla. Etimologías, vol.I-II. Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, Madrid Rich J (2013) “Roman rituals of war”. In: Campbell B, Trittle B (eds) The Oxford handbook of warfare in the Classical World.org. 542–68. Oxford Handbooks, Oxford. doi:https://doi.org/10. 1093/oxfordhb/9780195304657.013.0028 Stoiani R (2002) Da Espada à Águia: Construção Simbólica do Poder e Legitimação Política de Napoleão Bonaparte. Unpublished Master thesis, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo Tetteris K (2014) The embodiment of victory. Heritagization of war trophies in early modern Sweden. Unpiblished Master thesis, University of Stockholm, Stockholm Tiempo (1964) vol. XLIV. num. 1141. (s.a.). March 16th. 1964 (UNSC R. 2347/2017) Conselho de Segurança das Nações Unidas (2017) Resolução n. 2347/2017 Disponível em. https://www.undocs.org/S/RES/2347%20 Vance JF (1995) Tangible demonstrations of a great victory: war trophies in Canada. Mater Cult Rev 42(1995):47–56 Vaïsse M (1998) La Grandeur: politique étrangère du général de Gaulle. Fayard, Paris Zétola BM (2006) Triunfos militares e legitimação de poder na antiguidade romana. Métis 5(2006):35–59

Chapter 17

Soft Power of Minas Gerais: The Circula Minas Program (2015–2018) as a Measure of Preservation, National and International Diffusion of Minas Gerais Culture and Heritage Vanessa Gomes de Castro

and Thiago Rodrigues Tavares

Abstract The following paper analyzes the results of the Circula Minas Program of Cultural Interchange from 2015 to 2018, with closer attention to cultural heritage. The program’s edicts, supported by cultural and social policies, sought to financially support artists, researchers, masters of traditional knowledge, and other residents of Minas Gerais for presentations and capacitation in many cultural areas, fostering national and international diffusion of Mineiro culture, as well as its preservation. In face of that, this paper reflects on the edicts considering the concept of soft power, understood as the construction of friendly power relations, for instance, through cultural policies, strengthening, therefore, political and economic power both within and outside the country through cultural attractivity. The results are presented in charts containing the amount of yearly selected proposals, the cultural areas represented, the value of financial support, cities of origin, and countries of destination. The conclusions emphasize the potential comebacks of measures such as the referred edicts in the promotion and protection of the state’s culture and heritage in strengthening the Mineiro and Brazilian soft power. Keywords Soft power · Programa Circula Minas · Cultural policies · Heritage

This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). V. G. de Castro (B) Federal Institute of Northern Minas Gerais (IFNMG), Araçuaí, Brazil T. R. Tavares Federal University, Juiz de Fora, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_17

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17.1 Introduction This work aims to analyze the results of Cycles Mines notices Cultural Exchange, in terms of their contributions to the dissemination and preservation of Minas Gerais culture in various areas, for example in the field of cultural heritage, strengthening friendly relations of power both internally and abroad. The Circula Minas edict was a cultural exchange program promoted by the Government of Minas Gerais, through the State Secretariat of Culture (SEC) and the Interior and Cultural Action Superintendence (Siac), with annual editions from 2015 to 2018. It was anchored to cultural policies, such as State Law no. 11.726/1994, which delineates the cultural policy of the State of Minas Gerais, aiming, among other things, at the exercise of cultural rights, encouraging the creation, dissemination, protection, and preservation of Minas Gerais culture, such as forms of expression, manners of creating, making and living, scientific, technological and artistic creations, works, objects, documents, buildings, heritage itself. The Circula Minas de Intercâmbio edict was also based on social policies, such as state law no. 18,692/2009, which provides criteria for execution and management of the free transfer of goods, values, and benefits within the scope of social programs, aiming at guaranteeing fundamental rights, such as education, health, work, housing, leisure, security, basic sanitation, sport, access to culture, among others. Obviously, the edict is based on the Federal Constitution of 1988, a landmark of the period of democratization in Brazil after two decades of military dictatorship, aiming at the ratification of the fundamental individual and social rights of all Brazilians, such as the right to culture, along with dissemination and cultural preservation policies. Thus, the Circula Minas edict, from 2015 to 2018, granted financial support to individuals, as well as to non-profit legal entities of a primarily cultural nature, Brazilian or naturalized, such as artists, researchers, masters of traditional knowledge and similar, domiciled in the state of Minas Gerais. In view of this, it aimed to exchange experiences and disseminate Minas Gerais culture in different areas, inside and outside the country, for example: in the visual arts, circus, dance, theater, audiovisual (cinema and video), new media, literature, cultural memory, black movement, capoeira, museological and cultural heritage, design and fashion, cultural management and production, creative services, humanities, cultural diversity, handicrafts, folklore, among others, except the music area for having its own incentive program. This financial support enabled the circulation of cultural attractions in the state of Minas Gerais and the strengthening of friendly national and international relations. Considering this, this work seeks to analyze the results of the public edicts Circula Minas de Intercâmbio, in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018, as well as their contributions to the preservation and diffusion of Minas Gerais culture inside and outside the country, in several areas in general and in the field of cultural heritage, in particular. Thus, the edicts and their results are examined from the perspective of soft power, a concept established in the field of international relations, referring to the construction of friendly power relations, strengthened by cultural policies. It is important to stress that the approach of international relations, historical research, and the field of cultural

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heritage is somehow related to the rise of cultural history (Burke 2002). The mutual exchange of knowledge involving history and other disciplines in the humanities (sociology, anthropology, political science, international relations, economics, etc.) has sought to understand the human experience as a whole (Burke 2008), enabling us to better understand society’s relationship with its cultural heritage. According to Burke (2008), twentieth-century historiography has expanded the possibilities of research for the historian, making it possible for every human record to be valued as a potential source of social interpretation. The perspective of local and microscopic observation becomes to be considered, in which historians can shed light on concrete local experiences without losing sight, however, of the macro issues regarding social systems’ structures. In this sense, this work examines the results of a cultural exchange program in the state of Minas Gerais, considering its possibilities for the Brazilian context. To do so, we adopt the quantitative method to analyze the proposals deferred by the edicts and the money invested by Minas Gerais State. According to Burke (2002), the quantitative method has a long history in the humanities, used in economic, demographic, sociological, historical, and other analyses. That said, this paper methodologically analyzes the data on the results of the abovementioned edicts, which were published in the Official Daily of the State of Minas Gerais and on the website of the State Secretariat for Culture,1 such as the number of eligible and selected proposals, eligible and unselected proposals and disabled proposals to receive financial support over the years; the amount of financial support received by the selected proposals in the 4 years of the public edict; the cultural areas of the selected proposals; the total amount of financial support received by area; cities of origin; and destination countries. In this sense, besides the analysis of all areas in general, we emphasize specificities in the cultural heritage field. Thus, it was possible to grasp a perspective of the potential results of the edict in the building of friendly power relationships, inside and outside Brazil, involving culture, government, and the population, strengthening political and economic power in the present time.

17.2 Soft Power Coined by Joseph Nye Jr. between the late 1980s and early 1990s, the concept of soft power is part of international relations theory, being used to designate the ability of governments to persuade in the geopolitical sphere, considering, among other aspects, its cultural capital. When observing United States’ foreign policy, Nye Jr. (2002) argued that the country, despite being a superpower, with great economic and military power, should also attract other countries through cooperation, with the use of soft power. This power represents a state’s ability to achieve its goals through attraction, rather than coercion. In this way, soft power is characterized by the use of 1

The links for the edicts can be found in the references.

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instruments in the fields of culture and ideology, unlike “raw power” (hard power), which stems from the spheres of the economy, military force, the use of threats, and violence. According to Nye Jr. (2004), in recent years, due to several social, political, economic, and cultural changes, the exercise of “power” has also undergone several changes, for example, the counterbalance with the use of coercive power. As noted by Christofoletti (2017), for Nye Jr., the success of an international actor in world affairs would not only depend on the ability to enforce order through the economic or physical influence of hard power but also on the ability to attract admirable values through soft power, considered legitimate, in which “persuasion” through certain “intangible elements”—such as institutions, ideas, values, and, of course, culture itself—is consistent with the “tangible elements,” like strength and money, almost always associated with hard power. In the same direction, Ouriveis (2013) notes that soft power is directly related to a country’s credibility: the greater the capacity to disseminate friendly power relations (soft power), the more credit it will have in face of the international system. As stated by Nye Jr. (2002), a nation that succeeds in legitimizing its soft power in front of others will find the least resistance to get whatever it wants. Once a country has compelling culture and ideology, other countries are more willing to accompany him. Nye Jr. (2004) points Brazil, China, and India as emerging countries with the potential to spread their soft power during the global information age. The author is adamant in saying that hard power (coercion and punishment) is around and is going to last, although becoming increasingly combined with soft power (persuasion and attraction). With the use of strategies he currently calls smart power, Nye Jr. (2012) believes that it is possible to deal with today’s problems, such as climate change, drug trafficking, financial flows, pandemics, and others—everything that is out of governments’ control, whose power is chaotically distributed. Due to the need for cooperation, through collective work and the ability to create networks, soft power becomes more and more important to deal with this type of problem (Nye Jr. 2012). In the assessment of Nye Jr. (2004), soft power relations grow in three ways: the first is national culture; the second is internal policies and values; and the third, foreign policy—the last two with greater government dominance, in relation to culture. In view of this, the strategies presented by Nye Jr. (2004) are (i) to improve the transmission of messages and news (broadcasting); (ii) expand exchange programs for non-governmental sectors; (iii) improving visa granting processes for students; (iv) encourage studies abroad; (v) rethink the role of peacekeepers; (vi) develop programs to attract foreign teachers to teach their languages; and (vii) starting a public diplomacy corporation to develop soft power relations both in the private and non-profit sectors. Nye Jr. (2004) develops several arguments to prove the attractiveness of American culture. According to the author, it is possible to see how the United States has already adopted several soft power strategies, such as it is the country that most attracts immigrants, foreign students, and tourists; it has the largest worldwide publication of books, etc. For Ballerini (2017), soft power is perceived, above all, in culture. The

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classic example of Hollywood, with its films and derivative products, reproduces a lifestyle that serves American interests in the field of politics and economics very well. Beyond the United States, other countries have also sought their space and the strengthening of their soft power. Ballerini (2017), in his book “Poder Suave,” presents soft power in the light of entertainment and culture. The author uses the concept of Nye Jr. to explain soft power’s mechanisms of action and its expression in areas such as music, cinema, visual arts, and dance. According to Christofoletti (2017), Ballerini stands out for addressing some of the best-known examples of contemporary soft power, such as Russian ballet, the North American and Indian film industries, French fashion, the impact of Japanese manga, anime and games, Brazilian and Mexican soap operas, some musical genres, such as bossa nova and tango, as well as African and Chinese arts. Thus, culture is a key scene in the establishment of friendly relations of power and corresponds to the internal values of the country, to education, politics, institutions, diplomacy, cultural heritage, etc. (Gueraldi 2005). For Nye Jr. (2004), Brazil is a country with potential soft power, which projects attraction for its vibrant culture and promise of future, over which the author presents a positive view. As Gueraldi (2005) notes, in recent years, Brazil has sought to strengthen its soft power, that is, friendly power relationships with other countries through culture, for example, by increasing government investments in public universities and postgraduate programs, attracting more foreign students (such as Latin Americans and Portuguese-speaking Africans); with the financing of less favored countries to overcome economic and governance crises (as in the cases of Venezuela and Bolivia); with humanitarian aid (in Haiti and in an attempt to send troops to Asian countries hit by the tsunamis on December 26, 2004); or with investment in sport and hosting major sporting events, such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup, not to mention other sources of soft power that are beyond the reach of the government. However, it is emphasized that, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, this situation is in decline with the advancement of liberal, conservative political forces and extreme right groups, which discredit (in their speeches and public behavior) the potential of soft power. Therefore, we have in Brazil currently a new scenario in which the frailty of culture-centered, friendly power relationships predominates inside and outside the country, alongside a framework of little cultural incentive for culture by public managers, whether in federal, and state or even municipal level. Thus, Nye Jr. (2012) asked some interesting and reflective questions about the development of soft power. They are: how can we work together to produce global public goods that we can all benefit from? How do we define our national interests, so that it is not a zero-sum game, but a positive one? How to produce global public goods that are good for us and, at the same time, good for everyone? In view of this, we believe that the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio edict is an example of soft power cultivation, that is, the strengthening of friendly power relations through cultural attraction, inside and outside Minas Gerais, in the country and abroad, also bringing together the State and civil society. It is a positive-sum, and the gain belongs to everyone, as we will see later.

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17.3 The Circula Minas Interchange Edict from 2015 to 2018 In effect in the state of Minas Gerais between years 2015 and 2018, the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio calls for proposals were intended to provide financial support to artists, scholars, technicians, cultural agents, masters of popular knowledge and activities, among others, in national and international travels, aiming to participate in cultural events or activities, whether for the presentation of their own work, training course, artistic residency, tribute or award. The edicts aimed at disseminating, training, and multiplying the culture of Minas Gerais, in several areas, through the granting of financial resources. Thus, they sought proposals carrying out cultural activities demanded by individuals and legal entities of cultural character, non-profit, with permanent residence in Minas Gerais. The proposal could be executed individually or in a group. The public edicts were an initiative of the State Department of Culture (SEC), through the Interiorization and Cultural Action Superintendence (Siac), based on cultural and social policies. Thus, from 2015 to 2018, 04 calls for proposals were released, annually, with 12 months of validity each, with selections and results in the first and second semesters. These edicts encouraged initiatives in cultural diffusions, such as practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and techniques that result from the creativity of individuals or groups. On the training, research, and training axis, they mention the exchange of knowledge and experiences between groups, entities, and cultural professionals, through courses, seminars, debates, workshops, lectures, and exhibitions of academic works, contributing to the formation and/or professionalization of artists, managers, cultural agents, and the like. It should also be noted that the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio calls for proposals sought to prioritize the selection of proposals considering, for instance: the experience and training of the applicant in the cultural area; the history of the event, course, or institution promoting the activity whose participation was claimed; the relevance of the proposal for the cultural area, its potential for the unfolding and diffusion of Minas Gerais culture; proposals from the interior of the State; collective proposals; proposals with a socio-cultural counterpart; proposals focused on the theme and/or actions with Afro-descendants, native populations, disabled people, women’s or LGBTIQ empowerment. The financial resources for the public notices came from the Treasury of the State of Minas Gerais. The amount allocated to each edict was R$ 300,000.00 (three hundred thousand reais), conditioned to the budgetary and financial availability of the Secretary of State for Culture. The amount was divided among the selected proposals, which received a minimum and maximum amount, depending on the national or international destination and the number of participants. In view of this, each call received dozens of proposals, some qualified and selected; some not selected due to budget unavailability; and some disqualified for not meeting the requirements of the edict. Finally, each approved proposal had an obligation to account for its realization, as well as offering a counterpart activity within 60 days after its return. Thus, they

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should prove the expenses and prepare a detailed report on the proposed activity’s performance, including documentation, photographs, posters, catalogs, CDs, DVDs, press material, attendance list, or other supports. Also, a counterpart socio-cultural activity should be offered: workshop, lecture, seminar, artistic presentation, course, etc., meeting criteria of regionalization, democratization of access to culture, and training of people. Such activity should be free and carried out in the state of Minas Gerais. It is also important to note that the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio calls (2015– 2018) were made during the government of Fernando Pimentel (Workers Party-PT). After the change of the State Government and the entry of Romeu Zema (Novo Party), the edict was not published again, pointing out the problem of discontinuity of cultural policies in the state. However, on March 13, 2020, the Secretariat of Culture and Tourism of Minas Gerais (Secult) announced on its website that the Circula Minas edicts would be reinstated.2 The release was planned for April, however, until July 2020, it had not been released. This interruption since 2019, rather than resulting in economic savings for the State, creates the opposite effect through the reduction of Minas Gerais’ soft power and ignoring a global context in which governments favoring cultural preservation agendas have increased their economic and political power on the international stage. This way, Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state with the greatest number of humanity’s cultural heritage, with a rich tangible and intangible collection, weakens its friendly power relationships through cultural policies with other Brazilian states and countries. Another example of the State Government’s difficulty in managing cultural policies and soft power took place in 2020, with the lack of support for the carnival blocks, putting at risk the festivities in Minas Gerais’ capital, Belo Horizonte. In recent years, Belo Horizonte’s carnival has become one of the largest in Brazil, due to the attraction of many tourists who, in turn, spend on hotels, restaurants, transportation, etc., boosting both formal and informal economy. At the city carnival’s opening, the reading of a political manifesto from the blocs against the State Government tells us a lot about the importance of soft power: Romeu Zema, Governor of Gerais, we came here to show you the Carnival that we make. See this happy city, like you never wanted it to be. Zema, you incompetent, you did not release the sound cars for us. Zema, your stupidity brought us together: union, blocks, people you’ve never seen. Zema, you hardhead, here’s the strength of the culture. Zema, enemy of the people, old party passing as novelty. Zema from the banks and contractors, the misfortune of mining. Zema, friends with the contractors, we stand the tankers. Zema your blunderer, pays the minimum for education. Zema, friend of Jair, you will both fall down soon. Zema, police’ boss, Carnival is a delight. Out, Zema! (ENTÃO BRILHA, 2020, on-line).

Through this manifesto, it is possible to note, among other things, the discontent from the organizers of carnival blocs regarding the lack of incentive from the State Government to uphold the festival in Minas Gerais’ capital. In this sense, it reveals 2

Secult apresenta previsão de calendário 2020/2021 do Programa Cultura das Gerais—série de editais do Fundo Estadual de Cultura. http://www.cultura.mg.gov.br/component/gmg/story/5523secult-apresenta-previsao-de-calendario-2020-2021-do-programa-cultura-das-gerais-serie-de-edi tais-fundo-estadual-de-cultura.

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indignation at the lack of support for culture, as well as at political and economic problems of Minas Gerais and Brazil, in general. So, a friction between society and public managers, a cooldown of “friendly” relationships fostered by cultural policies becomes self-evident, a situation that denies soft power, which, to be effective, must be cultivated in all spheres, that is, in each city, in the state, the country, and abroad.

17.4 Results from Circula Minas Interchange Edicst from 2015 to 2018 As shown in Table 17.1, from 2015 to 2018, four Circula Minas calls were released. Thus, in 2015, 37 proposals were financially supported; in 2016, 34; in 2017, 40; in 2018, 38; totaling 149 selected proposals in four consecutive years of public edicts. As to the total financial support, in 2015, it was R$ 292,200.00; in 2016, R$ 301,400.00; in 2017, R$ 305,250.00; and, in 2018, it was R$ 341,350.00. Thus, approximately one million reais (R$ 1,240,200.00) were invested in the public edicts. Each selected proposal received a minimum of $ 450.00 and a maximum of R$ 35,000.00, depending on the city of origin and d the destination and the number of people involved in the activity. It is noteworthy that the value made available by the public notices are relatively negligible for the state, considering the symbolic and material returns of cultural circulation, both for Minas Gerais and Brazil, namely, the strengthening of soft power through the construction of friendly power relationships inside and outside the country, through cultural policies. It is noteworthy that, from 2015 to 2018, in addition to the 149 selected proposals, 148 proposals qualified, but were not selected due to budget unavailability, in addition to 252 proposals that were disqualified for not meeting the basic requirements of the edict, as we can see in the Table 17.2. However, the large number of proposals received in the 4 years of public notice (549), reveals the high demand for it and the need to expand it with respect to the budget made available. According to what is presented in Table 17.3, the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio edicts, from 2015 to 2018, taking into account the axes “cultural diffusion” and “education, research, and training,” covered 19 cultural areas, involving theater, dance, Table 17.1 Number of selected proposals and total support per year

Year

Total selected proposals

Total financial support R$

2015

37

292,200.00

2016

34

301,400.00

2017

40

305,250.00

2018

38

341,350.00

Total

149

1,240,200.00

Source Prepared by the authors (2020)

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Table 17.2 Selected qualified proposals, qualified unselected and disabled from 2015 to 2018 Year

Selected Enabled

Enabled not selected

Disabled

Total

2015

37

42

40

119

2016

34

two

35

71

2017

40

32

70

142

2018

38

70

109

217

Total

149

148

254

549

Source: Prepared by the authors (2020)

Table 17.3 Number of proposals selected by area from 2015 to 2018 Area

Amount

Theatre

37

Dance

33

Visual arts

17

Audiovisual

15

Patrimony

13

Movie theater

5

Circus

4

Literature

4

New media

4

Visual arts

3

cultural production and management

3

Capoeira

2

Creative economy

2

Memory

2

Art education

1

Performing arts

1

Crafts

1

Designer and fashion

1

Other (unspecified)

1

Total of 19 areas

149 proposals

Source Prepared by the author (2020)

visual arts, audiovisual, cultural heritage, cinema, circus, visual arts, cultural management and production, literature, capoeira, creative economy, social memory, new media, art education, performing arts, crafts, and fashion design. The areas with most of the selected proposals were theater (37), dance (33), visual arts (17), audiovisual (15), and heritage (13). These cultural areas had more than a dozen proposals selected, compared to the others. In these cases, there may have been a greater demand

318 Table 17.4 Total financial support by area from 2015 to 2018

V. G. de Castro and T. R. Tavares Area

Total support by area R $

Theatre

477,550.00

Dance

227,800.00

Audiovisual

117,400.00

Patrimony

113,400.00

Visual arts

87,600.00

Circus

39,200.00

Movie theater

36,700.00

Literature

24,600.00

Other (unspecified)

20,800.00

Capoeira

20,400.00

New media

16,200.00

Visual arts

15,000.00

Creative economy

13,500.00

cultural production and management

12,600.00

Crafts

8,400.00

Performing arts

4,500.00

Memory

2,650.00

Designer and fashion

1,000.00

Art education Total of 19 areas

900.00 1,240,200.00

Source Prepared by the author (2020)

for these fields, translated into the submission of a greater number of proposals in these areas. Table 17.4 indicates the total amount of financial support in each cultural area, adding the results of the 4 years of public notice. Thus, theater received the amount of R$ 477,550.00; dance, R$ 227,800.00; audiovisual, R$ 117,400.00; equity, R$ 113,400.00 (emphasis added); visual arts, R$ 87,600.00; circus, R$ 39,200.00; cinema, R$ 36,700.00; literature, R$ 24,600.00; capoeira, R$ 20,400.00; new media, R$ 16,200.00; plastic arts, R$ 15,000.00; creative economy, R$ 13,500.00; cultural management and production, R$ 12,600.00; handicrafts, R$ 8,400.00; performing arts, R$ 4,500.00; memory, R$ 2,650.00; fashion designer, R$ 1,000.00; art education, R$ 900.00; in addition to others not specified, which received R$ 20,800.00. In Table 17.5, we note that, regarding the cities of origin, out of 149 proposals selected for Circula Minas de Intercâmbio edicts, from 2015 to 2018, 85 were sent by residents of Belo Horizonte; 07, from Uberlândia; 05, from Poços de Caldas; 04, from Ipatinga; 04, from Ouro Preto; 04, from Nova Lima; 03, from Contagem; 03, from Juiz de Fora; 03, by Teófilo Otoni; 02, from Conceição das Alagoas; 02, by Passos; 02, from Sete Lagoas; and 02, from Três Corações. Another 23 cities had

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Table 17.5 Cities of origin and number of selected proposals (2015 to 2018) City of origin

Amount

City of origin

Amount

Belo Horizonte

85

Cordisburgo

1

Uberlandia

7

Copenhagen

1

Poços de Caldas

5

Guapé

1

Ipatinga

4

Itabirito

1

Nova Lima

4

Liberdade

1

Ouro Preto

4

Lima Duarte

1

Contagem

3

Mariana

1

Juiz de Fora

3

Mindelo (Cape Verde)

1

Teófilo Otoni

3

New York (USA)

1

Conceição das Alagoas

2

Pará de Minas

1

Passos

2

Paracatu

1

Seven lagoons

2

Ribeirão das Neves

1

Três Corações

2

Rio de Janeiro (RJ)

1

Almenara

1

Santa Rita do Sapucaí

1

Araguari

1

Santana de Pirapama

1

Barbacena

1

Sao Paulo (SP)

1

Betim

1

Uberaba

1

Caeté

1

Viçosa

1

Total of 36 cities and 149 proposals Source Prepared by the author (2020)

at least one proposal submitted and selected. It is observed that, although the state of Minas Gerais has 853 municipalities, most of the selected proposals (85) were sent by people from the state capital, followed by another 35 cities. It is important to highlight that such numbers antagonize the edict’s own proposal, which aimed to prioritize projects from the state’s interior. Therefore, the inhabitants of the capital and metropolitan regions took greater advantage of the opportunities offered by the edicts, compared to those who live in the state’s interior, a fact that relates, among other things, to the historical social and regional inequalities. Therefore, cultural policies need an interiorization strategy to achieve a greater number of people, until the “gorges of the state.” In addition, 05 proposals came from other cities outside Minas Gerais: 1 from São Paulo/SP and 1 from Rio de Janeiro/RJ (Brazil); 1 from Mindelo (Cabo Verde); 1 from New York (U.S.A.); and 1 from Copenhagen (Denmark). It should be stressed that the edicts also admitted a proposal in which the applicant domiciled in Minas Gerais could claim the granting of support to a third party (individual, with individual or collective execution), domiciled in another state or country, provided the proposed activity occurred inside and State of Minas Gerais.

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Table 17.6 Destination countries and number of proposals selected from 2015 to 2018 Destiny country

Amount

Destiny country

Amount

Brazil

32

Australia

1

Portugal

18

Belgium

1

France

17

Algeria

1

U.S

12

Bolivia

1 1

Argentina

9

Cape Green

Chile

7

Canada

1

Mexico

5

China

1

Colombia

4

South Korea

1

Spain

4

Croatia

1

Peru

4

Slovakia

1

Uruguay

4

Netherlands

1

Germany

3

England

1

Italy

3

Ireland

1 1

Cuba

2

Mozambique

Denmark

2

Nigeria

1

El Salvador

2

Poland

1

Ecuador

2

Serbia

1

Japan

2

Total of 35 countries and 149 proposals Source: Prepared by the author (2020)

Table 17.6 shows the destination countries of the selected proposals in the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio calls, between 2015 and 2018. It appears that most of the selected proposals were destined for Brazil itself (32), followed by Portugal (18), France (17), United States (12), Argentina (9), Chile (7), Mexico (5), Colombia (4), Spain (4), Peru (4), Uruguay (4), Germany (3), Italy (3), Cuba (2), Denmark (2), El Salvador (2), Ecuador (2), Japan (2). Another 17 countries were the target of at least 1 proposal each. These data are a great example of the circulation of Minas Gerais culture across the country and the world (35 countries), strengthening both the state’s and the nation’s soft power. In this sense, as shown in Table 17.7, the Minas Gerais culture went through five continents: America (85), Europe (55), Africa (4), Asia (4), and Oceania (1). In view of these results, it is noted that the financial investment in projects such as the Circula Minas edicts can be considered relatively low, given the economic and symbolic returns of cultural circulation, which cover the respectability of the state of Minas Gerais and Brazil, tourist attraction, entrepreneurship, training of cultural managers, production and circulation of educational materials, among other counterparts. The edicts received an amount of approximately three hundred thousand reais each year, totaling just over one million reais adding up to the 4 years. During

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Table 17.7 Destination continent of the selected proposals from 2015 to 2018 Continent America

Parents North America

United States, Canada, Cuba, Mexico

South America

Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, El Salvador, Ecuador, Bolivia

Proposals 85

Europe

Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, England, Slovakia, Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, Serbia, Croatia

Africa

Mozambique, Nigeria, Cape Verde, Algeria

4

Asia

China, Japan, South Korea

4

Oceania

Australia

Total: 5 continents

35 countries

55

1 149

Source Prepared by the present authors (2020)

this period, 149 proposals were selected, in 19 areas, being financially supported on trips involving cultural activities, covering 35 countries, on 5 continents, not to mention circulation within the country itself. This is face-to-face, long-range, lowcost advertising. In this way, the public edicts can be considered as an investment in the promotion of Minas Gerais and Brazil, to the extent that several regions of the world had contact with the Minas Gerais and Brazilian culture, enabling the construction of power relationships based on soft power.

17.5 The Circula Minas Exchange Program Edicts from 2015 to 2018 and the Selected Proposals in the Area of Cultural Heritage In addition to examining the results of the Circula Minas edicts in general, the present work also seeks to analyze the results in the cultural heritage area, specifically. Issues around heritage are intricately linked to the understanding of soft power and its influence on the international agenda. In the book “Cultural Assets and International Relations: heritage as a mirror of Soft Power,” organized by professor and historian Rodrigo Christofolleti, several authors will address the proximity and the growing use of heritage in the consolidation of public policies. In this work, we use the theory and concept of soft power, to understand how cultural public policies related to heritage have been developed nowadays. Christofolleti (2017) notes that, in recent decades, international organizations have come to look at heritage more broadly, including its potential in strengthening international relations, emerging a positive global agenda with regard to the preservation

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of cultural heritage. Since the end of the 1990s, several conventions carried out by UNESCO, together with the elaboration of multilateral documents, ratify efforts to institutionalize measures for the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage, such as the resolutions that adopted the Convention for the Protection of Heritage World, Cultural and Natural (1972), the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity (2001), the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005). Thus, with the expansion of actions in the sphere of international relations, cultural heritage has become a significant theme in multilateral dialogues and agreements. According to Poulot (2009), few terms have the power of vocation as large as “heritage.” The reality designated by the concept has not had a linear and continuous development until today, acquiring different configurations according to time and space. The concept of equity is, by definition, plural, culturally constructed, and historically determined, changing according to changes in time and contexts in which it is inserted, which enables several possibilities of interpretation. In general, heritage is that which must be passed on to future generations, which has a unique value and, therefore, is a good that needs to be preserved and disseminated. It is feasible to say that heritage is everything that has an important role in the culture of a people, and it can be cultural, historical, natural, intangible, or tangible. As proposed by Choay: um fundo destinado ao usufruto de uma comunidade alargado a dimensões planetárias e constituído pela acumulação contínua de uma diversidade de objetos que congregam a sua pertença comum ao passado: obras e obras-primas das belas-artes e das artes aplicadas, trabalhos e produtos de todos os saberes e conhecimentos humanos (Choay 2008, 11).

Despite dealing with the past, tradition, and memory, heritage is not the past, on the contrary, it is alive, it is the present. As Poulot (2009) points out, its purpose is to certify the identity and affirm values, in addition to celebrating feelings. It can be said that the constitution of heritage is the result of a dialectic of conservation and destruction. For much of the twentieth century, defense around Historical Heritage was concentrated on the European continent and on built goods. Often used for the purpose of legitimizing the power of certain social groups, it has been linked to elites and the concept of Nation and national identity. At the end of the twentieth century, the legislation around patrimonial protection, based on the Heritage Letters, was progressing. Initially, for example, the Letters adopted a perspective focused on the protection of what was commonly called “stone and lime.” Subsequently, the Charters expanded the notions around what is Heritage. Currently, in the twenty-first century, a broader concept is adopted, valuating goods of a tangible and intangible nature, present in the most diverse countries. In Brazil, in order to protect national heritage, Decree-Law no. 25, of November 30th., 1937, which proposes the protection of buildings, landscapes, and urban historical complexes. In the Federal Constitution of 1988, in its articles 215 and 216, Brazil established the expansion of the notion of cultural heritage, admitting the existence

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of cultural goods of tangible and intangible nature, certifying the forms of expression and the ways of creating, making, and living. In these articles, the Constitution recognizes tangible and intangible cultural goods that are references of the various formative groups of Brazilian society, to be preserved by and State in partnership with society. In addition, on August 4, 2000, Decree no. 3,551, which instituted the Register of Cultural Property of an Immaterial Nature, which concerns those practices and those domains of social life that manifest themselves in knowledge, crafts, and ways of doing: celebrations, forms of scenic, plastic, musical or playful expressions, and in places like markets, fairs and sanctuaries, which house collective cultural practices. In this sense, unprecedented transformations that have materialized and intensified since the 1990s (such as the globalization of the economy, new migratory cycles, ethnic and interreligious conflicts, communication and virtual networks) had a direct impact on the international agenda, reinforcing the need to develop instruments dedicated to safeguarding intangible heritage, languages at risk, indigenous peoples, cultural diversity. These are guidelines whose origin precedes that moment, but which have become unavoidable, as it can be seen by the sequence of conventions, agreements, and programs, not only by UNESCO but by the United Nations system (Machado 2017, 279). In turn, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defined practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, and techniques as intangible heritage—such as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural places associated with them-that communities, groups, and, in some cases, individuals recognize as an integral part of their cultural heritage. This definition promulgated in the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, in 2003, was ratified by Brazil. IPHAN (National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage) points out that Brazilian and international legislations share the view that intangible heritage is transmitted from generation to generation and is constantly recreated and experienced by different communities and social groups, depending on their environment, their interaction with nature and its history, which generates a sense of identity and conservation, thus contributing to the promotion of respect for cultural diversity and human creativity. IPHAN, as well as IEPHA (State Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage), have registered some intangible heritage in and State of Minas Gerais. Thus, from the turn of the twentieth to the twenty-first centuries, heritage must contribute to reveal its identities, thanks to the mirror it provides of itself and the contact it allows with the other (Poulot 2009, 14). In light of this, it is understood that the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio (2015– 2018) edicts, within the scope of cultural heritage, can be inserted into a positive international agenda, by supporting trips to disseminate Minas Gerais’ and Brazil’s heritage, “making this spoil an element of cultural export” (Christofolleti 2017, 27). Also, according to Christofolleti (2017), with the growing appropriation of cultural heritage for commercial and political purposes within international economies, its

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conservation, valorization, and dissemination play a remarkable role in cultural diplomacy. As noted by Hartog (2006, 265), heritage imposed itself as a dominant, encompassing, if not devouring category. In any case, evidence of cultural life and public policies. In 2018, for example, there is a group of researchers from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, members of the research group “Heritage and International Relations,” linked to the National Scientific and Technological Development Council (CNPq), the Cultural Heritage Laboratory-LAPA-UFJF and the Memory Conservation Center (Cecom-UFJF), selected in the Circula Minas public call, in the heritage area. The researchers made technical visits to the University of Porto, at the Transdisciplinary Research Center for Culture, Space and Memory (CITCEM), and also to museums and memory centers. Moreover, they performed presentations of their research and had meetings for dissemination and exchange of experiences on the protection and management of Minas Gerais and Portuguese cultural heritage, with UNESCO Club of representatives of the Port City and public authorities of the City of Matosinhos (such as the vice Speaker of the city council and members of the Secretariat of Culture and Tourism, along with the other responsible for the preservation and administration of the local heritage). In addition to the multilateral, scientific, and academic agreements signed during the trip to Portugal, in return for the funding promoted by the call for proposals, the researchers held at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), in September 2019, the “I International Congress of Management of Urban Human Heritage: challenges and risks of preservation” and the “I International Symposium on Human Heritage in Minas Gerais in the International Context.” The event was attended by important authorities in the field of studies and the preservation of historical and cultural heritage, bringing together researchers and students from all over Brazil and abroad. Therefore, the following tables refer to the projects included in the heritage area (cultural and museums). As shown in Table 17.8, there were 13 proposals selected in this area, 6 in 2015 (the year with the highest number of proposals selected in heritage); 1 in 2016; 3 in 2017; 3 in 2018. Regarding the total financial support in this area, in 2015 it was R$ 40,750.00; in 2016, R$ 15,600.00; in 2017 R$ 15,400.00; in 2018, R$ 41,600.00 (the highest amount of financial support). Considering all the Table 17.8 Selected proposals (2015–2018) and total financial support each year in the heritage area Public call year

Number of proposals selected in the heritage area

2015

6

40,750.00

2016

1

15,600.00

2017

3

15,400.00

2018

3

41,650.00

Total

13

113,400.00

Source Prepared by the present authors (2020)

Total support R$

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Table 17.9 Selected qualified proposals, qualified unselected and disabled from 2015 to 2018 in the heritage area Patrimony Year

Qualified and selected

Qualified but not selected

Disqualified

Total

2015

6

1

6

13

2016

1

1

2

4

2017

3

3

8

14

2018

3

1

10

14

Total

13

6

26

45

Source Prepared by the present authors (2020)

results of the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio notices, the total support in the heritage area was around R $ 113,400.00. It is also emphasized that, from 2015 to 2018, in addition to the 13 proposals contemplated with the financial support in the area of heritage, the call received 06 qualified proposals, but not selected due to budgetary unavailability; and 26 proposed disqualified for not meeting some requirements of the edict, as shown in Table 17.9. Thus, the Circula Minas edicts (2015–2018) received 45 proposals in the area of heritage, indicating the existence of several initiatives within the state of Minas Gerais, aimed at dissemination, preservation, and training in this area, requiring incentives. Table 17.10 shows the cities of origin of the proposals that were selected in heritage, in the edicts from 2015 to 2018. It is noted that, of the 13 proposals in the area, 8 came from Belo Horizonte; 2, from Ouro Preto; 1, from Juiz de Fora; 1, by Caeté; and 1, from Rio de Janeiro/RJ. That is, the proposals came from 5 different cities. Table 17.11 indicates the destination cities of the proposals selected in the heritage area. It is noticed that the proposals went through at least ten different cities. Cities like Lisbon/Portugal (2) and Montevideo/Uruguay (2) were the destinations that received the most selected proposals. Another nine cities were the destination of at least one proposal each. Table 17.10 City of origin of the proposals selected in the area of heritage Selected proposals in the heritage area (2015–2018)

City of origin

8

Belo Horizonte

2

Black gold

1

Rio de Janeiro

1

Caeté

1

Juiz de Fora

Total of 13 proposals

5 cities

Source Prepared by the present authors (2020)

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Table 17.11 Destination cities for proposals selected in the heritage area Selected proposals in the heritage area (2015–2018)

Destination cities

2

Lisbon, Portugal)

2

Montevideo (Uruguay)

1

Burgos (Spain)

1

Contagem (MG/Brazil)

1

Évora (Portugal)

1

Porto, Portugal)

1

Porto Seguro (BA/Brazil)

1

Salvador (BA/Brazil)

1

Santiago (Chile)

1

São Paulo (SP/Brazil)

1

Not included

Total of 13 proposals

10 cities

Source Prepared by the present authors (2020)

Regarding the destination countries of the proposals in the heritage area, the 13 selected proposals passed through 6 countries: 4 within Brazil itself; 4 in Portugal; 2 in Uruguay; 1 in Chile; 1 in Spain; and 1 in Japan, as shown in Table 17.12. In this sense, Table 17.13 helps us to reflect on the proposals selected in the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio edicts, from 2015 to 2018, having passed through three continents, taking the Minas Gerais and Brazilian cultural and museological heritage to America (7); Europe (5); and Asia (1). Thus, with respect to the area of heritage, the total amount granted by the Circula Minas notice, from 2015 to 2018, was just over one hundred thousand reais, supporting 13 proposals, which traveled through six countries and three continents. It is important to highlight, although such analysis has shown the specific projects entered in the category “heritage” in the Circula Minas edict, the proposals concerning the heritage also permeate directly and indirectly other categories of the Table 17.12 Destination countries for proposals selected in the heritage area Selected proposals in the heritage area (2015–2018)

Destiny country

4

Brazil

4

Portugal

2

Uruguay

1

Chile

1

Spain

1

Japan

Total of 13 proposals

6 countries

Source Prepared by the present authors (2020)

17 Soft Power of Minas Gerais: The Circula Minas Program … Table 17.13 Continent of destination of the proposals selected in the area of heritage

327

Heritage area (2015-2018) Continent

Countries

Proposals

America (South America) Europe Asia

Brazil, Chile, Uruguay Portugal, Spain Japan

7 5 1

Total: 3 continents

6 countries

13 proposals

Source Prepared by the present authors (2020)

edict, and may include dance, crafts, memory, folklore, literature, etc. In other words, they are projects that involve heritage, but they were registered in other categories. For example, among the categories listed for submitted projects, Capoeira stands out, which, although considered to be intangible heritage, in the case of the Circula Minas edicts, did not fall into the “heritage” category, being a separate category in itself. Thus, the Circula Minas edicts supported two proposals in the Capoeira category, originating in the cities of Belo Horizonte and Uberaba, and, as destination, respectively, São Sebastião do Caí (RS) and Philadelphia (U.S.A.), with a support of R$ 20,400, 00. As highlighted by Jurema Machado—in the presentation of the 12th volume of the Dossier Collection of Registered Cultural Goods, which presents the Roda de Capoeira (capoeira circle) and Capoeira Masters’ Craft, registered, respectively, in the Forms of Expression and Knowledge Registration Books—the practice of capoeira, present in vast documentation throughout Brazilian history, presents iconographic and documentary records since the eighteenth century, remaining strong in the knowledge and practices of its masters, a living heritage continuously transmitted to new generations. It is a cultural event present throughout the national territory IPHAN (2014). The capoeira circle, one of the most recognized Brazilian symbols, became the country’s Cultural Heritage in October 2008 and the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in November 2014. Thus, it stands out that, despite having 13 proposals registered specifically in the category “heritage,” other categories also encompassed proposals aimed at heritage, contributing to its safeguard. The area of cultural heritage has gained more and more importance in the alignment of international relations, becoming an instrument of soft power. Its dissemination and preservation have been at the top of the global agenda since the end of the twentieth century. Thus, the Circula Minas edicts fostered the internationalization of Minas Gerais cultural heritage, its diffusion, and protection, in line with the international agenda. In this sense, in recent decades, heritage and soft power are increasingly related, as instruments of cultural diplomacy and political and economic strengthening of countries, spearheading an international agenda, with the support of multilateral organizations for global cooperation (Goldsmith 2013; Ballerini 2017; Christofolleti 2017). Heritage Journeys have spread throughout the world, through UNESCO’s initiatives and international conventions, even discussing

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the terms of universalization of heritage (Hartog 2006, 265). As pointed out by Bortolotto (2010), the issue of protection of cultural heritage is currently a global fact. Heritage policies are now defined on a global scale and their management involves a complex set of organizations that interact at the supranational, national, and local levels. In addition, it should be noted that the Circula Minas edicts, by receiving and financially supporting projects in the area of culture, enabled the participation of civil society in safeguarding cultural assets, especially regarding intangible cultural heritage, contributing to its identification, documentation, research, preservation, protection, promotion, valorization and transmission (Bortolotto 2011). In this sense, cultural policies cannot only be the exclusive prerogative of the State and its representatives but must involve the participation of civil society in the various stages of the preservation process, a fact legitimized by international legal provisions. Thus, the participation of civil society is seen as essential to cultural policies, especially to safeguard heritage (Bortolotto 2011).

17.6 Final Considerations This work analyzed the results of the Circula Minas de Intercâmbio public edicts, from 2015 to 2018, the period in which it was in force. The public calls, supported by cultural and social policies, was published for four consecutive years, aiming at financially supporting artists, researchers, masters of traditional and similar knowledge, on trips to carry out cultural and training activities, involving theater, dance, cinema, circus, crafts, cultural heritage, and other areas. The main objectives of the calls were the national and international dissemination of Minas Gerais’ culture, as well as its preservation. Thus, we sought to reflect on the Circula Minas edicts considering the concept of soft power, understood as the possibility of building friendly power relations, inside and outside the country, through cultural policies, thereby strengthening political and economic power the state of Minas Gerais and Brazil. Therefore, we concluded that the construction and strengthening of soft power is a slow, gradual, and dialogical process, which depends on the relationship between the state and society; that permeates public cultural and social policies; that requires material and symbolic investments; that it needs to attract people’s participation; that it needs to be fostered inside the country and abroad; but also that it presents potential political, economic, and social returns, which deserve to be investigated in depth and praised, mainly regarding the preservation of cultural heritage. It is noteworthy that soft power takes time to build, however, it is easy to lose if there is no continuous development. Its development depends on intelligence, planning, diplomacy, speech, communication, and peaceful, polite, strategic behavior, aiming at friendly power relationships, anchored in the promotion and cultural attractiveness. All of this is contrary to the current political scenario in Minas Gerais and Brazil.

