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The Latin American Studies Book Series
Rodrigo Christofoletti Marcos Olender Editors
World Heritage Patinas Actions, Alerts and Risks
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 · Marcos Olender Editors
World Heritage Patinas Actions, Alerts and Risks
Editors Rodrigo Christofoletti ICH, Departamento de História Federal University of Juiz de Fora Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Marcos Olender ICH, Departamento de História Federal University of Juiz de Fora Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil
ISSN 2366-3421 ISSN 2366-343X (electronic) The Latin American Studies Book Series ISBN 978-3-030-64814-5 ISBN 978-3-030-64815-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2 © 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
Acknowledgments
The holding of an International Congress is necessarily a collective work. Translating the content of this congress into a book was an enormous learning experience, and therefore, in view of the result achieved, we thank the partnerships that made this idea possible. We thank the Secretary of Culture of the State of Minas Gerais for financing the fieldwork, embryo of the congress that resulted in this book. To our institutional partners who believed in the feasibility and relevance of this event: the International Council on Monuments and Sites—ICOMOS-Brasil, the Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) and the State Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage of Minas Gerais (IEPHA), long-term partners. To the Rectorate and the Office of the Associate Dean of Culture of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora—UFJF, which are fundamental in the financial and logistical contribution. To the Board of the Institute of Human Sciences, the Department of History, and the Graduate Program in History from UFJF, for understanding the importance of the event and helping us formally. To the members of the Cultural Heritage Laboratory—LAPA, the Heritage and International Relations Research Group— CNPq, and the UFJF Memory Conservation Center—CECOM, for their luxurious assistance along this path. In partnership with CITCEM—FLUP (Transdisciplinary Center for Culture, Space and Memory of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto), through professors Amélia Apolónia, Lúcia Maria Cardoso Rosas, and Maria Leonor Botelho. To Springer, in the person of Professor Jorge Rabassa, for the opportunity to publish in this prestigious journal. We thank the Directorate of International Relations at UFJF, in the person of professors Bárbara Inês Ribeiro Simões Daibert (Director) and Nilcilea Peixoto who supervised the translation of the Project scholarship holders—LABINT (Laboratory for Internationalization of International Relations) UFJF: Alyne Cristina Campos Cruzeiro Amanda de Assis e Silva, Felipe Monteiro de Oliveira, Jhulia Dara Caballero Granato, Luíza Modesto Silva, Nathalia Oliveira Celestino Magalhães, Victoria Lameira Machado da Costa and Vitória Medeiros Rinaldi. We also thank Vitória Acerbi, who helped us with the first translations of this book. Finally, we thank all contributors to this book and invite readers to think with us about the preservation of the world heritage/heritage of humanity as a link that brings us closer to our ancestry. May we explore this path together, with one foot in preservation and the other in action, successively. v
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World Heritage Patinas: A Metaphor to be Understood Patina is a term used by painters, otherwise they call it skin or crust that creates that universal darkness that time makes in paintings or ruins of yesterday and today. It helps in conservation and gives them an aura of being long-standing (...) (Filippo Baldinucci, 1681)
To write a book of this nature, in the scenario in which the country has lived since 2019, double doses of three attributes are needed: boldness, clarity of the social and political role that the public university plays, and mainly, a firm belief that events such as the one that resulted in this book strengthen the resistant atmosphere that we live in this moment. The origin of this book lies in the desire to hold an International Congress that addressed the management of world heritage sites, more specifically those that are urban, with special emphasis on those located in Brazil, due to, primarily, their significant existence in our country and the need to hold this debate at a time when we experience a scenario of institutional dismantling and cultural silencing that threatens the proper responsible preservation of these heritage sites. In addition to the collaboration of foreign professionals and research on world heritage in other continents, we aim to clarify the condition of the art of preserving Brazilian world heritage that has been sealed until now. We seek to respond to the demands that have been growing in recent years, which are a result of a more responsible awareness from various conservationist actors, as well as the need to better understand the dynamics, discourses, and practices of safeguarding these assets, especially in the face of the increasingly present threats surrounding their maintenance, conservation, and preservation. We seek, above all, to enhance the exchange of experiences on the management of world heritage in Brazilian territory and similar experiences on an international level, emphasizing the understanding of the processes of safeguarding and disseminating heritage.
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The expansion of the approach regarding cultural heritage and related themes that characterized the international debates, mainly from the 1970s onwards, broke the previous limited efforts to preserve cultural heritage with the formulation and consolidation of the notions of intangible heritage, world heritage and human heritage. The expansion of this approach is the result of the development of international relations related to the mentioned field of action. In very general terms, the concept of world heritage or the heritage of humanity (the first used most often to refer to material heritage and the second to immaterial) has gained relevance, and has faced clashes and debates in recent decades. Heritage is the legacy that survives and consolidates itself from the past and is experienced by our and future generations. It is our standard, our reference point, it is what identifies us. It is what Jean Michel Leniaud would call “a set of assets that one generation feels should be passed on to the next because they think that these assets are talismans that allow society to understand time in three dimensions”. (Leniaud 1992, 73) From the beginning, it sought to emphasize the exceptional character of the concept of World Heritage through the universality of its usage. World Heritage location sites belong to all people of the world and countries recognize that sites inscribed on the World Heritage List located in their national territory, without prejudice to national sovereignty or property, constitute a universal heritage “whose protection is a cooperative duty of the whole international community”. (UNESCO 2020) For this, world heritage is understood from a very broad definition. It can be a region or area that is considered of fundamental importance for humanity, or a single building, or even the architectural set delimited in a city, town or region. The manifestations, rituals, and practices of some communities can also be part of this list and identified as World Heritage acknowledged for their importance and/or cultural and historical singularity, providing the possibility of safeguarding such assets. Heritage can be the link for the maintenance of an inalienable human right: the right to inheritance and maintenance of one’s ancestry. The ability to access, enjoy, and care for heritage is essential to creating a culture of what the 1998 Nobel Prize winner in economics, Amartya Sen, called “the ability of individuals to live and be what they choose”. (Sen 2020, 176) The reception conservation fair access and effective sharing of the diversity of heritage reinforce and even expand the feeling of placement belonging, mutual respect for others, and a sense of purpose and ability to maintain the common good. These are elements that contribute to the social cohesion of a community, as well as individual and collective freedom of choice and action. But in addition to its inherent value for present and future generations, heritage can also mean an important instrument to contribute to the well living of these communities. And in the process of construction and consolidation of the heritage, the patina of time assumes a fundamental character not only regarding its constitution, but also, in the differentiation of each heritage. Patina, an effect caused by the action of time on exterior surfaces of architectural elements, and by extension, in social practices, is a fundamental element in the perception of the singular value of the heritage. From a generic point of view, it is
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often associated with aging and decay. This book presents a positive perception of the patina: the world heritage that experienced layers of time action needs to be thought of as a result of the overlapping of experiences, therefore, patina as a positive value. Due to the patina’s capacity to regenerate, it is essential that actions to preserve the world heritage consider it and embrace it as an inherent part of its identity. (Zanchetti et al. 2006, 03) The patina concept is relatively new. The first record is dated from 1681, in the dictionary by Filippo Baldinucci: Vocabolario toscano dell’arte del disegno. From the original meaning, it refers to a certain action that occurs on a certain object; the patina has evolved as a physicochemical concept to designate the oxidation of paints by the action of time. (Baldinucci, Weil 1996) Thus, the patina starts to express two notions: one that refers to the action of time on the object and another that concerns the result of that action on the object, that is, the patina is the cause as much as it is the effect. Starting from the ending of the eighteenth century, with the systematic constitution of a preservationist thought, the patina will assume a prominent place with the valorization of what Ruskin calls the “patina of time”, that is a fundamental element for its own differentiation in patrimony. This element that must be respected and valued in preservation because it affirms its own antiquity, originality, and exceptionality. The master key to understanding the patina is time; it exists only with its passage. According to the thought that patina is a dynamic process when removed, it regenerates and it is essential to consider that the erasure of the traces left by the action of man and nature over the years is the most common form of direct deterioration of the past. Patina must be considered so that world heritage does not lose its historicity and its main characteristic: being the great depository of human achievements throughout history. Therefore, we think of the Patinas of world heritage: actions, alerts, and risks supported by these goals, as a metaphor to be understood. 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 by elevating its status from a mere diplomatic strategy of good neighbourly relations to an elaborate tactic of soft power in different countries around the globe. Recently, international organizations have begun to see heritage more broadly, taking it as part of the speeches and agendas that make up contemporary global governance. Whether it is related to the idea of sustainability the fight against extremism or policies of citizenship and tradition, cultural heritage has gained much greater visibility and relevant participation, with an advance in the presence of preservationist organizations at international policy negotiations like never before, (Christofoletti 2017, 19) Cultural heritage is one of the captivating elements of this new international agenda, and a careful observation of the new world geopolitical map, and even the mapping of world heritage helps to consolidate this perception, which does not prevent a critical reading of such cartography.
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In 2020, 21 of the current 1121 world heritage sites1 in 167 countries are in Brazil, of which four are in the state of Minas Gerais: the Historical Center of Ouro Preto; the Bom Jesus de Matosinhos Sanctuary in Congonhas; the Historic Center of Diamantina and the Pmpulha Modern Ensemble, in Belo Horizonte. Up to date, few studies have systematized criteria for comparison and cooperation between world heritage sites in the state of Minas Gerais. The Patrimony and International Relations research group linked to the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development of Brazil—CNPq was created with the intention of understanding the exchange of the dynamics of the various actors of heritage preservation, nationally and worldwide and also presentings part of its activies in this book. More recent inquiries will be added to those developed by the research and extension group Laboratory of Cultural Heritage (LAPA) regarding the different dimensions and approaches related to heritage and its preservation. After the successful technical visits to the Transdisciplinary Research Center “Culture, Space and Memory” of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, Portugal—CITCEM—FLUP, at the end of 2018, part of the research group Heritage and International Relations was contemplated for the public campaign Circula Minas by the Secretary of Culture of the State of Minas Gerais. They were allocated to hold the 1st International Congress on Management of Human Heritage/1st International Symposium on Human Heritage of Minas Gerais in the International Context (counterpart of the public campaign), held by the two groups in partnership with ICOMOSBrasil, placing the city of Juiz de Fora on the international map of academic events. Part of the congress presentations give shape to this book, fuelled by the most critical discussions recorded in their round tables, conferences, and public debates. Those meetings sought to enhance the exchange of experiences on the management of world heritage, with an emphasis on those allocated in Brazilian territory, relating it to similar experiences on an international level, emphasizing the understanding of the process of safeguarding and disseminating it. Diffusing and safeguarding is a parti pris binominal. For this reason, it is understood that the universe of world heritage has grown every year and although we realize the increase of discussions about cultural heritage, in some academic spaces, the preservation policies and the so-called “diplomacy for heritage” still suffer from lack of depth among the studies of the so-called “hard power”, regarding themes considered “soft power”, which reflects in the sensitive disproportionality that concerns the international relations generated and/or provoked by these patrimonies. (Christofoletti 2017, 18)
1 This
number grows every year. The 44th session of the World Heritage Committee—UNESCO will take place in Fuzhou, China in July 2020, if the World Health Organization’s policy of social isolation has ended by this date. It is in the committee’s sessions that new guidelines are defined and the new world heritage is confirmed.
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The relation between preservation, diplomacy, and heritage branched out on themes such as the repatriation of works of art and cultural assets; the nefarious wave of heritage destruction sponsored by radical ethnic groups around the world; the increasingly incisive presence of research related to the so-called intangible heritage; the intensification of comparative studies between National States represented at UNESCO; and a relevant focus on colonies and the selection, reception, access, and safeguard criteria, and consequently, new formulations of international policies concerning cultural heritage and museums, in addition to other themes. As already pointed out previously, despite the emphasis on world heritage located on Brazilian territory, this book also covers studies on heritage considered “foreign” and even studies carried out by Brazilian researchers on cultural assets from other countries, thus enhancing the correlation between the local and the global. Through this approach, this book presents an overview of the most current ideas on the subject and also addresses recent issues in the sphere of heritage, paying attention to its possible relations to international issues and the so-called soft power (Nye 2004). At the same time, the dissemination of various heritages listed and legitimized by UNESCO has also grown exponentially, which is a criticism that some experts call “sectorial privilege” of some heritage, in spite of others that, consequently, are not listed. It is a fact that heritage that can be considered worldwide presents a distinguishable singularity that contributes decisively to humanity, and it’s not only those limited by the lists of a mutifaceted organization such as UNESCO. The imperative tone of this statement must be understood: heritage is everything that inhabitants deem as significant. This book is not indifferent to sectoring the recognition of the socalled universal values, which give substance to world heritage sites: we are attentive to this complex and contradictory nature of heritage and its managers. For this reason, it does not emulate naive propaganda about the panacea represented by UNESCO. However, if on one hand, we are critical towards an increasingly less capillarey approach and enthusiastic about an expansion of the heritage cartography present in the world heritage lists, whereas on the other hand, we understand the essential role played by the entity, which in the last few decades has expanded its presence in regions of the globe where the acronym UNESCO previously represented nothing. To have the dimension of the scope of the World Heritage listed and financed by UNESCO, there are currently about two dozen different platforms for projects and programs for the preservation of world heritage being financed by the institution. A quick visit to its website shows the plurality of actions carried out. A significant example of the collaboration between the public and private sectors is the Marketplace platform, which is a space created to bring donors/sponsors and projects together where it’s offered a wide variety of interesting and innovative projects to invest. By funding one or more projects on this platform, the donor empowers individuals and communities around the world who work to ensure that world heritage is protected. This is a response to the direct financial losses caused by the withdrawal of the United States and Israel from participating in the entity’s committee, which took place at
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the beginning of 2019.2 Unusually, throughout many decades, UNESCO started to use revenue incorporation strategies, bus less explicitly before. In this new scenario, among several actions, the narrowing between the natural or legal donors of the institution and the project platforms for the preservation of world heritage stands out. In a scenario of plurality of opinions, disputes over hegemony and overlapping memories, we ask ourselves: how can we rethink heritage and tradition? How can the preservation, conservation, promotion, and dignified survival of heritage live with the challenges of the future without disrespecting ancestry? Urbanization, climate change,3 global inequality, how can policies that transform the use of our planet be reconciled in the face of this frantic transformation? Some of the projects under development deserve special mention because they operate differently in the importance of the preservation of: education; management; new technologies; sustainability; influence of new stakeholders; improving the bases for creating lists for world heritage; environment and environmental catastrophes; armed conflicts and action by preservationist actors in both peace and conflict zones, and even of imminent danger. These are some of the fields of action of UNESCO, expanding the spaces of action, as well as the direct interlocutors of its programs and projects. If, on one hand, immateriality has been increasingly understood, analyzed and deepened through the actions of preserving the spiritu loci, on the other hand, the materiality embodied remains the motto of greater visibility on the UNESCO’s sponsored preservation programs.4 2 The decision to leave the institution was announced in 2017, but it was effective as of January 1st,
2019. The government of both countries justified the decision by citing what they claim to be bias against Israel and its policies adopted by the organization. At the time of the announcement, the United States government issued a statement mentioning what it’s called “UNESCO’s continued anti-Israeli bias” and the “need for reforms in the Institution”. In the statement, Trump’s advisors said they would continue to monitor the committee’s work, but as a non-member observer. Soon after the news, the then general director of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, regretted the decision. “At a time when the fight against violent extremism requires renewed investment in education and dialogue between cultures to avoid hatred, it is deeply regrettable that the United States withdraws from the United Nations committee that leads these issues,” he said in an official statement. The controversy between the two nations and the committee haves been going on since the beginning of the decade. In 2011, UNESCO recognized Palestine as an independent state. That year, the United States stopped passing quotas as a member state. Since then, the country has been a member of UNESCO, but has not exercised a vote because it did not contribute financially to the institution. See: https://whc.unesco.org/en/world-heritage-fund/. 3 The global World Heritage network also helps to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on human societies and cultural diversity, biodiversity and ecosystem services and the world’s natural and cultural heritage. For these reasons the project Climate change and world heritage seeks to boost the preservation equation through joint actions focused on the direction of climate change that affect the planet so much. WHC.UNESCO, 2020. 4 The following projects stand out: (a) Educational Resource Kit ‘World Heritage in Young Hands’. With the motto: “know, value and act”, this project sponsors the idea that education is the key to personal fulfillment, development, conservation, peace and well-being; (b) Engaging Youth in World Heritage: Developing political guidelines and good practices for States Parties and World Heritage Stakeholders reaffirms the idea that identity, mutual respect, dialogue and diversity are the pillars of positive interaction between the cultures of the world; (c) Building a sustainable global network of world heritage site managers, from which links and communication channels are
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To ease implementation, the General Conference recommended that Federal State Members take appropriate measures to adapt this new instrument to their specific contexts. As the radius of action of UNESCO is perceived in the face of the demands of the preservation of the world heritage, it covers diverse spaces and mobilizes a plurality of actions that grow every year, making its networks of action more interconnected. Sensitive to the political difference that often prevents some cultures from being represented on preservation lists, not only UNESCO, but also plenty of other actors must work more and more to build bridges that prevent isolationism and enhance the expansion of their preservation tools, which in reality means protecting the heritage in places where it is not yet preserved, without neglecting the maintenance of existing actions. The minefields of wars, the walls of segregation, the policies of erasing memories/ancestry, and ignorance as a tool for maintaining the status quo are some of the fields where the conservationist fronts must fight, under the stimulus of what their action represented until the present moment: the union of efforts and the maintenance of plurality. The development of conflicts between different political and religious attitudes don’t rarely exclude the struggles of the identity movements (ethnic, sexual, social, etc.) seeking affirmation on political and social spaces of different natures and cultural nuances. The crises of different levels launch our world in new scenarios and put it to established between managers of World Heritage sites around the world, providing a social media platform to share knowledge in the field of World Heritage; (d) Enhancing the credibility of the World Heritage List: Good Practices of the Tentative List: whose essential motto is the understanding that provisional lists are local inventories that are part of the cultural and natural heritage of a State Party, which have a strong potential for be inscribed on the World Heritage List; (e) Raising the perception of the List of World Heritage in Danger. Listing a property as a World Heritage in Danger allows the conservation community to respond to specific preservation needs efficiently; (f) The creation of a World Heritage and Sustainable Development Policy is the realization of a guide and a collection of good practices to support the development of national policies, programs and sustainable management of World Heritage properties; (g) Development of official mobile applications of UNESCO’s world heritage, which seeks to encourage the identification, protection, preservation and conservation of cultural and natural heritage worldwide; (h) the same goes for the project: Development of an online tool for the World Heritage Policy Compendium (2015– 2020). The current proposal is for additional activities related to the development of a compendium of online world heritage policies, which ensures that the compendium is an easy-to-use tool with easy access and reach; (i) World Heritage Adventures Cartoon Series. The Patrimonito cartoon series, World Heritage Adventure, is an emblematic activity carried out in the World Heritage Education Program since 2002. To date, 13 episodes of Patrimonito’s World Heritage Adventure have been produced; (j) Heritage Impact Assessments on World Heritage properties: database and guidance tools are part of yet another breathtaking project funded by UNESCO; (h) Improving the effectiveness of the reactive world heritage monitoring process whose objective is to strengthen the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, improving the effectiveness and understanding of its Reactive Monitoring process, including the benefits of registering properties on the World Heritage List in danger; (i) General guidance on properties of religious interest and their sustainable management; (j) Modern Heritage Program; (k) World Heritage and Indigenous Peoples; (l) World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism Program; m) World Heritage Cities Program; (n) World Heritage Forest Program and (o) Climate change and world heritage. All of these projects/programs seek to boost the preservation equation through joint actions. WHC.UNESCO, 2020.