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References Ballerini F (2017) Poder Suave. Summus, São Paulo Bortolotto C (2011) Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in the implementation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention. Revista Memória Em Rede 3(4):1–13 Burke P (2008) What is cultural history? Zahar, Rio de Janeiro, p 2008 Burke, P (2002) History and Social Theory. Editora UNESP, São Paulo Choay, F (2008) Allegory of heritage. Lisbon, Ed. 70 Christofoletti, R (2017) Cultural assets and international relations: heritage as a mirror of Soft Power. University Publisher Leopoldianum, Santos Goldsmith M (2013) Soft Power and the cultural industry: the American foreign policy present in the daily life of the individual. Acad J Int Relat 2(4):168–196 Gueraldi RG (2005) The application of the concept of soft power in Brazilian foreign policy. Unpublished Master thesis in Public Administration (draft), Rio de Janeiro, Getulio Vargas Foundation Hartog F (2006) Time and heritage. Varia Hist 22(36):261–273 IPHAN (2014) Dossier IPHAN 12 {Roda of Capoeira and Craft of the Masters of Capoeira}. National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute, Brasília Machado, J (2017) Made at home: Iphan and international cooperation for heritage. In: Schlee, AR (ed) National historical and artistic heritage magazine, n. 35, 245–283 Nye Jr. JS (2002) The paradox of American power: why the world’s only superpower cannot go on in isolation. Translation: Luiz Antônio Oliveira de Araújo. UNESP, São Paulo Nye Jr., JS (2012) The future of power. Translation: Magda Lopes. Benvirá, São Paulo Nye Jr. JS (2004) Soft Power: the means to success in world politics. Public Affairs, New York Poulot D (2009) A history of heritage in the West, 18th -19th . centuries. Estação da Liberdade, São Paulo Ouriveis M (2013) “Soft Power e indústria cultural: a política externa norte-americana presente no cotidiano do indivíduo”. Revista Acadêmica de Relações Internacionais, 2(4): 168–196

Chapter 18

Historic Heritage Policies as Soft Power During Estado Novo of Getúlio Vargas Filipe Queiroz de Campos

Abstract This current article analyzes the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN), a Brazilian institute created to protect historical heritage, as a project of soft power in the government of Getúlio Vargas, the so-called Estado Novo. Between 1937 and 1945, the politics of Estado Novo, as a dictatorship, were bounded to the needs of a self-propaganda to its people and to the world. One of the many projects of such government was a new preoccupation toward the politics of heritage and the official acknowledgment of heritage as the ultimate representation of Brazilian culture to the world. Understanding this institute as a project of soft power inserted in the terms of cultural diplomacy is a new effort. Soft power is a concept usually applied to more recent periods of Brazilian foreign policy history. We suggest, however, that the SPHAN project should not only be considered as a project of Getúlio Vargas’s foreign policy in the terms of soft power but also is a relevant case to study the intertwined relations between domestic politics and the foreign ones. Keywords Heritage · SPHAN · Soft power · Estado novo · Getúlio vargas

Filipe Queiroz de Campos is a teacher of History, Geography, English and Philosophy, a master in History from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora and a doctoral student in Political History by the same institution. He is a researcher of the History of Diplomacy in Brazil. His most recent publication is the book Secret Diplomacies: Brazil in the League of Nations. F. Q. de Campos (B) Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_18

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18.1 The Race of Images As of 1937, President Getúlio Vargas implemented a coup in Brazil, starting a dictatorship that lasted until the end of World War II. In this dictatorship, cultural diplomacy1 became an important vector in the process of consolidating the government’s image internally and externally. From educational to cultural policies, the government was concerned not only with how Brazilians saw it but sought to shape the country’s international image as well. One of the most famous editorial institutes of this effort, for example, was the Department of Press and Propaganda, which produced a series of books and apologetic magazines for the government. This department even published its books in the U.S.A., as Tania Regina de Luca recently demonstrated, in the work “A biblioteca do Impossível.” There were at least 331 titles of books and magazines that Brazil produced by this department, with a considerable budget. It turned out that these works were also published in English, such as “Toward the Winning Goal,” from 1940 (de Luca 2011), in an international effort to create an image of an organized, centralized and modern state for the world. In addition to the editorial propaganda effort, the Estado Novo was associated with an unprecedented systematic effort by Brazilian diplomacy to engage in a PanAmerican cultural exchange project. As early as 1937, there was a message from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to all diplomats about the new directions of the Intellectual Cooperation Service, which was aimed at the countries of South America. The message determined that Brazil would make a new effort to publicize the “Naturally Brazilian things” (Neponuceno 2019). This reform came 2 months before the Estado Novo dictatorship was implemented. It meant, according to Maria Margarida Neponuceno, a turnaround in Brazilian cultural diplomacy, as it intended to map the works of journalists and artists from all South American countries that showed interest in Brazilian culture. In this way, Getúlio Vargas’s foreign policy was very committed to building cultural diplomacy. Neponuceno (2019) demonstrated that one of the evidences of this concern, was a long letter from Oswaldo Aranha, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to Vargas, in 1937, saying that Brazil needed to create instruments of propaganda about Brazilian culture since “only traditional diplomacy” it would not guarantee the US interest in Brazil (Neponuceno 2019, p. 3).

1

It is important to make it clear that the term cultural diplomacy was not yet used in the 1930s or 1940s. It is an analytical concept currently used by scholars on the subject, such as Mark (2020), as a way of understanding that nations, throughout the time, they have been using culture and promoting it not for politically disinterested purposes, but as a way to promote diplomacy and the interests of a nation’s foreign policy. In this sense, Cultural Diplomacy is understood as a type of public diplomacy. The term public diplomacy, first formulated in the U.S.A., in 1965, is used to refer to actions taken by the State to communicate with external public opinion in order to influence the opinion of foreign societies, considering that the opinion of countries and citizens abroad have a clear impact on the economic and political life of countries (NOYA 2007). Thus, Cultural Diplomacy will assist us in studying the uses of culture in the foreign policy of the Estado Novo.

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Brazil was no longer a pioneer in American cultural diplomacy. Lindercy Souza Lins wrote that Argentina already had advertising agencies in the U.S.A. (Lins 2015). In the letter Aranha sent to Vargas in 1937, he said that only if Brazil guaranteed “supremacy in South America” would the U.S.A. have a greater interest in negotiations with the country, but there was already competition for this image of supreme or leadership. Uribarren and other scholars of Argentine cultural diplomacy demonstrate that the Argentine State of 1938 was already, including organizing a project to protect the national historical heritage, the National Commission for Museums and Monuments and Historical Sites (Uribarren 2009), going beyond traditional advertising. The presentation of historical monuments to the world became a striking feature of national and civilized countries. Brazil needed to grow in this sector. We can say that showing the national culture to the world was not a minority project in the Estado Novo. The pressure was great for the nationalist propaganda race. This need was seen as an expensive, serious, and international political project. Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, for example, created their cultural institutes in the 1940s. South American countries had already understood that cultural influence was a new tool for a nation’s political power. There was a green rush of images. In this context, Getúlio Vargas’s project was not lonely, but it was not the same as that of neighboring countries. Brazil intended to be a leader in this race. Ana Luiza Beraba, in América Aracnídea, announces that, when studying the cultural project of Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s, one can conclude that there was a pretension that Brazil would be the U.S.A. of South America. In the Sunday newspaper called A Manhã, there was a constant column on Pan-American cultural diplomacy. The name was Pensamento da América and circulated between 1941 and 1948. In 1941, the cultural project of the Estado Novo for South America was exposed: Brazil did not use the Yankee image to create a democracy; he preferred to found a democracy in his image (…) to Monroe’s Panamericanism, to Bolívar’s strong government, Brazil’s political thought now joins (…) they reconcile, complete, in a single luminous triangle, the 3 great American thoughts: that of Monroe, that of Bolívar and that of Getúlio Vargas. How can we deny the American feeling of the Estado Novo? (Beraba 2008, p. 46).

Thus, cultural diplomacy was an inevitable path to be followed for nations that wanted to present persuasion and weight in regional and international life. In 1938, Brazil was experiencing a dictatorship whose main justification for its existence before the world and its people was development. This development depended on how the world saw Brazil. The Estado Novo began to build, then, a reinterpretation of the country’s own history, to present it convincingly to the world. Exercising cultural diplomacy as soft power was a strategy that Brazil started using.

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18.2 Culture as a Political Tool As Professor Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda suggests, for most statesmen of the twentieth century, culture and politics were not antithetical fields and the national ideologies of that period have used the preservation of material and symbolic goods since at least the beginning of the century, in a political sense (Hollanda 2017; Christofoletti 2017). Culture can be seen as a political tool even in Ancient History, when we talk about the construction of Arches of Triumph by the Roman Empire, as a way of thanking the gods and spreading Roman art among the conquered peoples. In the twentieth century, however, culture began to play an even more decisive role, as it is capable of even determining the direction of politics and changing the economy. The notion that the areas of economy and war are not the only ones that determine power relations between nations is not new, as demonstrated by Caio Martins Bugiato (Bugiato 2017; Christofoletti 2017). Johan Galtung in 1959, for example, sought to understand the forms of expression of power between central and peripheral countries, through the concept of communicational imperialism. The idea is that through the domination of communication and news agencies, the countries of the domination center not only produce the most widely read news about the center but also the most widely read news on the periphery about the periphery itself, shaping the interpretation and behavior of the dominated. Despite this, the concept of communicational imperialism did not have a great deal of penetration among the authors of International Relations. Antonio Gramsci also contributed to the debate on cultural and intellectual domination through the concept of hegemony, but he also did not reach much repercussion in the discussions among the authors of International Relations (Christofoletti 2017, p. 143). The concept that received the most attention among International Relations scholars regarding the political power of culture was that of Joseph Nye Jr. In the context of his writing in the 1990s, he said that analysts who announced the decline of the U.S.A. influence in the world evaluated only by means of hard power, which would be economic and military development and the possession of territories. There would, however, exist a soft power. The purpose of this power would be the ability to get other nations to do what you want without using coercion mechanisms. Soft Power would be a country’s ability to convince others that its cause is the best without having to resort to economic or military threats, through culture, political values, and the foreign policy guidelines of a particular nation (Goldenberg 2008, p. 1). The concept emerged in a certain context and was used for a certain analysis: the world in the 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century under the cultural influence of the U.S.A. In 2004, however, enriching the concept, Nye Jr. sought to elaborate a work only on the concept, distancing himself from the specific analysis of the US case. From then on, soft power came to be understood as a power that every nation can and seeks to have in order to influence others. The concept of Nye Jr. (2004) ended up extrapolating the author’s original intentions, which were to analyze US foreign policy and started to assist in studies on

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the power relationship between countries. From then on, new relations between diplomacy and soft power started to be studied. One of these relationships is the study of historical heritage as soft power. This issue is recent in International Relations (Luke and Kersel 2012), but it already demonstrates a very relevant explanatory power for scholars on the subject. In this sense, cultural and historic heritage policies for the protection of culture, monuments, and manifestations of art are related to the concept of soft power when used to attract nations to the causes of those who practice them. Professor Rodrigo Chistofoletti draws attention to the fact that the management and dissemination of historical and cultural heritage can be seen as an exercise of soft power. What this author wanted to demonstrate in Bens Culturais e Relações Internacionais: “o patrimônio como espelho do soft power” is that cultural heritage is linked to the exercise of soft power in International Relations. Soft power represents “the power of attraction to culture or, in other words, the ability of a country to attract others because of its culture and political values in its foreign policy” (Christofoletti 2017, p. 18). Cultural and historic heritage policies have exactly that effect, so it is important to relate them to the concept of Nye Jr. This effort is based on the principle that there are no benevolent hegemonies in international politics. There is a dangerous ingenuity in ignoring the fact that the exposure of national heritage and national cultures to the world is exclusively artistic and devoid of political intentionality. It is precisely in the sense of this effort that we analyze Getúlio Vargas’s cultural and historic heritage policy in Estado Novo as an expression of Brazilian soft power. Heritage policies may serve domestic politics by creating a feeling of nationality by defining what is properly Brazilian, but this policy also has an international dimension. We cannot forget that in the 1930s and 1940s, Brazil underwent a renewal of cultural diplomacy, as we pointed out above, precisely as a way of increasing its political power among its neighbors and among the more developed nations. Therefore, it is important to see that Brazil’s historic heritage policies in the Estado Novo were related to Vargas’s foreign policy project as well. We understand that the application of the concept of soft power, created in 1990, does not constitute an anachronistic exercise when applied to heritage policies of the 1930s and 1940s. The concept is perfectly applicable for a better understanding of heritage policies also in the first mid-twentieth century, as Professor Marcos Olender has been doing and has suggested, for example (Olender 2020). After all, as we have shown, in Oswaldo Aranha’s letter, there was already a clear concern between building an image for Brazil through advertising and reaching US attention. There was already a clear understanding that the dissemination of Brazilian culture was a way of attracting economic and political interests through the propaganda of Brazilian culture. There was a concern with international opinion and the best way that Brazil had to bring that opinion to its advantage was to prove to the world that Brazil was important and unavoidable. Brazil needed to show who he was to the world in order to establish himself, but which version would he present? What identities and memories did Brazil select to call its own? Which ones did he prefer to delete? We believe that by studying

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the historic and cultural heritage policies developed by Getúlio Vargas between the 1930s and 1940s, we will be able to clarify how Brazil wanted to be seen, by whom and how he did it, that is, how the historic and cultural heritage served as soft power to this country, going beyond its utility for domestic politics. In addition, studying the relationship between Brazilian heritage policies in the 1930s and 1940s as soft power policies will help us to better understand Getúlio Vargas’s own foreign policy project in the Estado Novo.

18.3 The Context of Estado Novo’s Heritage Policies The 1920s, according to de Lorenzo (1997), is the moment of foundation of modern Brazil. The Great War impacted not only all the economic functioning of the world but also the way of thinking about culture and politics. Despite modernity, traditional social and economic characteristics still prevailed. The years of the 1920s, in Brazil, were marked by contrasts typical of a moment of transitions between countryside and city, Europe and America, authoritarianism and liberalism, agriculture and industry. One of the main characteristics of this modernity was the search for what was really Brazilian culture so that Brazil could enter the circles of more advanced nations in the world. For the aforementioned author (de Lorenzo 1997, p. 101), the political modernity of the 1920s was associated with the attack on republican institutions due to the oligarch crisis. All questioning of the order was based on a generally modernist angle of view. Bringing modernity meant bringing some sort of break with traditional orders. To be modern would be to break with the exclusivity of the agrarian vocation, with the valorization of European culture and politics. The ideal of modernity was politically associated with the break with liberalism, with the defense of the centralization of power in the figure of the president, and with a renewal of Brazil’s image and place in the world. It is not strange, therefore, that many intellectuals who were involved with the modernist cause, whether artistic or political, in the 20s, were directly associated with the Vargas government after the 1930 Revolution. Therefore, we want to demonstrate that since the beginning of the Provisional Government there was already a plan to materialize the ideas of modernist renewal in Brazil. In the Provisional Government, the Ministry of Education and Health was created, which would be responsible for bringing, among other responsibilities, policies associated with a new concern with culture. One of the biggest initiatives at the very beginning of its creation was about the historic and cultural heritage. In 1933, this ministry was responsible for elevating the city of Ouro Preto to a national monument, already exercising heritage protection practices. The concern with the protection of national memory or, at least, what the government identified as national memory, was linked to the “revolutionary ministry,” as Minister Gustavo Capenema himself used to call it.

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In the 1932 Ministerial Report, delivered to Vargas by Gustavo Capanema, we have found: By decree 21,240, of April 4th ., 1932, great favors were granted to the cinema industry and commerce, at the same time that the Film Censorship Service was nationalized, which stopped being merely “police” to become frankly “cultural.” To finance this project, the Provisional Government created the Cinematographic Rate for Popular Education, strictly intended to finance popular education services. Everything was naturally centralized in the Ministry of Education (Capanema 1934, p. 85).

The censorship service, according to this document, started to operate inside the National Museum. It is in this way that we realize that culture as a political instrument was already a project of the Provisional Government. This report also describes the integration of the Naval Museum into the National Historical Museum in 1932, as well as a policy of buying relics and books “to spare the destruction of the monuments of the past already sacrificed by the ignorance of some (…) and that represent an invaluable traditional wealth.” The project to centralize and format national culture was already clear (Capanema 1934, p. 87). The report points out that courses were given and the first had already had 12 students. In addition to the Museum, the report studied the conditions of the National Library, which started to offer a library course in 1931, the Casa de Rui Barbosa and the National Observatory. The latter, since 1931, became one of the “most important international studies on tides, geophysical phenomena and the study of latitudes.” This first documentation that we are analyzing is relevant, as it already brought the creation of a new external image for Brazil as a justification for its attitudes. The report argued that the National Observatory, for example, was fundamental for Brazilian cultural progress as “for the reputation of Brazil, occupying a situation of fair importance among similar organizations in the most advanced countries” (Capanema 1934, p. 88). The heritage policy’s concern was at the service of the 1930 Revolution, but what is the role of historical and cultural heritage for a government that was intended to be revolutionary? The revolution intended by that government was a revolution of a modernist aspect: bringing industrial development, the centralization of power, and representing Brazil to the world. For this, Brazil needed to meet the main international trends. The appreciation of historical heritage was one of them. According to Olender (2017), the inter-war period was the moment of internationalization of heritage preservation efforts. After the irreversible feeling that the world would never be the same after a world war, the preservation of art and the political use of that preservation became an international maxim. The International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation was created in 1922 and the International Museums Office. The latter organized the Athens International Conference in 1931. This conference was the first international effort to define what a historic heritage was. The list of what would be a historical heritage, since then has been left with: antiques, monuments, archives, and libraries. All this international effort was already linked to national political projects that expressed cultural and, through it, power. Marcos Olender draws attention to the fact that since the beginning of the debate about world heritage or the heritage of humanity,

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the idea contained in the concept of soft power was already present. As much as the concept was not formulated, it was well known that occupying spaces for international debates with characteristics of a particular culture was a way of expressing a power of conviction and attraction, unlike the power of coercion. France’s efforts to occupy the main means of financing of the International Commission for Intellectual Cooperation were not only related to the desire to preserve something in the name of humanity but also being used to face the political and symbolic power of Germany (Olender 2020), for example. In 1926, within the International Cooperation Commission, the Office International des Musées was founded, an eminently French initiative that received many complaints from Germans regarding the underrepresentation of French art and culture. This office was fundamental because it was precisely he who promoted the First International Conference on the Conservation of Monuments of Art and History, the Athens Conference, in 1931 (Olender 2020, p. 291). The headquarters of the International Cooperation Conference itself can be seen as a manifestation of national power: when the conference, scheduled for 1929, did not take place due to the economic crisis, Benito Mussolini financed his event, taking the event to Rome in a gesture of exaltation of the Italian concern with cuteness and art (Olender 2020, p. 302). From the Athens Charter, the notion of “heritage of humanity” started to be ventilated and defended internationally. As much as the term was not new, still dating from the end of the nineteenth century, from international movements, the preoccupation with the patrimony started to be officially inserted in the area of public diplomacy. Thus, historic and cultural heritage policies became an expression of soft power. This international context helps us to understand the dimension of the importance of, in Brazil, as we explained, having a ministry entirely directed toward heritage practices. Brazil was seeking to communicate through a new international language in which culture and memory also became tools for intense international disputes. How did Brazil fit into this context?

18.4 SPHAN as Domestic Policy Project Brazil entered this international context, through the creation of the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN). SPHAN was created in 1937, through Gustavo Capanema’s Ministry of Education and Public Health. Once a dictatorship was instituted in Brazil, with powers concentrated in Getúlio Vargas, the policies for the valorization of cultural heritage linked to the ideal of revolution won money, space, and names to be executed. Within SPHAN, a group of intellectuals was formed, what Helena Bomeny called the “constellation capanema” (Bomeny 2001). The so-called “capanema constellation,” a group of intellectuals linked to SPHAN and Education, functioned as an effort to co-opt intellectual elites: they were allowed to speak and act, being paid for it, but under an ideological imposition. In addition to Gustavo Capenama, let us

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mention Mário de Andrade, Rodrigo Melo Franco, Carlos Drumond de Andrade, Afonso Arinos and Lucio Costa, as examples. Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade took over as director of the institute. SPHAN represented a project with two political dimensions. One for internal policy and the other for foreign policy. Both dimensions cannot be understood separately, but we will study the characteristics of each one with a pedagogical purpose. Thus, the importance of this Estado Novo project will become clearer. For understanding SPHAN´s political domestic dimension, we turn to HenriPierre Jeudy, to seek to better understand the characteristics of the institution. For this author, historical heritage performs a series of political functions as a “safety valve,” because it allows cultural identity to compensate for the weaknesses of social identity. Heritage is not only a way to escape society’s weaknesses but also to “hide” the heterogeneity of thoughts and perspectives behind great monuments (Jeudy 2005). Thus, for domestic politics, SPHAN co-opted intellectuals and presented a homogeneous vision of national history, a peaceful and conflict-free version. The project perfectly suited the wishes of a dictatorship that needed to convince its people of its need. Hence, historical heritage played a role in “hiding” the heterogeneity of Brazilian culture, in order to produce a national identity. Let’s talk about the relationship between SPHAN and internal politics. The intellectuals linked to SPHAN played an important responsibility in producing this identity. For Nadya Maria Deps (Correia 2016), it was from the Estado Novo of Vargas that intellectuals began to have an official role in the planning of policies regarding education and the arts in the name of strengthening the dictatorship. The group of intellectuals had a mission to decide what it meant to be a Brazilian. Together, the intellectuals involved gave rise to an elitist project to preserve the heritage. They would be the filter that would interpret the heritage and preservation needs of society and the State, as stated by Mário de Andrade himself, author of the preliminary project that founded SPHAN. Intellectuals determined what would be and what would not be representative of Brazilian culture (Giovanaz 1979, p. 21). Among the modernists themselves involved with the Estado Novo projects, there was disagreement. Menoccio Del Piccia, for example, preferred to see that Brazilian culture would be perceived by valuing regionalisms, that is, the regions of Brazil would not fit in a single interpretation. If this vision were respected, the most diverse architectural styles would need to be represented, as well as the diverse expressions of Brazilian culture. Mário de Andrade, on the other hand, argued that regional cultures were only part of a whole that, when understood, would insert Brazil into modernity and show Brazil’s true identity to the world (Silva 2010, p. 65). This project was much more convenient to the Vargas dictatorship and was then chosen. The body would need to select only one cultural perspective to represent Brazil and could not be a heterogeneous representation that expressed conflicts. This last one was precisely the winning project and the driver of SPHAN´s perspective, which is why Mário de Andrade was chosen to produce the preliminary project that founded the institute itself. Even so, Mário de Andrade himself also suffered restrictions. In Mário de Andrade’s preliminary project, there was a need to recognize folklore and popular culture as cultural manifestations to be preserved as historical heritage. It

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would be an innovation even by international standards. This project did not interest a dictatorial government that sought to establish itself as a technician. The appreciation of other forms of culture besides the elite culture was not technician at the time. SPHAN did not seek to find the diversity of Brazilian culture, but to edit it to its interests. These interests were to demonstrate that Brazil had an imposing past of a culture that was linked to European civilization and that evolved toward modernist architecture. The logic of the listing criteria was also linked to the need to build a cultural identity, which ultimately ended up being “technician” by political criteria: “the inventory and listing criteria was determined by a previous choice linked to the political interests of the agency in relation to the construction of national identity” (Silva 2010, p. 72). To meet this identity project, SPHAN adopted colonial architecture and, more specifically, the Baroque style linked to the architecture of the state of Minas Gerais. The colonial architecture of Minas Gerais became a metaphor for national culture. Minas was chosen and the data is very clear: about 70% of all the falls done by SHPHAN were in Minas Gerais (Silva 2010, p. 75). This was because many of those who composed the SPHAN were from Minas Gerais, as well as a large part of the Baroque works were in Minas. A certain portion of Brazilian art was selected to represent all Brazilian art. In addition to the Baroque, modernist architecture would be the next to receive attention from the organ. This was the guiding thread of SPHAN projects; a thread that chronologically led Brazil from a country inserted in European culture and started to differentiate itself with modernity. An architecture that “evolved” progressively and without conflicts. Still as a work of internal policy, SPHAN fulfilled another function: to show that it was an intellectual effort unrelated to the government’s political project. Glaci Silva explains that the president of SPHAN had always sought to show that his work was impartial in terms of political guidelines. This helped to convey the image of a united Brazil in the name of culture and not an authoritarian regime. It is clear that this impartial understanding of SPHAN did not correspond to the facts. From the selection of the past to the denial of certain intellectuals at the institute, such as Gilberto Freyre, for example, who was denied as a regional representative for being considered a communist (Silva 2010, p. 83), SPHAN proved to be a concise project to convince that Brazil was being refuted and rebuilding its own history. A “technical” project does not appear to be a political project and becomes much more convincing for that. So far, we noticed that there were several layers of filters in SPHAN, to produce a refined vision. The modernist perspective guided decisions about who would be in command and even those chosen were constrained. What mattered was not quite the vision that this or that intellectual had, but that the project was in tune with a single reading of the past. In addition, this past must be linked to the present in an evolutionary perspective. As Ângela de Castro Gomes suggests, at the moments of implementation of major political projects, the attention of state leaders turns to the past, rewriting the facts (de Castro Gomes 1996). SPHAN, as Henri-Pierre Jeudy suggested to us as a possible characteristic of the historical and cultural heritage,

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was exercising its role of “hiding” the conflicts of society and the heterogeneity of the past.

18.5 SPHAN as a Foreign Policy Project Now, we begin to analyze how the importance of SPHAN for the Vargas government’s internal policy joins its foreign policy projects. Along with the foundation of SPHAN, a magazine was launched to expose various studies on Brazilian architecture throughout the country. In the opening magazine, Rodrigo de Melo Franco, director of the institute, pointed out as one of the main reasons for the need for the enterprise: Even recently, an English writer claimed that in Brazil there was an absolute lack of information and no one seems to seems to have the slightest interest in these things (…) a most irritating state of ignorance exists on the part of the Brazilians (…) there is a need for systematic action with the aim of improving and making the knowledge of our country’s art and history values safer and more refined. The creation of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service Magazine aims to contribute to this effect (de Andrade 1937).

The concern with an international opinion had always appeared among the necessities for Brazil to present his heritage policy. It was understood that there was an international pressure for heritage preservation, and Brazil would lose prestige if it did not respond to this concern. In an article from the paper O Jornal, in 1936, the author of the preliminary draft of the federal service for the defense of national heritage, Mário de Andrade, wrote: if, for any longer, the energetic measures required for the preservation of these values are missing, it will not only be future generations of Brazilians who will call us to account for the damage we will have caused them, but it is the opinion of the civilized world that will condemn criminal treachery. (Article published in O Jornal, RJ, 10/30/1936).

We believe that the concern with the international model of historical heritage also helps to explain the limits of the SPHAN project. The Athens Charter defined the “stone and lime” heritage and an appreciation of elite culture. This is in addition to one of the external uses of Brazilian heritage: showing a modern Brazil, which followed international trends and was culturally integrated with these trends. Showing the Baroque style was a way of dialoguing with Europe and the “most advanced countries,” but showing the folklore or the diversity of regional culture would be different from this objective. SPHAN was also a soft power project, it was a bridge between Brazil and the great powers. In this sense, SPHAN dialogued much more with the international intelligentsia than with the Brazilian people themselves. The magazines produced were technical with elaborate language. The historic heritage needed to be preserved within the international limits of what was a historic heritage. One of the most used concepts to refer to the Brazilian historical heritage was the terms “universal” and “good architecture” and the one who most used these terms

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was the architect Lúcio Costa. At the age of 35, he assumed the position of Director of the Division of Studies and Tipping of SPHAN. Lúcio Costa defended the “good architecture,” one that would be able to retake the inheritances of the civilized world. In his article in Revista do Patrimônio nº 5, 1941, he inserted Brazilian Baroque art into an international art chronology, showing how Brazil had received this European heritage. SPHAN, therefore, served as a project to select which part of the past would be most important to show what Brazil is to the world. In the words of Rodrigo de Melo Franco, SPHAN had the objective of “instilling the coexistence of the unity and perpetuity of the country” (Franco 1937: 57). The Baroque architectural style was already an international Catholic effort to fight the Protestant faith. Baroque was born in Italy in the seventeenth century. Argan (2004, p. 5) understands it as a cultural production linked to the idea of producing a modern pedagogy. The purpose of the Baroque was also political and convincing, through the image and forms about the power of the Catholic Church. In Brazil, the colonial Baroque monument was already a form of persuasion through the technical, imagery, and religious authority that the Jesuits brought. Baroque was the perfect choice for Estado Novo, which also wanted to persuade and educate. Aleijadinho, the most famous artist in Brazilian Baroque architecture, was internationally recognized as one of the greatest South American architects. Ouro Preto, a city replenished of such art, therefore became the center of persecution that SPHAN chose to exercise. Ouro Preto and the historic mining towns made other historical periods to be forgotten. After all, selecting is also forgetting. Chuva (2003) understands that there was an effort to connect the Baroque with the modernism of the 1920s and 1930s and that this was SPHAN’s effort to insert Brazil in the history of civilization. Brazil could not be just another representation of European art and, therefore, the Baroque served the project very well to identify something that was international and legitimately Brazilian at the same time. The colors and features of the Brazilian Baroque were already being internationally recognized as a “reinterpretation” proper to Brazil (Argan 2004, p. 83). Lúcio Costa was responsible for defending the interconnection between Brazilian Baroque and modern architecture. Márcia Chuva explains that Costa, in his speeches, had as main mission to demonstrate that the Baroque was a legitimately renovating refoundation, but that this renovation only appeared again with modern architecture. It was an anachronistic, but pedagogical effort to link a glorious past to the future to which the Estado Novo was taking Brazil. According to Abílio Guerra, this intercession between baroque and modern architecture was an exercise even more “culturalistic than architectural,” since the modern architecture that was being built was internationalized” (Guerra 2010). The linkage effort between Baroque and modernity seems to arise and converge for international concerns as well as those of domestic politics. Brazilian culture was internationalizing. This guaranteed weight and importance for Brazil. Henceforth, we may understand SPHAN as a soft power project.

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18.6 The Values of Minas Gerais as Soft Power in Getúlio Vargas’s Foreign Policy The Estado Novo presented a foreign policy guideline: renewing the Brazilian international image and influencing events in a new way. The debate about the importance of Brazil in Pan-Americanism and in cultural “evolution” had never been so intense. In the Revista do Instiuto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, between 1937 and 1945, we identified the prevalence of studies on the history of the Baron of Rio Branco and the needs of Brazil to project itself internationally as it did. We also identified, in the Revista Cultura Política, produced by the Department of Printing and Advertising, between 1941 and 1945, a session dedicated to art and culture. In that session, it was stated, in practically all magazines, that Brazil was undergoing an artistic renovation due to politics. There was an expensive editorial effort in building Brazil as a renewed country. What calls our attention is the role of art and culture in this renewal. These cultural propaganda bodies had a specific view of art and culture. The arts should show the evolution of Brazil toward a pacified country. The Estado Novo needed to show that dictatorship was necessary, so there was an interpretation that culture and art were only manifested in peaceful countries, so Brazil would be living its most peaceful and, therefore, the most artistic moment of its story. The Revista Cultura Política repeatedly demonstrated that artistic content only manifested itself with the control of the State and a political project. Only politics is able to stabilize the social (…), allowing beauty and art (…) Brazilian arts now evolve in function of the new policy in Brazil responsible for this social stability, which is the most eloquent document of its correspondence with the nation’s soul, its essence (…) In Brazil, we can only explain our current artistic evolution through the history of modernism (…) Such is the relationship between the arts of a medium and its own medium (Navarra 1942, p. 280).

This passage demonstrates a cultural project that sought to show the Estado Novo as the end of a linearity. The feeling that Vargas’s speeches, linked to foreign policy, wanted to pass was this: the evolution of culture is linear out of Europe and against Vargas. On the day of Brazil’s independence, Vargas spoke: Our ancestors could not even dream that in a little more than a century the colony (…) would become a homeland (…) in full possession of itself respected by other peoples capable of cooperating with the great powers in the defense of civilization. This is actually Brazil’s current position in the world (Vargas 1944).

Brazil would already be at the top of its civilization process. There was a message that Vargas’s cultural propaganda wanted to send: only with the Estado Novo would Brazil be what it really was: a peaceful country. The main sense that Vargas’s policy wanted to convey to the world is that Brazil was a country that did not cling to any ideology and that this was a value that would bring international respect for the country. Which sources authorized Vargas to prove that Brazil was a peaceful country for the world and for the Brazilians themselves? Brazil’s history is not just about international pacifism. Brazil has participated in the Paraguayan War, experienced many internal revolts, and lived as a slave country

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for a long time. Culture in the Estado Novo, however, became a tool for editing this history. The search for historical heritage was made by Vargas himself in his speeches and travels, going beyond SPHAN. In these speeches, the president made it clear that the best quality he was rescuing for Brazil was the identity of Minas Gerais and that identity was of a people who worked, obeyed, and respected. Minas Gerais was at the center of SPHAN’s attention, but it also was in the formulation of the bases that legitimized Vargas’s foreign policy values. In his speech to the city of Ouro Preto, precisely the first to be listed by SPHAN in 1933, Vargas, in 1938, listed in his speech all the elements that made Ouro Preto unique in his vision: churches, streets, and European culture saying Here in Ouro Preto all national traditions are condensed. They enclose the most exciting part of the history of Brazil as a living heritage (…) we contemplate the phases of our history (…) from the era of discovery, catechesis, mining, flags and even the Inconfidência that it constitutes the decisive step in the formation of our nationality (…) Ouro Preto is the mecca of the national tradition, the city to which we must turn our eyes, because it represents the living pages of our history (Vargas 1938).

This speech took place on the 1 of July. On July 15, Vargas returned to Ouro Preto at the ceremony to deliver the ashes of the incofidentes to the city of Ouro Preto. The inconfidentes were men who led a separatist movement in Minas Gerais against the Portuguese government in the eighteenth century. The memory of the revolt was widely used as the first symbol of Brazil’s search for independence (Fonseca 2002). Vargas used the devolution of the ashes of the inconfidentes to Minas Gerais to create a nationalist tradition of apology for pacifism. According to Cifelli (2005), Ouro Preto was the target of the invention of the nationalist tradition of Vargas government. Since 1936, there was a diplomatic mission led by Augusto de Lima Júnior to repatriate the ashes of the inconfidentes who died in Africa. The delivery of the ashes was a ceremony carried out in 1938 and, soon after, in 1942, the Pantheon of the inconfidentes was founded. Vargas’s patrimonial effort, according to Leandro Benedini Brusadin (2014), inaugurated both heritage and heritage tourism in Brazil, giving rise to the invention of a tradition. Vargas’s speech regarding the meaning of this gesture and what it means to be from Minas Gerais in this context is important for us to understand how he used this invented tradition to justify the values of Brazilian foreign policy: Gentlemen, (…) the people of Minas Gerais have always been an example of work within the order, of healthy traditionalism, of acceptance and adherence to the norms of peaceful and active life. I believe that there is a slight correspondence between the characteristics of your temperament and the impositions of our collective conduct in the stormy phase that we are facing. Now more than ever it is essential to walk steadily and cautiously. In order to dignify the efforts of the pioneers of nationality, we must persist in the guidelines they have pointed out to us: to avoid major shocks, to prevent the fragmentation of the country, to place the great country above regionalist concerns (…) without the excesses of exotic ideologies (…) (Vargas 1938).

As Joseph Nye Jr pointed out, one of the sources of soft power is not only culture but also the values of foreign policy and its guidelines in the search to attract other nations to his speech without using force. This is exactly Vargas’s strategy in linking

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the Minas Gerais tradition to the principles of his foreign policy. “The difficulties of the moment” referred to by Vargas were certainly the coup d’état of the Estado Novo, whose priority became suppressing regional identities but also referring to the Second World War that was taking place. Vargas not only chose the mining identitybut also molded it as necessarily peaceful and cordial and identified it as the origin of his political principles. The patrimonial policies of the Estado Novo were at the center of Vargas’s strategy: they were the materialization that Brazil was a country similar to Minas Gerais: obedient and orderly. If Ouro Preto was the mecca of the national tradition, the tradition of pacifism and tranquility would be the main values that Brazilian foreign policy inherited from these origins. Vargas continues in the same ceremony speech to the inconfidentes: Through the spirit of cordiality and the persistent purpose of reconciling peace, we have set an appreciable example for the world, so we continue to respect the rights of others so that we can demand in return that our rights are respected. The reaffirmation of these principles is precisely the work of the Estado Novo. In an opportunity like this, honoring and revering the memory of those who suffered for nationality in its beginnings, we demonstrate how deeply rooted our feeling of solidarity is in time and reinvigorate our old inclinations of healthy nationalism, very different from aggressive nativism and fashion imperialisms.

Brazilian foreign policy would deny all ideologies that preached about aggression and imperialism, not because Vargas or the Estado Novo wanted to. The strategy was to appear that pacifism was natural and Vargas was just rescuing something that all Brazilians had been born to be cordial. The sources that legitimized Brazil to be internationally cordial and not to be bounded to ideologies would have come from the interior of Brazil itself. It would be difficult to deny all this reasoning. Also on July 17, 1938, at a banquet also in Minas Gerais, Vargas again reinforced the characteristics of Minas Gerais as the characteristics of the Brazilian himself: The spirit of the people of Minas Gerais is made up of balance, order and work. It was necessary, therefore, that the Government’s action corresponded to this spirit so that it could find resonance in its support (…) gentlemen, Minas Gerais is a miracle of faith and all that involves me are stimuli that add to this overwhelming enthusiasm that crush the negative forces of the spirit. All those who do not surrender to the evidence of false faith (…) are dissociated from the Brazilian feeling. From the top of these mountains of Minas, from the clarity of their skies, it seems to me that Brazil feels and understands better (Vargas 1938).

Brazil was to be felt and understood through Minas Gerais, as the people of Minas Gerais were the source of the principles that the Estado Novo’s policy wanted to show. The convenience of associating Minas Gerais with Brazil’s metaphor for SPHAN was the same for Vargas in his speeches. In line with Brazilian foreign policy, pacifism and cordiality have always been there, but Vargas would be renewing them by valuing culture. We can say that the culture of Minas Gerais materialized in the efforts of SPHAN and the principles of Brazilian foreign policy served as perfect tools of soft power for Getúlio Vargas.

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18.7 Final Considerations Some scholars, after the renewal of Political History, mainly from the French historiography with René Remond, became interested in the relationship between internal and foreign policy. Among these, one of the first studies of this approach is by Pierra Milza. Milza (Rémond 2003, p. 365–401) considers that the studies that treat internal and foreign policy as separable have created a false dichotomy. These two can only be explained if studied together. It is precisely the relationship between the two that helps us understand the decision process of social actors. In addition, Milza also explains that the weight of international relations tends to incline leaders to modify their boldest domestic policy guidelines that are inconsistent with the political guidelines of other nations. In this way, the weight of international events causes a reduction in domestic policy programs. An internal policy that is too different from international guidelines is likely to receive less prestige and more rejection. We argue that this is an important feature of the relationship between foreign and domestic policy in the creation of SPHAN. The project was both, driven by international trends and limited by them. The inclusion project of Mário de Andrade’s folklore did not conform to international guidelines on what would be a historical heritage. The interpretation of the past of Brazilian architecture was edited to serve the plans of foreign and domestic policy that showed a Brazil free of conflicts and ready to develop. The baroque and culture of Minas Gerais were selected to insert Brazil into a history of “universal” civilization. This is how SPHAN’s limits and potentialities took shape. The relationship between domestic and foreign policy during the historical context of the Estado Novo helps to understand that Vargas had an innovative political project for culture. This project, however, cannot be seen in an altruistic and “technician” way, as we would be reading the past exactly in accordance with Vargas’s objectives: to show that Brazil was only interested in showing its greatness. In fact, understanding Getúlio Vargas’s cultural project between 1937 and 1945 as a foreign policy tool helps to make this reality more complex. To understand SPHAN as a soft power project is to remember that this project also had an international dimension. We believe that this perspective contributes to enrich the studies on the relationship between historical heritage and the concept of soft power, as well as helping us to shed a little more light on the history of heritage policies in Brazil.

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Brusadin LB (2014) O Museu da Inconfidência em Ouro Preto (MG) e sua interface com o turismo, o patrimônio e a comunidade local. Caderno Virtual de turismo. Rio de Janeiro 14(3):298–315, dez Bugiato CM (2017) Uma crítica à originalidade do sof power nas Relações Internacionais. In: Christofoletti, Rodrigo, org. 2017. Bens Culturais e Relações Internacionais: O patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Santos: Editora Universitária Leopoldinium Capanema G (1934) Relatório do Ministério da Educação e Saúde. Disponível em http://ddsnext. crl.edu/titles?f%5B0%5D=collection%3ABrazilian%20Government%20Documents&f%5B1% 5D=grouping%3AMinisterial%20Reports. Acesso em: 02 ago. 2021 Christofoletti R (2017) Bens Culturais e Relações Internacionais: O patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Santos, Editora Universitária Leopoldinium Chuva M (2003) Fundando a nação: a representação de um Brasil barroco, moderno e civilizado. Topoi 4(7) Cifelli G (2005) Turismo, patrimônio e novas territorialidades em Ouro Preto. Unpublished Master Thesis in Geography UNICAMP: Campinas Correia LMMDV (2016) Monumentos, território e identidade no Estado Novo: da definição de um projecto à memorização de um legado. Tese de Doutorado. Universidade de Coimbra de Castro Gomes A (1996) História e historiadores. Rio de Janeiro, Fundação Getúlio Vargas de Lorenzo HC (1997) A década de 1920 e as origens do Brasil moderno. São Paulo, UNESP de Luca TR (2011) A produção do Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda (DIP) em acervos norte-americanos: estudo de caso. Rev Bras Hist (São Paulo) 31(61):271–296 Fonseca MCL (2005) O Patrimônio em Processo. Trajetória da política federal de preservação no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro, Editora UFRJ/Minc-IPHAN Fonseca TNL (2002) A Inconfidência Mineira e Tiradentes vistos pela imprensa: a vitalização dos mitos (1930–1960). Rev Bras Hist (São Paulo), 22(44):439–462 Franco RMD (1937) Revista do Serviço do Patrimônio Histório e Artístico Nacional. Ministério da Educação e Saúde. Rio de Janeiro. Goldenberg, Ilan. (2008) It´s time to stop talking about sof power. The American Prospect. May, 29. Disponível em: https://prospect.org/article/time-stoptalking-soft-power/ Acesso em: 02 ago. 2021 Giovanaz M (1979) Mário de Andrade: ativista da preservação do Patrimônio Cultural no Brasil. In: Revista Ciências e Letras. n. 31. Porto Alegre, Faculdade Porto-Alegrense de Educação, Ciências e Letras Guerra A (2002) Lúcio Costa, Modernidade e tradição – Montagem discursiva da arquitetura moderna brasileira. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. IFCH-Unicamp, fevereiro Hollanda BBDH (2017) Prefácio. In: Christofoletti, Rodrigo, org. 2017. Bens Culturais e Relações Internacionais: O patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Santos: Editora Universitária Leopoldinium Jeudy H-P (2005) Espelho das cidades. Casa da palavra, Rio de Janeiro (1st edn) Lins LFTDS (2015) To sell a product or to sell an idea: a propaganda oficial do Brasil nos Estados Unidos da América (1930–1945). São Paulo: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo. Tese de Doutorado em História Social Luke C, Kersel M (2012) US Cultural Diplomacy and Archaeology: Soft Power, Hard Heritage New York: Routledge Mark S (2020) A greater role for cultural diplomacy. https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/ pdfs/20090616_cdsp_discussion_paper_114_mark.pdf. Acesso em: 05 novembro, 2020 Machado LG (2003) Barroco Mineiro. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2003 (Coleção Debates - Arte, no 11), p 151 Navarra R (1942) A Missão Francesa de 1816 e o Ensino Artístico no Brasil. Revista Cultura Política, Número 11. Disponível em: http://memoria.bn.br/pdf/163538/per163538_1942_00011. pdf. Acesso em: 02 ago. 2021 Neponuceno MM (2019) O Papel de Getúlio Vargas na elaboração de uma Diplomacia Cultural para a América Latina, após os anos 30. Anais do II Simpósio Internacional Pensar e Repensar

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a América Latina. ISBN: 978-85-7205-159-0. https://sites.usp.br/prolam/ii-simposio-internaci onal-pensar-e-repensar-america-latina_anais/. Access on 02 Nov. 2020 Noya J (2007) Diplomacia pública para el siglo XXI: la gestión de la imagen exterior y la opinión pública internacional. Madrid, Ariel Nye JR Joseph (2004) Soft power and American foreign policy. Political science quarterly 119(2):255–270 Olender M (2017) “Um courant sympathique”: primórdios da internacionalização da preservação do patrimônio cultural na segunda metade do século XIX. In: Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power, 189–211, org. Rodrigo Christofoletti. Santos, Editora Universitária Leopoldinium Olender M (2020) “O Abismo Da história é Grande O Suficiente Para todos”. Os primórdios Da Carta De Atenas De 1931 e a afirmação da noção de patrimônio Da Humanidade”. Locus, Revista De História 26(2):291–313. https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/locus/article/view/31204 Silva GTBD (2010) A materialização da nação através do patrimônio: o papel do SPHAN no regime estadonovista. Porto Alegre: PUCRS Uribarren MS (2009) La comisión nacional de museos y de monumentos y lugares históricos de la Argentina entre 1938 y 1946: el patrimonio cultural y la construcción de una idea de nación. Cuadernos de historia, serie ec. y soc., no 11, ciffyh-unc, Córdoba 2009, pp 213–244 Vargas G (1938–1944) A Nova Política do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: editora José Olympio, volumes II, III e IV, 1930–1945

Sources de Andrade RMF (1937) Revista do Serviço do Patrimônio Histório e Artístico Nacional. Ministério da Educação e Saúde. Rio de Janeiro Capanema G, Relatório do Ministério da Educação e Sáude. Ministerial Reports FGV-Arquivo Gustavo Capanema http://ddsnext.crl.edu/titles?f%5B0%5D=collection%3ABrazilian+Government+Documents&f% 5B1%5D=grouping%3AMinisterial+Reports&terms=gustavo+capanema&scope%5Bmeta% 5D=meta&scope%5Bfulltext%5D=fulltext Revista Cultura Política, Hemeroteca Digital Brasileira. http://bndigital.bn.br/acervo-digital/cul tura-politica/163538 Vargas G (1933–1938) A Nova Política do Brasil. Rio de Janiero, editora José Olympio, volumes II, III e IV

Newspapers O jornal-1933–1938 A Manhã-1930–1945

Chapter 19

The University of Coimbra and the Various Appropriations of the International World Heritage Stamp of Approval from UNESCO Carlos Gustavo Nóbrega de Jesus Abstract The purpose of this article is to present the results of the first part of the research linked to the interdisciplinary project “The different uses of institutional spaces in the preservation of Cultural Heritage”, in which we sought to analyze the use and appropriation of the University of Coimbra (UC) and of the city itself in question by several agents, from the presentation of the educational institution as a Cultural Heritage of Humanity and its assets built as true collections of an open-air museum. The hypothesis raised is that the nomination by UNESCO, in 2013, leveraged the initiative to use the “Coimbra” brand, specifically through its Cultural-Educational Heritage, as a true soft power, aiming to reestablish the city’s and University’s notoriety as a space for cutting-edge educational development and research worldwide. Keywords University of Coimbra · Cultural heritage · International relations · World heritage

This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus—Revista de História—UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). Carlos Gustavo Nóbrega de Jesus is a doctor in History (UNESP), a postdoctoral researcher in History of Art (UNICAMP) is a researcher at the Department of History, European Studies, Archaeology and Arts (DHEEAA) of the FLUC—Faculty of Letters of the University of Coimbra. C. G. N. de Jesus (B) Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] UNICAMP Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, Brazil Department of History, European Studies, Archaeology and Arts (DHEEAA), Faculty of Letters, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_19

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19.1 Introduction The purpose of this article is to present the results of the first part of the research that is linked to the interdisciplinary postdoctoral project “The various uses of institutional spaces in the preservation of Cultural Heritage”,1 in which we sought to analyze the use and appropriation by the University of Coimbra (UC) of the World Heritage stamp of approval granted by UNESCO, in 2013.2 This designation has granted worldwide status of exceptionality to the built assets and cultural practices of the University. From our point of view, this has contributed to a further development of the University’s political strategies for international promotion. The idea is that, the designation would not only ensure these built assets and cultural practices to be fully appreciated worldwide, but also that they would be appropriated as assets belonging to all humanity, which would help in consolidating the image of the University to attract foreign students, tourism and, most especially, foreign currencies. The document that was used to form these hypotheses was the Application File of the UC-Alta and Sofia, which was submitted to UNESCO, in 2012, and has more than two thousand pages (divided into seven volumes: Nomination; Management Plan; General Texts; Influences; Execution; Master Plans; and Protection Zone). The text was the result of a study that was done by an interdisciplinary group of researchers and technicians connected to the matter of Cultural Heritage. Among other matters, we noticed in these writings the intention of presenting the architecture to be evaluated as an open-air museum collection, an idea that is connected to the initiatives of the “New Museology” and its concepts related to community and territory museums. However, since these topics have been studied in previous phases of the research and have been the subject of other articles, they will not be deeply addressed here.3 The hypothesis raised in this part of the research is that, the designation granted by UNESCO, in 2013, leveraged the possibility to use 1

The project is one of several parts of the postdoctoral research that has been developed since 2018 at the Department of History, European Studies, Archaeology and Arts (DHEEAA) of the FLUC—Faculty of Arts of the University of Coimbra (FLUC) and supervised by Professor Dr. João Paulo Avelãs Nunes. 2 UNESCO was created by the international governmental organization United Nations (UN) in 1945 to help “maintain peace and security by strengthening collaboration between nations through education, science and culture in order to ensure universal respect for justice, the law and human rights and fundamental freedoms for all” (UNESCO 2016, my own translation from Portuguese). According to its guidelines, it proposes to assist in the establishment of an intercultural dialogue between globalized societies (UNESCO 2016). 3 Since the 1980s, new museum experiences paved the way for the International Movement of New Museology, which at the end of the 20th century helped to materialize the idea of a museum built by many and for all, having sociomuseology among its theoretical lines (Moutinho 1993, 1; Varine 2000, 62). These premises were discussed in another phase of the research, in which two case studies were chosen: the cultural relevance of PUC-São Paulo and its Perdizes campus building and the Architectural Heritage of a specific region in the country side of the State of São Paulo, the so-called “Boca do sertão”, where cities such as Indaiatuba, Sorocaba, Itu, Jundiai and Campinas are located. The topics were covered in specific articles to be consulted: Museu da Cultura (PUC-SP): patrimônio cultural, história e memória, olhares distintos a partir da nova museologia (de Jesus

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the brand “Coimbra”, specifically by means of its Cultural-Educational Heritage, as a strategic foreign policy of promotion and advertisement, which aimed to reestablish worldwide the reputation of the city and the University as a space of educational development and state-of-the-art research. This situation would consequently attract, henceforth, a greater flow of cultural and educational tourism, which could contribute immensely to a greater economic and social development of the entire region of the Portuguese city. Such a practice can be called “soft power”—a concept from the early 1990s that was taken from the field of International Relations and created by the North-American political scientist Joseph Nye Jr. to “designate skills of persuasion in the decisive sphere of governments and in the geopolitical strategy of Nation-States. It is the search for alternatives to the use of physical force, the exclusivity of military power, military intervention and, to the limit, war” (de Hollanda 2017, 9; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). The definition of soft power provided by Joseph Nye Jr. himself states that the practice, which has an internationalist feature, is mainly characterized by “… the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals, and policies. When our policies are seen as legitimate in the eyes of others, our soft power is enhanced” (Nye 2004, 14). Thus, according to both remarks, soft power can be understood as a foreign policy practice used by National States or, as proposed by paradiplomacy, by subnational entities in order to develop their external influence and attraction through culture or cultural practices, thus replacing the military and/or economic power (hard power), usually used in such initiatives.4 From our point of view, this situation can define the strategies for promotion and internationalization used by UC, especially after it was designated as a World Heritage by UNESCO, on June 22, 2013. On the other hand, the fact that this classification was viewed with caution by many experts was not disregarded. They credit this initiative with reducing the “particular characteristics of the place to better adapt them to the world classification of heritage” (Almeida 2017, 32 free translation from Portuguese by the present author), superimposing the interests of the supranational body on those of the State, as the former regulates the actions for protection of that heritage, revealing that external policies of heritage preservation may leave aside cultural assets or practices truly recognized by the local community (Almeida 2017, 32–72).