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test the accumulated knowledge about the management and preservation of cultural heritage and his knowledge that has its production significantly western-centered. At first, if the approach of cultural processes are marginalized or considered little in the West combined with new perceptions from other corners of the world, bequeathed to us the construction of the field of intangible heritage, today it launches us to new perspectives instrumentalized by new non-western worldviews and new related knowledge. This already raises questions about the boundaries between material and immaterial, translated internationally by the 1972 Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage and by the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, both within UNESCO, in the fragile and imprecise conceptual boundary between world heritage and/or human heritage: the first is most used (but not exclusively) for material cultural assets and the second for the immaterial, although we prescribe the name, by UNESCO itself from world heritage sites to the former. This apparent “fragility” and ambiguity in the names have been combined since 1995, with the concept of Cultural Landscape to boundaries, therefore, a new path to be taken in which the very deconstruction of the borders between material and immaterial appear as contribution and decisive guidance in the search for new parameters and perspectives. This process can be perceived, even if in a timid way, in the selection of new world heritage location sites during the disturbing process of more fair and inclusive preservation searches. Dialoguing with this pluralistic dimension, the texts presented here have a common premise: they are all the result of qualified actions for the preservation of world heritage, in Brazil and abroad. Therefore, to account for the set of themes presented in this compendium, the book was divided into five complementary parts. The first part of the book discusses the Action of National Preservation Organizations and presents texts that idle between the constant action of the organizations and the challenges faced. The opening text, the result of the contribution of Jurema Machado’s work entitled The Brazilian Experience of UNESCO World Heritage Sites briefly analyzes Brazil’s international cooperation trajectory within the scope of the United Nations to posteriorly address the implementing experience, by country at UNESCO’s Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural, and Natural Heritage. The evolution of the concepts and practices of selection and management of heritage provided by the Convention is evaluated in a comparative way with its trajectory in Brazil, seeking to point out advances favored by international cooperation in addition to the visibility gain brought by the registration of assets in the World Heritage List. Such advances are specifically identified through the description at the registration process of 14 cultural assets and mixed Brazilian property inscribed on the World Heritage List, from 1980 to 2019. Fifteen Brazilian cultural sites are now on the list: seven historic cities, two urban architectural sets, two archeological sites, two urban sites, a modern city, a cultural landscape, and a mixed property—cultural and natural, and when analyzing the challenges and risks related to the conservation of Brazilian world heritage sites we must take into account who are involved in the process, what are the consequences of receiving the nomination and how to manage these assets in a sustainable way.
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In Preservation Actors: Challenges and Risks of Managing World Heritage Cities, Marcelo Brito presents the latest institutional initiatives developed to incite debate on administrative and operational measures to achieve this goal. From this, some national and international meetings were promoted by IPHAN on the themes of restoration of historic urban sites (Brasília 2002), management of historic cities (Goiás 2003), management of modern cultural heritage (Belo Horizonte 2017), world management Cultural places of heritage (Goiás 2018), and the economic potential of heritage through its tourist appeal (Porto Alegre 2019). Parallel to this perspective, it addresses some nongovernmental heritage conservation efforts, such as the Organization of Brazilian Cities of World Heritage (OCBPM), emphasizing positive results of strategic management cooperation, especially in its national meetings, of the Brazilian cities that have been nominated to the World Heritage List. Finally, it points out the main demands on the theme in Brazil that were identified and ratified in this process, in addition to indicating the responses that the public sector is willing to offer, which finally leads to reflections on the management of cultural heritage and the related challenges in Brazil. In Current Challenges and Risks for Preservation of the Historic Center of Salvador, Nivaldo Vieira de Andrade Junior addresses the current risks and challenges for the conservation of the Historic Center of Salvador, Bahia (HCSB), which underwent a remarkable process of loss of centrality, ruin, and impoverishment during the second half of the century, culminating in the controversial Recovery Program carried out by the Government of the State of Bahia, in the 1990s. This program resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of low-income families and the creation of a scenic space for cultural tourism, fully funded by public resources. In this context, the term “gentrification” is used to refer to very different processes. Facing, on one hand, the inertia of the public authority and, on the other, the “gentrification” processes led by private capital, several social groups have been organized to defend the conservation of heritage, as well as the maintenance of the threatened low-income population, while requiring planning and management to be carried out in a participative manner from HCSB. Simone Scifoni presents a critical overview of the meaning of the title of world heritage in Brazil. In World Heritage in Brazil: Reflection and Criticism, she problematizes the process of selecting sites carried out by the State, based on an analysis of assets that have already been listed, as well as the items included in the indicative list. The article questions what was released by the world heritage records in Brazil by reviewing the available information on assets that were designated as historical heritage and those that appeared on an indicative list, largely linked to colonization. The result is that, over time, a “colonial” heritage has been used as a brand that helps to shed a positive light on the period of colonialization, ignoring its negative implications and excluding its violence. An overestimation known as “colonial” architecture and urbanism and a positive light in the associated economic processes are present in a naturalized view of colonization. Thus, the world heritage in Brazil, expresses a colonialized mentality, rooted in the state-sponsored preservation experience. As the author advocates: heritage needs to be decolonized.
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Monica Lima e Souza discusses a very compassionate theme in the field of preservation. In When Sensitive Memories Sites Become Heritage: The Case of the Valongo Wharf Rio de Janeiro, the author argues that the meaning of local memories—called sensitive memories, related to the history of African slavery in Brazil, focusing on the case of Valongo Wharf—are the essential motto to verify the permanence of legacies that ancestry left to their descendants. Recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in 2017, Valongo Wharf is studied as a space for uniting local black communities that also seek to participate in the heritage process. From the stories that give meaning to Valongo Wharf, she highlights pain as an element that crosses the sensitive memory of descendants and makes the trauma of slavery a cultural process in the formation of Brazilian identities in the post-abolition period. Finally, she states that this collective trauma has not been overcome, and in her discussion, suggests that it is possible to learn and deal with it. Raul Amaro de Oliveira Lanari and Hugo Mateus Gonçalves Rocha, in AfroBrazilian Religions and Protected Urban Areas: The Cases of Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, Sergipe discuss how the Afro-Brazilian cultural and religious manifestations of Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, both cities in the state of Sergipe, are distorted by cultural heritage policies, in a national level. The key argument is built around the fact that both areas have a significant number of terreiros (sacred meeting places of Umbanda and Candomblé), as well as the presence of many Afro-Brazilian cultural and religious manifestations, however, low—almost zero—participation of these communities and practices in policies to protect cultural assets. This situation occurs regardless of federal protection in the Historic Center of Laranjeiras and in the title of UNESCO World Heritage granted to the landscape and architectural complex of São Cristóvão. Socioeconomic, territorial, and cultural aspects are analyzed in order to demonstrate how these Afro-Brazilian communities demand historical recognition and the right to remembrance along with the belief that policies and instruments of protection of cultural heritage can help them achieve other social rights. Luciana Rocha Féres and Leonardo Barci Castriota present in the text The Pampulha Modern Ensemble Reflections on the Complexities and Contradictions for the Management of a World Heritage Cultural Landscape an excerpt from the duo’s doctoral research (Ph.D. Candidate and supervisor, respectively), in which they reflect about the complexities and contradictions of the management process of the worldwide cultural heritage, specifically regarding Brazilian’s Pampulha Modern Ensemble, which was on UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage List in the cultural landscape typology in July 2016. The text seeks to reflect on the following questions: what are the consequences and effects of Pampulha Modern Ensemble as a Cultural Landscape on the World Heritage List? What are the contemporary methodological approaches to the conservation/management of a Cultural (Urban) Landscape? What would be the limit of acceptable transformations in a world cultural landscape without it losing its O.U.V.—Outstanding Universal Value? In addition to these responses, the text aims to demonstrate that the inclusion of cultural landscapes located in urban areas in the World Heritage List is a recent phenomenon, and as such, it requires a review of the concepts and methodologies that were active in the field of heritage management and preservation.
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The experience of the Jesuit-Guarani missions bequeathed important cultural references to South America, present in common territory to four countries, and which contributed substantially to the construction of regional identities. The missionary catechesis project of the Companhia de Jesus, incorporated in the Jesuit province of Paraguay, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, aims to reconcile Hispanic dominance and promote the socioeconomic development of the border regions through the formation of a network of fixed settlements (reductions) to concentrate the Guarani population. In text Reflections on Tourism in Jesuitic-Guarani Missions, Ana Lúcia Goelzer Meira and Luisa Durán present a critical assessment of what has been accomplished in terms of preserving this important cultural complex. The second part mobilizes discussions on International Preservation Experiences of World Heritage. Marcos Olender makes a genealogy of the emergence of the notion of world heritage, mainly from the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1972 Convention in which both the process of internationalization of heritage preservation and the construction of knowledge that, from the western perspective, try to embrace peripheral and/or foreign cultures, as it is the case with Orientalism. “Which Egypt will answer”? Some Genealogical Notes on World Heritage are the complementation of another text by the same author in which he points out that from the second half of the nineteenth century, a new sensibility was formed about the need for of implementation and promotion of international mechanisms that aimed to preserve cultural heritage. In this case, the concern with the formulation of a systematized knowledge of Egypt, appears with certain preponderance and participates exemplarily in the elaboration of the notion mentioned and its application. In a very informative text, Maria Leonor Botelho and Lúcia Maria Cardoso Rosas evaluate their experiences as professors who use the city of Porto as a learning laboratory for their graduate students. With the title The Experience of Managing the City of Porto as a World Heritage Site: How to Teach and How to Learn? the text seeks to answer the question: what to teach and what to learn at postgraduate level by having the city of Porto, a world heritage site, as a laboratory? This text addresses two pedagogical projects developed at master’s level, first in the History of Portuguese Art and then, in Art History, Heritage, and Visual Culture of the College of Arts of the University of Porto: World Heritage of Porto (2015) and Porto of Virtues (2017). The projects resulted in virtual exhibitions published on the platform Google Arts & Culture. Mario Ferrada Aguilar presents in World Heritage Sites in Latin America: Conservation and Management Under a Value-Based Approach an updated overview of the context of world heritage sites in Latin America, and its scope in terms of sustainable development. This new paradigm that should guide the conservation and management of heritage assets is exposed and it’s a pending and deficient aspect of the regional reality, since Latin American world heritage sites must have another fundamental purpose: to signify the relationships that people establish with the context, with nature, with territories, with authentic ways of life, with social practices, and with ecological means of land production. The text presents an understanding of the role that world heritage can play in the twenty-first century.
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Joanes da Silva Rocha develops a narrative in the text Immaterial Heritage and The Risk of “Forgetting”: A Case Study of the Hidden Christian Sites in Nagasaki, Japan that explains a “dangerous moment in the preservation of this memory”, since immaterial aspects of the subject, such as rites and oral tradition, are already at risk of being forgotten due to internal and external threats. The Locations of Hidden Christians in the Nagasaki Region are made up of twelve components in a series that covers ten villages, an archeological site and a cathedral dating from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus, based on official documents and field research in Nagasaki, this text analyzes the problem and identify strategies proposed by the Japanese authorities (Cultural Affairs Bureau and Nagasaki City Hall), in order to prevent the disappearance of this living heritage. Paulo Henrique Martinez’s text ends the second part. In Environmental History and Cultural Landscape in Israel (2003–2020), the historian points out that public policies and institutional strategies for research, preservation, and diffusion of natural and cultural heritage, increasingly articulated since 1992, converge in many aspects to the notion of Cultural Landscape. Cooperation and sustainable practices were strategic axes recommended at the United Nations Environment Conference (RIO92), and reiterated at the Conference on Sustainable Development (RIO+20), among other forums for international debates. In Israel, Martinez advocates in favor of the economic space and the construction of social memory acquired by investigating similarities and differences in social changes that are taking place in the twentyfirst century. The study of Cultural Landscapes in Israel, given its complexity and challenges for its protection and preservation, involves uncontrollably the management of public policies and of society itself. In order to understand the field the author presents, he examines two examples of sustainable action: the White City of Tel Aviv and the Route of Incense, taking both as examples of the approximation between politics and culture. The third part signals the dangers to which a large part of the world heritage is subject, inside and outside Brazil. World Heritage Risks and Threats bring together texts by researchers who have tried to understand the threatening dynamics of world heritage and how its tentacles are reaching more and more spaces around the world. In the text by Rodrigo Christofoletti and Vitória dos Santos Acerbi entitled Brazil on the Circuit of International Cultural Relations: Return and Devolution of Ethnographic Goods, the authors offer a snapshot of what has been recorded in terms of the return, repatriation or restitution of ethnographic cultural assets in Brazil. They present a comprehensive history of the return of cultural assets around the world in the last centuries, focusing on the episodes understood by the duo as more significant. From this abundance of information, they also discuss the legal minutiae that differentiate each of these actions, analyzing some of the most successful cases of repatriation of ethnographic objects already registered in the country. The selection of World Heritage in Danger as a theme, more specifically, the factors of risk that threaten Cultural sites derived from the understanding that the sense of loss is a strong promoter of heritage safeguard. With the present text, entitled:
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World Heritage in Danger: Case Studies About Some of the Factors that Threaten Cultural Sites, Inês de Carvalho Costa realization of a critical reflection on how endangered world heritage through a multinational perspective, based on the analysis of three case studies that can illustrate some of the main threats that harm cultural sites. For that end, several sources will be addressed from normative documents like international Conventions and national decrees, but also the documentation available on UNESCO’s Official Website. References like monographs, scientific articles, articles of opinion will also be analyzed. The essence of the research will focus on the evolution of heritage safeguard mainly from the 70s of the twentieth century, and until the 2nd decade of the 2000s. Finally, the present text aims to contribute to a global and more humanized perspective on World Heritage in peril. The recent damage caused by fire in historic buildings demonstrates the need to deepen the subject in order to avoid further losses. Fire is undoubtedly one of the most destructive forces in world heritage. Lack of maintenance and mistakes in asset management can lead to irreparable losses. Based on this premise, the text by Antônio Maria Claret de Gouveia, Giovana Martins Brito, and Ana Elisa de Oliveira analyzes the risk of fire in the semi-detached buildings located in the Historic Center of the city of Ouro Preto. Entitled The Risk of Fire in Twin Buildings of the Ouro Preto Historic Center: World Heritage, this text presents these spaces typical of the Brazilian colonial period, as potentially fragile, which make them more susceptible to fire spread. The intention is to point out fire preservation and safety measures that are appropriate to the situation. Therefore, the study presents contributions to the discussion by suggesting measures that can be taken by the population living in the historic center and entities responsible for safeguarding buildings with historical, cultural, affective, and architectural value. Denismara Eugênia de Oliveira Nascimento deepens her examination of trafficking in devotional works of art. In Plunderers of Devotional Heritage, she analyzes the attacks against devotional heritage through the theft of sacred works in colonial religious buildings in Minas Gerais. Such robberies and thefts show an embezzlement in the Brazilian culturally/sacred collection and mainly in the groups that experienced them. According to her sources, the State Prosecutor’s Office for the Defense of Cultural and Tourism Heritage of Minas Gerais, almost 700 pieces are no longer in their place of origin. In order to analyze the clashes surrounding the theft of these pieces, the author makes use of publications in printed and electronic newspapers to analyze the news about thefts of sacred works, dealing with the disappearance, and sometimes even with the recovery of these objects. Kathia Espinoza Maurtua’s text analyzes two recent cases of the depredation of the cultural heritage of Cusco, Peru based on what the author calls “corruption established in the official institutions responsible for protecting the cultural heritage and the ideology of modernity in the country”. In From Works Aimed at Favoring Tourism to Attacks Against Cultural Heritage: A Story About Corruption and Modernity in the Cusco Case, she denounces not only the consequences of its loss, but also the corruption that generates state neglect and the institutions responsible for protecting