2018a) and Da “Boca do sertão” ao ouro verde: Indaiatuba, Itu e a evolução da arquitetura rural paulista (de Jesus 2018b). 4 By initial argumentation standards, paradiplomacy corresponds minimally to the international insertion of subnational actors or direct international action by subnational actors that complement and/or challenge the central policies of the State. Such subnational actors comprise ‘cities, municipalities, federal states, provinces, departments, regions, cantons, counties, district councils, autonomous communities’ (…)” (Junqueira 2018, 43, translated from Portuguese). Although no consensus on the definition of Cultural Diplomacy can be found in most attempts to conceptualize it, the term can be understood as “[t]he foreign policy channel responsible for promoting culture and national values abroad” (Barão 2014, 86, translated from Portuguese).

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Thus, it is evident that the problematization indicated in the research depends on the interdisciplinary dialog of History with Architecture, Museology and, especially, with the International Relations in the field of Cultural Diplomacy. The latter is still little studied, but is gradually gaining space due to the fact that, increasingly, “in the contemporary scenario (…) sociocultural conflicts and demands appear at the heart of the dynamics of international relations” (Barão 2014, 77; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). In this sense, Christofoletti (2017a) “opened a range of possibilities to see cultural assets as instruments serving an international political practice, as long as these cultural products translate universal values” (15). A well-known case, in this sense, is the intention of using the Cultural Heritage as an instrument of influence due to the legitimacy it gains after receiving the World Heritage stamp of approval from UNESCO. According to the author, such appropriation is punctuated by a number of questions, starting with the fact that for a long time the study of applications and inscriptions of the assets did not escape from the eurocentric and centralized parameters of the most powerful economies of the world (Christofoletti 2017b, 14, 21 and 24). Furthermore, the conjuncture marked by globalization and internationalism contributed to the possibility of the so-called subnational entities (municipalities, regions, companies, universities, research centers, and non-governmental organizations) engaging in soft power politics, a situation that can be seen in the Portuguese foreign policy and that will be addressed here, particularly, with the case of the University of Coimbra (UC). Thus, it should be highlighted here that the first objective of the research was to seek to understand how the Cultural Heritage in Portugal became one of the greatest drivers of economic development in the country in the last decades. This hypothesis was developed after contact with the University of Coimbra and the research done in loco in 2018, in which we noticed the international political and advertisement strategies used by the University and the city when availing itself of their Cultural Heritage, its preservation, and the UNESCO stamp of approval in order to attract, directly or indirectly, various favorable actions to the city and the UC. The research was supported by the investigative research method that is based on the analysis and crossing of documents, derived from various supports and materials such as, for instance, the built assets of the University and the city of Coimbra, various legislations, and the application file sent to UNESCO in order for the UC to claim the World Heritage stamp of approval. Such “documents/monuments” were considered as historical sources. For this, we sought the theoretical and methodological foundations connected to such a branch of knowledge.5 When analyzing the built architecture of the University and the city of Coimbra, we also engaged with the methods of History of Art, especially following the idea that these visual sources are “… certainly one of the richest sources, that 5

This concept was used by Michel Foucault in 1969 in the book Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) and later by Le Goff (1992): “The document is something that remains, that lasts, and the testimony, the teaching (…) that it brings must first be analyzed by demystifying its apparent meaning. The document is a monument. It results from the effort of historical societies to impose on the future—voluntarily or involuntarily—a certain image of themselves” (547–548; free translation from Portuguese by the present author).

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brings within the choices of the producer the whole context in which it was conceived, idealized, forged, or invented” (Paiva 2002, 17; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). In this aspect, when considered as such, the built asset must be analyzed as a historical source “… and just like others, it must be explored very carefully” (de Meneses 2003, 27–28, free translation from Portuguese by the present author). In other words, such heritage building must be historicized, going beyond the obvious and observing its various representations and silences, in order, thereafter, to punctuate it in the historical field in which it was produced, appropriated, consumed, analyzing it as the product of a “context, including the artistic conventions … of a determined place and time, as well as the interests of the artist, original sponsor, or client” (de Meneses 2003, 27–28; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Furthermore, we also sought in the theory of Contemporary History itself the support to assess such tridimensional documents and writings, not as bearers of absolute truths, but as true constructs attached to values from a given time and specific space, namely, following the criticism and the questioning of such sources, searching between the lines, in their “unspoken”, the evidences and signs that may support our hypothesis.6 However, it should be highlighted that the method used in the investigation presented here came from a theoretical-methodological elaboration that was created following a dialog with such proposals. This does not mean that we reproduced them as a set of predetermined steps, since we believe that each scientific investigation demands an original and specific methodology regarding the problematization raised and further developed, a practice that characterizes and provides relevance to the true academic research. This way, we sought to historicize the use of built and immaterial heritage of the site in question. In other words, we sought to study the history of cultural practices and customs that were used for various purposes, emphasizing that the UC was already, for some time, using strategies for promotion of its cultural potential to promote the city in national and international circuits. Throughout its trajectory, Coimbra, which houses one of the oldest universities of Europe (13th century),7 has 6

It seems obvious, but it is always good to remember that this practice only occurs through the historian’s work, which is very well defined by Marc Bloch (2001) as this: “The historian is the one who seeks in the documents something beyond explicit explanations, that is, they seek to extort the explanations they did not intend to provide” (81, translated from Portuguese), and, according to de Certeau (2000, 77) the evidences, sometimes, are in what is not said, namely, in what he called the “unspoken”, which reinforces the recommendation that it is the investigator’s task to find what is submerged in their investigative sources. 7 Created in 1290, the University of Coimbra is the first university in Portugal and one of the oldest in Europe and “(…) historically recognized for being the only Portuguese University until 1911, with the exception of the period when it coexisted with the University of Évora (Portugal), between the years 1559 and 1759. Thus, its impact in relation to the universe of knowledge was universal, mainly for corresponding to the Portuguese and Spanish empire, on a world scale, with maritime expansion and its ‘findings’ (…) the University went through different modes of use and occupation, always focused on knowledge, research, and the teaching environment. With the university reform of D. João III, the University Institution was definitively transferred from Lisbon to Coimbra. This change led to the development of a larger school center, due to the large influx of students and the

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had an extensive history of appropriation and various uses, from varied hues (political, economic, cultural, and social), which helped to shape its cultural, architectural, heritage, and immaterial profile. Such practice is well exemplified in the various panoramic historiographic analyses on the political and ideological uses that were made both of the University and the city in the Pombaline Reform (1972) and the Estado Novo Português, or Portuguese New State (1933–1974) (Pires and Pereira 2010; da Costa Brites 2014; Cf. Rosamaninho 2006). Following this, we arrived at a hypothesis that, due to such singularities, this place is a relevant example to studies and assimilations of practices that are to be applied in other cases and spaces, always respecting local specificities. Thus, it is clear that the investigation is very broad. However, it should be highlighted here that, with the first results of the research, care was taken in order to present in a detailed manner evidence that emphasized the practices of soft power that were used as subsidies by the UC. In this regard, we notice the strategic use of its history, memory, as well as of the preservation and conservation processes of its Cultural Heritage in order to provide a background for the sustainable development of both the city and the University of Coimbra. Attention should be drawn to the relevant planning of, first, doing an application project with UNESCO in order to be designated as a World Heritage, and then using the success of such enterprise for economic, political, and social purposes. This initiative did not happen overnight. Rather, there was an investment of financial, human, and intellectual capital, as well as time to later have the rewards of such a strategy reaped through various initiatives, including tourism and marketing to incentivize foreign students to search for the University. A last caveat should be made here: the use of policies or initiatives of internationalization of a brand as soft power for the benefit of sustainable development is a good solution not only to social and economic issues, but also to the practice of preservation of cultural assets and/or initiatives, because such a relationship works as “a two-way: the heritage as mainstay of soft power and soft power as the vector of cultural preservation” (Christofolletti 2017b, 37; free translation from Portuguese by the present author).

granting of a large number of academic degrees. (…) it occupied different physical structures, (…) initially concentrated in Jesuit colleges, located in Rua da Sofia (…) the oldest physical center of the University was the Paço das Escolas. Prior to its university use, it was the former royal address of the country, the former Paço Real de Coimbra. Because of this, the physical installations bring great architectural and decorative value to the set of cultural assets, such as the Biblioteca Joanina, Joanina Library, which was founded as a study library and was reserved for the service of the university community (Almeida 2017, 216, translated from Portuguese).

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19.2 Cultural Assets in Portugal: From Soft Power to Cultural Tourism It should be highlighted here that the good outcome of the dissemination policy of Coimbra’s culture and, mainly, its Cultural Heritage is a reflex of a larger political project, one of national scale that helped Portugal to grow economically since the twenty-first century. In this sense, the economic explanation for such a prosperity, which is based on the adoption of the Euro in 1999 and the economic initiatives for the next ten years, should not be overlooked. This situation underpinned the further development of the Portuguese economy which, in addition to the adoption of the communal currency, also counted on the irrevocable fixing of the exchange rate (Aguiar-Conraria et al. 2012, 302–303). Nevertheless, what draws our attention in such an advancement is the contribution of the Portuguese cultural tradition to this development. It becomes clear that culture and, especially, the Cultural Heritage were used based on a strategy of soft power to, mainly, promote the Portuguese tradition worldwide. Within this planning, a set of laws that were created to think about the preservation of the Portuguese Cultural Heritage should first be highlighted here. Thus, we should mention the Lei de Bases do Património Cultural, n.º 107/2001, Bases of Cultural Heritage Law, of September 8. This law established the policy of protection and valorization of the Cultural Heritage in Portugal and was largely responsible for the contribution of the increase in historical and cultural tourism in the development of the Portuguese State in recent decades. This legislation was based on the understanding: “permanence and construction of the national identity and the democratization of culture mainly through the increase of social and economic well-being and regional and local development” (Portugal, Título III, Artigo 12.º, Lei 107/2001, 5810; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). This demonstrates the importance given to the foundations of sustainable development in the bases of the code of protection of cultural assets. Likewise, the contribution of the Decreto/Lei n.115/2012, (Decree/Law n.115/2012), should also be highlighted. It centralized the services and bodies in the cultural sector through the creation of an organic structure, the Direção Geral do Património Cultural (DGPC), General Direction of Cultural Heritage. Among its attributions, one that stands out is that of proposing to the member of the Government who is responsible for the cultural sector “regional plans of priority interventions regarding study and safeguard of the architectural and archaeological heritage and the annual and pluriannual programs and projects for its conservation, restoration, and valorization” (Portugal 2012, 2774; free translation from Portuguese b y the present author). The creation of laws that were homologous to the ones aforementioned, incentivized the progress of tourism since, from that moment forward, the country sought a policy that extrapolated the traditional formula structured since the 1960s, which was based on the “commercialization” of its classic product “Sun and Sea”, “better known for the tourism of the 3 ‘S’—Sun, Sea and Sand. The tourism planning

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needed to diversify this branch, since it had great “competitiveness with other European countries” (Daniel 2010, 264; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). It was according to this view that the “Plano Estratégico Nacional de Turismo” (PENT ), “National Strategic Tourism Plan”, emerged. This plan ended up marking this turn in the Portuguese cultural tourism, as it was presented as a long-term, sustainable initiative of subsidy to the regional tourism, respecting and exploring the specificities of each region. It was presented on February 15, 2007, for the time horizon of 2006–2015. Within its action plan, culture appeared as a protagonist on the item “Experiências e Conteúdos”, Experiences and Contents, being marked, mainly, by the transmission and valorization of the traditional Portuguese contents, namely, “History, Culture and Heritage of each region are seen as differentiating offers, offers that will enrich the experience of the tourist” (Portugal 2007; free translation from Portuguese the present author). Nevertheless, time has shown that the definition of the objectives proposed in the approval of the PENT in 2007 was not realistic, since the results were well below expectations. This can be explained by the preponderant role that the international financial crisis of 2008–2009 played in Europe, contributing to the non-establishment of goals in various branches of the economy. For this reason, there was the commitment for a new assessment, a plan that took place in 2012 and was called “Plano Estratégico Nacional de Turismo, com propostas para revisão no horizonte 2015—versão 2.0” (Portugal 2012), “National Strategic Tourism Plan, with proposals for review in the 2015 horizon—version 2.0”. This strategic revision sought to present the balance of three years of the plan, drawing even more attention to the advancement of the proposal for a sustainable development tourism and, even if the indicators did not reach the expectations, they did not demonstrate such a bad performance either, which can be seen as a positive aspect of the implementation of the law (Portugal 2012, 9–10). The hypothesis that the economy of the country would develop again was already being considered at that time, because it was disclosed that Portugal would “grow above the European average, especially at the level of revenues, since the increase in average revenue per tourist is assumed as a priority” (Portugal 2012, 10; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). According to the projections, there would be an “average annual [growth] of 8.4% in revenues and of 4.6% in overnight stays until 2015, reinforcing the weight of Tourism in the total Portuguese exports of goods and services to 15.8%” (Portugal 2012, 10; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). What draws our attention in this re-reading of the tourism planning is the trust in the reestablishment of the economy by encouraging local, and especially regional, culture and the cultural landscape. According to this perspective, the 11 development lines listed as the basis of Sustainable Tourism stand out. Among them is item 9—”urgency to invest and better explore the urban and landscape quality, since the built cultural assets, spaces and the urban complex” are “fundamental components of valorization and qualification of Destino Portugal, Portugal Destination” (Portugal 2012, 11; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Furthermore, the brand “Destino Portugal”, “Portugal Destination”,

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aimed at being an aggregator point in regard to “… various offers, contributing to strengthen the national identity and the cohesion of the territory” (Portugal 2013a, b, 170; free translation from Portuguese by the present author) was also presented. In this context, it is important to reinforce the key ideas associated with the value proposition of the “Destino Portugal”: climate and light, history, culture and tradition, hospitality and diversity, within a vision that has as its central axis the sustainability of Portugal as a touristic destination (Portugal 2013a, b). The common objective of these laws and proposals was to provide Portugal with a structure to receive a large number of tourists looking for varied activities, as there has been a considerable increase in this initiative in the past three years,—a situation that, from our point of view, was already closely connected to the planning carried out since 2007 (Portugal 2013a, b, 2171). Thus, in 2013, right after the historicalcultural complex of the University of Coimbra-Alta and Sofia was classified as a World Heritage by UNESCO, a new national tourism plan was released, called “Plano de Ação para o Desenvolvimento do Turismo em Portugal para o período de programação comunitária 2014–2020”, “Action Plan for the Development of Tourism in Portugal for the 2014–2020 Community Program Period”. The Plan can be seen as a continuation of the one revised in 2012, having as its main characteristic not the mere appeal to external visitors, but rather a policy for the implementation of a structure that could receive tourists in a sustainable manner, also benefiting the internal social development. Thus, such an accurate analysis of the legislation identified a project that aimed to provide, at the national level, very well outlined sustainable development supported by the various sectorial perspectives, thus aiming “to integrate the different regional specificities and strategies …”, fostering “an articulation among promoters and projects, promoting, in particular, a better articulation between the public and private sectors” (Portugal 2013a, b, 3; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). In this proposal, there is also the launching of the project Cluster Estratégico do Turismo no Portugal 2020, Strategic Cluster of Tourism in Portugal 2020, a series of strategies that sought the collective efficiency in the development of Tourism in Portugal until 2020. The goal was ambitious: “to affirm tourism as a hub to economic, social and environmental development in the whole territory, placing Portugal as one of the most competitive and sustainable touristic destinations in the world.” (Portugal 2017; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). According to the critical review of these legislations taken as historical sources, it can be concluded that the core idea was to keep developing regional tourism and its specificities, but now in an integrated manner, as a network, which aims at a “continuous emergence of new destinations due to the development of accessibility and transport solutions” (Portugal 2013a, b, 30; my own highlight and translation from Portuguese). In regard to culture, it was presented, as always, as a protagonist, but now accompanied by other initiatives, such as health and the environment, as the study showed an increase in the demand for “destinations considered more beneficial for health, cultural tourism, and specific programs segmented for different audiences, … and adventure tourism”; also highlighting a significant increase in “the

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demand for activities associated with nature tourism” (Portugal 2013a, b, 28 and 30; my own highlight and translation from Portuguese). In view of all this, in 2019, official figures presented tourism as the largest economic exporting activity in the country, a situation that was recognized nationally and internationally, receiving numerous international awards, such as the World Travel Awards 2019, which considered Tourism of Portugal, the best “World’s Leading Tourism Board” for the third consecutive year. The latest data on the European tourism market confirm the preponderance of tourism of sun and sea. However, the segments of city breaks and touring, “which includes cultural and religious tourism, show higher growth rates that, if maintained, may change the ranking of the popularity of the tourism segments in the future (…). This means that, nowadays, mass tourists are also consumers of culture and heritage” (de Sousa 2016, 49; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). This situation privileges Portugal, as it has a rich and varied historical-cultural heritage, allied to a territory that is of relatively reduced dimensions, but with great wealth and variety of attractions (Portugal 2013a, b, 147). Thus, one must agree with the idea that “the heritage constitutes an essential resource for the development of tourism. … The past and its historical resources are, today, at the core of global tourism. Human beings travel, more and more, to observe or consume places with historical importance” (Marujo et al. 2014, 2; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). It is important to draw attention to the fact that this is not a one-way initiative, because well managed tourism also contributes to “an active policy in the field of preservation of culture and valorization of the Portuguese heritage” (de Sousa 2016, 49; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Coimbra has surely benefited from such a national situation to reactivate its economic, social, educational, and cultural aspirations, which led it to submit the application to UNESCO for the University to become a World Heritage, namely, an international stamp of approval for its soft power, even enabling to attract foreign students and executives, in addition to tourists, regaining its space as a Global University.8 As already stated here, since it is internationally renowned in the cultural sector, especially in regard to Cultural Heritage, the UNESCO stamp of approval is a great shortcut to forge the image of a city, a cultural asset or practice allegedly outstanding, consequently contributing to the transformations of these assets into soft power (Christofoletti 2017a, b, 21). However, such recognition, as well as the touristic appeal that it brings, has its controversial points. It is evident that UNESCO legitimates the historical and cultural value of material and immaterial assets from the moment it designates them as World Heritage, contributing, thus, to the process of their preservation, due to the symbolic value that the stamp of approval gives them. On the other hand, just as any classification, this one is marked by tendencies and postures that are political, ideological, and 8

An interest that is clear in its Strategic Plan (2015–2019), which can be found on: https:// www.uc.pt/planeamento/2015_2019_ficheiros/plano_estrategico_UC20152019_vpublica_web. pdf. (accessed June 29, 2020).

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cultural, of which the most emblematic is the one linked to the idea of exceptionality, authenticity, and superior-universal value of the cultural assets that are inscribed on the World Heritage List. This situation raises the concept of value hierarchy between one asset and another, which would be a less serious problem if such a discourse were not used as the basis of the narrative that seeks to advertise such assets for tourism and purely marketing purposes. The simplification of a reading that frames the asset into any list of exceptionalities, the eagerness to spectacularize such heritage assets and their extreme fetishization, sometimes obscures the relevance of disclosing its problematizations, such as the cultural/historical details or singularities of a site that a narrative approached in a more critical way would provide, making contact with the asset much more valuable and complete. The UC professor Paulo Peixoto raises equally problematic questions from the point of view of those who reside in these spaces that are appropriated for fetishist and marketing purposes. According to him, such an operation often does not contribute to the diffusion of the true culture and local cultural practices. Therefore, it can have the opposite meaning, if what is really intended is to diffuse local identity particularities, because, to him, this practice is singularized by distancing itself from a truly lived reality, namely, many of the aspects that are supposed to represent the everyday life of individuals or a city are, through a performance, through the design of touristic sceneries, somewhat external to the residents or the city (Peixoto 2003, 218–219). This is one of the main risks of this extremely reductionist appropriation that occurs with cultural assets for purposes that are only political and market oriented. The great challenge posed to those who think and manage Cultural Heritage is to cross this fine line that divides the extreme commercialization of assets for political and economic purposes and to use all their potentiality to preserve them following a critical problematization of their values. In the next lines, we seek to present how this complex operationalization took place, which culminated in the designation of the University of Coimbra-Alta and Sofia as a World Heritage.

19.3 University of Coimbra: From Internationalization to World Heritage Following a global and European trend, the vast majority of the Portuguese higher education institutions, public or private, have a Gabinete de Relações Internacionais (GRI), International Relations Office. At the UC, the internationalization program is one of the pillars of its political and pedagogical management. As one of the oldest universities in the world, and a reference especially to Brazilians who, until the 1920s, saw it as the only option of higher education, the University of Coimbra has already had a major role in the sector worldwide, a situation that was slightly overshadowed until the mid-1980s, when the cooperation for education “began to take shape in the Single European Act, in 1986, and, a little later, in 1992, with the

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Maastricht Treaty, which reshaped the European integration with the creation of the EU” (Gasici 2016, 25; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). According to the official statement released by the University, it can be noted that the international policy is one of the strengths of the university management, even appearing prominently in its Plano Estratégico de Desenvolvimento Universitário, Strategic Plan for University Development for the years 2015–2019: “The Strategic Plan of the UC considers that internatonalization is not a goal in itself but rather a transversal dimension of different institutional missions and pillars. However, the UC holds a specific strategic place in the international arena. It is a refence in the Portuguese-speaking world. For 400 years, it was the only educational institution for the elites of the Portuguese-speaking world. It is the alma mater of the Brazilian universities and, to many foreigners, it still is the preferred destination learn Portuguese” (Universidade de Coimbra 2020, 1; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). This proposal is not merely discursive, and it can be affirmed that the UC has a solid experience in a “more structured and integrated internationalization” (Universidade de Coimbra 2020, 2–4; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). According to the official narrative, “innovation and modernization of the UC, as a whole, also lies on internationalization” (Universidade de Coimbra 2020, 2–4; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). In practice, it can be said that this strategy benefited from the possibilities of a new international context, marked by paradiplomacy, since the international insertion and autonomy that subnational groups (Universities, Municipalities, Private Associations, Foundations, etc.) gained with the end of the Cold War enabled international exchanges of various kinds in a wider and more active manner. This situation was strongly reflected in the education sector, especially in those countries that have the largest economies of the world. The question that needs to be answered is: what do subnational institutions and even States gain from such an internationalist policy of the education bodies? This question cannot be reduced to a single answer, but if we had to set one, it would be summed up in the visibility and much greater power of cultural influence of those institutions that adopted a strategy aimed at internationalization. However, there is a political and ideological discussion that borders on the polarization of ideas and attitudes underlying this practice. The critics of this internationalization process of Universities point to the market-oriented interests of such an initiative: “Throughout the 1990s, internationalization of higher education was intensified worldwide in an unprecedented manner. The advancement of neoliberal globalization processes was extended to the education sector, accelerating the tendency to categorize education as a service that can be commercialized and no longer as a public good, a responsibility of the State alone, allowing for the interference from private initiatives. This way, the exploitation of education within a commercial and transnational logic was liberated. Education, therefore, ceased to be a public good, a founding component of the Nation-State, and became a commodity that could be commercialized” (Franca and Padilla 2016, 60; free translation from Portuguese by the present author).

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There is even a discourse that argues that the initiative is a way of exercising a (neo-)colonialist stance recovered by the old metropolises, because, according to this idea, “one cannot lose sight of the fact that the internationalization of higher education is per se a project of domination of the developed world based on oppressive and excluding ideologies, in which developing countries seek to fit and reproduce” (Franca and Padilla 2016, 61; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Bilateral agreements, such as the Bologna Declaration (1999), rely mainly on the motto “to promote … employability and international competitiveness of the European Higher Education system” (Bologna Declaration, 1999). However, the most widespread explanation is that internationalization “aims at the mobility and/or transfer of knowledge from the educational system of one state to the system of another” or ends up being summed up as the need of a “response to the challenges imposed by globalization and the principles of the new economy founded on knowledge” (Gasici 2016, 11; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Far from supporting one or another benefit brought by the practice of Cultural Diplomacy, one should bear in mind that all elucidations presented here lie on the idea of soft power, namely, the interest in internationalization occurs in pari-passu with the intention of influencing, indoctrinating, instructing the other, based on cultural, ideological, and political identity. In this regard, educational institutions clearly play a central role, since they are spaces of construction and dissemination of knowledge, building identities, and, especially information, which are essential initiatives to the exercise of any type of power and influence nationally or internationally. For this reason, Higher Education Institutions use all their instruments, and lucky are those that, in addition to their knowledge, offer their material culture, represented by buildings that are classified as outstanding,—a reality that, even isolated, also transmits power and influence. For this reason, the commitment to the application of the University of CoimbraAlta and Sofia complex to compose the World Heritage should not be disregarded, since this was one among the many stamps of approval to the internationalization and worldwide influence of the institution and its values. However, it remains to be known what symbolic power this architectural ensemble exercises or has exercised, to the point of being appropriated for internationalization projects, aiming at advertising the brand “University of Coimbra” (UC).

19.4 Coimbra/Cultural Heritage: University and City The architectural, historical, and cultural complex of the University gained official international exceptionality in 2013, but since its creation the UC sought ways to stand out and disseminate its experiences. It also had its cultural wealth appropriated for the diffusion of a political or ideological power.

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This conclusion was highlighted after a critical inventory study on the built assets and the cultural practices of the city and the Portuguese university. The investigation first required a photographic survey of the city and University assets; after an analysis of their architectural and historical characteristics, their relationship with the community and their political and cultural practices; and, lastly, the relationship between all of these and the process of preservation and promotion of the space as a World Heritage. To start the work, activities were divided into two blocks. The first block consisted of a field analysis, which sought to identify, in a problematized manner, the architecture of the Cidade Universitária de Coimbra, University-City of Coimbra.9 Then, we analyzed the heritage assets identified as a museum collection and/or historical document. Thus, according to this perspective, the architecture, the built asset, and the community experiences gained uncommon “status”, namely, by being defined as museum collections, they reached other dimensions in the production of critical knowledge, encompassing varied aspects of material and immaterial heritage. However, according to Professor Barbuy (1995), once “considered as a collection, such assets must be treated as documents” (221; free translation from Portuguese by the pre4sent author), namely, they become targets of a critical and reflexive reading that is proper to any historical source. The proposal seeks to see architecture not in an isolated manner, but from the perspective of the whole analyzed as a series of historical sources. In the case of a traditional museum, we could say that they would be part of the same collection. However, as we sought to analyze this set in a dynamic manner, we distanced ourselves from this conception that arises from classic museology. On the contrary, we based ourselves on the idea of architectural assets as historical sources of the material culture, namely, taken, at the same time, both as fruits and bearers of social relations in a given context or historical time. This procedure allowed us to see that the idea of museum collection and historical document was inversely appropriated in a totally simplistic, non-problematized, and ideological manner by the Portuguese New State (1933–1974), when the idea of a University-City was imposed to the UC. It should be noted that this was not the first time that the University had its architecture and heritage inserted in a political proposal with ideological and political purposes. In the eighteenth century, Marquis of Pombal, wanting to give a more scientific and secular character to the University, created numerous research centers and museums and made interventions in the buildings to change the religious character that they had until then. However, what interested us was the relevant fact that the interventions were made in a moment when the University became UniversityCity, because it is believed that, even though it was mistakenly seen, from the New

9

The Portuguese term Cidade Universitária is equivalent to that of University Campus in English. However, the name Cidade Universitária de Coimbra is translated as University-City of Coimbra in the application file sent by Coimbra to UNESCO. In this article, we decided to follow this official translation.

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State point of view, as a uniform museum complex, this was one of the main initiatives that allowed its classification as a UNESCO World Heritage. At first sight, it can be noted that the architecture of the whole University-City is dominated by the classicist monumental model, the expression of which is not only greater because some porticos remained to be built. This feature was established until 1944, when the influence of the works of Albert Speer and Marcello Piacentini, in Portugal, can be well exemplified by the Faculty of Letters, in the General Library, and the grand staircase. Nevertheless, the idea of a University-City of Coimbra was conceived and directed by Cottinelli Telmo, in the years of 1941–1948, and followed by Cristino da Silva, between 1949 and 1966, under the sign of monumentality: vast perspectives, symmetry, and orthogonality in the urban design and monumental classicism in the architecture. The simplicity and harshness of expression of the Faculty of Letters (1945– 1951) generated criticism from the Conselho Superior de Obras Públicas, Higher Council of Public Works, formulated in the name of ineffable traditional values and the “back-to-being-Portuguese” [“reaportuguesamento”] architecture. Thus, Alberto José Pessoa converted the previous Faculty of Letters, which was built a few years earlier, into the General Library in accordance with the project of Silva Pinto. In 1948, Cristino da Silva, who led the construction of the Faculties of Medicine and Sciences, stepped in. The substitution did not change the guiding principles, but the monumental classicism lost vigor in the mid-1940s. The Mathematics building, facing the Dom Dinis Square, was finished in 1969, whereas that of Physics and Chemistry was only finished in 1975. However, at that point, times had already changed, the New State was already over and with it the resistance to the classicizing monumentality that characterized it grew among architects, although it was kept in some works, such as the court buildings. For this reason, the Mathematics building, with its large portal, carved by Gustavo Bastos, still evokes this canon nowadays, but the building of Physics and Chemistry definitively distances itself from it, with a vast opening to the internal courtyard, where, by the way, a geometric sculpture of Fernando Conduto was placed. It is not too much to say that the architectural expression of the University-City of Coimbra built during the New State only was not stronger due to the absence of porticos, which would help integrate the buildings. All of the buildings designed and built until the seventies anticipated this interconnection. But the slowness of the construction, allied to the delays in the building of the Hospital, which should have occupied the north face of the Dom Dinis Square, ended up determining the abandonment of the porticos. Such absence really helped the valorization of the specificities and the differences of these architectural assets. Thus, it can be stated that the refusal of the construction of the porticos exerts a liminal criticism to the aesthetic and ideological foundations of the University-City of Coimbra, showing the dismantling of monumental classicism as the official art of the Portuguese New State. According to the analysis of the documentation and specialized literature, we also concluded that, in order to keep this classic monumentalist condition, the construction of the University-City did not respect the preservation laws, promoting demolitions

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of historical buildings and not doing archeological studies that are necessary to the valorization of a space that is over five hundred years old. We also noted that the quest to create a University-City had an ideological purpose, namely, the control of students and professors, following a model in which these could be seeing and controlled. This practice was dissimulated by the discourse that the distribution of the space was done with the intent of symbolizing the progress of the New State Regime, an idea that, from our point of view, brings this initiative close to the Nazi fascist forms. Another interesting aspect seen both in the documents and the literature is that, this conservative discourse based on the idea of University-City did not face any opposition at the time, neither from left-wing nor from right-wing groups, who saw in the proposal of devastating a big part of Alta Coimbra, where the University was, as a synonym of progress and modernity, which was required even by the academic community. This fact is also closely linked to the idea of development and modernization propagandized by the Portuguese New State. In that case, Coimbra should not be left out of this process, since it was the main symbol of the educational cultural development of Portugal. According to this point of view, the historical urban centers were devious, and these street arrangements should not coexist with the buildings of the new university complex, because this hybrid feature could seem displeasing to the strong progressive currents which, in the name of hygiene and monumentality values, condemned the historical zones of the city. In fact, it can be said that the progressive ideologues defended the demolitions in the name of the renewal of the cities—a situation that was also accepted by a large part of the population, who passively accepted such interventions as inevitable and benign, which makes it clear, in this moment, that the enthusiasm was urbanistic, aesthetic, and political. The idea of regeneration had messianic traces and the convenience of the demolitions happened in the name of a modern University-City. The opinion that seemed to be enlightened was that which minimized the destructions in the name of progress and urban hygiene. In 1966, there were initiatives such as exhibitions which favored nostalgic remembrances, enlivening the awareness of the loss of heritage. From this moment, the first criticisms of the construction of an environment artificially musealized in the name of political and ideological interests. The comparisons to the Nazi and fascist ideals helped to raise critical views about this pompous historical environment, built following forced precepts of the University-City, in an environment that was at the same time historical and aspired to be modern. With the decline of the New State, this aesthetic contempt was accentuated and the buildings were compared to motionless boxes, monstrous and sad big houses. Since the 1970s, the condemnation of the University-City began to be understood together with the ideological condemnation of the idea of building an artificial museological environment. At that moment, the first criticisms also began to be made against the impartial destruction of the historical centers made in the name of aesthetic, political, and ideological standards. It is not too much to say that it was already clear that the

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intervention was indeed a truly insensitive destruction, in the name of aestheticideological premises, based on an idea that excelled for a cohesive museological architectural discourse. In the 1990s, the seventh centenary of the University, the first investigations about the relationship between its architecture and the politics of the New State began to emerge. It is important to stress that, at that moment, there was an attempt to understand the regime without a strong value judgment, namely, looking at its art, propaganda, and ideology. Thus, these studies did not mean the acceptance of such initiatives, but an attempt to practice a supposed historical neutrality to critically analyze the formation of a museological architectural center based on political interests. The acceptance and heritage valorization of the University-City were no longer in question, but its uses based on aesthetic proposals of an authoritarian regime were. Thenceforth, there was an effort to historicize the heritage destruction without such a passionate look; therefore, it cannot be said that the value judgment disappeared, but it lost the dominance that it had in the 1970s and 1980s. Until the end of the 2000s, the idea of defending the overall beauty of the University-City or its symbolic virtues seemed absurd, until students protested against the vandalization of the monumental staircases and claimed its symbolic identity value. It must be highlighted that this identity characteristic was the starting point for the application for World Heritage to UNESCO. Thus, this practice shows a certain change in the benchmark of exceptionality, since taste was no longer punctuated by aesthetic value, closely linked to the New State, but to the symbolic, historical, and traditional, attributing, thus, a critical look to the museological construction, leaving aside the value judgment and emphasizing the relevance of the historical and critical analysis of the memory of the University.10 10

“The stage of evaluating the application for World Heritage is based on the analysis of a consistent technical documentation (…) This documentation must include proof of the intrinsic value of the cultural asset, the elaboration of a descriptive dossier of that value and detailed administrative and protection plan. (…) based on these established criteria, the outstanding universal value of the property, its authenticity and proof, and whether the State that supported the candidacy for heritage adopted the adequate and sufficient protective measures in relation to the nominated property will be defined” (Almeida 2017, 70–71; my own translation from Portuguese). Therefore, the list of cultural assets considered to be of outstanding universal value seeks to represent and select assets according to some representativeness and guidelines, such as: unique artistic achievement, a masterpiece of human creative genius or that exerts great influence, for a period of time or within a specific cultural area of the world, regarding the development of architecture, monumental arts, city planning or landscape model, or; it represents a special or at least outstanding testimony to a disappeared civilization or cultural tradition; it is an outstanding example of a type of building or architectural ensemble or landscape that illustrates a significant stage(s) of human history, or; it is an outstanding example of traditional human occupation or representative landuse of a culture (or cultures), especially when it becomes vulnerable under the impact of irreversible changes, or; it is directly or clearly associated with events or living traditions, ideas or beliefs, artistic and literary works of outstanding universal importance (the Committee considers that this criterion should justify inclusion in the list only in exceptional circumstances or in conjunction with other criteria). (UNESCO 2016; free translation from Portuguese by the present author).

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19.5 University as a UNESCO World Heritage When accessing the UC application file for World Heritage, it can be noted that the well founded investigative-scientific character of the proposal was the great trump card it played to receive the stamp of approval, a fact that is made clear in the submitted documentation, which was defined as: “scientific dossier of intentions”, unlike those commonly organized with the title “document of intention” (Almeida 2017, 38). This is probably due to the involvement of experienced technicians in the field of preservation, such as the architect and urban planner Nuno Ribeiro, and the UC researchers, such as the Professors Raimundo Mendes, Associate Professor of the Department of Engineering-FCTUC, and João Gouveia Monteiro, of the History course of the Faculty of Letters-FLUC. Thus, it can be said that the proposal of more than two thousand pages was developed by the interdisciplinary technical-scientific team.11 The draft of the document was structured by the rector of the University of Coimbra and two other pro-rectors, who coordinated different sectors, and composed by seven volumes: Nomination; Management Plan; General Texts; Influences; Execution; Master Plans; and Protection Zone. Entitled Nomination, two areas of the city, Alta and Sofia, were presented as constituents of the cultural asset, marked “mainly by the buildings and spaces of the University of Coimbra throughout history. Its structure was divided into parts: the contents and the investigation; the rehabilitation area and physical preservation; and the heritage preservation and rehabilitation” (Almeida 2017, 38; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). The proposal was that the University could be regarded as a culturally pluralized architectural/historical/museological ensemble, but which kept at least one point that would aggregate this entire complex, namely, the exceptionality of the buildings and the other cultural assets and practices that, due to a supposed differentiated aesthetic, history, or culture marked a time, a situation that would justify the stamp of approval and its preservation globally. For this purpose, even though the evidences regarding the changes, demolitions, and new constructions were still punctuated, they were 11

Professor Fernando Seabra Santos, who was Rector of UC from 2003 to 2011, was the main creator and organizer of the application. According to Professor Raimundo Mendes (apud Almeida 2017), a first preliminary dossier was made in 2004, a first proposal, which led the UC to be included in the tentative list for World Heritage, an initiative that occurs from time to time, which indicates that such assets are susceptible of being heritage of the humanity (…). The application structure was organized as follows. The Rector appointed two pro-rectors to coordinate different fields, (…) content and research field (…) and the field of physical preservation and heritage preservation and its rehabilitation. The pro-rector for the field of physical rehabilitation, therefore of heritage preservation was Professor Raimundo himself and of investigation was the Professor of History at the Faculty of Letters, João Gouveia Monteiro. As the work evolved, a Technical Office was created and Nuno Ribeiro, who had been Director of the Historical Center of Évora, was called to coordinate this technical part of the project. (307; free translation from Portuguese by the present author).

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very well adapted to the discourse of exceptionality and relevance of presenting a legacy of the Portuguese culture to the world. The idea was to give a certain dynamic quality to such an open-air collection, which conserved representations of various historical phases of the Portuguese culture and tradition through the University-City. Furthermore, it became very clear that such monuments were presented through a historiographic perspective, namely, seeking to remove the maximum of possible anachronisms that could attribute some kind of value judgment of the present time to those constructions of the past. In this sense, an effort was made to show how, nowadays, the monuments-documents were impregnated with questions relevant to their time, but that they also carried with them the stereotype of temporalities that were distinct from the time when they were built, showing the various features that one same cultural asset can have, depending on the representation that is made of them in a certain historical moment. It was so in the splendor of the New State, in the post-Salazar criticism, and in the appropriation of the staircases by students already in the twenty-first century. These questions were connected to a large variety of memories that led the University to be of a greater interest to the visitors who sought to visit the city. What can be noted is that the construction of the University-City is central to the document, but while it does not condemn the fact that the construction is the fruit of an authoritarian State, on the other hand, it also does not hide the fact that this work had unreserved support from the university community and the city itself at that moment. Therefore, it is noted that the dossier sought to contemplate the various resorts of memory, going beyond a mere contemplative pretension, showing the meaningful desire, at certain times, for the preservation of the physical space and the valorization of the heritage. But this did not prevent the destructions, made without historical criteria and in the name of political and ideological proposals, from being documented, even returning to the origins of the University and its various demolitions. It is this way that we sought to see and punctuate, through a dynamic perspective, the interventions over time, demonstrating how these operations also contributed to the formation of the identity of the University and, consequently, the city itself. Even though the dossier seeks to privilege the University of Coimbra-Alta and Sofia, we also notice the relevant focus that is given to the presentation of the city. The history of Coimbra and its community helps in the difficult harmonization of the architectural-museological ensemble, the memory of which is or was closely associated with the academic institution, either participating in the conception of its constructions or contributing to the development of its Portuguese identity and cultural traditions, which supposedly would only meet in that place, thus being prone to visitation and the exceptionality stamp of approval. For this purpose, it was not concealed that this whole construction has always been linked to a type of political, ideologic, cultural, and even natural power. Thus, the analysis was divided into seven cycles: Background (twelfth and thirteenth centuries), Origins (fourteenth century), Modern Age (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), Enlightenment (eighteenth century), Liberal/Republican Age (nineteenth century), New State (twentieth century), Democratic Age (twentyfirst century).