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the Peruvian heritage. Maurtua deepens the crisis that currently runs through the cultural heritage of the city of Cusco. In this sense, she analyzes the case of the construction of the Sheraton Hotel on Rua Saphi, located in the historic center of the city of Cusco, lacking national and international provisions in favor of its preservation. Likewise, as a second case, she considers the construction of the Chinchero Airport to be a civil work in the Sacred Valley that threatens to put the city of Cusco on the list of endangered cultural heritage. For this purpose, she examines the actions of official organizations that put cultural heritage at risk and, on the opposite front, the response that national and local social groups organized in their defense. In Modernity, Huacas and Heritage Depredation on the Peruvian Coast. The Specific Case of Chan Chan, World Heritage, (1986–2020), Jeremy Gibran Dioses Campaña criticizes the binomial modernity/preservation, analyzing the influence of European modernity in Peru, and more precisely, its impact on the actions of social agents at all levels of the social structure. Being a key element to understand the social dynamics that affected the preservation of huacas (sacred spaces of Peruvian ancestry), the author analyzes the scenarios in which all the attacks suffered by the Chan Chan archeological complex are inserted, with emphasis on the last two decades. He questions what the government has accomplished in the face of the UNESCO ultimatum on the withdrawal of the title of world heritage. Finally, he seeks to analyze the ambiguity of the Creole figure, seeking an explanation for the plasticity in the misconduct that allows the inhabitants to idle between pride in their heritage and heritage destruction. Hebe Mattos’s text ends the third part of the book. In Memory of Slavery as Material and Intangible Heritage: The Case of Valongo Wharf and the Passados Presentes Project, Mattos reflects on the relationship between historical research and public narrative that seeks to question the political meanings behind the presence of the slave past in the present, based on two different experiences: the candidacy and recognition of Valongo Wharf as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and the development of the “Past Past Presents” memory tourism project. This reflection was originally prepared as a speech at a seminar to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the city of Rio de Janeiro, celebrated in 2015, when the author participated in the event to celebrate the city’s anniversary, revisiting this muted topic of the city’s collective memory, its role as the largest slave port in the Americas and everything that comes with it. In this text, she discusses the idea of a material World Heritage signified mainly by its immaterial value and the dichotomies arising from this double understanding: material/immaterial. In Part Four—Legislation and Ethnography for the Preservation of World Heritage Sites, discussions are held that address themes that are transversal to preservation. Among the approaches presented are comparative legislation, an example of naming the Brazilian list, the internationalization of IPHAN and an ethnographic approach to indigenous heritage. Virgynia Corradi Lopes da Silva and Adriana Sanajotti Nakamuta in the text Control of Movable Property Circulation and Network Performance: Perspectives for the supervision of Cultural Heritage discuss aspects
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of the actions in network within the theme of the inspection of cultural heritage. Considering the actions of IPHAN, its characteristic as a federal supervisory body and its role in Brazilian public heritage policies, they examine the activities of this institute regarding the control of the circulation of movable assets, which can be defined as the set of inspection and authorization activities that regulate and monitor the movement of assets across the country and abroad. Thus, as the authors suggest the network itself as an organizational system emerge as an argumentative possibility for rethinking the inspection of cultural heritage. Caroline dos Reis Lodi in the text Legislation on the Protection of Cultural Goods: A Compared Study Between Brazil and Italy, outlines, in general terms, the trajectory of Brazilian and Italian legislation regarding the protection of cultural assets, comparing the way in which each norm defines and covers the topic of guardianship, its developments in the field of institutions and its possible advances and setbacks. Assuming that the norm is an organizing agent that drives the protection and enhancement of cultural assets and activities and also considering the relevance of the European country, for the topic in question she understands that a comparative study with the Brazilian norms for the cultural heritage sector can contribute to the deepening of different mechanisms of protection, valorization and evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of each model. Carolina Martins Saporetti presents an unprecedented discussion about the beginnings of the internationalization of IPHAN, during the administration of the entity’s president, Renato Soeiro (1967–1979). In IPHAN Looking Out: International Relations in Preserving National Heritage, Saporetti breaks down the first attempts to build a specific policy of international relations built by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute, during the 1960–1970s, period in which it is understood that there was the biggest internationalization process of the institution. Soeiro was responsible for adapting the federal agency to changes in the international and national context and managed to reconcile the economic growth of Brazil with the preservation of heritage, this from the expansion of international relations, with the approximation with bodies such as ICOMOS, UNESCO, and OAS. Thus, this article is a brief analysis of the influence of other countries in the development of public policies and projects for the preservation of heritage in the indicated period. Priscila Enrique de Oliveira, in the text Indigenous Culture as a Heritage of Humanity. Safeguarding Immaterial Heritage Through the Experience of the Guarani Mbya of the Indigenous Land of Ribeirão Silveira (SP) concludes the fourth part by stating about the international declarations and conventions as well as the national legal apparatus about indigenous intangible heritage and its resonance in public health policies of the Brazil. The research took place with the Mbya Guarani Indians residing in the Ribeirão Silveira Indigenous Land, in the north coast of the state of São Paulo and analyzed the health practices of the professionals who worked at the village medical post, which enhanced the intellectual dialog with the indigenous people. The text starts with the following premises: it is necessary to maintain the safeguard of knowledge in relation to the practices of healing and corporeality; these
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are recognized by the State and from there their public policies can be implemented in a noncolonial, horizontal, democratic way, and above all, from the recognition of the protagonism of the indigenous holders of this immaterial heritage. Finally, it signals the need for public preservation policies financed by UNESCO to become more effective, especially at a time when the dismantling of indigenous traditions and ancestry continues to accelerate. If in the previous parts the world heritage was approached at national and international levels, the texts presented in Part Five—World Heritage of Minas Gerais— Disputes of Power and Memories allude to the disputes of the various social actors involved in the gears of the preservation of the state of Minas Gerais, presenting a local dimension. Adriana Careaga discusses in World Heritage of Minas Gerais: Challenges and Opportunities for Its Management the conflicting status of the heritage concept. From the questions: Which heritage to preserve? Who preserves them? Who is opposed to its preservation? How does the academy dialog with local communities? How do you educate yourself about heritage? Cariaga seeks answers based on the deepening of the concept of outstanding universal value. It highlights the dialog between international documents and the declared world heritage in the state of Minas Gerais and signals the realization of an action plan that contemplates several functions such as: sustainability, human development, exchange of values, among others. For this reason, it discusses the assumptions of Risk and Disaster Management (GRD) based on the approach of Living heritage, formalizing a propositional agenda for the preservation of world heritage sites allocated in Minas Gerais. In Ouro Preto: World Heritage, Benedito Tadeu de Oliveira discusses the current scenario of Ouro Preto’s preservationist actions, trying to answer the following questions: (a) considering that in Brazil there is an institutional apparatus for the protection of urban and architectural heritage, why the protection in Ouro Preto is such a challenging issue? (b) Are the established measures for the restoration and conservation of Ouro Preto’s cultural and environmental heritage capable of interrupting the uncontrolled and destructive expansion and putting the city on a route of development and sustainable preservation? (c) Do the challenges to reconcile urban development and protection of cultural heritage belong only to Ouro Preto or do they also apply to other historic cities? (d) What has been done to conserve the architectural and urban landscape of Ouro Preto? Their responses are surprising. “Past Festivities, Responsibilities”: Urbanistic Conflicts in Ouro Preto After the Seal of World Heritage”, by Dalila Varela Singulane, discusses how disorderly growth, irregular occupations and the devaluation of memory and history, led to what the author calls “consequent disfigurement of spaces”. The prestige generated by the nomination as World Heritage given by UNESCO to Ouro Preto emphasized, in addition to culture, the conflicts of an urban nature that could be observed and analyzed through the Rio de Janeiro newspaper, Jornal do Brasil, which over the months preceding the nomination awarded to Ouro Preto generated explicit conflicts between Jornal do Brasil and the then tourism secretary of Ouro Preto, when he was accused by the newspaper of “harmful parochialism”. Therefore, the course of this