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Within this perspective, by thoroughly analyzing this dossier as a historical document, we noted that several material and immaterial aspects were drawn, which express the importance of an institution of which the influence and symbolism should cross local, regional, and national borders to acquire a true universal dimension, since, due to its singularity, it should be shared with all humanity. It is interesting to note, in this document, that not all buildings that reflect the historical periods described above have been preserved to the present day, as is the case of one of the first built structures, which later became the Colégio São Paulo, College of St. Paul, in the fourteenth century, and where the general library of the University can also be found. Only a few archeological records of these headquarters remain, which are kept in the Museu Nacional Machado de Castro, National Museum Machado de Castro. Likewise, attention is drawn to the fact that some of the many colleges that were built after the definitive transfer of the University of Lisbon to Coimbra, in 1937, but which were demolished to later meet other spatial or educational needs, are listed on the dossier. The demolition of the astronomical reservoir that belongs to the cultural and scientific phase of the eighteenth century, located on the South top of the schools’ courtyard, is also included in this overview. By turning this document into a historical source of the research, its critical reading helped to understand that the reference of such assets to the memory is presented almost as a compensation for the fact that, even though they do not exist anymore, they should still not be forgotten, as they would be part of this epic and almost rectilinear narrative that the dossier intended to present—an account that benefited the large majority of the historical buildings connected to the UC and that are still standing nowadays in an unavoidable manner, establishing the imagery of the city in a constant process of evolution and transformation, together with the path of the University as a scientific institution. Thus, it can be said that the ensemble that was presented to the application gathered a sum of physical, material, and immaterial elements that reproduce and represent the legacy of an institution as a diffuser center of knowledge, determining the urban structure of the space that it hosted and an endless number of individual and collective memories that established the influence of the University in the national and international levels. As already said, it became evident that there was no intention to hide the phase of support for the regime and authoritarian architecture of the Salazarist dictatorship; on the contrary, this situation is in the justification of the request for protection of the set of heritage assets, emphasizing that these also symbolize part of the historical moment and the memory that nowadays underpins the singular characteristic of the historical ensemble. The pombaline reforms made from 1772 were met with a similar posture. Far from being condemned, they were problematized, demonstrating that, such as in other political conjunctures, the University of Coimbra played an important role in the theoretical maturation of the Portuguese political history, which is also exemplified when mentioning that its faculty is part of the most distinguished leaders of the country, and especially of the New State dictatorship. Specifically, the buildings of vital structures of the regime and of the creation of repressive apparatus integrated a symbolic set of the University that sought to

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meet and ensure the full organic subordination of society to political power. Through such memories of stone and lime, one can remember that between 1936 and 1945, there was the growth in the instrumentalization of the educational system in favor of the ideological and political needs of Salazarism. In this regard, there are several evidences that show that the majority of the professors of the University of Coimbra kept an attitude of either collaboration or challenge to the New State. Even though this situation was delicate, it was not left aside by the dossier, since the idea of domain through space helped in the reconfiguration of such places, in which learning was developed, and shaped part of the characteristic of the present historical architecture of the University. It is noted that the hypothesis of an open-air museum and/or museum city marked the application proposal, because such as in the study of a museum collection, its pieces were exposed and problematized as historical documents; this occurred even to those that could tinker old wounds in the present. This way, the proposal subverted the established order in the international preservationist proposals, for seeking exceptionality precisely in what was not spoken or was hidden, diluted in the supposed architectural harmonization that, in fact, hid a series of demolitions that nowadays would probably be criminal. This critical and reflective tone expressed by the application dossier contributed to the success of the enterprise. However, it is still not possible to know what its impact will be when it is also used in the promotion strategy or in the use of the heritage set as soft power, since, for many experts, the UNESCO seal of approval ends up reducing the “particularities of the place to better adjust them to the world ranking of patrimony”. (Almeida 2017, 32; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Such critics believe that, to better adapt to the criteria required by UNESCO’s classification, the traditional urban tissues of the city are “deconstructed from their meaning”, recreating “new urban articulations that intensify and reduce complex realities” of their patrimonialization processes (Almeida 2017, 34–35; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Thus, “a dialectical process of cultural protection of the site” (Almeida 2017, 38; free translation from Portuguese by the present author) is considered, since the local valuation specificities of the environment and cultural landscape of the city give rise to the promotion of certain specific areas that are better adjusted to UNESCO’s globalizing classificatory discourse. Therefore, it can be stated that this organization overlaps the decision of the State as it regulates the actions of protection of that heritage. Thus, this practice ends up revealing a policy of heritage preservation that ceases “to have as a privileged place the national States” and the local specificities (Almeida 2017, 32–72; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). However, it cannot be denied that the stamp of approval enables the cultural diffusion of the space and can lead to economic development, which results from the practice of cultural marketing and cultural tourism, signs of a practice of soft power that, if used sparingly in a sustainable manner, can even contribute to a social and preservationist policy that is fairer, more professional and more responsible.

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19.6 Final Remarks In the lines that followed, we sought to evince the relevance of the Built and Immaterial Heritage to a University and a community, which even contributes to the main function of a higher education institution, namely, to shape critical and reflexive citizens. This happens because the protection of cultural assets “can be considered as an intrinsic contribution to human well-being” since “in addition to its inherent value for present and future generations, heritage can also mean an important instrumental contribution to the sustainable development in all its various dimensions” (Christofoletti 2017a, b, 20; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Unfortunately, this awareness is far from ideal at the global level, and especially, at the Brazilian national level. Differently, it was noted in the case in question that a series of factors were added to the cultural assets in order to seek, in the international official stamp of approval from UNESCO, support for the use of the UC as a soft power. Thus, in the case of the institution and the city of Coimbra, the awareness about the potentials of the Cultural Heritage helped, first, in the idea of the application, and then in the objective of using the exceptionalities demarcated in the designated Heritage to attract students and tourists, generating greater economic, social, and political development. In this sense, we can affirm that educational institutions that possess or are physically fixed in the “places of memory” can be considered privileged, since they have valuable tools for the intellectual, cultural, and human construction of their community, apart from being able to use such assets for their internationalization, and consequently, a greater economic, political, and cultural development, according to the rules of a world that is a hostage to capital and globalization.12 However, we must not lose sight of the fact that much of this trade-off must be reversed to the preservation and financing of initiatives that see the Cultural Heritage, not as a mere commodity, fetishized, but rather as a relevant instrument for the social and educational development of both tourists and the community in which the assets are inserted. It is important, in this sense, to draw attention to the recommendations of Professor Peixoto (2003), who states that the questions connected to Cultural Heritage and sustainable development must be posed as follows: “to what extent spaces that are organized for recreational and consumption activities, where local elements, including individuals, are preserved as attractions, are truly sustainable?” (219–220; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Unfortunately, the distortion 12

The term “Places of memory” was originally conceived by the French historian Pierro Nora for a collection of texts of which he was coordinator, called Les lieux de mémoire. According to the historian, “Places of Memory are born and live from the feeling that there is no spontaneous memory, that it is necessary to create archives, that it is necessary to keep birthdays, organize celebrations, pronounce funeral praises, note minutes, because these operations are not natural (…) they are places, effectively, in the three senses of the word, material, symbolic and functional, but simultaneously in different degrees. Even a place with a purely material appearance, like a filing cabinet, is only a place of memory if imagination gives it a symbolic aura” (Nora 1993, 13; free translation from Portuguese by the present author).

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of the real reason for the diffusion and use of the Heritage mainly with economic purposes can contribute to the process of “devitalization”, since, according to the professor, “there is a revival partly staged by a certain excess of animation and voluntary recovery of traditions” (Peixoto 2003, 221; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Thus, he questions to what extent a space that is preferably focused on tourism and consumption “possibly repulsive to the everyday activities and local citizens” (Peixoto 2003, 222; free translation from Portuguese by the present author) can really be sustainable, in the sense of bringing real benefits to the community? It is interesting to pose such questions, pointing out that several restoration processes that specifically aim at tourism and commodification end up working as an “allegory in the situations in which its splendor and the urbanistic qualities of its spaces, the cheerful colors of the recovered facades” contrast with “the rest of the city that surrounds them, turn them into a kind of work of art that represents an abstract idea of quality of life” (Peixoto 2003, 222; free translation from Portuguese by the present author). Perhaps the most symbolic and saddest example of such a practice is the process of recovery of the Pelourinho in Salvador, Bahia (Brazil), where the well-being of the community who resided there was not considered in a sustainable manner, and where even the removal of the former residents of the region occurred (Cifelli 2016, 234–252). In this sense, even though it is not totally perfect (is any proposal perfect?), the suggestion of a sustainable policy based on Heritage, Tourism, and the internationalization of the brand “University of Coimbra” was a good example of how to enjoy the potential of a Cultural Heritage linked to a University-City. This does not happen in the majority of the Higher education Institutions and cities in Brazil, which could positively explore their assets. Such initiatives corroborate the proposal that tourism should be used in the international dissemination of the preservation of Cultural Heritage and higher education institutions. Therefore, both memory locations must involve the participation of the community in activities of (re) valuing the social space to which they belong, enabling the cognitive and practical development of knowledge, through research, the production of knowledge and a taste for preservation of the Cultural Heritage. In a current global scenario marked by changes and uncertainties, this social and economic character of tourist activity will be of fundamental importance to help build citizenship and legitimize sustainable development. Thus, we believe that understanding and studying the well-established experience of Coimbra and its University in such practices helps to provide even more dynamism to projects and activities that are developed around the subject, and can open a range of possibilities for community engagement in the very process of research, preservation, recovery, and restoration of cultural and social assets and practices of a locality. The international context contributed to this, since spaces such as Universities, Higher Education Institutions, and Research Centers increasingly become valid interlocutors in the international political and economic game with the development of paradiplomacy. However, one should be attentive to show that such a task is not simple, as it became clear during the research that the particularity of this whole operation lies on the fact that such a practice did not focus on the merely economic aspect, but rather on a sustainable planning, aiming for this at searching also the

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social, cultural, and educational benefits that such an initiative can bring to the surrounding community.

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Gasici D (2016) Internacionalização Do Ensino Superior Em Portugal Através Dos Programas Europeus de Mobilidade. Unpublished Master’s thesis. Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Letras, Lisbon de Hollanda BB (2017) Prefácio. In: Christofoletti R (ed) Bens Culturais e Relações Internacionais: O Patrimônio Como Espelho Do Soft Power. Editora Universitária Leopoldianum, Santos, pp 9–12 Junqueira CGB (2018) Paradiplomacia: A Transformação Do Conceito Nas Relações Internacionais e No Brasil. Revista Bib 83:43–68 Le Goff J (1992) História e Memória. Editora Unicamp, Campinas Marujo N, Serra J, do Rosário Borges M (2013) Turismo Cultural Em Cidades Históricas: A Cidade de Évora e as Motivações Do Turista Cultural. Revista de Investigación Em Turismo y Desarrollo Local 6(14) Moutinho MC (1993) Sobre o Conceito de Museologia Social. Cadernos de Sociomuseologia 1(1). https://revistas.ulusofona.pt/index.php/cadernosociomuseologia/article/view/467 Nora P (1993) Entre Memória e História: A Problemática Dos Lugares. (Transl. Khoury YA, Projeto História : Revista Do Programa de Estudos Pós-Graduados de História 10:7–28) Nye JS (2004) Soft power: the means to success in world politics. Public Affairs, New York Paiva EF (2002) História & Imagens. Autêntica, Belo Horizonte Peixoto P (2003) Centros Históricos e Sustentabilidade Cultural Das Cidades. Porto, Portugal Pires CP, Pereira GG (2010) O Museu da Ciência da Universidade de Coimbra: Valorização de um património científico secular. In: Granato M, Lourenço M (eds) Coleções científicas lusobrasileiras: patrimônio a ser descoberto. Editora MAST, Rio de Janeiro, pp 210–285 Portugal (2001) Assembleia da República. Lei n.o 107/2001 de 8 de Setembro de 2001. This law establishes the basis for the policy and protection regime and valorization of the cultural heritage, as a reality of great relevance to the understanding, permanence, and construction of the national identity and for the democratization of culture. Diário da República. 1ª. série A.n..º 209, 8 September 2001 Portugal (2007) Secretário de estado do turismo de Portugal. Ministério da Economia e da Inovação. Plano Estratégico Nacional de Turismo, n. 1, de 15 de fevereiro de 2007. The main objective of this plan, in addition to economic growth, is to highlight Portugal, at the European level, as a tourist destination. The main function of the PENT is to build a connection between policies defined in the tourism sector and other sectors, such as in the spatial planning, 15 Feb 2007 Portugal (2012) Presidência do Conselho de Ministros de Portugal. Decreto Lei n. 115, de 25 de maio de 2012. This Decree Law represents a contribution to the concretization of the enunciated policy, in line with the provisions of the structure of the Presidência do Conselho de Ministros, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, with regard to services and bodies for the cultural sector, through the creation of the organic structure of the Direção Geral do Património Cultural, General Directorate for Cultural Heritage, which, among other aspects, succeeds in the duties of the Instituto de Gestão do Património Arquitetónico e Arqueológico, Institute for the Management of Architectural and Archaeological Heritage, I.P., with the exception of the duties in the fields of regional and local actions to safeguard and monitor the archaeological heritage, in those relating to the issuing of opinions on the plans, projects, works, and interventions in the protection zones of the classified properties or in the process of being classified that do not affect them and in the field of monitoring and inspection of works and interventions in properties located in those protected zones. Diário da República, 1ª. série, n. 102, 25 May 2012 Portugal (2013a) Presidência do Conselho de Ministros de Portugal. Conselho de Ministros. Resolução n. 74, de 16 de abril de 2013. In the process of revision of the current PENT, approved by the Resolução do Conselho de Ministros n.º 53/2007, Resolution of the Council of Ministers number 53/2007, of April 4, initiated in 2010, the need to anticipate and incorporate the impact of the global development of the Economy and the resulting – quantitative and qualitative – changes consumer behavior, with an impact on the development of the tourist demand until 2015, was also identified. Diário da República, 1ª. série, n. 74, 16 Apr 2013

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Portugal (2013b) Turismo de Portugal. Plano n. 3. Plano de Ação para o Desenvolvimento do Turismo em Portugal. The Turismo 2020: Plano de Ação para o Desenvolvimento do Turismo em Portugal, Tourism 2020: Action Plan for the Development of Tourism in Portugal, constitutes the strategic reference that establishes the investment objectives and priorities for Tourism in the Country and the Regions, specifically for the 2014–2020 community programming cycle – Portugal 2020, 2nd December 2013 Portugal (2017) Projeto Cluster de Turismo. Lisbon. http://institucional.turismodeportugal.pt/ SiteCollectionDocuments/gestao/ficha-projeto-cluster-turismo-compete.pdf. Accessed 28 June 2020 Rosamaninho N (2006) O Poder Da Arte: O Estado Novo e a Cidade Universitária de Coimbra. Editora IUC, Coimbra Rosmaninho N (2014) Cidade Universistária de Coimbra. Património e Exaltação. Revista Portuguesa de História – t. XLV:629–646. Disponível em: http://hdl.handle.net/10316.2/35447. Accessed Dec 2018 UNESCO. Étude sur les dispositions juridiques nécessaires pour assurer la protection du patrimoine monumental ou naturel des États” de 26 de janeiro de 1968, documento sobre a adoção de medidas em escala internacional, princípios técnicos, científicos e jurídicos aplicáveis no campo de proteção dos bens culturais, dos monumentos e dos sítios, em um estudo sobre as disposições jurídicas necessárias para assegurar a proteção do patrimônio monumental. Disponível em: http:// whc.unesco.org/archive/1968/shc-cs-27-8f.pdf. Accessed 9 July 2020 Universidade de Coimbra (2020) Erasmus Policy Statement. https://www.uc.pt/driic/doc/ErasmusPolicy-Statement-PT.pdf. Accessed 11 Mar 2021 Varine H (2000) O Ecomuseu. Ciências & Letras - Revista Da Faculdade Porto Alegrense de Educação 1(27):61–90

Chapter 20

Brazil with Its Back to Soft Power: Indifference or Lack of Knowledge About Cultural Goods? Lara Elissa Andrade Cardoso

and Nathan Assunção Agostinho

Abstract In the last decades, the theme of protection of Cultural Heritage has intensified both at the international and regional levels, as well as at the domestic level. As the notion of power in International Relations took on new configurations, especially from the turn of the twentieth century to the twenty-first century, the issues related to culture, science, and education also took on a new connotation to the ideals of progress and development of a nation. Despite the efforts made to bring the issue to the forefront, the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods is still a reality that affects Brazil and national states across the globe, moving significant financial amounts every year. So, the concern becomes quite feasible, as there has been a continuous increase in the association of trafficking with other types of crimes, such as terrorism, money laundering, corruption, in addition to the transnational practices by organized crime. In analyzing the theoretical assumptions, the international Conventions and the internal legal system of Brazil, we realized that it is not completely in conformity with what is required of the Brazilian State, taking into account the main obligations contracted in the international sphere, with respect to combating illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods from the perspective of soft power. Therefore, it is intended to present pertinent arguments throughout the present work in the light of multilateral channels, instigating plural debates, connecting, above all, the fields of History and International Relations, in order to raise contents that cross the notions of memory, construction Lara Elissa Andrade Cardoso—Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Departament of History. Member of the Heritage and International Relations Research Group—CNPq. CAPES Scholarship. Nathan Assunção Agostinho—Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Departament of Social Sciences. Member of Heritage and International Relations Research Group—CNPq. L. E. A. Cardoso (B) Department of History, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] N. A. Agostinho Department of Social Sciences, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_20

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identity, tradition, culture, and power in the geopolitical sphere, as well as making recommendations, so that the internal rules that refer to the issue are adequate to such obligations assumed by the Brazilian State, so that they can be configured as mechanisms of safeguarding of greater power, thus fostering its international projection in the cultural field guided by the foundation in soft power. Keywords Cultural heritage · Soft power · Cultural goods · International relations

20.1 Heritage at Risk: The Emergence of a Society Marked by Cultural Erasure The existence of Cultural Goods is essential and intrinsically linked to human existence, since, based on assumptions raised by History and Anthropology, culture is characterized as an inseparable aspect of life. Long before there was the conception of goods, culture, and property, these elements were present in the lives of individuals and human groups in communities, which can be said in relation to the greed for these belongings that today would be described as Cultural Goods. In this regard, although the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods is a longstanding problem, being identified as a highly profitable crime by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it is observed that the attention put into it is substantially lower than crimes such as drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, and corruption. On the other hand, as a result of the development and strengthening of international organizations and the densification of relations between national States, efforts to protect Cultural Heritage and Cultural Goods have gained international scope and greater presence in debates related to culture and the ways of soft power, especially with regard to the vision and engagement of a nation in relation to the other States of the globe. It should be noted that interstate relations have moved from the mere role of a good neighborhood policy to directly affecting decision-making, alliances, and the formation of bilateral treaties between States. Thus, in line with the recent international context, the power of influence awakened by humanitarian aid can present a more efficient national image and reputation than an attitude solely motivated by economic sanction. In this sense, diversified mechanisms and instruments designed to safeguard heritage were developed, especially from the second half of the twentieth century, having been supported by many nations, since this tendency to increase the protection of Cultural Heritage is observable not only at the global and international levels, but also at regional and national ones, which can be verified from readings carried out in Latin American press vehicles, such as “O Estado de Minas”, “Clarín” and “El Universal”. That said, it happens that, even in the face of legislative and structural advances, material destruction, the erasure of memory and the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods have not been effectively combated. Factors such as contemporary war conflicts and the development of means of transport and communication technology, which generate a growing interest in antiques and other Cultural Goods, have contributed to these extremely damaging processes for the places of protection of

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individual and collective memories. Furthermore, the disarticulation of the agents involved in combating this type of crime “at the street level”,1 figured in the unpreparedness of those responsible for implementing the law enforcement policies, added to the difficulty of accessing information, limited dissemination of the topic, diversity of related national laws and the disinterest of countries traditionally importing Cultural Goods, mostly in the European center, which show their history of influence and domination over underdeveloped nations through the cultural estate, which, in effect, ends up hampering an efficient application of instruments and mechanisms for the protection of Cultural Heritage. Brazil is also included in the route of illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods (Christofoletti 2017), despite having adhered to most of the relevant international legal instruments. Thus, the present work seeks to answer whether the domestic legal system is in conformity with what is required of the Brazilian State taking into account the main obligations contracted at the international level with regard to combating the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods, based on the Conventions in which Brazil places itself as a signatory. In addition, one of the general objectives is to analyze the bibliographic framework constructed nationally and internationally, so that we can debate the concepts related to memory, identity, tradition, and culture, as well as their relationship with the multiplicity of peoples that make up the Brazilian territory. In this sense, we intend to present the panorama of the typification of this crime in the country, aware that the problems involving the transfer of ownership of Cultural Goods illegally promote one of the main causes of the cultural impoverishment of the States of origin, and that international cooperation is configured as the most efficient instrument of protection from the basis of soft power: polyhedron designed from the key of collective memory.2

1

The emergence of bureaucracy studies at “street level” is linked to the growing academic concern regarding public policies implementation process between the 1960s and 1970s, in the United States. If, on the one hand, these programs were developed at the federal level, on the other, their implementation took place from the local level, with the involvement of a greater number of actors, who acted in disagreement with the legislation still insufficient for the conflict resolution, adapting them, while the actions become discrepancies between the institutionally elaborated policy and its implementation in practice. 2 Halbwachs created the category of “collective memory”, in which he postulates that the location of memories cannot be analyzed without considering the social contexts in which they operate. In this sense, the work of memory construction ceases to have only the individual dimension, considering that a person’s memories are never just his/hers, and that no memory can exist isolated from a social group (Halbwachs 1990, pp. 81–82).

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20.2 The Heritage Wealth Connected to Memory and Social Identity Olender’s (2012) article entitled “Algumas considerações sobre as coleções como ‘lugares de memória’ da Modernidade” brings the context of a woman who collects sand in glass bottles. There is even an interesting analogy between sand glasses and hourglasses. With remnants of varied origins, it is as if the collector carried a “small piece” of each place (Olender 2012). Thus, the collector removes the object from its function and its usual environment and then takes it to another one, where the object is inserted to compose another number in relation to the category to which it belongs. It is undeniable that the feeling of detachment that this feat causes, since it is based on removing things from their respective contexts and directing them towards a new one. The objects are meticulously organized, identified, and arranged on shelves, composing vigorous collections. In view of this, that is, when talking about collections as sites of memory, it would be appropriate to raise the following questions: Why collect? What is the meaning behind the objects on museum shelves? According to Pierre Nora, these issues could be resolved by reflecting that there are sites of memory because there are no longer means of memory, in other words, real environments of memory (Nora 1993). In this sense, it is worthwhile to pave the way at that point to discuss what is meant by means of memory. These means of memory can be understood as any signs of culture and tradition of a community, passed down from generation to generation, so that it is strong, timeless, and above all, present. We would say that Cartesian society is marked by the fear of forgetfulness. Thus, and in view of this discussion raised by the collection, it would be valid to reinforce the premise that sites of memory are always places of abyss, in the sense that they are always places that are threatened and that are at risk or, in other words, if they were not there, perhaps they would no longer exist. And that would mean, consequently, the death of a millenary tradition, the loss of the sense of belonging of current generations of indigenous peoples or other groups. We speak of cultures, in the plural, since a nation has different customs, habits, traditions pervaded by grandparents, parents and children. So, culture has this pluralized aspect, especially when we talk about Brazil, a country of continental dimensions. It is through the references included in the culture that an identity is built, given that one’s personality is largely influenced by the social environment in which s/he lives. In light of this, it is necessary to open some parenthesis to highlight the collective character of memory evidenced by Halbwachs (1990) in “A Memória Coletiva”. With a fluid writing and few bibliographical references, Halbwachs brings the view that memory is in a constant process of construction and it is susceptible to change. Although people have individual and unique perceptions regarding an occasion they have experienced together, the significant memory is the collective one, and therefore, it is the collective that constitutes memory. That being said, it is interesting to emphasize that memory is strongly shaped through the first contacts and alliances that people establish in their life trajectories such as school, family, church, community, and other state institutions. For example:

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the Church institution. If the child has a family that recognizes Catholic Christian values as preponderant factors for personal and spiritual development and, mainly, encourages them, that is, encourages the fulfillment of religious commitments, then the Church constitutes itself as a solid reminder of the behaviors that are encouraged there. Like the act of doing “in the name of the Father”3 when seeing a church, contact and possible friendship with the social group that also attends that Church, and so on. The analogy can also be considered with regards to the parents or first people the child has contact with, considering that the process of “collecting memories” usually happens from the age of three or the child starts speaking, specifically. So, taking into account society, the memories of a person are under influence by all of the social environment in which they live. Therefore, just as social interaction at different stages of life tends to change, memory is also changeable. So, even though it is alive and present, the perception of a certain event changes as the phases of life go through. Returning to the mention of places of memory, it is worth noting that later on we will list arguments about the safeguarding of Cultural Heritage. For this debate, it would be interesting to highlight the text by Olender (2017) “O afetivo efetivo. Sobre afetos, movimentos sociais e preservação do patrimônio”. The author starts the content from a need and an astonishment, which crystallizes in reinforcing the affective value integrated to the construction of collective identity through what must be preserved: “This text starts from a need and an astonishment. The need to specify, and to emphasize, the effective importance of affective value in the identification of what must be preserved and, even, in the way of doing it.” (Olender 2017, p. 321, free translation). In this sense, there are countries that do not recognize the importance of preserving the Historical Heritage, such as Brazil itself. Cultural Heritage usually marks generations and ranges from art, to the monument, to know-how (recipe, crafts, etc.), historic buildings, ruins, mountains, artifacts of indigenous peoples, music, festivities, churches, among others (Bischoff 2004). It is interesting to reinforce that the theme of preserving Historical Heritage is not only relevant for the materialization of the history of the social environment that no longer has its means of memory present, but also seeks to clarify its importance for the strength, power and geopolitical strategies of a nation, entering mainly in the soft power concept, which will be better developed forward. The website of the Clique aqui para inserir texto. Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (Iphan) characterizes listing as heritage as the most common legal protection instrument in Brazilian territory and the criterion for using this tool involves “[…] goods of historical, cultural, architectural, environmental value, and also of affective value for the population, preventing them from being destroyed or mischaracterized.” (Iphan, own translation). Therefore, there is talk about listing as a heritage when the element fulfills

3

In Catholicism, the sentence “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” represents the solemnity of the Holy Trinity in which the faithful generally symbolically reproduce The Sign of the Cross on occasions such as when beginning and ending prayers and passing near to a Church.

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historical, cultural, and scientific relevance, serving as a means of cultural maintenance of a people combined with identity formation, so that they become cultural wealth for peoples and for all humanity. Thus, distorting the meaning of a nation’s Cultural Goods clearly does not go hand in hand with a good and effective strategy for innovation, development, cooperation, individual freedom, human rights, identity construction, and above all, progress, in order to draw a the ideal positioning of a nation in relation to other countries on the globe for the consequent bilateral treaties. At this point, in order to take a more in-depth look at Cultural Heritage, it is worth mentioning the African traditionalist Bâ (2010) as a reference in his account exposed in the text “A Tradição Viva” to even go back to what we have described about such means of memory. Bâ clearly conveys the notion that literacy is not necessary to make the means of memory present. From this, we understand that the Cartesian mentality has the habit of separating everything into categories and classifying things, whereas, in the oral tradition, the material and the spiritual are not dissociated (Bâ 2010). Furthermore, the oral tradition attributes a significant value to words, that is, it does not pay itself “lip service” or “just for the sake of saying it”, since speech is already a magical agent in itself. In short, African culture involves a “[…] particular presence in the world—a world conceived as a Whole where all things come together and interact” (Bâ 2010, p. 169, free translation). So, the word was far from banal, it was, therefore, a “great vector of ethereal forces” (Bâ 2010). Thus, it is emphasized that speech carries consequences and seems to have an almost literal weight, so that it can either create peace or destroy it in a fraction of seconds. In this way, the subject who conceals the truth or does not tell the fact with the true richness of details that it deserves, would be corrupting him/herself and this is too worrying for the African traditionalist, since given the conception that the word is a sacred unity, lying or even omitting details about an event would mean to separate from yourself. Therefore, breaking with the truth, and consequently with sacred unity would be risky, whereas it would mean creating disharmony within and around you. In the midst of this, the great motto of the African traditionalist seems to be “take care not to separate yourself from yourself” (Bâ 2010, p. 177, free translation). Another interesting aspect to reflect upon in this text would be about how these peoples, even without writing, are able to nurture a well-developed memory, indirectly emphasizing that not so much is necessary to preserve the means of memory. Therefore, as a certain sensory faculty is well utilized, it becomes more developed, while, with disuse, the capacity is gradually atrophied. That said, it is worth mentioning that Brazil, unfortunately, is going through a situation of cultural erasure. A plausible explanation would be the lack of knowledge or even indifference to cultural, affective, historical and scientific values in cases such as those, especially focused on the growth of the incidences of crimes of works of art and heritage in the last decades, in light of the expressive financial return, as well as the insufficient legislation that should be responsible for the situations of illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods that involve the country. Thus, denunciations of works of art’s thefts, archeo-paleontological artifacts, antiques, and rare bibliographic productions are recurrent. However, they usually fall on money laundering or justification of use for personal use. The agencies concerned with the protection and security of these

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goods differ according to each nation, since States are free faced of the possibility of adhering or not to the proposals presented in the treaties. And even if they adhere, it is not a rule in which one must follow the letter to follow the legislation that the treaties propose. In this sense, nations can choose which goods they intend to place under international tutelage and protection. Therefore, each country defines its own means of protection and security of its Cultural Goods. For the purpose of synthesizing the international activities related to the safeguarding of Cultural Heritage, it is necessary to reinforce the three main international treaties, which are: the Hague Convention of 1954, the UNESCO Convention of 1970 (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) and the UNIDROIT Convention of 1995 (The International Institute for the Unification of Private Law). Each of them was prepared to offer appropriate measures in their respective contexts, such as post-colonialism, also listing situations of war and times of peace. They are, then, turned to material relevance and its immateriality interwoven in the extensive plurality of peoples who have suffered and suffer from the effects, direct or not, of colonialism and the consequent harmful territorial domination by the imperialist countries. However, the international regime regarding the protection of heritage is clearly insufficient and flawed, whereas one of the failures of these treaties would be the lack of adherence by Member States, since a reasonable explanation for the lack of participation would be the fact that developed countries tend to have their own measures and means of protection and security for their Cultural Goods.

20.3 Instruments Against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Goods in Brazilian Jurisdiction Over the centuries, actions and inactions have increased losses, often irreparable from the estate characterized as Cultural Goods. Thus, the loss, disposal, forgetfulness, and trafficking helped in the definitive disappearance of works and artifacts belonging to individual and collective memories, which should have been preserved by the Brazilian State, and it is worth noting that no action has been more destructive than that of fire (Christofoletti and Agostinho 2020, p. 91), followed by war, which has been responsible for an incalculable amount of loss of Cultural Goods, the latter being victims of both incursions and bombings, as well as the looting that as a rule accompanies conflict environments. Illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods is a criminal action that has become a large-scale phenomenon, given that no country is exempt from looting. According to Christofoletti (2017), international trafficking in Cultural Goods causes incalculable losses and moves approximately 6 billion dollars a year, according to official sources from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Considering that the main targets are museums and the victims are societies with their lost heritages, since 1945 several measures have been adopted for the protection of Cultural Goods, among which the expansion of studies on the subject,

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the International Council of Museums (ICOM) makes available on its virtual platform, accessible to anyone, a general bibliography on specific productions on the trafficking of Cultural Goods, covering six articles and reports of conferences in Spanish language, published as constitutions by Mexican and French authors. That said, we emphasize Brazil’s non-participation with publications, events or conferences listed in this bibliography found through ICOM’s electronic media. In this sense, it can be inferred that the condition is a reflection of the lack of specific publications on the topic in the country, in addition to the non-adoption of the Portuguese language as one of the official languages of international organizations, such as the United Nations, which elevates the need for this research to be focused on delivering results related to a theme that still suffers from scarcity today, leading us to believe that the continuity of the debate is fundamental from the framework of legal protection of Cultural Goods in Brazil. In this sense, several countries that are signatories to the United Nations Conventions seek to improve their legislation to make this type of transnational crime more difficult, considering that today, faced with this scenario, France has consolidated itself as the country with the most progressive and advanced legislation in this field. In addition, the repatriation process has been developing effectively worldwide, with INTERPOL’s4 direct intervention in coordinated actions with local agencies, such as the Federal Police Department of Brazil, whose web pages provide public access to a bank of data with several Cultural Goods that have been stolen or found, but that do not have owners, in addition to objects that have been returned to their maintainers and their safeguarding locations, respectively. Therefore, INTERPOL makes public the knowledge of these works, which facilitates their recognition, as well as the international competence in the repression of illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods. In this perspective, when it comes to the protection of Cultural Heritage in the Brazilian legal system, having clarified necessary concepts and the context that surrounds memory, as well as analyzed the structure that relates social identity and Cultural Heritage in view of the need to combat illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods at international and Brazilian level, we will start from the assumption that we address trafficking within the scope of transnational organized crime. With this, we will fulfill in this chapter, part of the specific objectives of this work, which is placed at the intersection between History and the field of International Relations, to analyze the Brazilian legal framework and its comparison with the dealings to which they are linked internationally, given that in the case of Brazil, one of the first events destined to call attention to the preservation of the Brazilian Cultural Heritage is the Semana de Arte Moderna5 held in São Paulo, in February 1922, 4

The International Criminal Police Organization, known worldwide for its acronym INTERPOL, is an international organization that promotes police cooperation and crime control worldwide. 5 The Semana de Arte Moderna, also called “Week of 22”, took place in São Paulo, between the 11th and 18th of February 1922, at the Municipal Theater of the city. This event represented a renewal of language, in the search for experimentation, in the creative freedom of breaking with the past, given that art has moved from the forefront to modernism. The event marked a time when it presented new ideas and artistic concepts, such as support through the declamation, considering that previously only music was performed through concerts and before there were only singers without

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since from the context created by it, the appreciation of genuinely Brazilian culture became evident, while legal instruments for the preservation of Brazilian Cultural Heritage were widely demanded. Thus, we emphasize that the increase in the safeguarding apparatus in Brazil, linked to the increase in the operational and scientific participation of international organizations that today work to combat trafficking in works of art and goods, such as INTERPOL, UNESCO, FBI, ICOMOS, in line with several institutions of a private nature and of international law, collaborated strongly to identify trends related to the study of crime against culture, to contribute to the development of public policies to defend the responsible management of the historical, cultural, and artistic heritage of the peoples that compose the Brazilian society, always in touch with its diversity.

20.4 Constitutional Provisions for Safeguarding Cultural Heritage in Brazil The notion of protection of Cultural Heritage in the legal system of Brazil has first reference in the Constitution of 1934, in a conception very close to what is considered Cultural Heritage nowadays, since article 10 includes in the list of synchronic competences of the Union and States, “to protect natural beauty and monuments of historical or artistic value, being able to prevent the evasion of works of art.” (Brasil, 1934, free translation). Furthermore, it determines, in article 148, that “it is up to the Union, the States and the Municipalities to favor and encourage the development of sciences, arts, letters and culture in general, to protect objects of historical interest and the artistic heritage of the Country.” (Brasil, 1934, free translation). Thus, the Constitution bestowed in 1937, in its Article 134, determines that: Art. 134. Historical, artistic and natural monuments, as well as landscapes or places particularly endowed with nature, enjoy the protection and special care of the Nation, the States, and the Municipalities. Attacks against them will be equated with those against national heritage (Brasil. Constitution of the Republic, 1937, free translation).

Thus, the 1946 Constitution appears without any significant innovation, providing that the protection of culture is the duty of the State and in article 175, that “Works of art, monuments and documents of historical and artistic value, as well as natural monuments, landscapes, and the places endowed with particular beauty are under the protection of the Public Power” (Brasil, 1946, free translation). The 1967 Constitution, which sought to legalize and institutionalize a military dictatorship following the 1964 coup, repeats in its Article 172 the formulation of Article 174 of the 1946 Constitution, by maintaining that “documents, works of art and places of historical or artistic value, notable monuments, and natural landscapes, as well as archeological sites” (Brasil, 1967, free translation). Thus, it appears in the present argument accompaniment of symphonic orchestras, in addition to the plastic art displayed on canvases and sculptures with bold design and aesthetics.

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that until the 1967 Constitution, the treatment of issues related to the protection of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Goods is succinct, somewhat superficial and not comprehensive. With the promulgation of the 1988 Constitution, the protection of Cultural Heritage as a fundamental component of the ligature of Brazilian society is now laid out in a detailed, precise, and affirmative manner. In terms of the distribution of the powers of the federative entities, the Union, the States, the Federal District, and the Municipalities, it is included in article 23 the protection of the historical, cultural, artistic, touristic, and landscape patrimony and the responsibility for damages to the environment, to the consumer, to goods and rights of artistic, aesthetic, historical, touristic and landscape value. In addition, also of the parts of the powers attributed to the Municipalities, as provided in article 30, it occurs in “promoting the protection of the local historical and cultural heritage, observing the legislation and the federal and state inspection action” (Brasil, 1988). In this way, Heritage or Cultural Goods are ratified as reliable representations of a culture, either for their historical, artistic, archeo-paleontological, anthropological value or as a tool for fostering scientific knowledge, given that Cultural Goods differentiate cultures and function as historic testimonies of preserving and maintaining these identities, and therefore, are valued by the people and must be preserved by institutions for posterity. Therefore, it is the duty of the State, based on constitutional assurance, to protect its assets through effective legislation for the preservation of national identities, as stated by Choay (2006): The values attributed to these monuments are revealed both by the austerity of the published decrees and instructions […] and by the great raptures of the famous Rapports [reports] […]. The national value is the first, fundamental (Choay 2006, p. 116, free translation).

In addition to being the object of protection for all spheres of the Republic, Cultural Heritage is also liable to be protected by Brazilian citizens insofar as, among the list of individual and collective rights and duties of Article 5 of the Constitution, it is postulated as possible that any citizen propose a popular action aimed at preventing any act that is harmful to the public heritage, the environment and, in this case, to the Historical Cultural Heritage, the author of the movement being exempt from the costs of procedural processing, unless proven bad faith of others. Ahead, in the constitutional text, more precisely in Chapter III of Title VIII, referring to the social order, there is a section, especially dedicated to the theme of culture, in which they are addressed: the exercise of cultural rights, access to the sources of national culture, valorisation and diffusion of cultural manifestations in a plural form, which at the end of the day is interwoven with the fight against destruction, deterioration, and decontextualization of cultural goods. Therefore, it is evident that the constitutional text supports the existence of actions to protect cultural assets, to prevent trafficking, since they are national assets and are under legal protection, as well as the guarantee of institutions and professionals linked to exercising interventions to recover missing assets. In order to legitimize this claim, the article 216 of the Constitution is adopted, whose notes describe what constitutes the Brazilian Cultural Heritage and points out the possible ways of protecting these Cultural Goods:

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Art. 216. Goods of a material and immaterial nature constitute Brazilian cultural heritage, taken individually or together, bearers of reference to the identity, to the action, to the memory of the different groups forming the Brazilian society, which include: I—forms of expression; II—the ways of creating, making, and living; III—scientific, artistic, and technological creations; IV—works of art, objects, documents, buildings, and other spaces destined to artistic-cultural manifestations; V—urban complexes and sites of historical, scenic, artistic, archeological, paleontological, ecological, and scientific value. § 1 The Public Power, with the collaboration of the community, will promote and protect the Brazilian cultural heritage, through inventories, records, surveillance, overturning and expropriation, and other forms of caution and preservation. (BRASIL, 1988, free translation).

Thus, the Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil has links with the safeguard guidelines of the international community, which has built a variety of legal mechanisms that seek to create a wide protection network for Cultural Heritage, among which the Brazilian State is positioned as signatory assuming several responsibilities ratified at international level by the conventions listed below: the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Goods in the Event of Armed Conflicts (1954); the Convention on Measures to Be Adopted to Prohibit and Prevent the Illegal Import, Export, and Transfer of Cultural Goods (UNESCO, 1970); the Convention on the Protection of World, Cultural, and Natural Heritage (UNESCO, 1972); the Convention on Cultural Goods, Stolen or Illicitly Exported (UNIDROIT, 1995); the Convention on Cultural Goods, Stolen or Illicitly Exported (UNIDROIT, 1995); in addition to the United Nations Security Council Resolutions. In this sense, the Federal Constitution of Brazil, which guarantees the enforcement of citizens’ rights, five times endowed with laws that are mandatory and in their execution have legitimate authority for the protection of Cultural Heritage and Goods, is configured as a fundamental parameter in case of an accident. In contrast to the jurisdictional advance, the damage caused to Cultural Goods through the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods continues to be a reality in the country, evidenced by incursions made in the collections of the newspapers Folha de S. Paulo, Estado de Minas and O Globo. It is evident that, although there is legislation and institutional design conducive to combating this type of crime, there is an inefficiency and mildness on the part of national laws in the application of punishments and sanctions to subjects and agents who practice the illicit. We maintain that robbery and theft of artifacts characterized as important for the maintenance of memory, demand agility in the sharing of information, and the ability to create strategies by the security agencies for the failure of these crimes or the recapture of objects once they are stolen. The lack of governmental agenda associated with insufficient data in the documentation of the objects, whether they are members of private collections or museum collections, impairs the performance of the competent police services at the time of theft, since military police do not usually obtain specific data, training and safe, as well as accurate information on various aspects of the object would assist in its recovery, in the case of artifacts that have owners.

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20.5 Cultural Heritage as Soft Power: The Brazilian Context in Evidence The heritage legacy is not always seen in a positive way by the political leaders of a nation and, from there, when there is no investment in this area, it ends up being oblivious. A complete example can be found in Brazilian territory. The community that struggles to preserve its memory and/or tradition finds itself helpless in many cases, such as in the incidences of illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods, in the lack of positioning of the government and specialized bodies to sustain the listing and the legislation that confers the preservation of Cultural Heritage. Revisiting the content previously discussed, we highlight the relevance of the affective, cultural, historical, and scientific values of what must be preserved. Another bias that we also raise is related to the fact that the Cultural Heritage theme is directly related to the geopolitical strategy in the sense that nations connect to establish bilateral treaties. In the internationalist field, this interstate relationship usually happens from the moment when the nation to which an economic agreement will be signed, for example, has a good reputation and values the basic values of a democratic state, while distorting the meaning of Cultural Goods does not go hand in hand with a good and effective strategy for innovation, development, cooperation, individual freedom, human rights, identity construction and, above all, progress, thus tracing an ideal positioning of a nation vis-à-vis the other countries of the globe. It is essential to highlight the fact that the majority of democratic nations in the world today embrace the values of culture, science, and education in the foreground for a favorable development perspective. It is important to emphasize, at that moment, what we understand by Cultural Goods since its meaning is broad. As such, it has changed over the years, in the sense that the definition imposed by the 1970 UNESCO Convention is even broader than the 1954 Hague Convention, two of the main international treaties regarding the issue of Cultural Heritage: […] The definition is found in Article 1: ‘For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘cultural goods’ means any goods which, for religious or profane reasons, have been expressly designated by each State as being of importance to archeology, prehistory, history, literature, art or science, and belonging to the following categories: (a) collections and rare examples of zoology, botany, mineralogy, and anatomy, and objects of paleontological interest; (b) goods related to history, including the history of science and technology, with military and social history, with the lives of great statesmen, thinkers, scientists and national artists, and with events of national importance; (c) the product of excavations archeologies (both authorities and clandestine ones) or archaeological discoveries; (d) elements arising from the dismemberment of artistic or historical monuments and places of archaeological interest; (e) antiquities of over a hundred years, such as inscriptions, coins and engraved stamps; (f) objects of ethnological interest; (g) goods of artistic interest, such as: (i) board paintings, paintings and drawings made entirely by hand on any support and on any material (excluding industrial designs and hand-made articles); (ii) original productions of statuary art and sculpture in any material; (iii) original engravings, prints, and lithographs; (iv) sets and artistic montages in any material; h) rare and incunabula manuscripts, books, documents, and old publications of special interest (historical, artistic, scientific, literary, etc.), isolated or in collections; (i) postage stamps, fiscal or similar, isolated or in collections; (j) archives, including phonographic, photographic and cinematographic ones; (k) pieces of furniture

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over a hundred years old and old musical instruments ‘ (UNESCO 1970, supra note 54, art. 3, free translation).

The repatriation and restitution themes, that is, taking Cultural Goods back to their place of origin and reframing them, are directly linked to the approach of illicit trafficking in these goods, a segment of crime that is, unfortunately, demarcated as one of the main factors of cultural impoverishment for the States that originated such goods. These crimes are not always easily solved, which, consequently, instigates the need to make these debates a priority on a nation’s foreign policy agenda, since it is relevant to emphasize that international cooperation and the recognition of Cultural Heritage as a key to collective memory is configured as an efficient tool to protect and safeguard the national Cultural Goods of a State (Christofoletti and Agostinho 2020). At this point, it is worth exploring a little more about the reasons for safeguarding a nation’s Cultural Heritage. What is the reason behind the preservation and protection of these Goods? We previously stressed the scientific, affective, historical, and cultural values, as well as the geopolitical strategy involved in the act of generating a good reputation for the State. In order to dismember and develop more about these topics, Bischoff (2004) spoke about cultural expressions, especially in the form of monuments and other buildings: the author considered the preciousness of Cultural Goods as “depositories of knowledge and testimonies of human experience”, in addition to represent the “portrait of human origin and evolution”. In another perspective, Bischoff pointed out that Cultural Heritage has “value for what it expresses in aesthetic, historical, and religious terms”, so that relevance is intrinsic to satisfaction related to existence. In addition, communities give a sign of dignity to the traditional and symbolic values connected to cultural assets that significantly represent their history, in addition to, according to the author, promoting their identity construction, self-understanding, and assisting in defining their uniqueness as a specific people. Another notion attributed to the safeguarding of Cultural Heritage would be linked to the attributes of resistance, integrity, guarantee of strength, and also security. In view of the countless reasons raised in favor of the protection of Cultural Goods, it is necessary to strengthen, once again, the argument that places of memory are always places of abyss, which are in danger. That is where the idea of resistance arises, of the people who struggle to keep their monuments upright and protected. The safeguarding of Cultural Goods has also emerged in view of the effect it has for present generations and for those that are yet to come. Cultural Heritage can represent a contribution to human well-being, as well as involve sustainable development in multiple dimensions: “As a storehouse of knowledge, such heritage can directly contribute to alleviating poverty and inequality, providing basic goods and services, such as safety and health, through shelter, access to clean air, water, food, and other key resources.” (Boccardi, quoted in Christofoletti 2017, p. 20, free translation). It is noteworthy that in Brazil, the position of protection rests with the Special Bureaus for Culture of the Ministry of Tourism through the Iphan. On the official government website, on the Cultural Heritage tab, about this function, there is a text with the following words: “In addition to preserving the Brazilian cultural heritage,

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strengthening identities, Iphan also guarantees the right to memory and contributes to socioeconomic development from the country.” The Special Bureau for Culture understands the material and immaterial dimensions of Cultural Heritage, so that: It encompasses both archeological sites, architectural, urban and artistic works - goods of a material nature - as well as celebrations and knowledge of popular culture, parties, religiosity, musicality and dances, food and drinks, arts and crafts, mythologies and narratives, languages, oral literature - manifestations of an immaterial nature. (Ministry of Tourism. Special Secretariat for Culture. Cultural Heritage. Available at: http://cultura.gov.br/patrim onio-cultural/, own translation).

Among the destructive activities that cause what we call cultural impoverishment, the action of fire, war contexts, Imperialism6 and, especially, the incidences of the crime of illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods, stand out. So, in order to combat the deterioration, destruction and decontextualization of these Cultural Goods, museums, sites and natural areas, the international community met to take legal measures that seek support and tend to build a network for the preservation of Cultural Heritage on a global level, as the following international agencies: UNESCO, International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), considering that each of the State members must decide to align themselves with the measures of such bodies. Ahead, it is worth going back to the soft power theme in greater detail. After all, what is soft power? Developed by the American political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. in the early 1990s, soft power refers to a set of strategies and skills peculiar to the geopolitical universe, in which, the sense of convincing or persuasion operates at the expense of coercive imposition. The first mention of the concept by Nye was in the work “Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power”, in which, the author describes it as an alternative to the so-called “hard power”, illustrated by warlike power. So, endowed with efficacy and breaking with the brutality of measures from hard power, soft power subtly manifests itself in the broad environment of culture, in order to house cinematography, musical productions, dance, performing arts, the pluriverse languages, cuisine, fashion, commerce, preservation of Cultural Heritage, among other fields. It is observed, then, that the soft power extends from artistic expressions to its prominence in the preservation of the Cultural Heritage—a theme, by the way, which is still little discussed in the field that intersects History and International Relations. That said, at this point it is convenient to open a parenthesis to encompass the material and immaterial Cultural Heritage as soft power and how it engages in cultural diplomacy, especially in the Brazilian case. In this sense, to what extent are the thematic peculiarities that encompass the cultural universe, from where museums, cultural landscapes, monuments, relations of reciprocity or cultural imposition emerge, are covered by the field of International Relations? To what extent, are they presented as relevant subjects as the universe of economics, military

6

Historical period recognized by the policy of expansion and territorial, cultural and economic dominance of one State over the other. In this context, the strongest nations sought to deposit their power of influence and control with the weaker nations.

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affairs, health, environment or terrorism is reported? (Luke and Kersel, quoted in Christofoletti 2017, p. 18). This writing initiative originates, then, as highlighted by Olender (2017), from a need and an appeal regarding cases of withdrawal of traditional symbols, entering, especially, in illegal transitions of these Cultural Goods as in situations of robbery and theft in the bias of illicit trafficking. Therefore, we emphasize that, like Brazil, there are nations that do not impose themselves to embrace the cause of explicitly evident contexts of this type of trafficking, as in the period of colonialism. It is worth reiterating that policies that are indifferent to the symbolic and traditional value of Cultural Heritage do not recognize or simply ignore the fact that monuments, buildings or traditional symbols, and goods are part of the history of different peoples and represent something valuable for certain groups, as well how it adds value to all of humanity. Therefore, to silence or even erase the marks of existence of these communities would be to erase part of the trajectory of this people who grew up and lived there, as if the remnants of past generations were silenced for present and future generations. As previously presented, Pierre Nora’s speech would fit well in this context, since: places of memory are created because there are no more means of memory. Returning to the concept of soft power, in the view of the Indian political activist Shashi Tharoor, one of the requirements for its exercise is to be connected. With this, we understand that the interaction, management, and diffusion of Cultural Heritage can be understood as a pragmatic performance of this sphere of power. Joseph Nye, while working on developing it, pointed out three pillars that according to him constituted his primary base. They are: political values, culture, and foreign policy. However, the individual sources of what is understood as soft power are multiple and varied and, in this sense, it is possible to say that such a category of power has always existed, that is, it did not come into existence after its “invention” at the beginning of the 1990s. In fact, the idea had its relevance in growth, especially as a result of the global changes of power as the global scenario was changing and, due to this, we verified a wrong argument when we related it to the perspective of invention, as if it started to exist from the beginning of a certain period. As such, the soft power dimension has been identified as a testament to the fundamental changes in power today. Joseph Nye pointed out, therefore, that power is not static, resources change according to the changing context; they have varied in the past and will continue to do so in the future. For example: the era of Imperialism and the great World Wars demanded that nations articulate in the face of attack and defense measures and, as a result, the tendencies that started and moved towards hard power became more urgent. In 2007, Nye, when drawing the results of the Congressional Smart Power Commission,7 co-chaired by himself and Richard Armitage, took a stand on the situation in the United States: “We conclude that America’s image and influence had declined in recent years and that the United States had to move from exporting fear 7

For more information see: Accessed on March 7th., 2021.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/04/12/the-war-on-soft-power/.

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to inspiring optimism and hope” (Nye Jr., quoted in Ohnesorge 2020, p. 5). Therefore, Nye, pointing out the argument of observers in the interstate scenario, clearly identifies the non-static character of soft power: they reinforce that, as a result of developments, globalization and new actors associated with the international system after the turn of the century, the sources of power are, in general, moving away from the emphasis on military strength and conquest that marked earlier times. So, nowadays, in the evaluation of international power, factors such as technology, culture, education and economic growth are becoming more and more relevant while geography, population and raw materials are becoming less important, in other words, are marking less prominence on the global stage. In another speech by Nye, we can observe that he argues that even the State leaders/diplomats who recognize the utility that soft power can play in achieving foreign policy goals, often the difficulties of incorporating it effectively because of a national strategy are underestimated. Thus, “soft power may appear a better, less risky option than economic or military power, but it is often hard to use, easy to lose, and costly to re-establish.” (Nye Jr., quoted in McClory 2015, p. 6). Due to the scarcity of publications of national works on soft power, we reinforce the need to disseminate research, especially for understanding and applying the internationalist vision. The present article articulates to contribute, therefore, because of making a bridge between Cultural Heritage, soft power and International Relations, given that the subjects that link culture as soft power are areas vaguely discussed in Brazilian territory. As previously highlighted, in Brazil, the cultural element is not usually in the priority of studies that cover the International Relations courses, nor in the foreign policy agenda. So, never coming as a protagonist, cultural issues are usually critically metaphorized as “intellectual perfumery” as being the easiest, simplest or most superficial part of knowledge. The safeguarding of Cultural Goods has changed its role from a mere diplomatic strategy for sustaining good neighborly relations to, in fact, fundamental tricks linked to soft power, taking into account the elevation of the prominence of the Cultural Heritage theme in multilateral dialogs and, consequently, the growth of actions in the internationalist and related fields.

20.6 Possibilities for Applying Punishments to Crimes Against Cultural Heritage When dealing with the application of punishments to individuals and criminal organizations that practice robbery and theft of Cultural Heritage, it is worth stating that there are several sociological perspectives on crime, which are different, especially from what they consider to be decisive for a criminal action, divided through its approach, which mainly takes into account social pathologies or economic factors imbricated to criminal action. Social theories reduce the focus on the individual and his/her pathologies, transferring it to society, that is, their studies are based mainly on the influence that social interactions have on the individual decision to commit a

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crime. In this perspective, the Chicago School argues that the crime rates found in this American city were shown to be higher where there was a high level of social disorganization, comparatively speaking. On the other hand, Gary Becker’s Economics of Crime (1968) is rooted in the Classical School, where the cost-benefit ratio is sustained, whereas it assumes that the individual’s decision to commit the crime is rationally decided, based in a notion of balance between the benefits and the costs directly and indirectly placed, the action being committed when the benefits stand out in relation to the costs. Therefore, this work does not aim to expand on the diversity of analyzes on criminal behavior in Brazil, but we recommend that these categorizations are of paramount importance for the insertion of the debate related to impunity and the loss of soft power that results from it in the Brazilian State. From a legal point of view, the definition of crime in Brazil is related to noncompliance with the law, since the penal code states that it is a crime, any criminal offense that under the law reaches imprisonment or detention, either in isolation, or alternative or a criminal offense cumulative with the penalty aggravating fine (Brasil, Penal Code, 1940). Furthermore, from the point of view in which the proper application of the law, in this case, with clarity and objectivity, makes its execution directly affect the notion of the costs involved in the crime, which increases the criminal’s perception of the effects of a crime conviction if discovered by the State. From this angle, the school on which the Economy of Crime Becker (1968) is based expresses that the penalty has to be the retribution of the criminal action, that is, in the same proportion, given that the penal rigor demonstrates the importance given to the criminal act by the society in question, as it operates from the logic in which the high rigor would be for the actions strongly socially reprimanded, while the low rigor would be put for the variety of acceptable acts. Despite the gigantic expansion since the end of World War II of the network of international legal instruments that aim to safeguard the Cultural Heritage, some recent factors are enough to show the relative ineffectiveness of the growing protection regime. In addition, despite the multiplicity of efforts since 1970, with the aim of curbing the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods, which constitutes one of the most advantageous industries in the contemporary world, surpassed in terms of profit only through drug trafficking, it is noted the advance of this criminal practice originating in the Brazilian territory, whereas, due to its relevance, it has become a research agenda at the Cultural Heritage Laboratory of the Federal University of Juiz Fora. In this regard, we maintain that for Cultural Heritage to receive the maximum possible protection and act as a resource of potential influence or, in other words, soft power, a concept that will be better explained below, the exception of military necessity should be suppressed or circumscribed. To achieve such a circumscription, a device can be added by the States part to the Hague Convention (1954), clearly defining the limits of the term and incorporating the principle of proportionality. In addition, the decision as to which concrete situations appeal to military necessity must be removed from the purview of the “military commander” in a broad sense and placed under the exclusive competence of the civil authorities, who are in line with the scientific community.

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In addition, in order to foster the robustness of mechanisms for the protection of Cultural Heritage in times of peace, we recommend the creation of a conflict resolution court, with specific jurisdiction to resolve conflicts over trafficking and trade in Cultural Goods, given that cultural nationalism deliberately clings to the argument that source countries are not endowed with the appropriate infrastructure to preserve the Cultural Goods that are in their territory. Still in the case of underdeveloped countries, a category that obviously encompasses Brazil in multiple aspects, it is emphasized that the rules to be met are hardly enforced by the State, pointing to the need for developed countries to provide the necessary assistance, through technology transfer, technical knowledge, and even economic resources. Another point worth mentioning about the ineffectiveness of international agencies, including bodies through the elaboration of treaties and conventions, would be the lack of accession by Member States, especially on the part of developed States, since they may already have their own means of safeguarding of their Cultural Goods, and therefore, do not need to align with them. Indeed, such a lack of accession weakens the legal mediation of these international bodies. In Latin America, in the same way, when considering Brazil’s role as a regional leader, a technology transfer system could be implemented to ensure the physical protection of Latin American Cultural Goods and promote the guarantee of memory linked to them by the diverse peoples that make up the national and plurinational states of the subcontinent. Finally, those countries with the capacity for economic command at the local level, would have an incentive to convert them, a posteriori, in the form of influence of other political bodies through cultural means. According to Nepomuceno (2015), until 1930, institutional exchanges based on the promotion of culture and identity between the countries of Latin America were isolated initiatives in some sectors of the Brazilian State, corresponding to very specific demands of individuals linked to the academies and, with the “Era Vargas”,8 the exchanges were broadened and became the conceptual motto of a cultural cooperation program in Latin America entitled “Missão Cultural Brasileira”. Made up of diplomats, educators and intellectuals, the missions contributed to bringing to the countries, initially in the Río de la Plata Region, proposals for shared cultural organization around the creation of cultural institutes that taught Portuguese and spread Brazilian culture. Also, according to Nepomuceno (2015), the Uruguayan-Brazilian Cultural Institute, founded in 1940, went much further, since it enabled Uruguayans to teach the Portuguese language using their own pedagogical method, having edited publications, encouraged the organization of teachers and students who collaborate in the diffusion of Brazilian culture, in addition to providing infrastructure for the formation of cultural networks, such as university exchange commissions. Finally, during several decades of the Institute in Montevideo, the entrance of Brazilian cultural diversity between the intellectuals and the political elites of the neighboring country 8

Era Vargas is the period of the republican history of Brazil between 1930 and 1945, when Getúlio Vargas ruled the country for fifteen uninterrupted years. The moment included the Provisional Government (1930–1934), the Constitutional Government (1934–1937) and the dictatorship of the Estado Novo (1937–1945).

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was aligned. Brazil knew how to benefit from the Cultural Heritage by creating opportunities for the constitution of a system of cultural cooperation between the countries of Latin America, boasting all its potential to foster a cultural diplomacy aimed at the heritage safeguarding of goods and narratives of memory of the multiple Latin American peoples. The Palermo Convention9 lists points that refer to the obligation to create criminal types at the national level, so that they criminalize participation in an organized criminal group (art. 5), the laundering of the proceeds of crime (art. 6), corruption (art. 8), and obstruction of justice (art. 23), in addition to pointing out government measures that encourage the adoption of international cooperation systems to promote training, assistance, and capacity building for law enforcement authorities competent in law enforcement effectively. Despite the existence of these protocols, which are characterized as branches of the Convention responsible for specific treatment for some crimes, we must bear in mind that the creators of the mentioned Convention conceived it as a tool for international cooperation in a broader sense, to cover different types of transnational crimes, as long as they fall within certain criteria. Accordingly, the scope of the Convention is limited to the prevention, investigation, instruction, and judgment of crimes of participation in an organized criminal group, laundering the proceeds of crime, corruption, obstruction of justice, and other serious offenses. In addition, punishments occur only in cases that constitute infractions with the penalty of deprivation of liberty, provided that they have a transnational character, that is, crimes that have been committed in more than one country or committed in only one State, but that have a substantial part of the preparation, planning, and control taking place in another national territory; infractions committed in a single nation, but involving the participation of an organized criminal group that practices activities in more than one territory; or committed in one state, but which has substantial effects in another and which involves an organized criminal group, which has existed for some time and acts with the purpose of committing serious infractions or those which are set out in the Palermo Convention, with the intention of obtaining, directly or indirectly, economic or material benefit. That said, it is evident that interpretation of what makes a transnational offense by nature and of what constitutes an organized criminal group becomes multifaceted, together with a broad definition of what constitutes a serious crime, ensuring that the widest range of criminal forms and, in this case, illicit trafficking in cultural goods, may be covered by the Convention and that efforts at law enforcement and international cooperation may be used in relevant investigations and prosecutions. Although there was no need to specify or exemplify what types of crimes could be applied under the Palermo Convention, since it would be enough for the crime to meet the somewhat abstract criterion of transnational organized crime, as specified in 9

In 1998, the UN General Assembly expressed the intention of drawing up a convention to combat transnational organized crime. After a series of meetings of experts in the field of criminal justice law, international cooperation, the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime was signed in Palermo in December 2000. The Convention also provides that States parties implement effective anti-corruption policies that promote the participation of society and reflect the principles of the rule of law, such as integrity, transparency and accountability.

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the previous topic, the possibility of using this Convention in the context of the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods stands out, once a minimum level of harmonization can be achieved in relation to sanctions and their severity, with respect to the inclusion of trafficking in Cultural Goods, which is characteristically related to these goods, and the list of common illegal acts committed by criminal organizations at the transnational level. In addition, it is possible for States to facilitate foreign investigations in an interconnected manner and to avoid the rejection of institutional cooperation due to the lack of double criminality—when the crime occurs in more than one national territory—if improvement and applicability are achieved, offenses that are generally present in most jurisdictions, as well as offenses related to Cultural Goods that deal with crime may not exist with specificity in all jurisdictions. As previously mentioned, the lack of harmonized legislation is a major obstacle to the protection of cultural property. In some States, such as Brazil, cultural property is covered only by general crimes such as theft, with no additional consideration for its nature and valuation related to individual and collective memories, while many destination countries tend to have stricter and more precise restrictions on trafficking Cultural Goods and related crimes, with stricter penalties regarding places of memory. The solution suggested would be to seek greater harmonization of laws between States, including with regard to the crimes established by the conventions, such as money laundering linked to crimes and other serious crimes specifically related to the trafficking in Cultural Goods. However, nowadays, when we are experiencing the pandemic of COVID-19, the largest since the Spanish Flu, in 1918, it was found through the disclosures of the French daily Le Monde,10 that the ability of States to protect themselves against this type of crime has been significantly reduced, while the proliferation of illegal negotiations on the internet has become possible from the spoils carried out with the reduction of surveillance in museums and archeological sites, widening the paths for the illicit transfer of Cultural Heritage. If activities related to the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods were criminalized and if it was classified according to the Convention on Measures to be Adopted to Prohibit and prevent the Import, Export, Transport, and Transfer of Illicit Cultural Goods,11 so that it coincided with the concept of serious crime present in the Palermo Convention, considering that the treatment of trafficking in Cultural Goods from the perspective of transnational organized crime is relatively new, the occurrences presented by Le Monde could be drastically reduced, as they cite the alarming deduction by Professor Amr Al-Azm, who points to the existence of one hundred and thirty groups, most of them Arabs, to dedicate themselves to the trafficking and sale of Cultural Goods on the Internet to a market that could reach half a million potential buyers. In line with the recommendations of the best international practices and renowned studies in the area, such as those developed by archeologists Simon Mackenzie and 10

Source: Le trafic de biens culturels a explosé pendant la pandémie de Covid-19. Available at: Le trafic de biens culturels a explosé pendant la pandémie de Covid-19 (lemonde.fr). Accessed on: February 16th. 2021. 11 Enacted by the Brazilian State through Decree no. 72,312, of May 31st., 1973, categorizing Cultural Goods as any property that, for religious or profane reasons, has been expressly designated by each State as being of importance for archeology, prehistory, history, literature, art or science.

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Donna Yates, two of the world’s leading specialists in combating the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods, the illicit collectibles will remain the touchstone of the illegal private enrichment, which, of course, contrasts with the process of cultural impoverishment of the collectivity of underdeveloped countries like Brazil, in a movement in which particularism undermines the collective and its pluralities. In this sense, the academic debate that proclaims the interface between History and International Relations can be a mechanism that promotes an international alliance that will prevent illicit transfer and its reception, through collaboration with States, in the construction of government agendas and legislation that are in line with the preservation of collective memory and its triggers. Otherwise, the denial of the importance of punishing subjects and agents that are intertwined with transnational criminal organizations, we will see these representations of identities, increasingly hijacked and banned on the shelves of individuals around the planet, in a process of systematic privatization of the common good.

20.7 Final Considerations It is urgent to point out that with the end of World War II, international legal instruments aimed at safeguarding Cultural Heritage have developed to the point of occupying a vacuum previously existing in the scope of International Relations. In this sense, it was evidenced that the efforts of the international community intensified significantly in relation to the fight against illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods, and this phenomenon was not restricted to the international field, since the efforts in favor of the referred objectives listed in the present article was also observed in regional and domestic bias, including in some countries that were seen, to some extent, as conniving to the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods, highlighting the United Kingdom, which, in January 2016, announced the allocation of £ 30 million from the Fund of Cultural Protection for projects designed to protect Cultural Heritage abroad (Christofoletti 2017, p. 1). Among the multifacets that are intertwined with the concern with the protection of Cultural Heritage, some are related to private interests arising from the popularization of an art market perspective as a form of capital investment, as well as what was analyzed: the approximation of trafficking with other types of crimes, such as terrorism, money laundering, corruption, other forms of trafficking, including the sphere of transnational organized crime, the effects of which have also contributed to making the debate a priority on political agendas. From another perspective, in spite of the variety of resources created, the impact of such efforts added to the historical reality does not allow us to conclude that the problem has been adequately and efficiently dealt with, since its implementation has proved to be challenging. With regard to the fight against illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods in Brazil, the domestic legal system does not provide the appropriate tools and, in some cases, it is uncompensated in relation to the postulate by the Brazilian State, especially when we take into account the main obligations contracted by dealings in which the country places itself as a signatory. So, returning to the question of meaning

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narratives in the political sphere in recent years, it seems productive to think about the way in which the incitement of the negative positions in relation to history is sustained as a type of cultural and ideological revisionism on the part of the Jair Bolsonaro government. Currently, he is considered one of the main representatives of far-right politics with markedly neo-fascist traits in the globe. In this sense, it is evident that this type of operation on reality, seeks to erase or deny the existence of specific facts, aiming to drastically alter the interpretation delegated to these facts by Brazilian historiography, in an exercise of counter-memory, although without any type of doable evidence for its support. In general, these movements that took place after the institutional coup promoted against President Dilma Rousseff (PT) and the consequent dismantling of the institutional apparatus represented by what remains of the Ministry of Culture, aim to validate an ideological framework of its own and of a power project that needs to change mechanisms that could undermine a set of retrograde notions and consensuses, since they would guarantee an effect of legitimacy and values closer to a democratic State. Based on the finding of certain incompatibilities, we recommend that the classification of conducts related to the destruction of Cultural Heritage and the illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods should be classified as crimes, so that the provisions of art. Twenty-eight of the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Goods in Events of Armed Conflict, as well as the indications of art. Two and eight of the UNESCO Convention on Measures to be Adopted to Prohibit and Prevent the Illegal Import, Export, and Transfer of Cultural Goods. In addition to the suggestions listed as solutions to the incompatibilities verified in the legal scope in Brazil, there are still essential measures to be adopted in the diplomatic field, configured from the recognition and, effectively, by the pragmatic application of soft power, as the segment of culture reflects competence with regard to the potential to influence and persuade without going into coercive imposition, incidences of crimes or, in other words, without resorting to violence in general, translated by the positions that would be more aligned to what we call hard power. From this perspective, efforts would be willing to contribute to the strengthening of the capacity to fight illicit trafficking in Cultural Goods by the Brazilian State, aware that international and regional cooperation, which in recent years has not been practiced diligently by Brazil, must also be pursued continuously, since it proves to be a tool of fundamental importance to safeguard the memory of the multiple peoples that make up the Brazilian territory. In view of the set of harmful and damaging disarticulations to the Brazilian State’s Cultural apparatus, it is possible to affirm that, based on the postulates in this article, there is an intensive investment, for example, in the control of narratives related to Brazilian dictatorial events, driven by historical negationism, which fills, with the current “populismo bolsonarista”, the vacuum of the existence of the few places of memory, interwoven above all, with contexts such as the episode of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship (1964–1965). It is worth noting that the government of President Jair Bolsonaro, recognized abroad as the “Trump of the tropics”, notoriously, divides opinions in the international community. The circumstances of the large burnings in the Amazon in recent times, combined with the unpreparedness in the work to control the outbreaks of

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fire, added to the way of dealing with the impacts of COVID-19 in the national territory, as well as the cultural erasure, the rise of criminality against tourists and corruption scandals involving family members of the President of the Republic, mark some points that tarnish the country’s reputation, and consequently, the Brazil brand, the colorful country of continental dimensions recognized worldwide for the vigorous influence of indigenous peoples, the famous carnival, football, and beautiful beaches. Therefore, the uncontrolled nationalism along the obstacles guided by the unpreparedness and poor engagement of foreign policy, end up causing serious risks, such as blocking the attraction of multinationals to operate in Brazilian territory. We see, on the one hand. the expectation of a government that should be sensitized and settle accounts with the past, in particular, the memories of slavery and dictatorship and, on the other hand, in reality, we identify that it is in the opposite ways that Brazil’s soft power goes down the drain. In sum, reality presents itself through a systematic bias of denial of memory and a state close to soft power, which evidently acts with indifference towards Cultural Goods based on the ways in which destructive government dynamics work in practice in the present day, as well as they foster the lack of knowledge related to such goods, in the sense that public policies that instill recognition and importance to the valuable Cultural Heritage of Brazil have not been advocated by the State.

References Bâ AH (2010) A tradição viva. In: Ki-Zerbo J (ed) História geral da África, I: Metodologia e pré-história da África, 2nd rev. edn. UNESCO, Brasília Becker GS (1968) Crime and punishment: an economic approach. J Polit Econ Chicago 76(2):169– 217. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1830482?uid=3737664&uid=2129&uid=2134& uid=368085011&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=368085001&uid=60&sid=21101726519613. Accessed 20 Feb 2021 Bischoff JL (2004) A proteção internacional do patrimônio cultural. Revista da Faculdade de Direito da UFRGS 2004(24):191–218 Choay F (2006) A alegoria do patrimônio. Estação Liberdade, UNESP, São Paulo, 288p Christofoletti R (2017) O tráfico ilícito de bens culturais e a repatriação como reparação histórica. In: Bens Culturais e Relações Internacionais: O Patrimônio como Espelho do Soft Power. Universitária Leopoldianum’s Editor, Santos Christofoletti R, Agostinho N (2020) Tráfico ilícito de bens culturais: uma reflexão sobre a incidência do furto de patrimônio bibliográfico raro no Brasil. Revista do Arquivo 2:90–100 Halbwachs M (1990) A memória coletiva. Vértice, São Paulo McClory J (2015) The soft power 30 - a global ranking of soft power. https://softpower30.com/wpcontent/uploads/2018/07/The_Soft_Power_30_Report_2015-1.pdf. Accessed 7 Mar 2021 Ministério do Turismo. Secretaria Especial da Cultura (2021) Patrimônio Cultural. http://cultura. gov.br/patrimonio-cultural/. Accessed 3 Mar 2021 Nepomuceno MMC (2015) A Missão Cultural Brasileira no Uruguai: A construção de um modelo de Diplomacia Cultural do Brasil na América Latina (1930–1945), São Paulo Nora P (1993) Entre Memória e História: a problemática dos lugares. In: Projeto História, vol 10. PUC, São Paulo, pp 07–28 Nye JS Jr (1990) The changing nature of world power. Polit Sci Q 105(2):179

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Ohnesorge HW (2020) Soft power: the forces of attraction in international relations. Springer Nature, Switzerland AG Olender M (2012) Algumas considerações sobre as coleções como ‘lugares de memória’ da Modernidade. In: Magalhães AM, Bezerra RZ (Org.) Coleções e colecionadores: a polissemia das práticas, vol 1, 1st edn. Museu Histórico Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, pp 154–163 Olender M (2017) O afetivo efetivo. Sobre afetos, movimentos sociais e preservação do patrimônio. Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artísitico Nacional 35:321–341

Chapter 21

The Timbila of Mozambique in the Concert of Nations Sara Morais

[...] heritage is produced in a context of discourses on roots, ownership, nationalism, and a global politics of recognition. (Rowlands and De Jong 2007, 13)

Abstract The article discusses aspects of the Mozambique “Chopi Timbila” patrimonialization process that culminated in its proclamation by UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage Masterpieces Program in 2005. Inspired by analyses of objectification and semantic reduction processes involved in the official recognition of cultural expressions as cultural heritage, I approach elements of the timbila’s historical and social trajectory to understand its role in the nation building and its choice as the first intangible cultural element in Mozambique which was enshrined in international arenas. I emphasize all along the text several elements that locate this African country within the scope of its international relations; on the one hand, I discuss some of the dynamics perpetuated by colonialism, which enabled the dissemination of timbila beyond the colonized territory and, on the other hand, I reflect on Mozambique’s relationship with Unesco, in light of the country’s political history and its reception in relation to certain criteria and understandings of this international organization with regard to intangible heritage. Finally, I highlight the interpretations given by the Mozambican State to Unesco’s ideals of social participation and show how the dossier produced by the Mozambican government used the criterion of authenticity in vogue at that time to describe and justify the choice of timbila. Keywords Timbila · Mozambique · Intangible heritage

This text was originally published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus - Revista de História - UFJF, Vol. 26, nº 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM). PhD in Social Anthropology (University of Brasília). Anthropologist at IPHAN (National Institute for Cultural Heritage). S. Morais (B) Anthropologist at IPHAN (National Institute for Cultural Heritage), University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_21

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The third and last edition of the UNESCO Program for the Proclamation of the Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity (hereafter the Masterpieces Program) in 2005 recognized the Chopi Timbila of Mozambique as one of 43 cultural expressions from diverse selected countries that present, among other criteria, exceptional value as masterpieces of human creative genius. This prestigious title was awarded to the timbila following an application by the Mozambican government and a favorable international evaluation. Although I encountered different versions concerning the origin of the idea of recommending the timbila for the 2005 Proclamation, there was no divergence among the actors involved in preparing the UNESCO dossier regarding the choice: the timbila was the ideal candidate for the Program. As described by the specialized bibliography, timbila are xylophone-type musical instruments, played in large groups by the Chopi people of Mozambique.1 More broadly, the term timbila simultaneously designates dance, music, instrument, and poetry.2 Many African peoples make and play xylophones.3 The Chopi are known for the uniqueness of their sounds and for the exuberance of the timbila with various timbres and distinct sonorities that make up their musical groups. In Thomaz’s suggestive observation (2009, 16), the timbila is an “instrument-symbol of the Machope, revealing extraordinary creative individualities, today incorporated in the very idea of Mozambique.” The association of the timbila with the Chopi is so firmly rooted in the shared imagination that approaching them separately has become impossible. The “Chopi people”4 have been chosen for centuries to represent Mozambique abroad through their timbila. Research on the timbila has shown the historical processes and social practices responsible for transforming an element of culture associated with one “ethnic” group, located in a specific territory, into a symbol of national collectivity. In a large national community formed by diverse cultural expressions, the timbila assume a unique position. The instrument is played and lived not only in local events among the “Chopi people” and in different configurations in the country’s capital, but was also once used by members of the Portuguese colonial administration for entertainment purposes in their districts in Inhambane province. Today, timbila groups are autonomous entities, founded and headed by timbila players (timbileiros) who live in rural communities scattered throughout the Zavala 1

See Tracey (1948), Rita-Ferreira (1975), Dias (1986), Munguambe (2000), Jopela (2006), Wane (2010), Webster (2009). 2 The singular form of timbila is mbila. In general the use of mbila in the written form refers to a single instrument, and timbila to the broader grouping of instruments. The term timbila is also used as a reference to the ensemble of dance, music, and poetry. 3 Examples include the bsabingas of the Central African Republic, the lobis of Burkina Faso, the mandingas of Guinea-Bissau, the bambaras of Mali, the fangs of Gabon, the baribas of Benin, and the masikoros of Madagascar, among others. See Duvelle (2010). 4 The origin of the groups inhabiting the southern region of Mozambique has been studied by researchers whose analyses are considered fundamental to understanding the formation of this territory. See H. P. Junod (1927); Smith (1973); Rita-Ferreira (1982); Webster (2009); and Pereira (2019).

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district.5 The composition of these groups tends to be fluid, especially the dancers, with group members continually replaced due to the intense mobility of people in these communities. They are also called “cultural groups,” a widespread denomination since it is used by the state to refer not only to the timbila but also to Mozambique’s diverse other artistic groupings. These groups meet periodically to rehearse their repertoire and perform in many kinds of ceremonies and events. This repertoire, which tends to have a small number of songs, is based on compositions, always sung in Cicopi (the Chopi language), created by its members—usually the lead mbila player—or on reinterpretations of songs by past composers. Here I analyze UNESCO’s recognition of the timbila, focusing on how heritage processes are intrinsically related to nation building projects. Policies for identifying and protecting cultural heritage have played a significant role in the creation of modern nation states (Hafstein 2018, 107) and still have considerable influence in the disputes between countries for visibility and prestige. In this sense, the epigraph explains the tone of the article’s discussion, observing that heritage is built in contexts in which certain types of discourses proliferate (Smith 2006) and within a global policy of heritage recognition. The proclamation of the Chopi Timbila as a Masterpiece is part of this international scenario in which the most diverse countries seek to gain prestige through processes that transform national symbols into Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Handler (2002, 144) highlights the universalist intention behind UNESCO’s attempt to formulate global cultural policies. Reflecting on the implementation of the organization’s Masterpieces Program, the author argues that the application of such a policy cannot be expected to generate the same results in distinct situations. His interest lays in observing how these differences could be addressed in the most diverse contexts. This article is a contribution in the same direction. The construction of the timbila application was a bureaucratic process involving at least five institutions (the Mozambican Ministry of Culture, the Zavala Government’s Directorate of Culture, the Inhambane Provincial Directorate of Culture, AMIZAVA,6 and UNESCO) and included the production of a plethora of official documents: memos, letters, email and fax correspondence, and so on. Throughout the entire process, the timbila players themselves (timbileiros) were included only tangentially: they provided some information regarding the timbila and were filmed and photographed. UNESCO’s guidelines regarding the participation of bearers were followed by the commission responsible for producing the application, based on its own interpretation of the term, which rather than foregrounding the timbileiros themselves as protagonists, conceived them as individuals who needed to be represented by authorities legitimized by the state (Figs. 21.1 and 21.2).

5

In this text, I refer only to about eight timbila groups operating in the Zavala district. However, it is important to mention the existence of an important group that has been performing in Maputo, as well as the use of the instrument in other musical groups in the country’s capital. 6 Association of Friends of Zavala.

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Fig. 21.1 Timbila dancers at M’saho Festival 2018. José (in memoriam) is featured in the center. Timbila and njele players stand under the cement structure. Photo by the author

Fig. 21.2 Timbila players from Timbila Ta Venansi group perform at M’saho Festival 2018. Photo by the author

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This role was performed by “community leaders,” political figures reinserted into national political life after the Mozambican civil war.7 This new classification encompasses the old régulos,8 previously nominated and legitimized by the colonial administration. Following the switch to the democratic government of FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique), these figures began to play a role in public administration. They signed the UNESCO dossier, thus providing their consent to the process. The régulos had previously been the “owners” of the timbila orchestras, a role they ceased to play in the post-independence era. Due to their reappearance on the national political scene through their investiture by the Mozambican government, these leaders were called upon, as part of this process of patrimonialization, to represent the authority they held in the past, even though their relationship with the timbila has since changed drastically. The Mozambican government’s choice of the timbila as the country’s first intangible heritage to be recognized by UNESCO was not fortuitous. The act that culminated in official recognition of the timbila is part of a longer process, permeated by different historical times and marked by substantive social transformations. A long and effective process of objectification preceded its official patrimonialization and recognition by UNESCO resulted from relatively well-established expectations. According to the Mozambican state, inclusion of an element of national cultural on the list of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity—at a time of important changes in the field of cultural heritage—was crucial not only in terms of international political relations, but also in support of a national project to strengthen the idea of the country’s cultural heritage, a challenge confronted since its independence in 1975, albeit with different emphases and justified by different ideologies. Studies of heritage practices have emphasized the effects of “cultural objectification” processes (Handler 1988) and “discursive inventions” (Gonçalves 2002). Trajano Filho (2012) proposes that explicit and formal attempts to patrimonialize heritage are preceded by processes of objectification that effectively reduce the semantic range of cultural practices. In the view of these authors, total cultural manifestations or institutions of solidarity, reciprocity, and conviviality are transformed into icons of identity, memory, and national culture through the choices, selections, and options made by state institutions or international bodies. 7

The Mozambican Civil War, fought between the government of the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), began in 1976/1977 and officially ended in 1992 with the signing of the Peace Accords in Rome, Italy. 8 Régulos are also known as traditional authorities, a term that refers indiscriminately to other figures possessing some kind of political or spiritual connection with certain spaces and recognized as such by the surrounding society. The régulos, and consequently their powers, were a creation of the colonial government, largely based on the existence of authorities traditionally legitimated by the rural population, but often subverting the rules of linear succession so as to appoint individuals who better served the administration’s interests. To this day, the term remains widely used in daily life, not only by the populations living in the spaces where it retains legitimacy, but also by the public administration itself (Dava et al. 2003). The Mozambican state formally calls them “community authorities,” although this term is seldom used outside official documents. See Decree No. 15/2000, which establishes the forms of articulation between local state agencies and these subjects.

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Inspired by these perspectives, in this article I propose to discuss aspects related to two complementary processes: (1) in Sects. 21.1 and 21.2, I analyze the process of objectification of timbila prior to patrimonialization through some of the ways in which they were defined and described by colonial authorities, experts, and agents of the independent Mozambican state, (2) while in Sect. 21.3, I focus on some of the elements involved in the construction of the timbila application dossier sent to UNESCO. In this second part, I examine the formal patrimonialization process to discuss how the previous process supports a significant part of its content, legitimizing certain approaches and meanings already consolidated on the timbila, as well as showing how the agents involved in the production of the candidacy interpreted some of UNESCO’s criteria.

21.1 The Timbila in the Colonial Period The first six decades of the twentieth century were decisive in fixing the timbila in the national imaginary, a movement explained by some specific social dynamics. First of all, due to the position it held within the system of social relations produced by colonialism, which promoted presentations to colonial authorities, trips made by Chopi timbila players and dancers to the capital of the empire and the capital of the colony (Lourenço Marques), among other events. The existing literature on the subject and the diverse sources consulted reveal the organization of presentations of the great timbila orchestras by régulos in the first half of the twentieth century.9 In the 1950s and 1960s, festivals and exhibitions were held in honor of governors-general and other political personalities who visited the Zavala district. This information can be found in leaflets and brochures published by the colonial government, which contain programs, song lyrics, general information about the Chopi, the content of the lyrics, and so on.10 An episode in 1940 will provide the reader with some idea of the place occupied by the timbila during the colonial period. In January 1940, in the run up to the Historical Portuguese World Exhibition, a document addressed to the Head of the Indigenous Affairs Services of Lourenço Marques, sent by the Colony of Mozambique’s Technical Department of Statistics, requested a list of the “indigenous people” who would represent the colony at the event in Lisbon: “30 Landins or Bàchope, accompanied 9

Junod (1996) mentions the Prince of Portugal’s visit to Mozambique in 1907, greeted by 30 timbila players performing the Portuguese national anthem in unison. The author also remarks on the Sunday presentations in some Johannesburg mines. Also worth mentioning are two voyages made by orchestras to Portugal (in 1934 to participate in the 1st Colonial Exhibition of Porto, and in 1940 for the Historical Exhibition of the Portuguese World) and the visit of President Carmona to Mozambique in July 1939 for which was mobilized “a phenomenal orchestra of 100 timbila players and 200 dancers-singers” (Munguambe 2000, 46–47). 10 See REPÚBLICA PORTUGUESA/Província de Moçambique/Distrito de Inhambane/Administração da Circunscrição de Zavala, Algumas Canções Chopes (1958), and Festival do Povo Chope, n/d (1963).

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by ten women and children from the families—or, should it be deemed inconvenient to send women and children, their substitution by 10 men.”11 A timbila orchestra had already gone to Portugal in 1934 when the 1st Colonial Exhibition was held in Porto. The event sought to celebrate the image of the Portuguese nation, which, at the time, was imagined to include not just the “little space of the metropolis” (Thomaz 2002, 254) but also the huge overseas areas annexed to it during the era of the great navigations. Under the enthusiastic gaze of the Salazar dictatorship, the exhibition sought to consolidate the idea of a “Portuguese world” that had spread to various parts of the planet. In Mozambique’s case, the timbila were chosen to represent that portion of Portugal to the European Portuguese and the rest of the world. Held in 1934 and 1940, these events can be considered the first major initiatives of the Portuguese colonial government to publicize the timbila outside the territory where they usually appeared. The voyage undertaken by Chopi group to Lisbon in April 1940 was made onboard the ship Niassa, accompanied by the Administrator Guilherme Abranches Ferreira Cunha. According to a document produced at the time: The Chopi group is formed by 30 men, 5 women, 5 children; they carry their drumsticks, and the men compose a timbila orchestra (commonly known as marimbas), with their dancers. As we know, the Bàchope timbila orchestras are the most refined expression of indigenous music, and the Bàchope are, among the populations of our territory, the one that best translates the musical genius of the Bantu. The group leader, also a gentile leader of the Zavala district, besides being a dancer, is a composer of African melodies performed by the orchestra. […] Thus, the group of indigenous Mozambicans that will appear at the Portuguese World Exhibition is formed by two of the most representative Bantus sub-races that populate our territory.12

Written by the Central Bureau of Indigenous Affairs, this circular included a list containing the names of all the “indigenous people” who boarded the Niassa. Its contents express an idea that has been repeatedly defended, mainly since the 1940s, concerning the distinctiveness of Chopi from other Mozambican peoples: the observation regarding their genius and musical verification is probably due to what has been written about the timbila since the beginning of the twentieth century. Junod (1996) [1926] emphasizes the “superiority” of the music produced by the Chopi and the complexity of the construction of their instruments, the timbila. His son, Ph. H. Junod, states that “intelligent and skilled with their hands, the Batchopi are known throughout southern Africa, above all, as the uncontested masters of the timbila or xylophones” (Junod 1927, 91). It would not be unreasonable, then, to presume that many of the adjectives used by the colonial administration in these documents were 11

Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique/Fundo Direcção dos Serviços dos Negócios Indígenas, A/26, Expediente relacionado à Exposição Colonial do Mundo Português em 1940. Sala 1, Caixa 84. 12 Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique/Fundo Direcção dos Serviços dos Negócios Indígenas, A/26, Expediente relacionado com a Exposição Colonial do Mundo Português em 1940. Sala 1, Caixa 84.

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inspired by the studies and conceptions that had been circulating for some years regarding the music produced by this people. The group leader to which the document refers was Armando Magenge, a close friend of the famous composer Catine, who had traveled to Lisbon in the same boat. A remarkable episode involving Magenge on this voyage is still known to many today: his death onboard the ship. Although Tracey (1949, 34) claims that he died in Lisbon, some timbileiros currently living in Zavala told me that he lost his life still during the trip. They decided not to report his demise before their arrival in Portugal worried that their participation would be canceled. It seems that Magenge was already ill before the trip.13 Still, he had no choice because he was replacing a régulo who had been arrested days earlier for failing to pass on the correct amount of hut tax (imposto de palhota) to the colonial administration. In December 1940, the Governor-General of the Colony approved the proposal of the Head of the Central Bureau of Indigenous Affairs to “compensate the family of régulo Magengo, who died in Lisbon while he was representing, with his indigenous people, the Colony of Mozambique in the Colonial Section of the Portuguese World Exhibition.” In addition to this justification, the document stressed the need to increase the prestige of the colonial authorities among the “indigenous people.” The authorization reached the Zavala District Administrator at the end of January 1941, containing the amount to be handed over “to the heirs of the régulo” and signed by the Head of the Central Bureau. He justified his initiative as “taking into account the child-like spirit of the indigenous people, their faulty reasoning and imperfect notion of the mission they went to accomplish, because they consider their trip to Lisbon as a service that the government ordered them to do.”14 This data reveals some of the elements involved in the Portuguese government’s relationship with the “indigenous people” who played and danced timbila. Believing them incapable of knowing what they were doing in Portugal, but anticipating that the death of one of the groups, a leader with prestige in the district, could provoke a negative response toward the colonial administration, the officials moved quickly to offer compensation that everyone would appreciate. We cannot know the effect achieved by the payment. What good would it do to receive the money if Magenge was not buried in Zavala, making it impossible for his family, friends, and neighbors to say goodbye, or for ritual tributes to be offered to him as an ancestor? The details of this trip shed light on fundamental aspects of the colonial government’s relationship with the timbila. The Chopi were classified as “indigenous,” like any other native population of the colonial territory, but they began to acquire a special reputation due to the renown garnered by the timbila. The representativeness to which the aforementioned circular alludes was, at least in the case of the Chopi, based exclusively on this reputation, since in terms of population size, they were far 13

Tracey (1949, 39) wrote: “Manjêngue caught a strong cold that degenerated into pneumonia and has taken him from this world to a better one. He was buried in Lisbon and his wife had to return without him.” 14 Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique/Fundo Direcção dos Serviços dos Negócios Indígenas, A/26, Expediente relacionado ao Exposição Colonial do Mundo Português em 1940. Sala 1, Caixa 84.