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work encompasses urban disputes and conflicts generated in Ouro Preto between 1980 and 1982, from what is portrayed in the pages of Jornal do Brasil. In the text Pampulha Modern Ensemble: Reflections on the Complexities and Contradictions for the Management of a World Heritage Cultural Landscape, Flavio de Lemos Carsalade discusses the difficulty to recognize the Modern Complex of Pampulha as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, from its initial proposition to the developments that followed. Examined step by step of the process, through a critical reading. The Pampulha Modern Ensemble is shaped by a landscape situation that brings together five buildings articulated around the water mirror of an artificial urban lake, as an integrated result of the creative genius of the main Brazilian names in the arts and architecture in the twentieth century, Oscar Niemeyer. The set includes the Church of São Francisco de Assis, the Casino (now the Pampulha Art Museum), the Casa do Baile (now the Belo Horizonte Urbanism, Architecture and Design Reference Center) and the Yacht Golf Club (today Yacht Tennis Club), built almost simultaneously between 1942 and 1943. In this text, (interesting dialog to the article by Féres and Castriota), it builds an authorial narrative that helps us to understand the behind the scenes of this heritage until the present moment. Alexandre Augusto da Costa investigates in Dispute Over the Social Imaginary in the City of the Prophets: Conflicts, Environment and Heritage in Congonhas (1985– 2020), the social imaginary pressing from the dispute over the cultural identity in Congonhas, located in the central region of the State of Minas Gerais from recognition by UNESCO in 1985, as World Heritage to the present day. The city is the economic hub of the Quadrilátero Ferrífero and is home to the largest mining companies in the country such as Vale and Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN). In the Basilica of Senhor Bom Jesus de Matozinhos, one finds the greatest masterpiece of Brazilian Baroque artist, Antônio Francisco Lisboa (Aleijadinho), the sculptural ensemble made up of 12 soapstone prophets and the 66 cedar sculptures of Via-crúcis—Worldwide Heritage site. The central hypothesis of this text the development of the author’s doctoral thesis is that Congonhas, based on the UNESCO seal, began to rethink local identities, thus reflecting an imaginary that inspired a long-term vision that included alternatives to the economic vocation of mining, in addition to the rescue of identity ties with Portugal (a country that inspired devotion to Senhor Bom Jesus de Matozinhos) and the search for expertise in the management and promotion of heritage. In this sense, the actions of the main actors are mapped: City Hall, Public Ministry of Minas Gerais, Catholic Church, civil society, and mining companies. The book is concludes with the participation of Junno Marins da Matta, who discusses the management of the city of Diamantina, a world heritage site since 1999. In the text World Heritage and Living Monument, the architect makes a critical assessment of the last decades of management of the historical heritage of the city, presenting the actors, the disputes and the imaginary that helped to build the dynamics of the first 21 years of the city’s seal. The five parts dialog with each other, echoing what is most contemporary in the dynamics of preserving Brazilian world heritage and some foreign counterparts to date. It is not able to represent all the assets that are certified or even with the potential to be so, but it summarizes in a relevant way examples that make world heritage the
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universe where our demands are reflected, whether they are from the past, the present or tomorrow. If patinas are the crust of time and help the long-standing, as defined by the seventeenth century Filippo Baldinucci, may the actions, the alerts, and the risks of preservation be better understood in the valuable purpose of its essence: preserving to exist. Winter 2020
Rodrigo Christofoletti Marcos Olender
References Baldinucci F (1861) Vocabolario Toscano dell’Arte del Disegno, nel quale si explicano i propri termini e voci, non solo della Pittura, Scultura, & Architettura; ma ancora di altre Arti a quelle subordinate, e che abbiano per fondamento il Disegno. Firenze Christofoletti R (ed) (2017) Bens culturais e relações internacionais o patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Editora Universitária Leopoldianum, Santos Leniaud J-M (2002) Les archipels du passé: le patrimoine et son histoire. Fayard, Paris Nye Jr., JS (2004) Soft power: the means to success in world politics, New York, Public Affairs. Chapter One: The changing nature of power. pp. 1–32 Ruskin J (2008) A Lâmpada da Memória. Artes & Ofícios, São Paulo Sen A (2020) Collective choice and social welfare—an expanded edition. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Weil PD (1996) A review of the history and practice of patination. In: Price NS, Tallaey MK, Vaccaro AM (eds) Historical and philosophical issues in the conservation of cultural heritage. The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles World Heritage Centre (2020) UNESCO Zanchetti SM, Silva AF, Lira FB, Braga, ACEG, Gonçalves F (2006) A Pátina na cidade. Anais do XII Congresso da Associação Brasileira de Conservadores e Restauradores de Bens Culturais “Preservação do Patrimônio Cultural—Gestão e Desenvolvimento Sustentável: Perspectivas”. Fortaleza—CE, August 28 to September 01
Contents
Action of National Preservation Organizations The Brazilian Experience of UNESCO World Heritage Sites . . . . . . . . . . . Jurema Machado
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Preservation Actors: Challenges and Risks of Managing World Heritage Cities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marcelo Brito
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Current Challenges and Risks for Preservation of the Historic Center of Salvador . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nivaldo Vieira de Andrade Junior
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World Heritage in Brazil: Reflection and Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Simone Scifoni
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When Sensitive Memories Sites Become Heritage: The Case of the Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Monica Lima e Souza
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Afro-Brazilian Religions and Protected Urban Areas: The Cases of Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, Sergipe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Raul Amaro de Oliveira Lanari and Hugo Mateus Gonçalves Rocha
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The Pampulha Modern Ensemble: Reflections on the Complexities and Contradictions for the Management of a World Heritage Cultural Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Luciana Rocha Féres and Leonardo Barci Castriota Reflections on Tourism in Jesuitic-Guarani Missions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Ana Lúcia Goelzer Meira and Luisa Durán International Preservation Experiences of World Heritage “Which Egypt Will Answer”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155 Marcos Olender xxv
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The Experience of Managing the City of Porto as a World Heritage Site: How to Teach and How to Learn? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Maria Leonor Botelho and Lúcia Maria Cardoso Rosas World Heritage Sites in Latin America: Conservation and Management Under a Value-Based Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197 Mario Ferrada Aguilar Immaterial Heritage and The Risk of “Forgetting”: A Case Study of the Hidden Christian Sites in Nagasaki, Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223 Joanes da Silva Rocha Environmental History and Cultural Landscape in Israel (2003– 2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241 Paulo Henrique Martinez World Heritage Risks and Threats Brazil on the Circuit of International Cultural Relations: Return and Devolution of Ethnographic Goods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259 Rodrigo Christofoletti and Vitória dos Santos Acerbi World Heritage in Danger: Case Studies About Some of the Factors that Threaten Cultural Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Inês de Carvalho Costa The Risk of Fire in Twin Buildings of the Ouro Preto Historic Center: World Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Antônio Maria Claret de Gouveia, Giovana Martins Brito, and Ana Elisa de Oliveira Plunderers of Devotional Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323 Denismara Eugênia de Oliveira Nascimento From Works Aimed at Favoring Tourism to Attacks Against Cultural Heritage: A Story About Corruption and Modernity in the Cusco Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339 Kathia Espinoza Maurtua Modernity, Huacas and Heritage Depredation on the Peruvian Coast. The Specific Case of Chan Chan, World Heritage (1986– 2020) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359 Jeremy Gibran Dioses Campaña Memory of Slavery as Material and Intangible Heritage: The Case of Valongo Wharf and the Passados Presentes Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377 Hebe Mattos
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Legislation and Ethnography for the Preservation of World Heritage Sites Control of Movable Property Circulation and Network Performance: Perspectives for the Supervision of Cultural Heritage . . . . 391 Virgynia Corradi Lopes da Silva and Adriana Sanajotti Nakamuta Legislation on the Protection of Cultural Goods: A Compared Study Between Brazil and Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 411 Caroline dos Reis Lodi IPHAN Looking Out: International Relations in Preserving National Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425 Carolina Martins Saporetti Indigenous Culture as a Heritage of Humanity. Safeguarding Immaterial Heritage Through the Experience of the Guarani Mbya of the Indigenous Land of Ribeirão Silveira (SP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439 Priscila Enrique de Oliveira World Heritage of Minas Gerais—Disputes of Power and Memories World Heritage of Minas Gerais: Challenges and Opportunities for Its Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 459 Adriana Careaga Dispute Over the Social Imaginary in the City of Prophets: Conflicts, Environment and Heritage in Congonhas (1985–2020) . . . . . . . 473 Alexandre Augusto da Costa “Past Festivities, Responsibilities”: Urbanistic Conflicts in Ouro Preto After the Seal of World Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487 Dalila Varela Singulane Pampulha Modern Ensemble: Reflections on the Complexities and Contradictions for the Management of a World Heritage Cultural Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 505 Flavio de Lemos Carsalade Ouro Preto: World Heritage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 523 Benedito Tadeu de Oliveira World Heritage and Living Monument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 547 Junno Marins da Matta
Action of National Preservation Organizations
The Brazilian Experience of UNESCO World Heritage Sites Jurema Machado
Abstract The text briefly analyses Brazil’s history of international cooperation within the United Nations, and subsequently looks at the country’s experience in applying the Unesco Convention for the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, from 1978 to the present day. The improvement of the methods of the Convention by Brazil and the application of this experience for the improvement of the preservation policy at the national level are seen as the main result of the international cooperation for the patrimony. However, the moment is one of uncertainty and perplexity. What are the country’s prospects for cultural heritage at a time when Brazil is turning its back on international cooperation, especially in the fields of the environment and human rights. Will the Brazilian system heritage preservation system, built up over decades, be solid enough to survive these times of denial of universal values?