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from the most numerous people in the colony. The number of “indigenous” people taken to Lisbon for the exhibition was not even particularly large compared to other such events. From the 1950s on, the timbila was increasingly in demand to play the Portuguese anthem every Sunday at the headquarters of those administrations with orchestras (Munguambe 2000). Other official occasions, such as visits by important colonial authorities, also provided motives for requesting them. In all these cases, the régulos were contacted and the orchestras were assembled for the public performance. Responsibility for maintaining the timbila orchestras—rehearsals, recruitment of musicians, organization for presentations, and so on—fell to the régulos. Webster (2009, 373) points out that “recruitment for orchestras corresponds, roughly, to the broader territorial and political divisions. An orchestra usually represents each village, and it is from these that the orchestra of the village group is formed.” The bibliography on the subject contains little data on the internal dynamics of the orchestras. These texts (Tracey 1949; Munguambe 2000; Webster 2009) and the narratives of the timbileiros themselves indicate that each regulado (area under the dominion of a régulo) had one or more timbila groups, whose members were often compulsorily recruited and expected to devote themselves almost exclusively to playing the timbila. The information I accessed indicates fierce competitions between orchestras from different regulados. The régulos strove to find the best musicians and the presence of a renowned composer was a mark of success that further augmented their prestige among the Portuguese. The more impressive the orchestras, the more important the regulado became. Parallel to the colonial administration’s approach to the timbila and its use as an instrument of propaganda for the colony in the eyes of the world, one important encounter definitively fixed how the timbila would be perceived: the visits to Zavala by Hugh Tracey (1903–1977), an English ethnomusicologist living in South Africa. Undoubtedly, this researcher’s writings are the most significant source of diffusion of the timbila even today, an influence on all the authors who succeeded him, consecrating the explanatory principles and the comprehensive lexicon on the timbila as a musical practice. Tracey first visited the Chopi territory in August 1940. In an article published in the periodical Moçambique: documentário trimestral, he recorded his first impressions about the timbila, judging them “as developed as any other in Africa” (Tracey 1940, 30). In 1940, he compared the musical ability and quality of the Chopi with other peoples and, in 1942, observed that their poetry is highly evolved (Tracey 1942, 70). Years later, he stated that the “orchestral dances” of the Chopi “must be the highest expression of African art in southern Africa” (Tracey 1949, 1). Chopi Musicians, published in 1948, stands as the most influential work on the music of the timbila even today. All the studies placing the timbila at the center of their analyses (Munguambe 2000; Jopela 2006; Wane 2010) reproduce to a greater or lesser degree the schemes and definitions contained in this work. Hugh Tracey founded a vocabulary and ways of apprehending the timbila so strongly diffused, therefore, that they transformed into an analytic paradigm on the subject. Moreover, practically all the songs analyzed in his book are accompanied by audio recordings.

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The 1948 publication was the result of Tracey’s studies with timbileiros from different periods. As mentioned earlier, he made his first visit to Zavala in 1940. Later, in 1941, he traveled to the same district again. It was only in 1943 that he had the chance to spend a few more weeks there. On his return to South Africa, he took with him six players who stayed in Durban for 3 months. Finally, in the late 1940s, he visited several residential complexes serving the mines near Johannesburg to watch the Chopi playing in their workplaces. Chopi Musicians provides several lyrics of songs from the time in Cicopi (the Chopi language), accompanied by English translations and condensed interpretations of their context of production. Each regulado grouping possessed its own ngodo,15 which, according to Tracey, “means ‘the whole show,’ including both dancers Basinyi and players Waveti, and their performance” (ibidem).16 In the following section, I present more information on the importance of the ethnomusicologist’s work in the later process of registering the timbila as cultural heritage.

21.2 Written Appearance and Classification Leading authors on the subject (Junod 1939; Tracey 1948; Munguambe 2000) agree that the existence of the timbila was mentioned for the first time by Father André Fernandes in a letter dated 1562, written in Goa and sent to his colleagues from the Society of Jesus in Portugal. The following description, which became famous, is taken by the referred authors to refer unquestionably to a mbila: This people are much given to the pleasures of singing and playing. Their instruments are many gourds tied with twine and a stick bent into a bow, some large, others small, and they dampen the noise from the mouths with a coating of wild honey so that they resonate well and produce faux-bourdons, and so on. They play music to the king at night who gives them something and those with the strongest voices are seen as the best musicians. The songs they sing are usually in praise of those to whom they sing. ‘You are a good man because you once gave me this, another time you will give me more’ (Father André Fernandes, quoted in Junod 1939, 17–18).

This passage is also considered the first written reference to music (Lichuge 2016) in the territory called Mozambique. Henri-Alexandre Junod (1975 [1897]) says that the timbila is a musical instrument “to which we do not hesitate to apply the pompous name of piano (that of xylophone would certainly be more suitable) and which reveals a musical complexity that the others would not lead us to even imagine” (Junod 1975 [1897], 11). In this same publication from the end of the nineteenth century, the 15

See Tracey (1970 [1948]) for details on the ngodo movements. The ngodo is also “an orchestral dance of nine to eleven movements. Each movement is distinct and separate, and lasts only one minute each, as in the case of some of the introductions, and can last five or six minutes each. The complete performance lasts about 45 min, depending on the complexity of the dancers’ movements and the atmosphere of the moment” (Tracey 1970 [1948], 2). 16

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missionary asserts that all the instruments are tuned “according to a certain tuning fork,” forming the “true orchestras in their villages” (Junod 1975, 14).17 The timbila were also classified as a “musical ensemble” (Junior 1965, 68–69) and an “ensemble of Chopi artists” (Notícias, June 14, 1953, 11). The former expression was used in a publication describing a festival held in Quissico to welcome the visit of Admiral Américo Tomás in the mid-1960s. The author, who makes a number of observations about this event, presents the Chopi as great artists, marimbeiros famous for their compositions, the orchestration of their music, and their ballets (Junior 1965, 64). The latter expression is mentioned in the newspaper Notícias, which reported on the arrival in Lourenço Marques of the group known as the “Marimbeiros de Zavala,” accompanied by the régulo Felisberto Machatine. Both the Junods, father and son, had already propagated the idea of timbila as orchestras, but it was only with Hugh Tracey’s work that the broader association with the terms, forms, and structures of modern Western music became consolidated. As we can see in his work, the ethnomusicologist translates specific terms related to timbila music, making them intelligible from the viewpoint of Western nomenclature: he divided the various parts contained in the presentations standard at that time and considered them as movements of an orchestra that, besides the quantity and diversity of musical instruments, consisted of dances. Instead of suites, he applied the term “orchestral dances” to them. In addition to the more musical aspects of the timbila, in Chopi Musicians Tracey discussed the social function of the song lyrics, highlighting their moralizing character “in a society lacking a daily press, publications or stage beyond the village clearing to express their feelings or protests” (Tracey 1970, 3). It would be no exaggeration to say that Tracey was one of the main figures responsible for the process of patrimonialization of the timbila, not only founding the mode of perception through which the timbila were understood and described in the following decades, but also ensuring their position as a unique form of artistic expression. Based on his propositions in Chopi Musicians, the state agents who wrote the dossier submitted to UNESCO explained the timbila in the same way as Tracey: as music consisting of a composition lasting about an hour (with several complex movements), played by xylophones that compose an orchestra and accompanied by singing and dance. The use of terms like melody, harmony, variations, movement, orchestra, musical instrument, composer, and so on reveals, as we will see in the next section, the alignment of the dossier text with the standardization and formatting of the timbila embedded in Tracey’s scheme. The dissemination of Chopi Musicians and other publications in the first half of the twentieth century—works that attested to the exceptionality and quality of Chopi music—had a considerable impact on how the timbila were treated and approached in future writings. In the second half of the last century, especially during the 1960s, mention of the timbila in colonial publications became more frequent. All these works (Rocha 1962; Marjay 1963; Junior 1965; Dias 1986; Rita-Ferreira 1974), in 17

Although it was Hugh Tracey who disseminated the idea that the way the Chopi organized and played the timbila could be classified as “orchestral,” we can see from the above reference that this comparison with the European musical format had been advanced at least four decades earlier.

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addition to the three texts explicitly examining aspects of the timbila published in the 2000s (Munguambe 2000; Jopela 2006; Wane 2010), reiterated the explanatory schemes and conceptual definitions proposed by Hugh Tracey. After the country’s independence, the timbila occupied a prestigious place in the national imagination. FRELIMO’s first initiatives to build the Mozambican nation focused on the cultural area (seminars, festivals, research, conservation campaigns, etc.). The primary purpose of these activities was to save the “patrimony of the Mozambican people.” Based on the general idea that colonialism had subjugated the entire population and inhibited the manifestation of its cultural practices, the government fervently defended the rescue of the “authentic” culture of the people— that is, the patrimony of the nation. The timbila played a central role in this moment. At the 1st National Festival of Traditional Song and Music, held in late 1980 and early 1981, the timbila became the emblem for publicizing the event and featured in written media coverage. In this sense, the discussions generated by this festival of traditional music enabled us to reflect on the objectification process that preceded official patrimonialization of the timbila. The answers obtained within this debate showed that it was primarily classified as dance,18 although it could also be defined as music or even singing. Recognizing that the classification and definition of artistic genres is an exercise of power (Dias 2012), the state had a preponderant role in this respect. Since then, in relation to the stages provided by the flourishing national cultural festivals, the Mozambican government has allocated timbila groups to the category of “Mozambican dances.” Still in the post-independence context, I highlight two facts that reveal part of this movement to build a place of prestige for the timbila within the framework of the national imaginary in Mozambique: (1) Andrew Tracey (2011), Hugh Tracey’s son and also an ethnomusicologist, argues that they may be considered the first national music since the first musical piece to be broadcast by the main Mozambican radio station (Radio Mozambique) after independence was an excerpt from a mitsitso whose authorship is attributed to Chambini Makasa19 ; (2) Law no. 2/80, which created the metical (Mozambique’s currency) in substitution of the escudo, stipulated that the 50 cent coin would take “national culture” as its theme, represented by the “timbila.”20 Thus, the criterion of “exceptionality” required as a necessary condition for the Masterpieces Proclamation was already sufficiently consolidated in the case of the timbila; no other cultural expression on Mozambican soil was as renowned. It is no surprise, then, that there was a consensus surrounding their immediate choice as the first item of heritage to be submitted to UNESCO. Although the country did not have legislation that officially and individually recognized specific elements as national heritage, at the time of elaborating the candidacy, the timbila had conquered 18

Previously, in 1978, timbila were performed at the 1st National Festival of Popular Dance, also playing a prominent role. See Morais (2020). 19 Mitsitso refers to “introductions or ambiences, varying in number from 1 to 5, without singing or dancing” (Munguambe 2000, 84). 20 Currently the 5 metical coin depicts a timbila on one side.

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their place as a national symbol and enjoyed considerable international prestige. I turn now to some aspects of the “Chopi Timbila” application to the Masterpieces Program.

21.3 Intangible Heritage, Community Participation, and the Recurrence of the Authentic Rowlands and de Jong (2007) discuss how UNESCO policy on the African continent operates through an opposition between tangible and intangible heritage, suggesting that authentic Africa is more performative than monumental.21 In Mozambique’s case, this phenomenon has become consolidated with the support of the state, which has resorted to diverse musical and dance expressions to develop the broader idea of an identification between the country’s various social groups and the nation. Simultaneously, and in constant dialogue with UNESCO policies, the government has updated the powerful discourse constructed in the post-independence era concerning pre-colonial culture, a period idealized as the cradle of the most authentic and thus most traditional expressions. The dossier produced for the Chopi Timbila has reinforced this idea of an inextricable connection with a past structure that is constantly reiterated. The notion of intangible heritage has been accepted without much tension in relation to the Mozambican state’s proposals in this area, reinforcing the idea identified by the aforementioned authors of an Africa stuck to its “roots,” defined and presented as a repository of authentic knowledge that constitutes its existence. It is important to emphasize that the term “intangible heritage” was not incorporated into the Mozambican government’s vocabulary because of the Masterpieces Program. A law published in December 1988, still in force and closely linked to the socialist ideals of Samora Machel, first president of the country, already stipulated the “legal protection of tangible and intangible elements of the Mozambican cultural heritage.”22 Let us see how this legal instrument defines intangible cultural elements. 21

As for the tangible heritage of “stone and mortar,” represented in many countries by historical monuments and buildings considered authentic from an architectural viewpoint, this dimension is generally represented on the African continent by places associated with the slave trade. African countries, represented mostly by their intangible heritage in the international forums promoted by UNESCO, are depicted as fragile States deficient in material structures and concomitant economic resources. This association leads to the issue of the identification of processes of national construction in Africa as incomplete, partial, absent, or even unfeasible (Trajano Filho 1993). 22 According to this law, intangible cultural elements are “the essential elements of the collective memory of the people, such as history and oral literature, popular traditions, rites and folklore, the national languages themselves and also works of human ingenuity and all forms of artistic and literary creation regardless of the medium or vehicle in which they are manifested” (Law 10/88, Chapter II, Definitions, Article 3).

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From a legal and thematic point of view, the Mozambican government received support at least a decade before the first UNESCO initiatives concerning intangible heritage. In January 2004, the Mozambican Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation received an official invitation from UNESCO to apply to the Third Proclamation of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. The text to this document explained that the category included “cultural spaces or forms of cultural expression of exceptional value or popular and traditional cultural expressions of exceptional historical, artistic, ethnological, sociological, anthropological, linguistic or literary value.”23 The document also informed that 47 Masterpieces from all over the world had already been proclaimed by the Program’s first two editions (2001 and 2003). Lisa Gilman (2015) analyzed a case in another African country whose situation is quite different from the timbila. This concerns the patrimonialization process for a healing ritual of the Tumbukas people of northern Malawi. Called Vimbuza, one of this rite’s main characteristics is the healing dance, accompanied by drums and bells and an active audience composed mostly of women. In conversation with several healers, the anthropologist observed that they did not consider their practice as cultural heritage but rather as a medical practice, a form of cure. Many of the healers remarked that if the government was interested in Vimbuza, it should channel its demands through the Ministry of Health, not the Ministry of Culture (Hafstein, 2018, 130–131). Based on the fact that the practice is well documented and ignoring the controversies surrounding its existence issuing from religious and medical sectors, the Malawian government, in its Action Plan for the Vimbuza application to UNESCO, proposed an annual festival in which the ritual is represented as a dance, completely separated from its curative purposes, even though this primary function is acted out in the performances. In this sense, the preservationist perspective contained in patrimonialization processes is an imperative of UNESCO’s policy for recognizing intangible heritage, whose guidelines have been incorporated by hundreds of legislations worldwide. According to Hafstein (2018), safeguarding intangible heritage means creating social institutions, such as councils, committees, commissions, and so on, and promoting certain expressive genres, such as festivals, competitions, and promotional materials. Safeguarding has been understood as a device (Foucault, quoted by Arantes 2019) through which diverse social agents are mobilized around activities that produce new meanings in the dynamics of cultural heritage expressions. The Masterpieces Program, which included three proclamations (2001, 2003, and 2005) and the system of “living human treasures,”24 were the first experiences dedicated to the preservation of intangible heritage developed by UNESCO. The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), still in force, took its final form after heated discussions among experts, researchers, and representatives of UNESCO signatory countries in meetings promoted by the organization (Bortolotto 2013; Hafstein 2018). One of the main issues discussed in 23 24

Republic of Mozambique/Ministry of Culture/Cultural Heritage Department 017/DNP, 05/02/04. On this theme, see Abreu (2009).

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relation to the conceptions and the field of activities conventionally called intangible heritage has been the need to widen the focus of UNESCO’s activities concerning the heritage domain, which was almost exclusively based on the recognition and preservation of material elements (monuments, historical sites and buildings, among others) and natural features as world heritage. The underlying discussion concerned the deleterious effects of globalization on oral manifestations transmitted from generation to generation using methods considered informal. The Convention’s noble purpose was, in this sense, to promote the implementation of safeguarding mechanisms that would prevent or reverse the extinction of cultural manifestations around the planet. One of its basic principles is the idea that intangible cultural heritage is everything that “communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as an integral part of their cultural heritage” (UNESCO 2003). Some of the debates that preceded the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO 2003) in 2006 questioned the criterion of authenticity in the Masterpieces Program.25 Bortolotto (2013) notes that the term’s role in the official processes for recognition of intangible cultural manifestations is ambiguous and controversial. The author demonstrates how, despite being proscribed from the principles governing the Convention, the idea of authenticity has been mobilized by various agents—researchers, government agents, and the very owners of intangible heritage—to highlight the connection between cultural manifestations and the territory and, in many cases, promote actions focused on territorial marketing (Bortolotto 2017). ∗∗∗ One of the first documents sent by the Mozambican government to UNESCO was a request for funding to cover various expenses related to the timbila application. This document justified this request on the basis that the Chopi Timbila application had been approved by “community leaders.” The government officials who prepared the application explained that these leaders were the link between “the communities and all the parties involved in the process of selecting the different oral and intangible expressions” in Mozambican territory. The leaders were identified as oral sources par excellence in providing information additional to that obtained from bibliographic research. Finally, the document indicated the role of these leaders in the application: they would be responsible for “mobilization” of the timbileiros.

25

According to Arantes (2019, 12), the Program for the Proclamation of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity has foregrounded a type of object that, for specialists, no longer fits the straitjacket of the conventional notion of folklore, celebrating the uniqueness of cultural expressions. At the same time, it adopted a principle of value that was necessarily comparative (present in the idea of masterpiece) and universalist in inspiration (value of universal exceptionality), rooted in institutional practices and in the public opinion established by the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted in 1972.

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The term “community leaders” refers to what Decree 15/2000 denominates “community authorities.”26 This designation, in turn, encompasses a series of traditional authorities, a term that refers indiscriminately to various individuals with some kind of political or spiritual connection to particular spaces and recognized by the surrounding society. After the country’s independence in 1975, the FRELIMO party removed all “traditional authorities” from their functions and created local bodies to arbitrate in cases of land distribution and conflict resolution (West 2009), since they were considered to be either representatives of “rural obscurantism” or collaborators with colonial authorities (Meneses et al. 2003, 351). These authorities were prohibited from exercising their roles in society by FRELIMO. Among the figures classified under this term were the régulos. During the years 1976/1977 to 1992, a violent civil war, caused mainly by FRELIMO’s profound rupture with the practices and ways of life of a significant portion of the country’s rural populations, spread throughout the country and decimated thousands of people. Geffray (1991, 15) argues that FRELIMO’s leaders were unable to think about nation building without at the same time erasing the concrete and historical diversity and heterogeneity of the social groups that intended to unite and integrate under the sign of a single identity […] In reality, this victorious and united colonized society was not homogeneous: a secular history and a few decades of social struggles in a colonial situation divided it… But the conditions of struggle and victory were such that the leaders of FRELIMO […] had practically no political or social mechanism at their disposal to recognize the existence of the different, sometimes contradictory, components of the colonized society that they were given to govern.

In the post-war period, many debates sought to understand how the state could recover the legitimacy it had lost (Farré 2015, 205). Thus, “delegitimized among the grassroots, FRELIMO sought ways to restore forms of local governance, officially re-establishing traditional authorities from the year 2000” (Meneses et al. 2003, 354). The decree set out “to establish the forms of articulation between local state bodies and community authorities,” enhance the “social organization of local communities,” and obtain an “improvement in the conditions of their participation in public administration for the country’s socio-economic and cultural development.” Based on this legal instrument, these authorities were now recognized by representatives of the state. In the case discussed here, the state agents who drafted the material for the Chopi Timbila application not only defined the traditional authorities as legitimate political partners in mediating with the rural population in their district, including the timbileiros themselves, but also elected them as representatives of the timbila. Considering the role of the régulos in Zavala, the state thus incorporated them into the process of patrimonialization to the extent that it interpreted them as the individuals who represented “community” affairs. Since UNESCO’s demand referred to the participation of the community that owned the cultural element in producing

26

Mozambique, Decree of the Council of Ministers No. 15/2000 of June 20, 2000.

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and approving the application, the Mozambican government agents did not hesitate to involve the régulos.27 Following the country’s independence, the régulos ceased to be the main agents responsible for bringing people together around the timbila (Morais 2020). This does not mean, however, that they do not still play a key role in various spheres of rural social life, including conflict resolution (usually around land disputes, debts, injury to people, damage to property, and family issues) and the direction of traditional ceremonies (Meneses et al. 2003). In fact, concerning the latter, the régulos continue to conduct various rituals in which timbila groups are present. Thus, although they are no longer responsible for recruiting members and maintaining the groups, they continue to give the timbila their closest connection with the territory, since they are a legitimate source of authority to which people in the district often turn for assistance in resolving various conflicts and in maintaining the relationships that bind them with their ancestors. In this sense, the interpretation of the state agents involved in drafting the application was consistent with the government practice advocated by the decree. However, the UNESCO agents, informed by the universal guidelines concerning community social participation set out by the organization, apparently hoped to find the protagonism of the timbileiros in the process. Two observations in this regard may shed light on this question. Approximately one month after submission of the above funding request, UNESCO sent a fax requesting additional information as a matter of urgency to proceed with the evaluation of the request. The content demanded by the Parisian staff was the following: a description of the Chopi Timbila (containing their main characteristics); where they are located; who their holders are and what their “historical origin” is; why the timbila were selected by the Mozambican government to apply for the Masterpieces Program; the causes of the risk of disappearance of the cultural expression; specification of the team responsible for preparing the application; presentation of a work plan and schedule containing the activities to be developed; and, finally, demonstration of the involvement of practitioners with the cultural manifestation, including their names and contacts. On this last item, the document advised: “These tradition-bearers should be much more involved in the preparation of the candidature file, particularly in the designed and later implementation of the Action Plan.” In its response, the Mozambican government provided a table containing all the leaders of the eight timbila groups and informed them that if they needed to be 27

Although during this period UNESCO had yet to produce any guidelines on how this participation should be accomplished, one of the main objectives of the Masterpieces Proclamation was “to promote the participation of traditional artists and local practitioners in the identification and renewal of the intangible heritage” (UNESCO, Guide for the Presentation of Candidature Files, p. 4). In 2011, a few years after the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), the UNESCO Subsidiary Body made its position known in this regard by requesting countries to clearly describe how the community, group, or individuals participated actively in the preparation and elaboration of a cultural property application to the Representative List at all stages of the process, providing clear and accurate evidence of community participation in this preparation (Urbinati 2012).

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contacted, this could be done through the Zavala District Culture Directorate.28 The director of the National Directorate of Cultural Heritage of the Ministry of Culture, responsible for producing the reply to UNESCO, assured the latter that the bearers would be involved in preparing the candidacy through interviews, video production, drafting of the Action Plan, and so forth. She also affirmed that this involvement would enrich the design of the Action Plan with the ideas and demands of the practitioners themselves as a means to ensure its “conscious and full” implementation. This response is highly significant in terms of the government’s understanding of the participation of the timbileiros. For the Committee preparing the dossier, the latter would be interviewed, filmed, photographed, and would speak about their demands for improving the timbila. In this sense, their participation was more as informants or interlocutors than as agents involved in producing data to be sent later—the role expected by UNESCO. During the dossier elaboration process, when UNESCO started to insist on the active participation of the bearers, the response provided by the Mozambican government reflected the approach to “cultural groups” practiced for decades in the country: a very sporadic participation, limited to the moments of public performances. A UNESCO official in the Paris/Intangible Heritage Section, not convinced about the participation of the timbileiros in the candidacy, wrote to the director who had written the response in September 2004, asking her to identify the people directly involved in preparing the application. The director answered by e-mail that she was trying her best to prepare a good application for “our beloved timbila” so that they would become part of the Masterpieces of Humanity. Regarding the elaboration of the application, she reported that the commission was working with AMIZAVA (Association of Friends of Zavala) in the district where the Chopi timbila practitioners lived. The official replied a few minutes later, thanking her for the e-mail and the information, adding that, for UNESCO, “it is essential that the participation of the communities be effective. You must emphasize this in the dossier and in the Action Plan.”29 AMIZAVA is an association founded in 1994—thus in the post-civil war context, a period in which the government encouraged the creation of “civil society associations” to act “in partnership” with the state—by Zavalenses who lived in Maputo, the national capital, for their work and/or political activities. Although it enjoys the support of some timbileiros, who became members, and has played an important role in planning and implementing the M’saho festival,30 it is not an association of 28

It is important to mention that at that time only one leader had a telephone contact. Personal collection of Maria Ângela Kane, kindly provided to the author as part of her doctoral field research in 2018 in Mozambique. 30 M’saho is the name given to an annual festival of timbila and other expressions in Quissico, Zavala. Its meaning, in the Chopi language, indicates its character of a reunion or meeting with a competitive nature. It is a complex social event in which different actors and institutions (state and non-state) participate and through which values, political and institutional postures, specific ways of building collectivity and conviviality, among other aspects, are highlighted. In addition to demonstrations of musical performances, it reinforces feelings of belonging to a Chopi collectivity, 29

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timbileiros as the UNESCO official seems to have understood. It was enough for the director to indicate an association located in the district where the practitioners of the object to be patrimonialized lived for him to feel relieved. After all, the community’s participation was guaranteed! She also encouraged the government to include this information in the dossier. The application file for the Chopi Timbila runs to 31 pages, as well as four appendices. The topic related to “Chopi timbila music” contains the information that the Chopi are one of Mozambique’s smallest ethno-linguistic groups. However, their timbila orchestras—and here the statement seems to compensate for the population’s numerical inferiority—can be considered “one of the most spectacular and complex forms of artistic expression on the African continent” (Mozambique 2004, 5). The timbila are defined not only as an ensemble of instruments, but also as the music played by its instruments and the dance that accompanies it. The timbila orchestras, considered together with the dance, are called migodo (singular ngodo) by the dossier. This name and its definition derive from Tracey (1970). For the latter ethnomusicologist, timbila is defined as a great xylophone orchestra, constituted by its “orchestral dances, migodo.”31 The music produced by the timbila is explained as follows: a unique composition, lasting about an hour, divided into several movements, comparable to those of a Western classical symphony. The rhythms of each movement are classified as complex. Thus, the performance of the timbila begins with an “entrance solo,” followed by “the sudden and powerful playing of all the musicians.” The intermediate movement, called mzeno, “the great solemn chant,” is the part where the musicians play softly and slowly while the dancers sing a poem. The songs, often full of humor and sarcasm, deal with social problems or serve to narrate “community events.” After this part of the performance, the musicians play the timbila again. The n’godo performers, still following the exhibition in this text, are xylophone players, rattle players, and dancers who also sing. An orchestra develops one or more new compositions every year, based on the compositions of previous years. According to information in the dossier, this practice ensured the perpetuity of the timbila music for so many centuries. In general, therefore, a timbila group possesses a current repertoire performed on all occasions until another replaces it. Although the bibliographical source is not explicitly cited, it is not difficult to trace all the elaborations, definitions, and information on the characteristics of “timbila music” contained in the dossier to the famous book by Hugh Tracey (1970). The commission clearly opted for the formal and highly consecrated description of an expert over other possible formulations—including those more contemporary to the writing of the dossier—gathered from the research experience with the groups active in Zavala at the time. The information regarding the periodicity of the production actualized through its annual cyclical time, which instills in the populations of Zavala (including the timbileiros) immense expectations of participating in it and, therefore, recognizing themselves and being recognized as part of this collective. 31 “This word Ngodo (sometimes Igodo, Ingodo, or Mugodo) means ‘the whole show,’ including both dancers Basinyi and players Waveti, and their performance” (Tracey 1970, 2).

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of new compositions was elaborated in the 1940s, when the timbila were organized by the régulos and played a central role in the communication of episodes of collective life (Morais 2020). This pattern of song production was unlikely to be maintained decades later, especially if we consider the various changes experienced by the timbila, caused, to a large extent, by the troubled political transformations felt by the country. In 2018, some groups had been performing the same repertoire for almost a decade. Some also incorporated the compositions of past and consecrated composers in their performances. An interesting tension between those approaches centered on Hugh Tracey’s bibliography and a more contemporary perspective focused on the dynamics of the timbila is the use of “orchestra” and “timbila group,” respectively. While the term orchestra was widely used in the colonial period as an explicit reference to a European form of musical organization—which made exotic music reasonably intelligible to foreign perception—this terminology later fell into disuse. Another position reproduced from the specialized literature inspired by Tracey concerns the “gender reservation”: only men can participate in the ngodo. When the dossier was produced, though, female members could be found among the groups. This application strategy, using past descriptions to define the timbila and their modes of execution and reproduction, is similar to the approach analyzed by De Jong (2013) in the proposal to patrimonialize the kankurang ceremony and the mandinga initiation rites in Senegal. The anthropologist discusses how a project to restore the secret of this ceremony reveals a feeling of nostalgia on the part of state agents (De Jong 2013, 110)—a vision that was reproduced in the candidacy for UNESCO—in the face of the transformations in the initiatory practices and their more contemporary dynamics. Although these are two different contexts to the one I am comparing, the state logic of these two African countries concerning the patrimonialization process seems the same: the return to a reified past, either through oral narratives or through written studies that describe the cultural expression concerned at a time when it was manifested in the most “correct,” “true,” or “authentic” way. The idea of revitalization in the objectives of the Masterpieces Proclamation fits perfectly with the Mozambican government’s ideology of a return to “origins.” In the institutions where I conducted field research, several times I heard comments from state technicians to the effect that the dances and other traditional artistic manifestations had become diluted. It was the government’s obligation to provide conditions (clothing, raw materials for the fabrication of musical instruments, and so on) so that they could return to as they were “originally”—that is, in an immemorial past supposedly existing before colonization. In this sense, revitalization would correspond to an unattainable ideal since the time in which a parameter for action is sought today—the first, original time—is fictitious. These points indicate a concern centered on the timbila constructed by the dossier: a musical expression that has existed for centuries in a territory called Zavala, through which its inhabitants, the “Chopi people,” can be identified (a territory=a people=a music). As we can apprehend from these ideas, they were extracted and abstracted from elaborations, notions, and conceptions previously built around the timbila,

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revealing how this objectification process existed long before the direct participation of state institutions. When the Mozambican government launched the official patrimonialization process with UNESCO, the movement in this direction was already well advanced. I have also shown that the Mozambican government’s notion of participation was based on specific understandings of that context, influenced by the country’s historical and political experience. Nor was the idea of intangible heritage received as a kind of tabula rasa in Mozambique: the legislation cited, the institutional and political background, and, above all, the way in which members of the application commission appropriated this set of instruments and practices are indispensable to understanding the broader process of patrimonialization of the timbila.

21.4 Conclusions My purpose in this article has been to discuss the broader process of patrimonialization of Mozambique’s timbila through an analysis centered on different moments in their trajectory. I argue that the candidacy of the Chopi Timbila in the Masterpieces Program resulted from a long process of objectification reaching back to the first decades of the twentieth century. The dossier production, which culminated in UNESCO’s proclamation, explained how the state perceived the timbila: an ancestral practice, rooted in a “Chopi community,” scientifically studied by various specialists. The timbila were contacted through “community authorities,” who agreed to the process and ratified information provided by the district public administration (Zavala). The data I discussed in this article allows us to state that a much older and longer lasting process of publicly displaying the timbila preceded the recognition by UNESCO. The various modes of presentation in ceremonies welcoming colonial authorities, competitions between regulados, festivals promoted by the colonial administration, semicircular arenas in the mines of South Africa, official inaugurations and receptions of the FRELIMO government, traditional ceremonies in honor of ancestors, the M’saho festival, and so on are all part of the social history of the timbila, and it is through them that they have been reproduced, rebuilt, and exhibited even today. Patrimonialization cannot be said to have completely altered their social function. This official international recognition process has emphasized their spectacular and performative character, reinforcing previously sedimented attributes and definitions. In this sense, the analysis undertaken in this article presents an interesting counterpoint to categorical statements regarding the effects and transformations generated by processes of patrimonialization conducted by nation states and international organizations. In the case of the timbila, I have shown how objectification as a musical practice and as dance, along with the “festivalization” (Hafstein 2018) of this cultural expression, are not recent phenomena produced by dynamics alien to its trajectory. The question about social participation and the discourse of authenticity sheds light

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on the debates that have taken place since 2003, with the publication of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The particularities of African contexts can help elucidate and deepen the debate further.

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Handler R (2002) Comments—Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Culture: Reflections on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Current Anthropology 43(1): 139–148 Jopela V (2006) Para uma caracterização da poesia oral nas timbila dos Vacopi e alguns aspectos do contributo português 1940–2005.” Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Departamento de Literaturas Românicas, Universidade de Lisboa Junior R (1965) Moçambique: Terra de Portugal. Agência-Geral do Ultramar, Lisbon Junod HP (1939) Os Indígenas de Moçambique no Século XVI e comêço [sic] do XVII, segundo os antigos documentos portugueses da época dos descobrimentos. Documentário Trimestral, Moçambique 17:5–35 Junod H-A (1975) Cantos e Contos dos Rongas. Transl. Leonor Correia de Matos. Lourenço Marques: [s.n.] Junod H-A (1996) Usos e Costumes dos Bantu. Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique, Tomo II. Maputo Junod HP (1927) Some Notes on Topi Origins. Bantu Studies 3(1): 57–71 Lichuge EA (2016) História, Memória e Colonialidade: Análise e releitura crítica das fontes históricas e arquivísticas sobre a música em Moçambique.” Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Departamento de Comunicação e Arte, Universidade de Aveiro Marjay F (1963) Moçambique. Bertrand Lda, Lisbon Meneses MP, Fumo J, Mbilana G et al (2003) As autoridades tradicionais no contexto do pluralismo jurídico. In: Conflito e Transformação Social: uma paisagem das justiças em Moçambique, eds. Boaventura de Sousa Santos and João Carlos Trindade. Edições Afrontamento, Porto, pp 341–426 Morais SS (2020) O palco e o mato: o lugar das timbila no projeto de construção da nação em Moçambique.” Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Departamento de Antropologia, Universidade de Brasília Mozambique (2004) Chopi Timbila National Candidature File Munguambe AD (2000) A Música Chope. Maputo, Promédia, Moçambique Pereira MS (2019) Batuques negros, ouvidos brancos: colonialismo e homogeneização de práticas socioculturais do sul de Moçambique (1890–1940). Revista Brasileira de História 39(80):155–177 Rita-Ferreira A (1982) Presença Luso-Asiática e Mutações Culturais no Sul de Moçambique (Até c. 1900). Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical/Junta de Investigações do Ultramar, Lisbon Rita-Ferreira A (1974) Em Salvação da Música Chope. Jornal Notícias, Lourenço Marques Rita-Ferreira A (1975) Povos de Moçambique história e cultura. Afrontamento, Porto Rocha I (1962) A arte maravilhosa do povo Chope. Instituto de Investigação Científica de Moçambique, Lourenço Marques Smith L (2006) Routledge, Uses of Heritage, New York Smith AK (1973) The peoples of Southern Mozambique: an historical survey. J Southern Mozambique 14(4):565–580 Thomaz OR (2009) Uma terra de amigos: nota de apresentação. In A sociedade Chope: indivíduo e aliança no Sul de Moçambique, 1969–1976, David J. Webster, 15–19. ICS, Lisbon Thomaz OR (2002) Ecos do Atlântico Sul. Editora UFRJ/Fapesp, Rio de Janeiro The Community Participation in International Law (2015). In: Between Imagined Communities and Communities of Practice. Participation, Territory and the Making of Heritage. Nicolas Adell, Regina F. Bendix, Chiara Bortolotto and Markus Tauschek, editors 123–140. Universitätsverlag Göttingen, Göttingen Tracey H (1940) Três dias com os Bà-Chope. Documentário Trimestral, Moçambiquen 24:23–58 Tracey H (1970) [1948] Chopi musicians. their music, poetry, and instruments, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press/International African Institute, London Tracey H (1942) Música, Poesia e Bailados Chopes. Moçambique. Documentário Trimestral 30(1942):69–112 Tracey H (1949) A música chope: gentes afortunadas. Imprensa Nacional de Moçambique, Lourenço Marques Tracey A (2011) Chopi Timbila Music. Int Libr African Music 9(1): 7–32

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Chapter 22

Salazar, Propaganda and Heritage: The Design of “Being Portuguese” as a “Soft Power” Around 1940 Maria Leonor Botelho

Abstract The “Policy of the Centenaries”, defined by António de Oliveira Salazar in March 1938 in an Unofficial Note of the Presidency of the Council, reflects the Spirit Policy designed by António Ferro (1895–1956). The 1940’s Celebrations, as Ferro explained, were not only intended to glorify our past, to underline our eternity, but also to celebrate Portugal of the present time. Within the politics of the Estado Novo (1933–1974), the idea of “being Portuguese” is clearly re-identified and identified not only with the glorious and triumphalist past of the nation but also through the design of a new nation under an enormous public works program that would lead to the Portuguese “resurgence”. Facing the national and international need to also affirm the historical value of a country with eight centuries of history that wanted to remain neutral in the context of World War II and the Spanish Civil War, the National Propaganda Service (SPN) would start a set of propaganda actions that put history, heritage and the new public works at its. At the same time, while Europe’s borders are beginning to show themselves sensitive, we see Portugal taking on “collaborative neutrality” and making use of a deep and active political propaganda that ultimately aimed at the “material restoration” of a country. The double centenary commemoration of the Foundation of Nationality (1143) and the Restoration of Independence (1640), gathered on the joint date of 1940, is a good example of political affirmation that relies on the demand of what is “to be Portuguese” and shows how culture and heritage were then used as a soft power affirmation. Through the critical analysis of the propaganda designed around these events, but also through official discourses by Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and António Ferro the present study

This paper is financed by National Funds through the FCT—Foundation for Science and Technology, under the project UIDB/04059/2020. Our thanks to the Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa, to the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal (National Library of Portugal) and to the Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema (Portuguese Cinematheque-Museum of Cinema) for providing the images published in this article. M. L. Botelho (B) CITCEM Researcher/Assistant Professor DCTP/FLUP, FLUP Master’s in History of Art, Heritage and Visual Culture, Director, FLUP Via Panorâmica s/n, Porto 4150-564, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7_22

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aims to understand how the existing or created heritage was at the time assumed as what we now call “soft power”. Keywords 1940 · Propaganda · Heritage · Soft power · Estado Novo

22.1 Introduction O ano de 1940, minhas senhoras e meus senhores, não foi, desta forma, um ano que passou, mas um ano que ficou, um ano histórico (The year of 1940, ladies and gentlemen, was not, in this way, a year that passed, but a year that remained, a historic year.) (Ferro 1949, 29)

The present article intends to raise the issue of how in 1940, the year in which the Estado Novo, a nationalist regime, developed a profound action leading to the celebration of the Centenary of the Foundation and Restoration of Nationality (1140– 1164–1940), and started a deep propaganda campaign on an international and national scale, affirming (and even creating) an idea of what “being Portuguese” is. With the international war context as the background, marked by the advances of the Spanish Civil War and of what was to become World War II, two figures played a leading role in this action, António de Oliveira Salazar, Chairman of the Council of Ministers, and António Ferro, head of the Secretariat of National Propaganda. We therefore start by understanding sources and facts that occurred at the time that materialise this propaganda and, above all, allow us to gauge how culture, heritage and foreign policy anticipate the concept of soft power as systematised by Joseph Nye (Nye 2008). António de Oliveira Salazar’s Nota Oficiosa da Presidência do Conselho (Official Note from the Presidency of the Council), published in March 1938 in the Diário de Notícias newspaper, and Panorama dos Centenários, a conference delivered by António Ferro in Rio de Janeiro in 1941 (and published in 1949), constitute our analytical references for the interpretation of the thought and ideology of the period. The tripartite structure of this article derives from the analysis carried out. In a first topic, called “1940. Year of Double Celebrations for ‘Portuguese and foreigners’” we seek to understand the propagandistic strategy implemented in the promotion and realisation of the Double Centenaries and how the apologetic discourse was addressed to foreigners, affirming the historical longevity of the Portuguese borders, with eight centuries of history, and simultaneously legitimising before the Portuguese the celebrations in progress, reflecting the Estado Novo’s ideology of the idea of “national restoration”. Then, in “1940. The ‘material restoration’ of an eight-centuryold Nation” we seek to understand how this propaganda materialises in action through the preparation of the stages for the Double Centenaries. Assumed as “material restoration”, there was a strong commitment not only to public works leading to the modernisation of the country but also to its resurgence. It is in this context that we also see particular attention given to monuments that responded to a triumphalist vision of history and which will host some of the celebrations from the Centenary

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programme. The Portuguese World Exhibition, held in Belém, was the pinnacle of this action, combining modernity and conservative tradition. Finally, in “1940. ‘Moral restoration’. Between internationalisation and the affirmation of ‘being Portuguese’” we seek to understand how institutional propaganda saw a “moral restoration” in this material “resurgence”, another of the ideological standards of the regime. Mirror of the Politics of the Spirit (Política do Espírito), of which António Ferro is the major ideologue and of which the SPN is the major actor, the identity of “being Portuguese” is associated with the assumption of a supposed modernity. A desire to preserve traditions and, at the same time, to design a new country was thus affirmed before the Portuguese, and this was embodied in the great public works, because for the President of the Council of Ministers, “the centenary commemorations are, above all, a great national celebration, a celebration for all Portuguese people in the world, in which everyone can and should collaborate effectively” (Salazar 1938, 7). Foreigners were shown the strength of a regime and its capacity to act, through propaganda about what “being Portuguese” was and what “Portugal was”, using staging and persuasion as an early manifestation of soft power. Salazar was premonitory when he stated that, “since it is an unusual event, it is not ambitious to hope that foreign countries will be kind enough to associate themselves with the festive celebrations in the many ways in which we can pay tribute to an old civilizing nation or cooperate in the brilliance of a solemnity” (Salazar 1938, 3).

22.2 Year of Double Celebrations for “Portuguese and Foreigners” In the context of the Estado Novo politics (1926–1974),1 a nationalist regime par excellence (Medina 1993, 12), the centenary celebrations (1140–1640–1940) assume particular importance, in a clear manifestation of the political propaganda of the Nation that one wants to see established both internally and externally, cementing an idea of “being Portuguese”. The “Politics of Centenaries” was defined in its intention, spirit, and programme by António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970),2 in March 1938 in an Official Note from the Council Presidency. Published in the first issue of the Revista dos Centenários 1

Born with the military coup of May 28, 1926, the Estado Novo regime lasted until the Carnation Revolution on 25 April 1974. The 1933 Constitution inaugurated a corporative regime, nationalist in nature, guided by a Catholic conservatism and traditionalism that reflected a central importance given to the family base, fundamentally anti-liberal and anti-democratic, non-partisan, but endowed with a political league, the National Union (Rosas 1996, I, pp. 315–319). 2 Statesman, politician, professor at the University of Coimbra, Head of Government between 1932 and 1968, he was the founder and main ideologist of the Estado Novo. He was born in a village in the municipality of Santa Comba Dão, district of Viseu, into a modest family. His intellectual capacities were soon noted, and he continued his studies at the Seminary of Viseu until he entered Law school at the University of Coimbra in 1910, where he encountered a conservative catholic universe. At only 27, he started teaching Economics and Finance at that University. In 1917, he entered the teaching career definitively and the following year he was awarded a PhD degree. Once

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(Journal of the Centenaries), dated January 31, 1939, under the title Independência de Portugal (Independence of Portugal), it clearly sets out the framework for an ambitious celebration that was intended to be twofold: No ano que vem – 1939 – pode dizer-se que faz oitocentos anos Portugal, contada a sua independência desde que D. Afonso Henriques se proclamou rei pela primeira vez. Em 1940 passa por seu turno o terceiro centenário da Restauração, ou seja, o terceiro centenário da reafirmação, solenemente selada com o sangue de muitas batalhas, da mesma independência (Salazar 1939, 2).3

A true propaganda instrument at the service of an event that was intended to have a due “internal and external” scale, the Revista dos Centenários (Journal of the Centenaries) was intended to inform and record “the high significance of the historical events that were being commemorated”, calling “the attention of the Portuguese and foreigners” to them, as Júlio Dantas (1876–1962)4 explains on behalf of its Executive Committee (Dantas 1939, 1–2). Official instrument of the celebrations that took place between January 2 and December 2, 1940 (Comissão 1940, 6), and promoted by the Secretariat of National Propaganda (SPN), this Revista dos Centenários (Journal of the Centenaries) was published in 24 issues given to the press between January 1939 and December 1940 (Fig. 22.1). Created in 1933, under the direct dependence of the Council of Ministers, i.e. António de Oliveira Salazar, the SPN was responsible for integrating the Portuguese people into a moral thought that “should direct the Nation”. In this context, the “release of publications aimed at publicising the activity of the State and the Portuguese Nation” is a priority (Medeiros 2020, 41). We owe to António Ferro the philosophical matrix of this institution, called Politics of the Spirit, which came to be seen as a “cultural project” combining modern aesthetic resources. The opening of a studio, the creation of prizes or the sponsorship of individual and group exhibitions were a response to the desire to affirm the values of “irreverence” and “audacity” of “modern art” (Ó 1986, 894). Simultaneously, a nationalist programme of “reinventing tradition” was asserted, which was conveyed in mass events, since the words “history” and “folklore”, like the phrase “popular art”, were constantly repeated in order to inspire artists, which António Ferro intended to reconcile in a single idea, his abilities and skills were recognised, he took on the State Finance portfolio in 1928, playing an important role in balancing the public treasury. A process of reorganisation of the state machine and political affirmation then began, which led António de Oliveira Salazar to be sworn in as head of government on the 5 July 1932 (Rosas 1986, vol. II, 891–876). 3 The next year—1939—Portugal will be 800 years old, counting its independence since King Afonso Henriques proclaimed himself king for the first time. In 1940, it will be the third centenary of the Restoration, that is, the third centenary of the reaffirmation, solemnly sealed with the blood of many battles, of the same independence. 4 Writer, diplomat, politician, and academic, Júlio Dantas had an important collaboration with the “politics of the spirit” of the Estado Novo, having carried out functions of external representation, of which we highlight the integration of the delegation sent to London to negotiate the issue of the liquidation of the Portuguese war debt (1926) with Churchill, the participation in the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation since 1934 and the presidency of the embassy sent to Brazil in 1941 in appreciation of the Brazilian participation in the 1940 celebrations (Esquível 1996, vol. I, pp. 251–252).

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Fig. 22.1 Cover of the Revista dos Centenários (Journal of the Centenaries (numbers 19 and 20). In the centre of the cover, the emblem of the centenary editions by Eduardo Anahory. Source: Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa

“Being modern without ceasing to be Portuguese” (Ó 1986, 894). In Panorama dos Centenários, and referring to the role attributed to artists, António Ferro assumed that it was up to them “to create the Portuguese style of 1940 in painting, sculpture and architecture, not an art nouveau style but a modern, strong, healthy style that came from the past shaking the dust off the road” (Ferro 1949, 16). However, going far beyond the internal and external propaganda needs of the Estado Novo (Medeiros 2020, 41), the Politics of the Spirit ended up promoting a cultural development based on a more characteristically nationalist wing, defending the intervening State and an idyllic vision of the people as “the greatest Portuguese artist” (Paulo 1996, 356). It is therefore in this context of a supposed marriage between modernity and a more conservative reading, but also following international propagandistic movements, particularly the German and Italian ones, that we can understand the first achievements of the SNP prior to 1940, such as the Exhibition of Popular Art (1936), exhibited in Geneva, Lisbon and Madrid or the contest of the most Portuguese village in Portugal (1939). The Nota Oficiosa da Presidência do Conselho (Official Note of the Presidency of the Council) of António de Oliveira Salazar is an important source for the perception of how the practice of cultural diplomacy is envisioned in the centenary celebrations, firming an alleged “Independence of Portugal” and supporting the objectives of

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foreign policy, but also of its internal legitimation linked to Salazar’s policy. It was on the front page of the Diário de Notícias newspaper on March 27, 1938, in capital letters, that it was the first broadcast. Acciaiuoli notes that Salazar’s official statement appears flanked on the same page of the newspaper by two others that reported on the most current issues, one concerning the progress of the war in Spain and another, transcribing the “Times”, presenting new data on the German offensive, and highlighting Hitler’s most recent speech, in which he proclaimed that “no border in Europe corresponds to the needs of the peoples” (Acciaiuoli 1998, 108). On the 16 September 1941, António Ferro held a conference at the Portuguese Reading Cabinet in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) which sought to outline an overview of the Panorama dos Centenários (Ferro 1949). Published years later by the SNI (National Service of Information, Popular Culture and Tourism), this conference was one of the most significant sources for understanding how history, identity elements of Portuguese culture and heritage were assumed as instruments of diplomatic affirmation and, simultaneously, of internal legitimisation by the Estado Novo. As we shall observe from the approach we propose in this article, in the 1940s, Portugal cultural diplomacy instrumentalised culture, as well as heritage, and sought to implement “policy strategies aimed at the cultural sector, with the aim of facilitating or promoting the foreign policy or diplomatic ends of a country, group of countries or region” (Christofoletti 2017, 27). The truth is that we will find that the action of the Estado Novo, in a very particular chronology, made excellent use of those three resources that Joseph Nye identified, back in the 1990s, as the three main soft power resources that a country can resort to: “its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political values (when it lives up to them at home and abroad) and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority)” (Nye 2008, 97). If, in January 1939, António de Oliveira Salazar already called for “the disturbances in Europe” of which Portugal was a part (Salazar 1939, 2), a few months later, and given the evolution of events, he would declare the country’s neutrality on the 2 September, in a statement in the Portuguese press (Cardoso 2017, 356). In Panorama dos Centenários, António Ferro informs us that the vast programme, set out by the President of the Council of Ministers for the Commemorations in his Nota Oficiosa (Official Note) of 1938, was carried out within the planned schedule (Ferro 1949, 15), despite the climate of war that was already being experienced throughout Europe, both due to the turbulent imposition of totalitarian regimes on the European political scene and the civil war that was already raging in neighbouring Spain. On the eve of the Celebrations, and with preparations already well under way, there was still the belief that “the war would certainly end soon (it was not possible to extend it…) and we could then celebrate, with more joy, more safety, already free of the horrible nightmare, the Centenary of our Foundation, and the certainty of our continuity” (Ferro 1949, 15). Despite the warlike scenario, the Portuguese World Exhibition was inaugurated on the 16th. of June 1940, and Lisbon was officially visited by “the Ambassadors Extraordinary of Great Britain, France, Germany and Italy, opening a parenthesis in their war, side by side”, in what António Ferro described, in a clearly apologetic

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tone, as “a dramatic, exciting meeting, in praise of Portuguese sovereignty, of almost all neutral and belligerent countries” (Ferro 1949, 24). A careful publicity action was then developed (Comissão 1940), inviting Portuguese “scattered throughout the five corners of the globe” and foreigners to participate in the great 1940 celebration. In a well-designed brochure that promoted Portugal. Eight Centuries of History, the official programme of the Celebrations was made known, with its main events and stages (Comissão 1940, 7–13), as well as reinforcing the “Invitation” to participate and informing the potentially interested parties of the various ways, at the time, of travelling to Portugal, by air, sea, rail or land, and where to settle (Comissão 1940, 13–16) (Fig. 22.2). Between 1940 and 1942, Lisbon’s political will and diplomatic action also demonstrated immense capacity, favouring Spanish non-belligerence in the Second World War scenario, together with the interest of the great European powers in the strategic neutrality of the Iberian Peninsula (Teixeira 2000, 117). With the celebration of the Double Centenaries, one of the events that occurred on a global scale that made us think about the fragility of the physical and diplomatic borders between countries Fig. 22.2 Photograph of the Inauguration of the Portuguese World Exhibition published in Revista dos Centenários (Journal of the Centenaries), No. 19 and No. 20, July/August 1940, p. 11. Translation: The Head of State is welcomed by the President of the Council at the entrance of the pavilion of honour of the Portuguese World Exhibition. Source: Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa

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Fig. 22.3 Digital photogram extracted from: Jornal Português nº 16 - c. 17–6-1940 - [First of the Special Series of Commemorations]. Translation: And on the 4th of June 1940, while a war raged dividing and tearing Europe and the World apart, Portugal proudly, peacefully, with prayers, cheers and flowers, celebrated the eight immortal centuries of its history. Source: Cinemateca Portuguesa-Museu do Cinema

was inaugurated. António Ferro recognises this when he says that “despite international difficulties, despite the dark shadow of war, 1940 was the year of the great spiritual and material achievements of the Estado Novo” (Ferro 1949, 32). António de Oliveira Salazar soon wanted to show that: Ter oito séculos de idade é caso raro ou único na Europa e em todo o Mundo, sobretudo se para a definição da identidade política se exigir o mesmo povo, a mesma Nação, o mesmo Estado. Quási desde o princípio, com o esforço dos primeiros reis, ficaram definidas e fixadas na península ibérica as nossas fronteiras. Guerras, muitas; mas nem invasão ou confusão de raças, nem anexações de territórios, nem substituição de casas reinantes, nem variação de fronteiras (Salazar 1939, 2).5

It is worth underlining that, besides the Revista dos Centenários (Journal of the Centenaries), other organs of propaganda, such as Jornal Português, tried to stress this reality, of affirmation of the past and of emphasis on “being Portuguese”, in the various portraits and coverage that were made of the Double Celebrations, confirming an alleged superiority and intangibility of the Estado Novo that would have made Portugal this “island of peace in a world at war” (Rosas 1996, I, 318) (Fig. 22.3). 5

Being eight centuries old is a rare or unique case in Europe and throughout the world, especially if the definition of political identity requires the same people, the same Nation, the same State. Quasi from the beginning, with the efforts of the first kings, our borders were defined and fixed on the Iberian Peninsula. Wars, many; but neither invasion or confusion of races, nor annexations of territories, nor replacement of ruling houses, nor variation of borders.

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22.3 1940. The “Material Restoration” of an Eight-Century-Old Nation With the international conflict, and placing culture, political values and international policies at the service of a Nation and an ideology as a background, António Ferro acknowledged that the holding of the Celebrations was considered an “admirable opportunity to shout to the World, for six months, day after day, the slogan of our eternity: ‘Eight centuries of History!’ ‘Eight centuries of History!’” (Ferro 1949, 15). As a matter of fact, it is worth mentioning how this reality and historical awareness was enhanced at the level of the contents taught in school contexts during the Estado Novo, as Pedro Martins has recently demonstrated (Martins 2013). There was also investment in the publication of “monumental cultural works published by the Academy of Sciences and History, Fine Arts, the General Agency of the Colonies, the Secretariat of National Propaganda and many other bodies” (Ferro 1949, 32). In line with the international panorama in this area, where there was the appearance and development of large specialist art book publishers such as Phaidon and Thames and Hudson from London or Skira, based in Geneva and Paris, during the Estado Novo period, publishers such as Portucalense Editora, from Barcelos, which produced impressive works marked by a committed, apologetic and patriotic discourse were founded (Botelho 2013, 267). A notable example of this is the História de Portugal (History of Portugal), directed by Damião Peres (1889–1976), and published with the subtitle Edição monumental comemorativa do 8.º centenário da fundação da nacionalidade, profusamente ilustrada e colaborada pelos mais eminentes historiadores e artistas portugueses (Monumental commemorative edition of the 8th centennial of the foundation of nationality, profusely illustrated and collaborated by the most eminent Portuguese historians and artists) (Peres, 1928–1954). Although with a later chronology, the 1960s saw the publication, in the form of fascicles, of the three monumental volumes of Oito Séculos de Arte Portuguesa. História e Espírito (Santos, 196-), continuing the “cultural policy” of the Estado Novo and serving that same need to appreciate the historical past so affirmed from the eve of 1940 (Botelho 2013, 279–280). Besides the temporal longevity of Portugal as a country with its own History, the Centenary also sought to celebrate its geographical scale, thus confronting “those who insist on considering us a small nation [because] they do not count on our Colonial Empire, nor on that infinite country of our History” (Ferro 1949, 21). It is in this context that we should understand the holding of the Portuguese World Exhibition which, taking place in Belém, Lisbon, sought to be “the figuration of that infinite country” (Ferro 1949, 21). Considered “the first completely disinterested exhibition that has been held in the world” (Ferro 1949, 20), this exhibition wanted only to evoke and celebrate the past and was taken as a “mirror” of the “resurgence” of a country and its people. Ferro’s propaganda is not innocent when he refers to the impact that the Portuguese World Exhibition had “proclaimed in all languages, with a loud voice, in the press, on the international radio” (Ferro 1949, 32).

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However, both the spaces of the Exhibition and the programme designed for it sought to portray what was understood to be the most authentic reflection of Portuguese identity. In seeking to pay tribute to the “Portuguese People, represented by the delightful Portuguese villages and ethnographic pavilions” (Ferro 1949, 23), the visual memory of this exhibition (Acciaiuoli 1998) bequeathed to us a very particular affirmation of what it was intended to affirm as “being Portuguese”. Let us once more quote António Ferro: Em 1940 Portugal dispunha-se a abrir as portas ao Mundo mas passaria a viver exclusivamente dentro de si próprio, dentro da sua consciência de velha e nova grande nação (Ferro 1949, 17).6

Between 1938 and 1951, the Sociedade Portuguesa de Atualidades Cinematográficas (SPAC) produced the Jornal Português for SPN, under the supervision of António Lopes Ribeiro (1908–1995).7 According to Jorge Sousa, it was the first film journal produced with continuity in Portugal (Sousa 2008, 74). Intended to complement the written press, it presents us with a significant set of news of a distinct nature, whose narration is not at all free from an official reading placed at the service of the propaganda machine. Produced to be projected in national cinemas before the main film, it was the protagonist of the reportage between 1938 and 1951, the year in which it was replaced by Imagens de Portugal (Images of Portugal) (Sousa 2008, 74). Each issue of the Jornal was approximately 10 min long and presented various news items on government acts, national political news, major sporting events and many other social and cultural events (JORNAL Português, ed. 2015). In the context of the study of the 1940 Centenaries, the Jornal Português is an important source that registered and reported, through moving images, the preparations, and the main moments of the Celebrations, making them known to the Portuguese of that time and thus providing us today with several layers of interpretation beyond the officially narrated one. The discourse, although propagandistic, allows to explain and justify the options taken in many of the reported actions, having the amount reference of the German propagandistic models that were very efficient “in exploring the means and techniques of propaganda, using the radio, the cinema and the street staging with great mastery to transmit an image of form, power and future”, as Débora Cardoso states (Cardoso 2017, 359). Despite this propaganda action that, in 1940, made use of numerous resources and instruments, the Portuguese neutrality then advertised, was eventually considered by Débora Cardoso as “collaborative” because diplomatic and economic actions were maintained with the belligerents. Moreover, it should be 6

In 1940, Portugal was ready to open its doors to the world but would live exclusively within itself, within its conscience as an old and a new great nation. 7 Filmmaker and film critic, António Lopes Ribeiro was one of the first Portuguese film critics. Having become known as the most emblematic director of the Estado Novo, of which he was a fervent supporter, he was the director of several short films such as “A manifestação nacional de Salazar” (“Salazar’s national manifestation”) or “Trinta anos com Salazar” (“Thirty years with Salazar”) or of several films such as “A Revolução de Maio” (“The May Revolution”) (1937), “O Pai Tirano” (“The Tyrant Father”) (1941) or “Amor de Perdição” (“Ill-fated love”) (1943), among others (Alexandre 2000, 262–263).

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remembered that Portugal was the stage of a propaganda war that gave rise to groups supporting and defending the two warring sides, headed by the publication of the magazines A Esfera and Mundo Gráfico, the former with pro-Axis tendencies and the other Germanophile, despite the regime’s efforts to control their dissemination among us (Cardoso 2017, 356–358; 360–361). A careful analysis of the several news items related to the events of 1940, the year targeted by our study, allows us to observe the various stages that hosted the celebrations, whether of a perennial or ephemeral nature, and the way they are transformed and used, whether this use is more staged or not. The Jornal Português “reported the commemorations of anniversaries, political events, military parades, inaugurations and other events, in a logic of propaganda of the Estado Novo” (Sousa 2008, 74). Addressing the history of the regime, besides allowing us to understand what it was and how it was meant to be shown, it ends up giving us an insight into several events from Portuguese life that went beyond the terrain of direct staging (Costa 2015, 5). Safeguarding the due differences with its German and Italian counterparts, Jornal Português also sought, in a certain way, to publicise a set of events that, going beyond the sphere of the Double Centenaries, reveal the material restoration of a Portugal in constant transformation and modernisation and the moral restoration of a conservative Nation, aware of its identity, its values and what it meant to “be Portuguese”. At the time, it was the body that sought to cinematically preserve the period of the Politics of the Spirit, of which the Double Centenary Commemorations were the pinnacle, and to project the Estado Novo and “portugalidade” (“portugality”) during the conflicts that then marked current world affairs, i.e. the civil war in Spain and World War II (Piçarra 2015, 7). As Débora Cardoso states, after the outbreak of the war, Lisbon gradually became one of the main platforms for international circulation by virtue of its geographical position and excellent structures for shipping goods to several markets in the Mediterranean, Africa or America (Cardoso 2017, 356). In addition to these elements of attraction, there were others such as tungsten trading and the welcoming of refugees who brought material and intellectual wealth with them, of which the Armenian Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (1869–1955)8 is one of the best examples. The 1940 celebrations were also intended to attract another type of actor, foreign visitors (Salazar 1939, 3). Tourist exploitation is very much present in António de Oliveira Salazar’s (1938) speech, in which he used it as a pretext to improve a series of infrastructures that would allow the country to be “in a position to receive the people who visit us” (Salazar 1939, 4) and whose public inauguration was also part of the programme of the celebration (Comissão 1940, 7–11). On the 28 May 1936, in a speech given to the Nation in Parque Eduardo VII (Lisbon), on the inauguration of the Exhibition commemorating the tenth anniversary 8

Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian (1869–1955) was an Armenian businessman, art collector and philanthropist, born in the Ottoman Empire. Having become a British citizen in 1902, in 1942 he settled in Lisbon, where he amassed an art collection that was unique in the world and which, bequeathed in his will, forms part of an international foundation bearing his name. He played a key role as a mediator in international negotiations for the exploitation of oil reserves in the territory that is now Iraq (CALOUSTE, 2020).

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of the National Revolution, the material restoration, moral restoration, national restoration that the Homeland had been undergoing were well emphasised (Salazar 1947, 145–149) and contributed to stabilising a discourse on the renewal of the Nation (Neto 2010, 157). In the context of what João Medina called patrimonialism, understood as the “restorationist passion of the Portuguese patrimonial past carried out by the Dictatorship” (Medina 1993, 34), one of the hallmarks and supports of Salazar’s ideology and policies, the first formula refers to the repair of roads, buildings and monuments, among other activities carried out by the Public Works under the tutelage of Duarte Pacheco (1899–1943)9 and which converted Portugal into a veritable building site. In fact, this landmark event of the early days of the Estado Novo, which culminated in the Celebrations of the Double Centenary, ended up being used as a pretext to begin, continue and finish monumental public works that constitute the new physiognomy of the Homeland (Ferro 1949, 32). Alongside the aforementioned glorification of the past, the Centenary Commemorations were intended to “give the Portuguese people a tonic of joy and selfconfidence, to make public and private services, through the pressure of time and creative enthusiasm, accelerate the pace of their activity, with the aim of affirming Portugal’s ability to perform” (Salazar apud. Ferro 1949, 12). As the country’s capital, Lisbon had to be materially prepared to respond to such a lofty goal, stated before the world and the Portuguese people. Central stage of the celebrations, the coastal road between Lisbon and Cascais, the Lisbon airport and the National Stadium were then inaugurated, with all due publicity and circumstance. In Matosinhos, near the city of Porto, the Port of Leixões was inaugurated (Comissão, [1940], 7–13). In addition, improvements to railway stations and certain roads were carried out all over the country, investment was made in “improving facilities and perfecting the services of hotels in Lisbon and in the province” and in the “establishment of a certain number of inns in provincial areas” (Salazar 1938, 4). New construction that sought to respond to a resurgent nation was also built, with the “Hospital-Schools” (Santa Maria in Lisbon and São João in Porto), a series of new economic districts and a commitment to “the radio connection between Portugal and the Empire” that aimed to propagate in overseas domains “at every moment the spiritual manifestations of Motherland” (Salazar 1938, 5). Beyond 1940, public works continued with the material restoration of Portugal (Comissão, 1947), of which the construction of new public buildings such as refrigerators, maritime stations, schools and parks attest (Ferro 1949, 33). “The whole of Portugal, from north to south, was a noisy hive” and even the public services joined the movement, renovating their facilities (Ferro 1949, 16). In 9

Appointed Minister of Public Works and Communications in 1932 to join Salazar’s executive, Duarte Pacheco left the position in 1936, returning 2 years later until his death. The figure of Duarte Pacheco appears associated with the vast policy of public works launched by the Estado Novo. (Rodrigues and Pereira, 1996, 710–711). It was during his first period in charge of this portfolio that Duarte Pacheco established the organisation of the Ministry of Public Administration, giving it the heavy technical and bureaucratic machinery that it would retain throughout the regime. However, his golden period was the preparation of the 1940 Expo, during his second political mandate (Fagundes 1993, 366–368).

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the series of seven posters alluding to A Lição de Salazar (Salazar’s Lesson), by Martins Barata and published in 1938, another one of the methods promoted by the regime’s propaganda, one of the paintings is dedicated to the national artistic and historical heritage, seeking to emphasise an image of the physical degradation of buildings. This Lesson is made up of two pictures that are intended to be contrasting, including by their polychromy: while in the first, painted in watercolour in pastel shades, the latent ruin of the castle, the school and the Town Hall is evident, in the second, already taking on a lively colouring, the buildings stand out as a work recently restored (the castle) and updated (the school and Town Hall), “according to dignified and functional projects, in accordance with the moral and civic renewal of the young” (Neto 2010, 158) (Fig. 22.4). It is also in this context of material restoration that particular focus will be given to artistic and architectural monuments in the context of national public works policy. With the Estado Novo having adopted the word restoration as the regime’s watchword, thus responding to its nationalist desires, as we have seen, special attention was given to monuments associated to triumphant events and characters that had marked the nation’s history, the so-called “monuments of the Nation”, a veritable lesson of the value and what was considered to be the Lusitanian race. The Directorate-General of National Buildings and Monuments (DGEMN), created in 1929 under the Ministry of Public Works (MOP), assumed responsibility for the ideological enterprise of this

Fig. 22.4 Salazar’s lesson: from the neglect of public services and ruins, signs of disorder and misery, the Estado Novo, while building, renews the nation’s historical heritage. Design: Martins Barata (1938). Source: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal

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material restoration, in a materialisation of the cult of monuments, at the service of a triumphalist vision of history. In the Bulletins published by the DGEMN (131 between 1935 and 1966) the work carried out was propagandised, assuming the character of a national mission of the intervention carried out in a significant set of national monuments. Most of the numbers published were devoted to medieval buildings, many of them embodying a particular vision of history and a desire to emphasise the medieval values coeval with the foundation of Portugal as a country, that is, the invocation of the Eight Centuries of History being celebrated. Pedro Martins was one of the authors who best demonstrated how “the Middle Ages were politically exploited during the first years of the Portuguese dictatorship” (Martins 2013, 2). As we have pointed out, Salazar had already claimed the antiquity of the Portuguese borders, compared to other European nations, in the Official Note of the Presidency of the Council that underlines the Independence of Portugal before the Portuguese and the world (Salazar 1938). The commitment of the interventions made by the DGEMN in medieval buildings, and particularly in those with a Romanesque foundation, is quite evident in terms of their motivations and the tendencies in the options taken. The historiographic affirmation of the historical and artistic value of the architecture of the Romanesque period (Botelho 2013), which is materialised by a historicist sentiment that connotes Romanesque monuments as “contemporary, solemn, and sympathetic testimonies of the development of our nationality” (Monteiro 1908, 126), became extremely pertinent insofar as it conformed to the ideology that interested the political powers, namely the Estado Novo, which adopted and nurtured it. In fact, João Medina soon noted the strong intrinsic medievalism of Salazar and his regime. The Middle Ages, as a historical period, then enjoyed “special fervour and favour, both in the sphere of the imaginary and in the practice of historians and ideologues of the Estado Novo”, reflecting an allegedly perfect union between power and faith and a perfect tripartite society (Medina 1993, 34). Furthermore, we should mention, in this context, the special reception that the work A Idade Média (The Middle Ages) (1936), by Cardinal Dom Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira (1888–1977),10 a prominent figure in the regime, had at the time when promoting the medieval period as a golden age in the history of humanity (Cerejeira 1936, 162). Pedro Martins has rightly pointed out that “the notion of Portugal as a nation providentially chosen to defend the Catholic faith became a commonplace among the political elites of the Estado Novo” (Martins 2013, 6). In this context of international affirmation of the Estado Novo, we must also underline the diplomatic role played by the Cardinal Patriarch. The 7 May 1940 was symbolically marked by the Concordat and the Missionary Agreement signed between the Portuguese State and the Holy See, putting an end to the “religious 10

Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon during the Salazar regime, of whom he was a close friend and colleague at the University of Coimbra, Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira made an eminent contribution to the renewal of the Church in Portugal and to the normalisation of relationships between the State and the Church through the signing of the Concordat of 1940. We owe to him the launch of Rádio Renascença (1937), a Portuguese Catholic broadcaster, and the boost to the cult of Our Lady of Fátima, which culminated in the inauguration of the basilica in 1938, designed by the architect Pardal Monteiro (Cruz 1996, I, 142–143).

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question” that the liberal extinction of religious orders (1834) and the republican Law of Separation of State and Church (1911) had signed (Brito 2011, p. 269). The strong Portuguese Catholic tradition was thus affirmed internationally, symbolically celebrated at a time when Portugal was celebrating its eight centuries as a nation. Pedro Martins also notes that “regarding the role of the medieval era in Portuguese history (…) in the logic of a religious and providential vision of the past, that this was the period when the nation had discovered and developed its Historic mission: initially, the defence of Western Christianity through the Reconquista against Islam, and, in a second phase, the beginning of its expansion throughout the worlds the fifteenth century Discoveries” (Martins 2013, 6). Religious ceremonies such as the Te Deum celebrations, in the Porto or Lisbon Cathedrals, or the outdoor masses near the São Mamede de Guimarães Castle or on the Sagres promontory, followed by the Blessing of the Sea (Comissão, [1940], 8–9), are some of the events of a markedly religious nature that were part of the Centenary programme. The Ceremonies of the Double Centenary of Formation and Independence, held in 1940, gave great importance to these chronological periods to the one concurrent to the Foundation of nationality that the date of 1140 convenes, to the one of the Portuguese maritime expansion that 1640 emphasises, as well as to the role that the Catholic Church played in both eras. The commemorations were the stage for the affirmation of a particular political and religious model that enabled the regime to better convey its ideological values (Brito 2011, 269). It is, therefore, in this context that we see the Centenary commemorations held in 1940, and which extended “to the whole country, to the adjacent islands, to our lands of Africa, Asia and Australasia”, note, giving particular emphasis to three historical cycles, namely the Medieval Cycle (from 2 to 15 June), the Imperial Cycle (from 16 June to 14 July) and the Brigantine Cycle, starting in early November (Comissão, [1940], 7–8). According to Miguel Tomé, the Centenary Celebrations include in their programme five “symbolic places of Lusitanianism, synthesis of important historical facts and articulators of a total programme”, namely (Tomé 1998, vol. I, 63): Porto Cathedral (nucleus of the formation), São Jorge Castle and Lisbon Cathedral (capital of the empire), Castle and Church of São Miguel of the Guimarães Castle (cradle of nationality), Braga Cathedral (religious centre) and, finally, Paço Ducal de Vila Viçosa (symbol of the Restoration of Independence). The historical value attributed to these spaces is materialised in the interventions to recover a primitive image of the intervening architectures and in the projection of “‘sacred acropolis’, spaces with a strong presence in the surrounding urban landscape and the product of intense demolition efforts” (Tomé 1998, vol. I, 63). Other places in the country were also part of the vast Centenary programme. Salazar reinforced that the programme of the celebrations would integrate “patriotic tours to places more especially connected to the facts being celebrated” (Salazar 1938, 6). By way of example, we should mention “Ourique, where, according to the legend, Afonso Henriques defeated five powerful Moorish kings and their armies in a single battle” or Lagos and Sagres, chosen as the setting for the glorification of Prince Henry the Navigator and the navigators of the Henrique cycle. In the University of Coimbra’s Sala dos Capelos, in a solemn

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session, “the Cortes of Coimbra (1211) and the foundation of the University (Lisbon 1290; Coimbra, 1308) were staged” (Comissão, [1940], 9).

22.4 1940 “Moral Restoration”. Between Internationalisation and The Affirmation of “Being Portuguese” Since there was no hesitation in continuing the celebrations and the great public works that were underway, despite the international context, “because thousands upon thousands of workers would be deprived of bread at that moment of crisis, of adaptation to the economy arising from the new international conflict”, the holding of the Portuguese World Exhibition was considered to be the sum total of the national capacity for achievement, revealed both to foreigners and the Portuguese people (Ferro 1949, 15 and 23). The 1940 achievements were intended as an affirmation of the present and a testimony to a moral restoration that, rather than being internationally recognised as a reflection of the organisational and propagandistic machine of the Estado Novo, wanted to testify how “a people that trusted itself in its present could evoke its past with such strength and joy” (Ferro 1949, 23). Furthermore, according to the Director of National Propaganda, this moment contributed to the Portuguese “raising their heads definitively, to gain, once and for all, the awareness of themselves” and of the spiritual and material achievements of the Estado Novo (Ferro 1949, 32). And because an alleged national identity was affirmed through the promotion of the historical roots of a nation with eight centuries of history, it was then urgent to find (or reaffirm) the identity of “being Portuguese” as a cultural identity beyond its own historical identity (and, if we will, legitimation). In the context of this moral restoration, we cannot forget the conservative, traditionalist character and Catholic content implicit in the trilogy “God, Homeland and Family” (“Deus, Pátria e Família”), the basis of Salazar’s political philosophy (Medina 1993, 11–142). The poster for A Lição de Salazar (Salazar’s Lesson), embodying the ideology from the Estado Novo, shows a small Portuguese house, of a conservative matrix and prototype of a rural Portuguese matrix, where the nuclear idea of the “perfect family” is associated with a religious one through the emphasis given to the crucifix in the domestic space, the centre of the pictorial composition created by Martins Barata (Fig. 22.5). The several regions of continental, insular and overseas Portugal were represented at the Portuguese World Exhibition. There, the Regional Centre, a synthesis of Portuguese popular life, sought to bring together the multiple aspects of Portuguese regional architecture, with each street corresponding to a province. Considered as a “village that contains the whole of Portugal”, the news of circa 8 August 1940 (no.19, 00:04:14–00:06:11) of the Jornal Português emphasizes the participation of “authentic ranches coming from their own places” and the organisation of their space with its cornfield, mill, scarecrow, the inn and even the “fairground” for the sale of

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Fig. 22.5 Salazar’s Lesson. God, Homeland, Family: The Trilogy of National Education. Design: Martins Barata (1938). Source: Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal

typical crockery. There were popular marches and parades with floats, and the space dedicated to the villages was animated with “dances, songs and works” showing to the world the rural character that still existed in the country and, simultaneously, to the “humble people of the villages” that the Estado Novo not only did not forget them but was willing to “preserve their traditions and customs so rich in colour and so deep in meaning”, as the Jornal Português reports us once again, in news circa the 2 January 1941 (no.23, 00:03:06–00:04:11), already in the aftermath of the Exhibition. But, if no more so than at the Portuguese World Exhibition inaugurated in Lisbon on the14th of July 1940, at least in a parallel initiative, it was at Portugal dos Pequenitos (Portugal for the Little Ones), which inaugurated 2 weeks earlier in Coimbra and under the patronage of Bissaya Barreto (1886–1974), that we see Raul Lino’s (1879–1974)11 showcase taking shape (Botelho 2014). With the typification of the houses by administrative province, as if composing a “Portuguese village”, the architect Cassiano Branco (1897–1970) made use of Raul Lino’s recipe, either quoting him directly (as happened in the houses of Caramulo and Ribatejo) or recreating it 11

Lisbon-based architect with German and British training, Raul Lino belongs to the generation of artists and intellectuals who in the 1890s defined a nationalist ideology nostalgically focused on a revaluing of traditions and experiences that shaped the Portuguese home campaign (Tostões 1996, II, 521–522).

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(as exemplified by the houses of Monte Alentejo and the transition house from the Alentejo to the Algarve) (Bandeirinha 1996, 42).

22.5 Closing Remarks The Official Note of March 1938 sought to affirm the historical values of a nation that was embarking on a Double Centenary Celebration, gathered on a single date, glorifying a past with eight centuries of history. The publication of this release in the newspaper Diário de Notícias, between two news items on war scenarios that were geographically close by, does not seem innocent to us, and is certainly not the result of a coincidence. As we have pointed out, António de Oliveira Salazar’s speech and António Ferro’s narrative of events in his conference on the Panorama dos Centenários bear witness to this. The 1940 celebrations sought to celebrate “not only yesterday’s Portugal but also today’s [1940]” (Ferro 1949, 12), as an instrument of escape from the bellicose scenario prevailed, taking “away the threats of war, the dark horizons, the daily spectacle of eternal human pain” (Ferro 1949, 17). Through the Politics of the Spirit, the appreciation of traditions that reflect a certain conservatism alongside an openness to modernist novelty, these celebrations bear witness to how Portuguese culture was taken on as an instrument by the Estado Novo, making it attractive to the Portuguese, thus legitimising a sense of “being Portuguese”, and to foreigners, thus guaranteeing the recognition of our identity beyond our own borders. Political values and cultural diplomacy are constantly present, both in Salazar and Ferro’s committed speeches and in the links established with ambassadors from belligerent countries who came to Portugal to witness, perhaps more than participate, the Nation’s capacity for achievement. We are thus facing a true manifestation of soft power if we consider this whole framework in its “ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion or payment. A country’s soft power rests on its resources of culture, values, and policies” (Nye 2008, 94) (Fig. 22.6). The General Secretary of the Centenary Commission argued that Portugal would emerge stronger, more progressive, greater after the Celebrations, since 1940 was an historical year, a year of Portuguese unity (Ferro 1949, 14, 29 and 33). In effect, this year of 1940 also bears witness to the reach of the ideology of material restoration, moral restoration and national restoration from Estado Novo, which was embodied in a profound campaign of public works (through intervention in the existing heritage and the creation of new works, currently already considered heritage that bears witness to this era at the most diverse levels), in an affirmation of national identity values through the emphasis (or is it construction?) of what it is to “be Portuguese” and, finally, through the affirmation of an idea of the Nation with internal and external impact. António Ferro was well aware that the year 1940 would come to be regarded “as one of the most remarkable in contemporary Portuguese history” (Ferro 1949, 29). Thus, in an open letter to the Portuguese that he published in the Diário de

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Fig. 22.6 Photograph of the Inauguration of the Portuguese World Exhibition published in Revista dos Centenários (Journal of the Centenaries), No. 19 and No. 20, July/August 1940, p. 11. Source: Hemeroteca Municipal de Lisboa

Notícias, he stated that “what Salazar wanted, what the Government wants, is for your effort to be so miraculous, so creative, that the Portuguese people of tomorrow, the Portuguese people of 2040, feel the imperious need to celebrate, with enthusiasm and recognition, the 1940 Centenaries, the Centenary of Centenaries” (Ferro 1949, 13).

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la restauración en el espacio iberoamericano. Livro de Atas. Ed. By José Delgado Rodrigues. LNEC e Artis, Lisboa, pp 63–70. Brito R (2011) A presença e o papel da religião nas Comemorações Centenárias de 1940. Lusitania Sacra. 24 (Julho-Dezembro 2011), pp 263–276 Cardoso D (2017) A «neutralidade colaborante» e a propaganda em Portugal durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial. Revista de História da Sociedade e da Cultura. Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2017, 17, pp 355–370. https://doi.org/10.14195/1645-2259_17_16 Cerejeira G (1936) A Idade Média. Coimbra Editora, Lda., Coimbra Christofoletti R (2017). Introdução. Património como esteio das relações internacionais: em questão, o soft power. In: Bens Culturais e Relações Internacionais. O Património como espelho do Soft Power. Org. by Rodrigo Christofoletti, Editora Universitária Leopoldlanum, Santos, pp 13–40 Comissão Executiva da Exposição de Obras Públicas (1947) Quinze Anos de Obras Públicas 1932– 1947. Livro de Ouro. Imprensa Nacional de Lisboa, Lisboa Comissão Executiva dos Centenários (1940) Portugal. Oito séculos de História. Secção de Propaganda e Receção da Comissão Executiva dos Centenários, Lisboa Costa JM (2015) O Jornal como fonte de história. Cinco notas a propósito da edição do «Jornal Português» em DVD. In: Jornal Português. Revista Mensal de Actualidades. (1938–1951). 5 DVDs. Cinemateca Portuguesa Cruz MB (1996) Cerejeira, Manuel Gonçalves In: Fernando Rosas JM (ed) Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol I. Brandão de Brito. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 142–143 Dantas J (1939) A «Revista dos Centenários»” In: Revista dos Centenários. Nº1 (Janeiro de 1939). Lisboa: Edição da Comissão Nacional dos Centenários, pp 1–2 Boletins da DGEMN (1999) DGEMN. DGEMN, Lisboa (Cd-Rom edition) Patrícia E, Dantas J (1996) In: Fernando Rosas JM (ed) Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol. I. Brandão de Brito. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 252–252 Fagundes J (1993) Duarte Pacheco. Percurso Biográfico. In: Medina J (ed) História de Portugal dos Tempos Pré-Históricos aos nossos dias, vol II. Ediclube, Amadora, pp 366–368 Ferro A (1949) Panorama dos Centenários (1140–1640-1940). Política Do Espírito. Lisboa: Edições SN I:1949 Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian. “Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian” (Updated on 30 September 2020). Accessed on: 25 Feb 2021. Available: https://gulbenkian.pt/fundacao/calouste-sarkis-gulbenkian/ Jornal P (2015) Revista Mensal de Actualidades. (1938–1951). 5 DVDs. Cinemateca Portuguesa Nye J, Joseph S (2008) Public diplomacy and soft power. Ann Am Acad 616:94–109. https://doi. org/10.1177/0002716207311699 Martins, Pedro. 2013. “«Whatever is more alive in the present is the past» - images of the Middle Ages in the Portuguese dictatorship (1926–1940)”. V Congresso da Associação Portuguesa de Antropologia, UTAD, Vila Real, 2013. Available: https://www.academia.edu/7682640/_Wha tever_is_more_alive_in_the_present_is_the_past_images_of_the_Middle_Ages_in_the_Portug uese_dictatorship_1926_1940_ Medeiros N (2020) “O SPN e o SNI na encruzilhada do livro: António Ferro e o campo oficial da edição no Estado Novo” In: Projetos Editoriais e Propaganda. Imagens e Contra-Imagens no Estado Novo. Org. by Filomena Serra; Paula André; Sofia Leal Rodrigues Lisboa. ICS 2020:41–51 Medina J (1994) História de Portugal Contemporâneo (Político e Institucional). Universidade Aberta, Lisboa, p 1994 Medina J (dir.) (1993) História de Portugal dos Tempos Pré-Históricos aos nossos dias, vol. XII. Amadora, Ediclube Monteiro M (1908) S. Pedro de Rates. Com uma introdução àcerca da architectura românica em Portugal, Porto, Imprensa Nacional Neto MJ (2010) Restaurar os monumentos da Nação entre 1932 e 1964 In: 100 anos de Património. Memória e Identidade. Coordinated by Jorge Custódio. IGESPAR, Lisboa, pp 157–166 Jorge Ramos do Ó (1996) Secretariado de Propaganda Nacional (SPN)/ Secretariado Nacional da Informação, Cultura Popular e Turismo (SNI)/ Secretaria de Estado da Informação e Turismo

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(SEIT). In: Fernando Rosas JM (ed) Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol II. Brandão de Brito. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 893–896 Paulo H (1996) Ferro, António Joaquim Tavares. In: Fernando Rosas JM (ed) Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol I. Brandão de Brito. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 355–357 Peres D (1954) (Dir. Literária); Cerdeira, Eleutério (Dir. Artística). História de Portugal. Edição Monumental comemorativa do 8º Centenário da Fundação da Nacionalidade, vol 9. Portucalense Editora, Lda., Porto, pp 1928–1954 Piçarra MC (2015) A marcha do tempo no Jornal Português: a projeção de Salazar e da «portugalidade» à derrota da «política do espírito”. In: Jornal Português. Revista Mensal de Actualidades. (1938–1951). 5 DVDs. Cinemateca Portuguesa, pp 7–11 Rodrigues Maria de Lourdes e Pereira S (1996) Pacheco, Duarte. In: Fernando Rosas JM (eds) Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol II. Brandão de Brito. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 710–711 Revista dos Centenários. Nº1 (Janeiro de 1939). Lisboa: Edição da Comissão Nacional dos Centenários, 1939. Rosas F (1996) Estado Novo. In: Fernando Rosas JM (eds) Dicionário de História do Estado Novo, vol I. Brandão de Brito. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 315–319 Rosas F, Salazar AO (1996) In: Dicionário de História do Estado Novo. Ed. by Fernando Rosas; J.M. Brandão de Brito, vol II. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 861–876 Tostões A (1996) Lino, Raul. In: Dicionário de História do Estado Novo. Ed. by Fernando Rosas; J.M. Brandão de Brito, vol II. Bertrand Editora, Lisboa, pp 521–522 Salazar AO (1947) Discursos e Notas Políticas (1935–1937), vol II. Coimbra Editora, Coimbra Salazar AO (1939) Independência de Portugal. Nota Oficiosa da Presidência do Conselho de Ministros, [26] março de 1938, In Revista dos Centenários. Nº1 (Janeiro de 1939). Edição da Comissão Nacional dos Centenários, Lisboa, pp 2–7 Santos R dos. Oito Séculos de Arte Portuguesa. História e Espírito. Lisboa: Empresa Nacional de Publicidade – Editorial Notícias, [196-], 3 vols. Sousa JP (2008) Uma história do jornalismo em Portugal até ao 25 de Abril de 1974. In: Jornalismo: História, Teoria e Metodologia. Perspectivas Luso-Brasileiras. Org. by Jorge Pedro Sousa. Porto: Edições Universidade Fernando Pessoa, pp 93–118. Available: http://www.bocc.ubi.pt/pag/sousajorge-pedro-uma-historia-do-jornalismo-1974.pdf Teixeira, NS (2000) Política externa. In: Dicionário de História de Portugal. Coordinated by António Barreto; Maria Filomena Mónica. Volume IX. Suplemento P/Z, 116–122. Porto, Figueirinhas Tomé M (1998) Património e Restauro em Portugal (1920–1995), Unpublished Master’s Thesis presneted to the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, 3 vols., Porto

Interviews

Crossed Looks in an Upside Down World Rodrigo Christofoletti and Maria Leonor Botelho. In these interviews, which takes place separately, the same questions were asked to two of the most important activists for the preservation of world heritage at work: Irina Bokova, former UNESCO general secretary and Francesco Bandarin, senior consultant to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. Each of them approached the themes in its own way, helping to critically circumscribe many of the challenges, risks and actions that the preservation of heritage in the scope of international relations has conquered in the last decades. Complex themes were addressed and, in each answer, it was possible to verify the expertise and experience of both leading the most respected organisms for the preservation of the world heritage. The identical questions1 provided complementary answers that epitomized the spirit of this book: the union of discerning eyes in the face of a collective challenge. The understanding of how international relations can collaborate effectively for a culture of preservation and preservation of culture, simultaneously. These interviews thus seek to consolidate concise answers in a time of uncertainty. Faced with an interconnected scenario, and because of the “thematic novelty” character, how can we perceive the growing concern with the preservation of heritage in times that oscillate between generalized forgetfulness and the overproduction of memories? Does heritage, especially that connoted as universal, have the power to fuel social and political changes? And in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and the following restrictions on accessibility, 1

These questions were originally asked of the British historian, Peter Burke, emerit professor of Cambridge University and published in the Dossier: Heritage and International Relations published in Locus – Revista de História - UFJF, Vol. 26, no 2, 2020, organized by Rodrigo Christofoletti (UFJF) and Maria Leonor Botellho (FLUP-CITCEM).

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti et al. (eds.), International Relations and Heritage, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77991-7

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how to escape the “depatrimonialization” of these places? Are we already moving towards a post-inheritance time? Answering these questions was not an easy task, but the answers given by our guests can help us to understand a little more about the context in which we live, regardless of the agreement or disagreement regarding their positions. Even in the face of the imponderable, we continue to work for the theme to gain visibility and, for the changes, we project to be assimilated by issues related to the preservation of cultural heritage and its international aspects. The filigree of these points of view the reader will know next.

Interview with Irina Bokova First woman to hold the post of Director-General of UNESCO (2009–2017) Bokova graduated from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations and studied at the University of Maryland (Washington) and at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (Harvard University). She joined the United Nations Department at the Bulgarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1977. As a Member of Parliament (1990– 1991 and 2001–2005), she participated in the drafting of Bulgaria’s new Constitution, which contributed significantly to the country’s accession to the European Union. As Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova actively engaged in international efforts to promote quality education for all, gender equality, cultural dialogue and scientific cooperation for sustainable development and is leading UNESCO as a global defender of journalists’ security and freedom of expression. As DirectorGeneral of UNESCO, Irina Bokova was actively engaged in the UN efforts to adopt Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, focusing on quality education, gender equality, the protection of the world’s cultural heritage. Irina Bokova has been particularly active in the defence of cultural heritage against its deliberate destruction by extremists which lead to the adoption in 2017 of the landmark UN Security Council Resolution 2347. She has received state distinctions from countries across the world and is Doctor Honoris Causa of more than 40 Universities across the world, Irina Bokova was on the Forbes List of the world’s most influential women for 2016. In 2020 she was elected International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In this interview goes through different subjects and demonstrates the perception of those who were at the head of the largest multilateral organization on the planet, a reason that in itself makes her look into the subjects proposed in this interview. (1)

Due to its character of “thematic novelty”, there are so far few systematized studies in the field of the intersection between heritage and international relations, and there is currently no general consensus on its definition. In a world scene interconnected by information flow, this theme presents itself as one of the domains to be debated. How do you see the growing concern about heritage preservation as key to the maintenance of tradition in times that move between the generalized forgetting and the overproduction of memories?