Dealing with Brazil’s relationship with the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage, known as the World Heritage Convention, requires starting a little earlier, situating the relationship between Brazil and UNESCO, or even earlier, between Brazil and the United Nations. However, any analysis effort should contribute to a reflection on the perspectives of international cooperation in the field of heritage, at a time of so many uncertainties and setbacks, such as dissolution of values not only at the national level but also at the international stage. The World Heritage Convention, approved in 1972, will be 48 years old in 2020 (UNESCO 1972). The reflections I bring here result, to a large extent, from circumstances in my professional career, which allowed me to participate in Jurema Machado—Urbanist architect by UFMG (1979). She was president of IPHAN from 2012 to 2016 and coordinator of the Cultural Sector of the UNESCO Representation in Brazil from 2002 to September 2012. She was president of IEPHA-MG from 1995 to 1998, in addition to having worked in the formulation of the Monumenta from 1999 to 2001 and in the areas of urban planning and control in the municipalities of Ouro Preto and Belo Horizonte J. Machado (B) Brasilia, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_1
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the entire last third of that period, acting on different sides of the world. Initially at the local level, in the preparation of the application for Diamantina; then, it was 12 years in the UNESCO office in Brasilia, whose role was to support the World Heritage Center in dialogue with the Brazilian government, and finally, in the direction of IPHAN, between 2012 and 2016, where I participated in a more complete and the most productive phase of Brazil’s relationship with the Convention. This good phase that I am referring to started around 2006, continued during my term in the presidency, and fortunately, continued with brilliance until 2019. How this path will develop ahead is one of the discussed questions in this text. Next 2019 September 24th, four days from now, the President of Brazil should deliver the opening speech for The Annual General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly. If he does not appear, a minister from his government will certainly deliver the speech. That is, in any event, Brazil will open the meeting. Despite the hostility of the current government toward the international cooperation environment, the concession of the opening speech complies, in a disciplined manner, with a tradition that began in 1949, exactly 70 years ago, remaining practically throughout the United Nations trajectory. But why does Brazil have the opening speech? Conceived with the utopian sense of rebuilding the world and establishing the foundations of peace in the post-war period, the UN was born challenged by the confrontational climate between the United States and the Soviet Union, a condition that has since removed both primacies in the opening rites of meetings. Brazil was one of the founders of the UN and the first country to join the organization. Oswaldo Aranha, foreign minister of the Vargas government, chaired the first special session of the General Assembly and the second ordinary session in the same year, meetings that went down in history for having approved the creation of the State of Israel. Brazil proved to be an active and participating Member State, very representative of the Western democratic values that emerged victorious from the war against Nazifascism. And, at that moment, it still held the sense of a great promise and the image of a mixed and harmonious country: the ideal one to open the sessions. This image of Brazil as a mixed, harmonious and promising society also permeated UNESCO in those early years, to the point that, in 1951, the General Conference decided to commission a study that became known as “UNESCO Project” to research. “This great republic [that] has a civilization developed by the direct contributions of different races and [that] suffers less than other nations from the effects of prejudices that are at the root of so many vexing and cruel measures in countries of similar ethnic composition” (UNESCO 1950). Conducted in Brazil by major researchers, such as Luiz da Costa Pinto, Roger Bastide, Thales de Azevedo, Florestan Fernandes, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Octavio Ianni, to mention only the best known, obviously the conclusions of the work did not confirm the initial hypothesis. The study pointed to the social distance between whites and blacks and ended up suggesting a plan to analyze social disparities and racial inequalities in the country (Maio 2000). All the opening speeches of the UN General Assembly until 2007 are gathered in a publication by Alexandre Gusmão Foundation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, whose introduction emphasizes that it is “remarkable the consistency with which Brazil usually presents itself and before the world”, always demanding the
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strengthening of the role of the UN and an international order permeable to the realities of emerging countries. Also, according to the publication, the UN has been a reference in the process of international relations in Brazil since 1945, the source of learning about multilateralism and international coexistence. As a good student of multilateralism, Brazil had prominent roles and cadres in what analysts consider to be “the great collective project of international society in the 20th century” (Seixas Correa 2007). Brazil participates in all UN specialized agencies and is among the ten largest contributors to the Organization’s regular budget, in addition to playing an important role in peacekeeping operations. It has or has had leaders in important posts at FAO, the WTO, UNESCO, the OAS and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. There are proportionally few Brazilian employees in the Organization. Sergio Vieira de Melo, the victim of a terrorist attack in Baghdad in 2003, was the most notable of them. Brazil also provides important rapporteurs for special commissions, such as the recent examples of Professor Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, in Human Rights, and architect Raquel Rolnik, in the Right to Housing. But, as ironic as it may seem in the face of the current situation, one of its greatest, if not the greatest contribution from Brazil, may have been the construction of the international environmental agenda. In 1992, Rio hosted the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Eco-92, which gave rise to no less than three important conventions: Biodiversity, Combating Desertification and Global Climate Change. The Conference approved the so-called Agenda 21, today a world-renowned brand, which helped to popularize the concept of sustainable development and brought the environmental agenda to the territory of cities, a fundamental theme for those who care for heritage. In 2012, the Conference would return to Rio - Rio +20—this time with more modest results, but consistent with the strengthening of the Sustainable Development Goals—the SDGs—and the United Nations Environment Program, UNEP. The Climate Agreement—the so-called Paris Agreement, in 2015—which definitively confirmed the risks of climate change and agreed targets for reducing greenhouse gases, would not have happened had it not been for Brazil’s role in articulating support from developing countries. In addition, the country is committed to expand the use of alternative energy sources and clean technologies, reducing deforestation and restoring forests. The Agreement is in force and has been ratified by Brazil. The threats by the current government to come out of the Agreement still hang over, although cooled down by the impact not only of image but above all the economic impact of the recent speech against the environmental agenda, a speech that was painfully materialized in the recent fires in the Amazon (remembering that Obama’s administration signed the Agreement and, later, in 2017, Trump’s administration withdrew the United States from the Agreement, which has been a “source of inspiration” for Brazil). Concluding the UN approach, it should be noted that the inflection that Brazil has shown in the field of human rights has been frightening, contradicting all its history in the organization’s forums and aligning itself with the positions of the most authoritarian and conservative countries; at the same time, that it has been charging for measures, internally, aimed at weakening the National Mechanism for Combating and Preventing Torture.
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1 Brazil and UNESCO Even though this is not the central objective of this text, Brazil’s relationship with the UN serves as a context for the UNESCO case and will serve us to reflect on what we may face ahead. UNESCO is the agency of the United Nations System that deals with Education, Science and Culture, created according to the same utopian perspective of acting on the “minds of men” to avoid new wars, choosing as strategies for this the diffusion of knowledge and the valorization of education and culture. Brazil participated directly in the design of the UNESCO creation act, in 1945, and was the 18th country to ratify it. In the process that led to the creation, the participation of Brazil is remarkable, whose delegation has remained active for decades. Particularly at UNESCO, Brazil stands out for its “good student” profile, having contributed to the formulation of all Conventions in the area of Culture and ratified almost all of them, except for the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage in 2001, which is a controversial topic that deserves discussion and analysis. With regard to the World Heritage Committee, despite having a somewhat irregular presence over the years, Brazil was a member for three subsequent terms (1983/99), interrupted its participation for eight years, had a new term from 2007 to 2011 and returned to the Committee, starting in July 2019. Even before the World Heritage Convention came into force, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos), already undertook actions aimed at the conservation and management of heritage in Brazil. One aspect of these actions are the missions of international specialists, which took place in the 1960s and 1970s. They deserve special mention for the developments that had those of Alfredo Viana de Lima, who proposed an urban plan for Ouro Preto, between 1968 and 1970, and that of Michel Parent, who visited 35 Brazilian cities between 1966 and 1967 (Leal 2008). The Parent report, emphatic in the relationship between heritage, development and tourism, may have directly influenced the conception of the Historic Cities Program, the PCH, the first major preservation program conducted by IPHAN since 1973 (Corrêa 2012). Between 1972 and 1981, several conservation specialization courses were the subject of an agreement between IPHAN and UNESCO and took place in São Paulo, Recife, Belo Horizonte and Salvador (Nascimento 2016). In Bahia, this was the origin of the Specialization Course in Restoration and Conservation of Monuments and Historical Complexes, the current Cecre, and in Minas the course unfolded in the creation, in 1980, of the Center for the Conservation and Restoration of Movable Cultural Goods, the Cecor. Both are currently masters at the respective federal universities and are major references in their field. Let us move on to the central objective of this text, which is to analyze what has been the major milestone of international cultural cooperation for heritage, which is the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage, known as the World Heritage Convention, approved in 1972 and ratified by Brazil in 1978 (UNESCO Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage). In the context of an international campaign to save Egyptian monuments
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considered invaluable to humanity, UNESCO decides to prepare a draft convention on the protection of “monuments and places of universal interest”. During the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, 1972, this preliminary project will join an analogous project that was being produced by IUCN—the International Union for the Conservation of Nature—for natural heritage, converging on the only text dedicated to cultural and natural heritage, in the form of a UNESCO convention. A convention, different from recommendations resulting from expert meetings, such as the ones from Icomos or from architects and other experts’ advice, is legally binding; that is, it implies legal responsibilities for the signatory states. For this reason, it needs to be ratified, that is, internalized in the national legal system, which, in the case of the World Heritage Convention, corresponds to Decree nº 80.978, of December 12, 1977, with 47 years of existence, 1121 registered goods and the 167 countries1 adhered to it, leaving no doubt that this is the normative instrument of greater adhesion and visibility among those conceived by UNESCO. The Brazilian experience has shown that the presence of a property on the World Heritage List expands the commitment to preservation, since governments feel more demanded when asked to defend nationality values against an international collective. Another effect already noted is the empowerment of local communities and preservationist movements, which use the Convention to pressure governments when necessary. The application of the Convention is valuable not only for highlighting exceptional sites but for contributing to the formulation of a consistent heritage policy in the signatory countries. So, it must be seen as an idea unfortunately subverted due to the obsession with the production of the List of notable goods. The List is the most visible face and a great communication strategy of the Convention, but it is not its main objective. The structure of the text of the Convention and the evolution of its guidelines and methods of application have correspondences and many symmetries with the preservation policy in Brazil (Machado 2017). The first analogy is made with the ability to adapt the normative instrument itself. The basic text of the Convention has remained intact since 1972, but accepts gradual improvements in principles and procedures through a periodically updated document called Operational Guidelines (UNESCO 2012). Similarly, we did the same with Decree Law 25 of 1937, which was updated in its concepts by the Federal Constitution of 1988, but which, as a legal text, was also kept intact, choosing not to formalize such changes in the form of a new bill. In 2018, IPHAN produced something similar to UNESCO’s Operational Guidelines by editing Ordinance No. 375/2018, which institutes IPHAN’s Material Heritage policy, consolidating refined principles and concepts over decades after the decree law. Another important reference of the Convention is the production of an Indicative List, a rule that requires each country to prepare a pre-selection of sites to be presented to UNESCO in a given period.2 The spirit of the Indicative List is to guide 1 Data
for July 2019. a better understanding of the Indicative List instrument, see https://whc.unesco.org/en/tentat ivelists/.