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While you are right in saying that there are few studies in the field on the intersection between heritage and international relations, I would argue that the understanding of its link has grown immensely in the last decade or so. There are several reasons for that. The first, no doubt, is the globalization and the use communication technologies and the consequences thereupon. Humanity is on the move and has never been so connected. These developments connect peoples and cultures like never before. The second is the shifting geopolitics and the fact that we are living increasingly in a multipolar world. New powers are rising and this process is accompanied by a strengthened cognizance of their cultural expressions. Others, are in search of the roots of their complex identities. These major changes bring about heated debates and new understanding about history, memories and about the past, about identities, colonialism, conquests and conflicts, as well as the role of cultural exchanges for our very diverse humanity. And the third reason is the consequences for heritage and culture of the new “modern” conflicts, that are changing shape. The most conspicuous examples are linked with the rise of extremism in Afghanistan, Mali, Syria and Iraq and the tragic destruction of emblematic heritage for all humanity. These Conventions represent a solid basis for understanding the role of culture and heritage in the contemporary world. The current era of globalization, with its unprecedented acceleration and intensification in the global flows of capital, labour, and information, is having a homogenizing influence on local culture. While this phenomenon promotes the integration of societies and has provided millions of people with new opportunities, it may also bring with it a loss of uniqueness of local culture, which in turn can lead to loss of identity, exclusion and even conflict. This is especially true for traditional societies and communities, which are exposed to rapid ‘modernisation’ based on models imported from outside and not adapted to their context. Balancing the benefits of integrating into a globalized world against protecting the uniqueness of local culture requires a careful approach. Placing culture at the heart of development policies does not mean to confine and fix it in a conservative way, but on the contrary to invest in the potential of local resources, knowledge, skills and materials to foster creativity and sustainable progress. Recognition and respect for the diversity of cultures also creates the conditions for mutual understanding, dialogue and peace. Let me mention here two sets of decisions that made history. The first is the adoption by the UN Security Council of several Resolutions on the link between peace and security on one hand, and protection of heritage and fighting looting and destruction, on the other. I have in mind particularly UNSC Resolution 2199 of January 2015 and UNSC Resolution 2347 of March 2017. No doubt these were landmark decisions as they recognised for the first time that safeguarding heritage and diversity are key for maintaining peace, that they heal and reconcile and give confidence to people. Another breakthrough decision in the same vein of activities, was again the first ever condemnation by the International Court of Justice for the deliberate

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destruction of the mausoleums in Timbuktu, Mali. And second, is no doubt the inclusion of culture and the protection of heritage in the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 adopted in September 2015. I have been an ardent proponent of integrating culture as a driver of social cohesion and sustainable development during the elaboration of this important Agenda for humanity. It is again for the first time that the international development agenda embraces culture as an important driver for growth, social inclusion, equality and justice. This was an unparalleled recognition of the role of culture and its contribution to many of the SDGs—safe and sustainable cities, decent work and economic growth, reduced inequalities, the environment, promoting gender equality and peaceful and inclusive societies. I have always insisted that if the purpose of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development is an agenda of the people, by the people and for the people, then culture and heritage should play a very central role. All the more that the SDGs enshrine a conceptual shift in thinking about development beyond economic growth—envisioning a desirable future that is equitable, inclusive, peaceful, and environmentally sustainable. The record and news of catastrophes recently reported, such as the fires of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro or of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, or the floods in Venice, as well as the iconoclastic actions carried out in Bamiyan or Mossul, have given a new place to Heritage on the scale of international relations. How can we think about issues of identity and memory when heritage is destroyed in the event of conflict or (natural) disaster? How do you see the wave of destruction recorded in recent years and how can society and academia act to curb or minimize such damage? This question is of utmost importance. There are many threats to the safeguarding of heritage—uncontrolled urbanization, unsustainable tourism, lack of capacity, knowledge and financial resources, illicit trafficking of antiquities, illicit poaching and logging, conflict, wars and deliberate destruction, earthquakes, inundations and other natural disasters and last but not least climate change. During the last years, we have seen the acceleration of natural disasters such as floods, draughts, melting glaciers and rising ocean temperatures. In some cases the very existence of coastal heritage sites is under threat, and the aqcua alta in Venice is a telling example. Let me emphasize that the biggest threat to the natural world heritage conservation nowadays is climate change. It has already been recognized as such by IUCN (The International Union for the Preservation of Nature), one of the two Advisory Bodies to the World Heritage Committee, which started in 2014 to publish Heritage Outlooks providing thus scientific analysis of the real threat to heritage. One of the challenges in this regards is that when the Convention was adopted, there was no knowledge about the link between the climate change and the World Heritage preservation. It happened only recently and still there is no sufficient understanding and recognition of the gravity of the threat and no precise measurement. The striking examples of Venice, the Great Barrier Reef, Yellowstone and other iconic World Heritage sites ring the alarm of

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the extent the threat.The other part of your question relates to the deliberate destruction of iconic heritage by extremists during the last decade in places such as Afghanistan, Mali, Syria and Iraq. We all remember the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, in Afghanistan, ordered by the Taliban, in 2001. Ten years later, in 2012, we saw violent extremists take control of Timbuktu and destroy the city’s millennial mausoleums and mosques. In Iraq and Syria, along with a humanitarian crisis, we saw unprecedented attacks against culture. We saw systematic violations of human rights, the persecution of people on ethnic and religious grounds. We saw sustained efforts to eliminate the culture of coexistence that is the DNA of this region. We saw the intentional destruction of irreplaceable landmarks, and organised looting for illicit trafficking. All of this is part of the same deliberate strategy, which I called ‘cultural cleansing.’ This strategy seeks to destroy identities by eliminating heritage and cultural markers. It seeks to render social fabrics, by weakening sources of belonging and renewal. It attacks pluralism, to impose exclusive visions of identity. In summing up, if you look at the threats to heritage protection, it is obvious that they are part and parcel of the most pressing agenda in international relations. I would argue that tackling them is not just a cultural issue, but a broader response to the search for internationally agreed responses in time of heightened international tensions. The rise of the importance of heritage protection revels also the role it plays in the “soft power” politics todays, exacerbated by the globalization and connectivity. It is more than obvious that cultural diplomacy is becoming ever more important in the spectrum of both traditional and new tools of diplomatic and political interaction between countries. Or, assuming another perspective (more provocative, perhaps), how can we understand these events, that we watch “live” in the light of art history and heritage studies, when we know that the first records of intentional destruction date back to Antiquity? Are we, the society of the present times, the ones who seek to add new layers to these events? Indeed, culture has always been the victim of war—as collateral damage, sometimes from direct targeting or from looting. Wars of conquest were often wars of destruction and dominance of one culture over the other. History of humanity contains many such examples and certainly the first records of intentional destruction date back to Antiquity. But I strongly believe there is no room whatsoever for comparison. Since the end of the second World War with its horrific human tragedy and destruction, our understanding of culture and heritage have evolved immensely around the need not only of international collaboration, but about an agreed understanding of heritage as a common good of humanity. UNESCO was created with this idea in mind that peace should be built differently. On that basis UNESCO launched major new concepts and perhaps the most prominent among them was the concept of the world heritage. I have said many times Protecting World Heritage is one of the most positive, visionary and transformative ideas of the twentyfirst century. This is the idea that heritage belonging to different cultures

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may represent “outstanding universal value” and should be protected by international law, embodied in the World Heritage Convention. This is the idea that humanity stands united in all its diversity around shared values. The idea that all cultures are different but that difference does not divide—it unites. It is remarkable that, with its 193 States Parties, the World Heritage Convention is the most widely ratified international legal instruments. And what is even more remarkable is that the world heritage list is an open book of humanity’s diversity. All this development is a total antidote to the thesis that today, as in the antiquities, we can accept the destruction of culture being used as a tool of war. Protecting our common heritage has become for the first time a universally accepted value in itself and I do not believe we can go back. As the new century shows itself, the scanning of the power relations reveals new actors, sites and representations. Considering the understanding of contemporary world between “practices and representations”, which examples of soft power can you name that could comprise such a widening of the radiography of the power relations? Does heritage (above all, the one recognized as “world heritage”) is strong enough to be the fuel of social and political change? Power relations and shifting geopolitics brought about new powerful actors in the area of cultural heritage not sufficiently represented before. With the broadening of the scope of the World Heritage list, where already 167 States Parties to the Convention have their sites inscribed, we have today a much more democratic and fair representation of the diversity of cultures and historic narratives. The “Europocentric” view thus has evolved with time to embrace a more diverse understanding of questions such as authenticity, community engagement and practices and universal value, to take but a few. It has equally embraced the understanding of the strong link between the tangible and intangible heritage so that today the World Heritage List is much more representative and inclusive of all the different cultures of humanity. A new phenomenon also is the growing attention and interest towards inscribing major serial and transnational sites with epochal significance such since “Quapaq Ñan, the Andean Road System”, that covers 6 countries in Latin America, or “Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang’anTianshan Corridor, submitted by China, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan—both inscribed in 2014. UNESCO has played a critical role, broadening significantly our understanding aboit culture over the last decades. The 2001 UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity was signed by every one of its Member States. As the Declaration compellingly states, cultural diversity, “widens the range of options open to everyone; it is one of the roots of development, understood not simply in terms of economic growth, but also as a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, moral and spiritual existence.” I would like to make here an important point. There is a very fine line between pride in one’s culture and intolerance towards what is different. And in order to walk on this fine line, we need understanding and knowledge

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about the other. This why intercultural dialogue and education are so critical in our era of connectivity and exchange.The other aspect is that heritage and culture can be powerful drivers of economic and social change as mentioned already in the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development. Cultural heritage has become an increasingly important actor in multilateral dialogue and, as such, is part of the broadening of the actions in the domain of international relations. From there come other objects of study, only to a small extent incorporated so far in the topic such as the growing presence of themes that approach “Africanities”, “Asianities”, “Latinities” and the “Orientalisms” (still largely unexplored). How do you see this process? Indeed, you are right in saying that cultural heritage has become an increasingly important actor in multilateral dialogue. Apart from the changes in the global landscape, many societies undergo profound changes, revisiting historic narratives and broadening their understanding about their own past, about cultural influences and exchanges. Let me give an example of a major UNESCO initiative that is quite relevant to this question - the regional “General History” projects, that UNESCO started already in the 60thof the last century, documenting extensively the contributions of different global regions. This massive work began with a General History of Latin America, General History of the Caribbean, History of Civilization of Central Asia, General History of Africa, and Different Aspects of Islamic Culture (UNESCO, 1977). These series are unique in that they provide a culturally relevant perspective, a point of view of the people concerned, whose past has often been neglected or distorted by colonizers. What is remarkable about this initiative is that it has enabled a better understanding of the evolution of societies and the flourishing of cultures that were almost forgotten and their interaction with other parts of the world. One of the most prominent and influential among them, launched in 1964, was the elaboration of the General History of Africa, with the goal of reconstructing Africa’s history by freeing it from ignorant or racial prejudices and allowing African scholars to own and share their own history. 35 years of cooperation between 230 historians and experts, comprised of African and non-African experts, and overseen by an International Scientific Committee, resulted in an 8-volume work, published between 1981 and 1993. In 2009, during my tenure as Director General of UNESCO, the General History of Africa Project entered a second and most exciting phase—the launch of the pedagogical use of this landmark collection so that Africa’s youth could discover and take pride in their common heritage rooted in their continent’s rich civilization. A core curriculum was developed for use in primary and secondary schools in Africa and the Diaspora, along with teaching materials for introduction into the national curricula. In addition, further inclusions of history on slavery and the slave trade were also a means of contributing to the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent. What is remarkable is that the “Pedagogical Use of the General History of Africa” project (UNESCO, 2009b) sparked further, deeper research in African regional historical studies, which led to revision of the

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content initially included in the eight volumes and to the discovery of new stories previously ignored or unnoticed by historians. This shows the value and need for “updating” both content and the way it is adapted to the opportunities of the new information and communication technologies. In 2013, coinciding with the celebration of the 50thanniversary of the founding of the Organization of African States that later transformed into the African Union, the 9thvolume of the General History of Africa project was published and dedicated to the African diaspora and its contribution to the development of societies across continents. This brings me to the important topic of teaching humanities, of which I have been a strong advocate all my tenure as Director General of UNESCO. It is through humanities, unfortunately neglected for quite a long time, that we understand the social transformation of our societies and the way to manage it for the benefit of all, it is through humanities, that we understand and get to know the history of others, it is through humanities that we understand better the challenges of globalization, it is through humanities that we can understand and embrace cultural diversity as a strength and not as a threat, it is through humanities that we can foster new global citizenship in an era of diversity. And last but not least, it is through humanities that we can understand and find the right answers to the challenges of how to bridge the gap of inequalities. Teaching philosophy or history or arts is fundamental for the opening of young minds towards the diversity and the “other”. It is the constant challenge of the present that can make one imagining and reinventing the future. A book can or a lesson of history or philosophy may change the perception of the world, may instil empathy and the sense of belonging. Knowing one’s own history, culture and heritage creates a sense of belonging. Knowing others history, culture and heritage creates a sense of “sharing” and solidarity. As the American historian Drew Faust, the first woman to serve as President of Harvard University for more than ten years, who was a passionate defender of teaching humanities said in a speech: “How can we create minds capable of innovation if they are unable to imagine a world different from the one in which we live now? History teaches contingency; it demonstrates that the world has been different and could and will be different again. Anthropology can show that societies are and have been different elsewhere—across space as well as time. Literature can teach us many things, but not the least of these is empathy—how to picture ourselves inside another person’s head, life, experience—how to see the world through a different lens, which is what the study of the arts offers us as well.” How do you see the local/global dichotomy in preserving world heritage sites? What examples can be given between the globalization of heritage and the need for it to be locally preserved? What is the hierarchy we should assume when we defend and communicate heritage? Once inscribed on the World Heritage List, sites become global by recognizing their “outstanding universal value”, albeit they will always stay local. The preservation efforts are responsibility of Governments, but their safeguarding will be challenging if the local communities are not engaged. One

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of the difficulties in a more fragmented world of today, is the protection of heritage that does not belong to the predominant culture and identity as felt and recognized by the specific community. This where here is a particular need for education and deeper knowledge about history and the past, the need of respect towards the other and towards diversity. And speaking about hierarchy, one of the positive impact of the concept of world heritage, is that it created a different and powerful new narrative and even mentality about the need to look differently at all the heritage—inscribed or not on the World Heritage List. It created the notion of equality among cultures. It encouraged countries to make their own national lists and inventory and protection of heritage became a global movement where there are already many actors, apart from Governments - experts and civil society groups, academia and the private sector. Tourism is terrorism. The sentence written on the wall next to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, registered in January of this year, represents a very critical perception of the predatory touristic exploitation of sites that have been suffering its negative impact. How do you see the binomial tourism/world heritage and how in your view have we behaved recently regarding this matter? It is true that today mass or unsustainable tourism is one of the threats to safeguarding world heritage sites. Many emblematic world heritage sites become victims of their own success—such is the global interest and curiosity towards a place, recognized by the UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee. The problem indeed is of binominal nature. While often the ambition for inscription is led by the desire of developing local economies, including through tourism, there should be a very well though strategy of mitigating its possible negative consequences. Starting from 2015, UNESCO and the World Tourist Organization (WTO) are holding regular conferences, dedicated to the different aspects of the implementation of the concept of sustainable tourism linking it with the protection of the world heritage sites. The goal is to make sure that tourism abides by the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and by the WTO Global Code of Ethics. One of the important answers to your question seems to be sustainable tourism with its three pillars—economic, environmental and socio-cultural. All the three pillars are important, but I would I would just emphasize the last one, which is extremely important in my mind—the respect for the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, to safeguard their built and living heritage and traditional values and to contribute to intercultural understanding and tolerance. In a globalized world, cultural tourism is on the rise and It is a powerful way of getting to know other cultures and to start appreciating and respecting them. It is also a powerful tool of fighting certain cultural stereotypes, of educating people in diversity and of respecting this diversity. What place do you envisage for World Heritage sites in the face of touristification? And how should we manage the increase in the number of sites inscribed on the World Heritage List (as of today, 1121)? Can this willingness on the part of States Parties to obtain the Unesco brand not only be a

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risk to heritage management on an international scale, but also national and ultimately locally? This is a very important question, which has two aspects. The first is linked to the process of inscription to the World Heritage List and whether there are limits to this process. The interest in inscribing site on the World Heritage List is growing immensely which, overall, is positive as it speaks a lot about why heritage matters. And indeed, in order to balance the list and to include more sites from diverse regions and countries, the World Heritage Committee has passed recommendation that appeals to the States Parties to submit only two proposals at each sessions of the Committee. There were many initiatives to support countries to acquire the knowledge and skills to identify sites and to present the respective submissions for inscription to the World Heritage Committee. In 2012 UNESCO adopted five years Action Plan for the improvement of the representation of African Heritage on the World Heritage List through capacity building, improving management systems, balancing heritage conservation and development needs, and creation of mechanisms for protection and management in pre-conflict and post-conflict situation. The 38thGeneral Conference of UNESCO in November 2015 declared the 5thof May as the African World Heritage Day so that both the Africans but also the world at large to get to know and celebrate the Continent’s unique cultural and natural heritage. I believe, all of these measures are giving results. Today 167 countries are represented on the World Heritage List which is a huge success, reflecting humanity’s diversity. The second aspect of your question is related to the process of inscription versus the safeguarding measures. I have to admit that the last decade is marred by a clear ambition for inscribing sites sometimes at the expense of respecting all criteria. The process has acquired gradually political overtones which threatens to undermine the integrity of the World Heritage Convention? This was the reason for my decision as Director General to launch an informal dialogue in 2012 between the Advisory bodies to the WHC, ICOMOS and IUCN, and the States Parties so that the integrity of the Convention be preserved. Now that we are approaching the 50thanniversary of the World Heritage Convention, we are in front of a choice. And allow me to repeat what I have said on a number of occasions. Instead of distorting our heritage in endless disputes about what belongs to who, about which heritage is the greatest, the biggest, the oldest… here we choose to unite for heritage, because World Heritage is not about division, it is about building common ground. This is not a beauty contest, and this is not a political arena. This is a place for expertise and the highest standards of excellence, it is a place for dialogue and mutual understanding. If we take such an approach, then the Convention will continue to be an important and credible legal instrument for protection of our common heritage and pass it on to the new generations.

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Currently the official website of the World Heritage, linked to the UNESCO, conducts systematic fundraising campaigns focusing on private donors, especially natural persons. Something unimaginable decades ago. In your opinion, what did the withdrawal of the US and Israel from UNESCO mean, as the former had already done in 1984, and what are its impacts on UNESCO’s funds, ideology and geopolitics? As long as your question refers to a difficult period of UNESCO’s recent history and of my own mandate as Director General, I would like to caution against possible misunderstandings comparing the two periods the United States withdraw from UNESCO. In 1984, the then US Administration took a deliberate decision to leave UNESCO, because it considered that the Organization did not correspond to the values and purposes of the US policy. Still, the United States continued as a member of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, paying its dues, as well as stayed involved in the work of the World Heritage Committee. This situation continued until 2003, when after 9/11 the US decided to return to the Organization. The situation in 2011 was quite different. The admission of Palestine as a full Member of UNESCO triggered two laws adopted in the beginning of the 1990s, that prescribed that should Palestine become member of any international organization, the US should automatically suspend its contribution. For the US Administration at the time there was no choice, albeit I believe they have clearly demonstrated how much they appreciated the work of the Organization. No doubt, the suspension the of US contribution had political and financial consequences for UNESCO. The influence of the US was fading away, while other countries and regions were growing. Also, losing 22% of its regular budget, after years, if not decades of underfunding, weakened the Organization. We entered thus a period of profound reforms that helped the organization to become more flexible and relevant and the search of donor funding definitely increased. I am happy that UNESCO could cope with this severe financial crisis without giving up on any of its major programs and was particularly active on two fronts—the adoption of the UN Agenda 2030 and responding to the rise of violent extremism and the deliberate destruction of heritage sites these fanatic groups. Could we have done better? Maybe, but within the existing political realities, we had to reform and to deliver, not to stop, but to advance and keep both the visibility and the importance of UNESCO’s mandate as well the trust of Member States and of all those people who looked at the Organization for solutions and for hope. Exactly eleven years ago, in a column written for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the britanic historian, Peter Burke wrote a text entitled Hunt for treasures, in which outlined your understanding of the repatriation of historical objects. In this text he stated that repatriation could fragment the collections of large museums and impoverish the world. The increase in requests for repatriation has occurred at a time when UNESCO, national governments, museums and the general public are growing concerned about what is now known as “cultural heritage". In the text the historian ask important questions: should

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each object of a cultural heritage given that, in the past, it was removed from its original environment, whether it was donated, bought or stolen, should it be returned? If so, to whom should it be returned? Do modern countries have the property right over something that was produced in the past in a territory that is now theirs? These issues remain highly controversial and the controversy involves governments, museums, lawyers and dealers. According to the text, the world would be impoverished if everything were returned. For he, some objects should be returned, but not all. Large international collections such as the British Museum and the Louvre should not be fragmented. What is your current opinion on this issue? How do you see the relationship between illicit trafficking in cultural goods and museums? This is a hugely important question and it is difficult to answer in a few lines. It touches upon issues of colonial past and history of humanity, international and national legal frameworks, what is the role of museums and their collections, the notion of “universal museum”, looting of art and archaeology, or as some experts call it, “transfer of cultural property under conditions of symmetry” during colonial times or domination, and last but not least—the ethical aspects of appropriation of heritage and objects of culture in such circumstances. While acknowledging the necessity of discussing all the questions raised, I would nevertheless disagree with Prof. Peter Burke on the fundamentals. I believe there is definitely a shift and a lot of momentum today, in beginning of the twenty-first century and the world has already entered a new phase embracing new thinking around these issues. I remember vividly the moving ceremony of the voluntary restitution of two important Khmer Pandava statutes by the Metropolitan Museum of New York to Cambodia in 2013 during the meeting of the World Heritage Committee with the contribution of UNESCO. In 2015, the UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society in its article 18 stated: “In instances where the cultural heritage of indigenous peoples is represented in museum collections, Member States should take appropriate measures to encourage and facilitate dialogue and the building of constructive relationships between those museums and indigenous peoples concerning the management of those collections, and, where appropriate, return or restitution in accordance with applicable laws and policies”. There is an interesting debate about the legal versus ethical considerations. They touch upon the fundamental meaning of cultural heritage and artefacts, not just as objects for display, but reflecting the identity of communities and peoples. As the famous Cameroonian historian and philosopher Achille Mmembe pointed out recently: “There is simply no moral ground for the confiscation of African artefacts in Western museums” and I tend to agree with him. Achille Mmembe went further to say: “After the customary genuflection, there follows a lengthy discussion of all the supposed negative consequences entailed by restitution for Western museums whose last line of defence is what the philosopher Souleymane Bachir Diagne calls “overhang universalism” (universalisme de surplomb). The damage already suffered

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by Africa as a consequence of the confiscation of its objects as well as the damage incurred by non-restitution are quickly passed over in silence”.It is not by chance that the landmark Report, commissioned by the French President Emanuel Macron and prepared by Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in 2018 on the case of the Benin bronzes, looted by the French troops end of the nineteenth century in a punitive expedition, is under the title “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics”. This Report and the follow-up law, adopted in 2020 by the French Parliament, showed that there is a way to eliminate the legal obstacles based on the ethical considerations and consequently return the looted objects. Another important development also is the Resolution adopted by the European Parliament in 2019, that on the fundamental rights of people of African descent in Europe, calling, among other things, Member States “to take steps towards meaningful and effective redress for past injustices and crimes against humanity…which may include some form of reparations such as offering public apologies and the restitution of stolen artefacts to their countries of origin”. The debate about looted colonial art in many European countries, including in German museums, is also gaining new momentum. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has taken a clear stand on the issue, urging the accurate restitution of African cultural assets which Germany has in in its public collections— especially the so-called Benin bronzes. On the 24th of March this year, Maas said this was a matter of honesty and justice: “An honest approach to colonial history also includes the question of the restitution of cultural assets”, adding: “This is a question of justice.” At the same time, I do recognise all the different considerations and I do agree that one size does not fit all. What is necessary and has been encouraged by UNESCO, is diplomacy and dialogue between the interested partners based on mutual respect and honest approach about history and the past. In 2020 we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the AuschwitzBirkenau concentration camps. Again, the binomial pain/forgetting and memory/reparation that are re-edited from time to time in our society, come back to the surface. Those who visit the museification built in the concentration camps on the Holocaust narrative ask themselves what memories and stories are effectively preserved in places like these. In Bark, the French historian Georges Didi-Huberman wonders to what extent the cathartic pilgrimage of visitors to these sites, now recognized as world heritage sites, helps in the perpetuation of the messages contained in their material heritage. What is your opinion of the use of places considered to be traumatic, such as Auschwitz, Hiroshima or the Valongo Pier, for the preservation of world heritage sites? People taking selfies in front of the Birkenau concentration camp, or even inside the crematorium exposed at the site, post their photos with words absolutely devoid of historical consciousness. It is the “picnic of dis-consciousness”, which alerts us that regarding the Holocaust and the Nazi

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crimes there is not only the danger of negationism, but also of trivialization. What can we learn from this behavior? One of the most difficult tasks is how to preserve memory of past horrible crimes such as the Holocaust, as well as other genocides, how to transmit the message “never again” to the future generations. While admitting the challenges of safeguarding such sites, I believe inscribing Aushwitz Birkenau on the World Heritage List in 1979 saves the memory of millions of people that perished in the Nazi death machine from oblivion. At the same time, such places are not simply sites of memory, but of education about history, albeit its most dark pages. It is obvious that today, as the last survivors are passing on, new dangers are emerging. In a moving French documentary “Saving Aushwitz”, launched in 2016, the authors tried to present these new challenges - the danger of desensitization through mass tourism, of trivialization, or the difficulty of the local town and its citizens to continue their lives with the nightmare next door. I have always thought that preserving heritage and education should go hand in hand, that heritage sites are not just bricks and stones, but they bring a message. This is even more relevant when we speak about places of memory. History should be known in its entirety and the history of the Holocaust should be taught, particularly when we see attempts to revisit the history of the war, whitewash responsibility in the crimes perpetrated, expunging national histories from their Jewish dimension. That is why the Holocaust education and research program, launched by UNESCO in 2009, in partnerships with museums and educational foundations and universities through the establishment of UNESCO Chairs, is so important. Unfortunately, we see more and more, including in Europe, attempts to deny or distort the history of the Holocaust, we see unacceptable prejudices become commonplace again. This clearly is a regeneration of traditional, nationalistic antisemitism. We need to counter this trend. We need to mobilize an ethical and political commitment against anti-Semitism and intolerance today, which should be founded on an intellectual effort to understand the roots of hatred and to defuse the discourse that exploits ignorance. Teaching of the history of the Holocaust remains a foundation in the struggle against anti-Semitism today - to know the past, but above all to teach the mechanisms of escalating violence, how prejudice may lead to insults, insults to discrimination, discrimination to murder. This is why places of memory such as the Aushwitz Birkenau should be preserved. Yes, there is a danger of “trivialization”, but I do not believe anybody can stay indifferent after visiting it. Heritage massification, due to the urge to know the places with the UNESCO brand, led to ask what we can call the “commercialization of heritage”, which consequently arises to the emptying of its meaning. What role should the various actors at international (and local) level play to reverse this situation?

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How can we make heritage sites places of knowledge building? How can we make them physically and intellectually accessible? The heritage “brand” is so powerful, that it became one of the most recognisable feature of UNESCO. The diversification of the UNESCO World Heritage List is bringing new interest and curiosity towards other cultures and sites little known before and I think this is very positive. On the other hand, local people may use this opportunity for development. But again, there should be a well struck balance between development needs and protection of heritage. The World Heritage Convention and the follow-up Operational Directives have created a clear framework for the management and monitoring of the protection of the sites. What is needed is their rigorous respect and implementation. I have seen during my numerous visits to World Heritage Sites and meetings with Government officials, experts and particularly with the young people, the immense pride and sense of belonging. This is, in my mind, the best argument for its protection. And again, education and knowledge are vital, particularly in multicultural environment. In an increasingly diverse world cultural literacy is vital and heritage plays a key role. Because at the end of the day, heritage indeed should be about knowledge, knowledge about diversity, about the evolution of ideas and societies, about mutual exchanges and enrichment. To what extent could this lead to the “unpatrimonialisation” of sites? Are we already moving towards a time of “post-heritage”? What are the new stakeholders in a post-patrimonial context? What instruments can we use to create and safeguard new heritage in such a context? There is an interesting debate among scholars about the meaning of heritage, the need for a tight definition and whether we need it at all. I would rather agree with those, who consider it as reflecting a social process deep down in history, not just starting from the nineteenth century or the last 20 years of the twentieth century. If we take this approach, then I believe it will be easier for historians and researchers to embrace ALL heritage. No doubt the new technologies are entering more and more the world of heritage. I do not know what exactly is the meaning of the term “unpatrimonisation” of sites, but if it is about certain diminishing of their significance in a post-modern world, I would not agree. I would rather consider it growing against the background of the shifting geopolitics, unprecedented connectivity and the increasing use of the “soft” power of cultural diplomacy in the world. On the other hand, the new technologies are giving new life to heritage, spreading images and content and thus democratizing it access, albeit digital, and helps us preserve some of it that is threatened by destruction by conflict or by climate change. I know this is very much disputed by experts and I join them in the quest for preserving the authenticity of all heritage, which is our main ambition. But we have to recognise that the digital helps preserve equally manuscripts and architectural designs.

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The line: “Today we know more and more about less and less, and less and less about more and more” seems to summarize the universe of heritage preservation. Enjoying and preserving are everyday verbs in a time that suffers the effects of a kind of “heritage inflation". How can the historian of the present understand this pendulum reality? With the new technologies of communication, “knowing more and more” is becoming a real challenge not only for the universe of heritage preservation. It reflects all the knowledge and information that get in just one click. I would not call it, though, “heritage inflation” and I do not take it negatively. On the contrary, the fact that there are so many different aspects around the meaning of heritage and its preservation, that are being studied today and that go beyond the purview of a limited group of experts, is a very positive one. I can hardly find an area where heritage studies are not included as an important aspect of research today—international relations and diplomacy, legal frameworks and the development of the international and national law, urbanism and climate change, anthropology, colonial and post-colonial history or social sciences and humanities broadly speaking, and many, many others. Do you believe that international relations in general, and linked to the preservation of heritage in particular, will change in a post -pandemic world? Of course, it is not an exercise in futurology, but can a historian who is used to studying changes and permanences be able to prospect what awaits us in the future but can a historian who is used to studying changes and permanences be able to prospect what awaits us in the future? The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated some of the trends in the international system in many aspects. On one side, it revealed its shorcomings and the tendency that started well before the pandemic to undermine the UN and substitute the “grammar” of multilateralism with unilateral actions. On the other, the pandemic showed us all how interdependent we all are without respect for national borders, race, faith or any other difference. The pandemic showed us that we are all human and that there is a huge need of compassion, solidarity and empathy. The impact of Covid-19 on culture and heritage is devastating and unfortunately it is there to stay if Governments do not take into account the lon-term negative consequences. It was amazing to see during the lockdowns how culture took by storm our homes. Museums, theaters, music halls and operas opened their on-line platforms in order to give us hope, beauty and a sense of renewal. In some sense, I do hope the world will not be the same. I hope the main lesson from the Covid-19—to put human security and human wellbeing above any other consideration will prevail. I believe it is not by chance that there is a much more heated debates about inequalities, that exacerbated because of the pandemic, about poverty and inclusion. Many cities are “greening”, the private sector is asking itself what is the purpose of business and “green” investment is on the rise. It is not

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by chance that in the midst of the pandemic, many world leaders announced importante commitments to fight climate change. And if human well being is the center, then culture and heritage should play na important role. It will not come automatically. It will need leadership, advocacy and commitment. No doubt, there are many stumbling blocks, and among them the shifting geopolitics, the ethical aspects of Artificial Intelligence and the impact the new technologies on privacy and human rights, to take but a few. I do believe that what world needs today is a new “intelectual and moral solidarity of humanity” to quote my favourite phrase from UNESCO’s Constitution. By the way, what do you think of this iconoclastic wave of destruction of monuments linked to the so-called “wicked side” of the past? This is yet another complex issue that has its proponents on both extremes. I can understand perfectly well the desire to take away monuments that glorify dark periods of opression. Many such statues were removed in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And the call for the removal of statues that symbolise slavery are equally understandable. But I do not believe one can destroy all monuments everywhere. You cannot erase history by simply detroying monuments and statues that do not reflect our contemporary values. The darkest pages of humanities history need to be studies and known more so, not just erased. There may be diferent ways of approaching this problem, such as museums of the past, like the one in Berlin, at the medieval Citadel, with the aim of not let history disapear. I believe the context and the narrative are very important. At the end of the day, this is a debate about the past in as much about the future, about what kind of societies we want to live in.

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Interview with Francesco Bandarin Francesco Bandarin is an Architect and Urban Planner, specializing in Urban Conservation. He holds a degree in Architecture (IUAV Venice) and Urbanism and Regional Planning (UC Berkeley) and was Professor of Urban Planning and Urban Conservation at the University of Venice (IUAV) from 1980 to 2016. From 2000 to 2010, he was Director of the Heritage Center UNESCO World Heritage Site and Secretary of the World Heritage Convention. From 2010 to 2018, he served as UNESCO’s Deputy Director-General for Culture. He is a member of the Aga Khan Architecture Award Steering Committee and a Senior Advisor to the Aga Khan Trust for Culture. He is a member of ICOMOS Italy, ICOM Italy and the Council of the Fondazione Santagata for the Economy of Culture in Torino. He served as president and member of several international juries and committees, including the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, the Shenzhen Creative Design Award (SCDA), the Getty Conservation Institute. His recent publications include: The historic urban landscape: Managing heritage in an urban century, 2012, and Reconnecting the city. He has been working for several years on polar heritage issues, both as part of the UNESCO Secretariat and as a researcher independent. He currently co-directs (with Giulia Foscari) the Antarctica 200 Polar Research Lab at the London School of Architecture Architecture Association, which aims to study the evolution of Antarctic buildings, architecture and engineering, in collaboration with the main Antarctic institutions and several national Antarctic programs. (1)

Due to its character of “thematic novelty”, there are so far few systematized studies in the field of the intersection between heritage and international relations, and there is currently no general consensus on its definition. In a world scene interconnected by information flow, this theme presents itself as one of the domains to be debated. How do you see the growing concern about heritage preservation as key to the maintenance of tradition in times that move between the generalized forgetting and the overproduction of memories? The existence of several international treaties on cultural heritage protection clearly indicated a nexus between heritage and international relations. This dates back to the 1930’s, with the Roerich Pact, but it really became part of the international legal system only after WWII, following the massive destructions of entire countries’ heritage, like in Europe and Asia, and especially in Germany and Japan. The long story of post-WWII international treaties, from the 1954 Hague Convention for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict to the 2005 Convention for the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions shows that there has been a growing interest of the ‘international community’ of States for cultural heritage. With some exceptions (World Heritage, the 1970 Convention on the illicit traffic of cultural heritage, etc.) policies expressed by the Conventions have not reached the larger public, nor have always prevailed against stronger interests, such as tourism or military strategies, but they have established an important area

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of international interest. Certainly, the conceptual framework of our cultural conventions is anchored to a traditional approach to heritage and has only partially been able to integrate the enormous transformations brought about by globalization. This is today a major reason of concern. The record and news of catastrophes recently reported, such as the fires of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro or of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, or the floods in Venice, as well as the iconoclastic actions carried out in Bamiyan or Mossul, have given a new place to Heritage on the scale of international relations. How can we think about issues of identity and memory when heritage is destroyed in the event of conflict or (natural) disaster? How do you see the wave of destruction recorded in recent years and how can society and academia act to curb or minimize such damage? The great public resonance of catastrophic events concerning heritage, proofs that it plays a big role in public imagination and consequently in public policies worldwide. This is not a recent phenomenon: the destruction of the Bamyan Buddahs in 2002 is a notable example, and it was indeed that event that prompted UNESCO to adopt the 2003 Declaration concerning the intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage. The events of the past 10 years have intensified public outrage on intentional destructions and prompted a series of innovative responses, ranging from the 2016 Strategy for the Reinforcement of UNESCO’s Action for the Protection of Culture and the Promotion of Cultural Pluralism in the Event of Armed Conflict to the creation of ad hocfunds like Aliph, to the definition of a joint UNESCO-World Bank policy on urban reconstruction (The CURE Framework). These policy guidelines are also applicable in case of destructions brought about by natural disasters. Finally, the 2017 Warsaw Recommendation on Recovery and Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage constitutes an important advancement as it recognizes the aspiration of communities to overcome the trauma of conflict by reconstructing heir heritage. In spite of these advancements, much remains to be done, as openly recognized by all specialized organizations. Or, assuming another perspective (more provocative, perhaps), how can we understand these events, that we watch “live” in the light of art history and heritage studies, when we know that the first records of intentional destruction date back to Antiquity? Are we, the society of the present times, the ones who seek to add new layers to these events? Destruction of cultural heritage has been a permanent feature in human conflicts, all throughout history. As symbol of collective identity, as well for their religious and civic values, cultural artifacts in all forms (temples, statuary, mobile objects, and even intangible elements) have been subject to attack and destructions in all domestic or international conflicts, colonial adventures, religious controversies that we can remember. The concept of cultural heritage as a collective value protected by the law is a relatively recent one (it originated out of the French Revolution), and even more recent are the international normative tools aimed at its protection (the 1954 Hague Convention being the most relevant and specific among them). Contemporary

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societies have given value to the protection of cultural heritage, and this is reflected in public reactions to destructive events. As the new century shows itself, the scanning of the power relations reveals new actors, sites and representations. Considering the understanding of contemporary world between “practices and representations”, which examples of soft power can you name that could comprise such a widening of the radiography of the power relations? Does heritage (above all, the one recognized as “world heritage”) is strong enough to be the fuel of social and political change? The way contemporary societies deal with heritage reflects the evolution of their values. In the nineteenth century (but also today), heritage was essentially a tool to support the idea of the Nation-State. Today, heritage fulfills a broad set of function, from building local and national identities to education and to promotion of economic development linked to tourism. Global processes and information technology are rapidly changing the way in which people perceive and consume heritage, and values will likely change in the future. Changing attitudes toward heritage, like the ones we are witnessing today with respect to the issue of race and colonialism, confirm the relevance of its symbolic role for societies and communities. Cultural heritage has become an increasingly important actor in multilateral dialogue and, as such, is part of the broadening of the actions in the domain of international relations. From there come other objects of study, only to a small extent incorporated so far in the topic such as the growing presence of themes that approach “Africanities”, “Asianities”, “Latinities” and the “Orientalisms” (still largely unexplored). How do you see this process? There is an inner contradiction between the claim of ‘universality’ of the values of heritage protection (the World Heritage Convention being the foremost example) and the claim to respect cultural diversity. This friction has been dealt in different manners throughout the development of heritage concepts (an example is the 1994 Nara Document on Authenticity, trying to deal with the diverging approaches to heritage conservation of different cultures) but it remains an open issue. The emergence of new form of cultural identity, whether associated with regions, cultural belonging, or even age and connectivity, will certainly bring new elements to this discussion. How do you see the local/global dichotomy in preserving world heritage sites? What examples can be given between the globalization of heritage and the need for it to be locally preserved? What is the hierarchy we should assume when we defend and communicate heritage? Heritage has become a ‘global’ issue only relatively recently: since a century for the elite and since a few decades for the larger public (the ‘masses’). Before, and in large part still today, heritage -tangible and intangible- was essentially a ‘local’ issue, linked to cultural identities of groups, communities, social bodies. The emergence of heritage as a global ‘good’ has generated new international laws and policies and a strong public support, visible whenever

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there is a threat to the survival of a heritage site of global significance, such as Venice or Palmyra. Tourism is terrorism. The sentence written on the wall next to the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy, registered in January of this year, represents a very critical perception of the predatory touristic exploitation of sites that have been suffering its negative impact. How do you see the binomial tourism/world heritage and how in your view have we behaved recently regarding this matter? The relationship between World Heritage and tourism is among the most unresolved issues in modern conservation policies. As mass tourism did not exist at the time of the creation of World Heritage, and because of the prevailing top-down approach of the Convention, the role and impact of tourism was never fully embodied in the ‘classical’ conservation philosophy. As a result, the most consequential global phenomenon impacting heritage conservation, way beyond any other ‘threat’, is largely understated. This is a serious issue that need to be addressed. However, we must remember that in 2010 a proposal by the UNESCO Secretariat to start preparing a Recommendation on the relationship between tourism and heritage was turned down by the Member States… What place do you envisage for World Heritage sites in the face of touristification? And how should we manage the increase in the number of sites inscribed on the World Heritage List (as of today, 1121)? Can this willingness on the part of States Parties to obtain the Unesco brand not only be a risk to heritage management on an international scale, but also national and ultimately locally? World Heritage seems to belong to the type of goods that do not devalue even when supply increases. So at least for the foreseeable future the number is not a problem. The real issue is whether states are able to comply with the obligations and the standards of conservation required, and whether a proper monitoring system can be maintained as numbers increase. A change of monitoring processes to embrace the power of IT and foster civil society participation would be necessary, albeit this could be in conflict with State interests. Currently the official website of the World Heritage, linked to the UNESCO, conducts systematic fundraising campaigns focusing on private donors, especially natural persons. Something unimaginable decades ago. In your opinion, what did the withdrawal of the US and Israel from UNESCO mean, as the former had already done in 1984, and what are its impacts on UNESCO’s funds, ideology and geopolitics? The impacts of the withdrawal of the USA and Israel have been more of political than financial nature. The US stopped paying their dues to UNESCO in 2011, and in this past decade the organization has been able to absorb the losses and compensate with other funding. On the contrary, the absence of the US from UNESCO is a clear political drawback.

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Exactly eleven years ago, in a column written for the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, the britanic historian, Peter Burke wrote a text entitled Hunt for treasures, in which outlined your understanding of the repatriation of historical objects. In this text he stated that repatriation could fragment the collections of large museums and impoverish the world. The increase in requests for repatriation has occurred at a time when UNESCO, national governments, museums and the general public are growing concerned about what is now known as “cultural heritage". In the text the historian ask important questions: should each object of a cultural heritage given that, in the past, it was removed from its original environment, whether it was donated, bought or stolen, should it be returned? If so, to whom should it be returned? Do modern countries have the property right over something that was produced in the past in a territory that is now theirs? These issues remain highly controversial and the controversy involves governments, museums, lawyers and dealers. According to the text, the world would be impoverished if everything were returned. For he, some objects should be returned, but not all. Large international collections such as the British Museum and the Louvre should not be fragmented. What is your current opinion on this issue? How do you see the relationship between illicit trafficking in cultural goods and museums? As you can imagine, this is a complex and multifold issue that would require an ad hocdiscussion. The return of all objects to the countries of origin is clearly not feasible option today, as in itself this is part of the history of culture. However, selected returns are possible and even desirable, especially when and if there still is a living community that attaches particular value to an object (case of the body remains of indigenous populations brought to Museums, or similar). It’s a discussion that has just started and not yet reached maturity, so we need to watch and find empirical solutions. Other story is the illicit traffic of cultural objects that is regulated by the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. In 2020 we celebrated the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the AuschwitzBirkenau concentration camps. Again, the binomial pain/forgetting and memory/reparation that are re-edited from time to time in our society, come back to the surface. Those who visit the museification built in the concentration camps on the Holocaust narrative ask themselves what memories and stories are effectively preserved in places like these. In Bark, the French historian Georges Didi-Huberman wonders to what extent the cathartic pilgrimage of visitors to these sites, now recognized as world heritage sites, helps in the perpetuation of the messages contained in their material heritage. What is your opinion of the use of places considered to be traumatic, such as Auschwitz, Hiroshima or the Valongo Pier, for the preservation of world heritage sites? Places of memory are a rare occurrence in World Heritage and a major discussion is underway at the moment in the World Heritage Committee on the issue. The Convention is certainly ill-equipped to deal with these emotionally and

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politically charged sites, and important changes would be necessary to properly address an issue that risks becoming a ground for political statements. The solution may lie in a more operational and transparent cooperation with civil society organizations in charge of dealing with these issues, such as the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. People taking selfies in front of the Birkenau concentration camp, or even inside the crematorium exposed at the site, post their photos with words absolutely devoid of historical consciousness. It is the “picnic of disconsciousness”, which alerts us that regarding the Holocaust and the Nazi crimes there is not only the danger of negationism, but also of trivialization. What can we learn from this behavior? Again, places of memory are emotionally charged, and this is why they should be treated with utmost care. Their function in today’s world is twofold: maintain alive the memory of the events and create a space for reflection and education of the newer generations. In this sense, they play a major role in fighting negationism and trivialization. Heritage massification, due to the urge to know the places with the UNESCO brand, led to ask what we can call the “commercialization of heritage”, which consequently arises to the emptying of its meaning. What role should the various actors at international (and local) level play to reverse this situation? How can we make heritage sites places of knowledge building? How can we make them physically and intellectually accessible? There is no other solution to these pressing issues than a good organization of civil society. Tourism/gentrification/airbnbisation are powerful forces, able to buy out politics and people. A balanced development process, respectful of social and environmental values is only possible if civil society gets organized and counters the rapacious forces at play. This is the spirit of the international organization we just created: OURWORLDHERITAGE. To what extent could this lead to the “unpatrimonialisation” of sites? Are we already moving towards a time of “post-heritage”? What are the new stakeholders in a post-patrimonial context? What instruments can we use to create and safeguard new heritage in such a context? Heritage is definitely here to stay. What will change—as it has always been— is the way in which people value and invest in conservation. New heritage forms will appear, also because perception and fruition are changing due to technological and cultural changes. The line: “Today we know more and more about less and less, and less and less about more and more” seems to summarize the universe of heritage preservation. Enjoying and preserving are everyday verbs in a time that suffers the effects of a kind of “heritage inflation". How can the historian of the present understand this pendulum reality? Our culture has become increasingly interested in conservation of traces of the past (personal, collective), thanks also to technological advances. We have

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to learn how to select and let things disappear, especially in living context. The lesson of Kevin Lynch (in: What time is this place?) is still valid today. Do you believe that international relations in general, and linked to the preservation of heritage in particular, will change in a post -pandemic world? Of course, it is not an exercise in futurology, but can a historian who is used to studying changes and permanences be able to prospect what awaits us in the future but can a historian who is used to studying changes and permanences be able to prospect what awaits us in the future? Post-COVID changes are still an open question, especially as we don’t really know when and if the pandemic will really end. Certainly, some of the changes we were all forced to accept (teleworking, distant contacts, mobility reduction, etc.) will remain, both for behavioral and economic reasons. Heritage (and culture in general) has suffered massive income losses, and we will have to redesign its sustainable survival… Bythe way, what do you think of this iconoclastic wave of destruction of monuments linked to the so-called “wicked side” of the past? Another complex issue that is far from being well framed and discussed. Context (political, historic, regional) plays a major role in public attitudes toward the symbolic meaning of places and monuments. San Francisco has removed the name of Lincoln from a school, while the Mussolini obelisk is still standing in Rome, and so on…). This is an important reflection that should be gradually taken away from the emotions of the day and dealt within educational and cultural policies. And a final question, the last, but not the least! Recently you are an associate member at the International Polar Heritage Comitte (ICOMOS) and before that you were Assistant Director-General of UNESCO for Culture. We are talking about two completly different heritage dimensions that ask for different internacional approaches. Can you tell us something about this? Do you have a final lesson for us? I am always been attracted by the poles as a challenging area for human discovery, exploration and cultural and scientific advancement, and believe me, I have not been disappointed by what I have been able to see and learn. I have taken part in several expeditions both to the Arctic and the Antarctic, and discovered that all the issues we discuss in heritage conservation can also be found in those extreme environments (there is even an Antarctic Heritage List!), but largely freed of the ‘noise’ brought about by our daily life (from politics to interests). It is therefore easier to assess values and discuss ways to preserve them, even when cultural objects appear at first look small and insignificant.