2 For
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a coordinated and coherent action in the submission of applications. We still lack something similar, that is, a reflection on where and for which categories of goods we wish to extend protection, avoiding circumstantial and reactive falls, which has been the keynote of our protection policy. The diversification of sites inscribed on the World Heritage list—diversification of historical periods, regions, languages, values—results from a deliberate and persistent action by UNESCO from the moment that the 20 years of the Convention were celebrated. This is another experience that, in Brazil, we have been going through in a similar way. The reconceptualization of the Brazilian cultural heritage has concrete repercussions in the diversification of the falls, to the point of offering us a representation nowadays, in the list of protected goods, which goes from the House of Chico Mendes, in Acre, to the Cathedral Basilica of Salvador. Another process that UNESCO went through and that has a great similarity with our trajectory is the improvement of the application dossiers, analogous to our registration processes. Two elements neglected at the beginning of the application of the Convention became fundamental, to the extent that UNESCO demanded that all countries make retrospective corrections to the old dossiers. The first is the explanation of the criteria for valuing the asset, which must be translated in a concise and objective way in a synthesis that UNESCO calls the Exceptional Universal Value— VUE. The second is the clear definition of the perimeters of the property and its surroundings, the buffer zone. Our tipping processes, whether produced by IPHAN or by other entities, most often extend into historical and stylistic descriptions, but do not lead to a clear conclusion about the values to be preserved, they do not define perimeters, while environments are rarely defined. This has been the main source of inconsistencies and contradictions that will show its consequences in the next phase, that is, in the good management phase, bringing enormous difficulties and conflicts. Finally, a born UNESCO skill deserves attention, which the organization has managed to advance even further over the years. It is their ability to build networks, a characteristic that is at their birthplace, when the technological resources and the importance given to “networks” did not have, by far, the dimension they have today. In other words, your ability to get others to do it, creating transmission belts, sharing responsibilities and commitments. In order to expand the capacity to preserve, there has been an increasing appreciation of the civil society participation in the practice of the World Heritage Convention, an example that has been extended and deepened in the most recent Conventions, such as the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, of 2003, and the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, of 2005. This is also the reason why the success of the candidacies increasingly depends on the management capacity of the Member States, largely translated by the others instruments that guarantee preservation, such as urban master plans or management plans. Our country’s practice tends to disregard such instruments in the overturning processes, not establishing with them the pacts that are essential for the preservation of effectiveness.
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2 World Heritage in Brazil The list of Brazilian goods recognized as World Heritage clearly reflects this evolutionary trajectory of concepts and practices. An initial phase, of marked presence of Brazil in the environment of the Convention, goes from its ratification in 1978, until 1988. In this period, seven Brazilian candidacies, six cultural goods and one natural were approved. Brazil strives to register its most established sites: it starts with Ouro Preto (1980), following Olinda (1983), Guarani Jesuit Missions (1983/84), Salvador and Bom Jesus de Congonhas Sanctuary (1985), which are all unequivocal landmarks of the colonial period. In 1986, the first natural good, the Iguaçu National Park, is registered, and in 1987, Brasília, the first representative of the Modern Movement to be included in the world list, a milestone in the history of the Convention itself. The case of Brasilia registers, for the first time, an initiative to apply for a cultural asset whose origin was not IPHAN. Not only due to operational weakness but also due to conceptual doubts, IPHAN had not yet protected Brasília by the federal overturn, when the governor of the Federal District, José Aparecido de Oliveira, fearful of the process of political emancipation of the Federal District, decided to take a step further and proposed the inclusion of Brasilia on the UNESCO list. IPHAN participated in the process with the contributions of a Working Group created under the management of Aloisio Magalhães, the GT Brasilia, but the legal guarantee of preservation was offered by a district decree, and not by the federal overturn, which did not exist until then. The listing of Brasilia by IPHAN would take place only three years later, in 1990. Then, the registration of the Serra da Capivara National Park is also the result of an external initiative to IPHAN, this time from a non-governmental organization, the Fundação do Homem Americano, directed by archaeologist Niéde Guidon. Ten years separate Brasilia’s inscription from the next urban site on the list, the historic center of São Luís do Maranhão. As in the case of Brasilia, the proposal for registration of São Luís is the result of an initiative of the state government, in the context of an extensive program of conservation works in the historic center. The application was officially processed on the margins of IPHAN, with disclosure restricted to technical areas and without social participation, as was the practice until then. The historic center of Diamantina, a peculiar and well-preserved example of mining villages from the 18th century, inscribed in 1999, corresponds to the first case in Brazil, in which social participation is the starting point of an application. Another particularity was that it had, for the first time, a municipal government as the protagonist of the recognition process. With the local economy very weakened by the end of mining, the city sought, in the expansion of the university and tourism, economic alternatives for the municipality, center of a very poor region of Minas Gerais. A communication campaign was created with a discourse focused on tourism and economic redemption, but legitimately supported by the strong community ties and living traditions of the city, which were highlighted in the arguments that led to registration. The Master Plan and the protection mechanisms of Serra dos Cristais, around the site, with the dimension with which they were proposed, were also innovative experiences for the application processes in Brazil.
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The case of the historic center of the city of Goiás, registered in 2001, has the same pattern as Diamantina: local initiative, search for an economic alternative for the city, social participation, preparation of the Master Plan and protection instruments of the Serra Dourada, in the surroundings. IPHAN did not have the initiative, but participated in the mobilization and contributed to the preparation of the dossier, produced by an external consultant with costs borne by the community movement. This position of relative distance from IPHAN in relation to the applications would change substantially from then on. On the one hand, the institution’s disreputable situation has improved steadily since 2006. On the other hand, the practice of social participation has matured and it no longer made sense to produce dossiers in spite of the affected communities. However, what explains the changes in the relationship between IPHAN and the Convention is mainly the international politics of Brazil since 2003, when the intention of having a cultural diplomacy—worked jointly by the Itamaraty, Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Culture—is clear. Brazil started participating in new international forums and initiated bilateral cooperation projects with countries with which it had no cooperation activities until then (Novais 2013). It was in this context that IPHAN returned, in 2007, to the World Heritage Committee, willing not to restrict itself to the reproduction of the concepts and practices consolidated by the Convention, but to actually interfere in the debate about the instrument, its application criteria and its results. Brazil returns to the scene, but this time as a much less well-behaved student than expected. The first measure of this new phase was the acceptance, by IPHAN, of the proposal presented by the World Heritage Center to create a Category II Center in Brazil,3 aimed at heritage management. The Center, called Centro Lúcio Costa, is headquartered in Rio de Janeiro and is in operation, although it has been experiencing chronic difficulty in asserting itself over the years. Another milestone of the period was the holding of the most important meeting of the Convention, the great annual meeting of the World Heritage Committee, which took place in Brasília in July 2010. At that meeting, the registration of the São Francisco Square, located in the city of São Cristóvão, in the state of Sergipe, was also on the agenda, an application also coming from local mobilization. The proposal that originally appeared on the Indicative List of Brazil was that of a series item—“Franciscan Convents of the Northeast”—object of much greater expressiveness than the Square alone. IPHAN chose not to frustrate local expectations and ended up strongly defending the candidacy, using a rhetoric capable of shaping the values of the good to a somewhat vague theoretical framework, such as the idea of universal value present in the Convention. In Brazil, few people followed this movement, but in the specialized environment, the political movement in Brazil, in articulation with countries that had long been questioning what they considered to be the exaggerated supremacy of the advisory
3 For
the definition of UNESCO Category II Centers, see https://en.unesco.org/international-net works/category-2-institutes.
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bodies4 did not go unnoticed. It has been the subject of several academic articles and an article in The Economist, somewhat acid and ironic, referring to the BRICS (group of countries composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and questioning the large number of decisions by advisory bodies that were modified by the delegates of the countries that made up the Committee. The Rio de Janeiro candidacy, with Carioca landscapes between the Sea and the Mountain, conceptually complex and innovative, was approved in 2012 after years of unsuccessful attempts. The structuring narrative of the dossier pointed to synthesis sites of the different dimensions of the landscape, which resulted in a sequence of discontinuous areas, an option not previously considered. These discontinuous areas are (a) the Landscape designed intentionally: Botanical Garden, Public Walk, Flamengo Park and Copacabana Waterfront; (b) the evolving Landscape: Tijuca National Park and its replanted forests; and c) the Associative Landscape, elements that received the hand of man and whose images project the city and its culture in Brazil and in the world: Corcovado, Pão de Açúcar with Christ the Redeemer and the cable car, the entrance to Guanabara Bay and its forts. This time, IPHAN, even counting on external consultancy, had complete mastery of the application process, to which it also associated a social mobilization strategy. The approval of the candidacy, as in the case of Brasilia, represented a milestone in the history of the Convention. For the first time, an urban cultural landscape is inscribed on the World Heritage List. At that time, UNESCO came from a sequence of strong pressures for radical interventions in urban sites registered in the List, as was the case in London, Dresden (removed from the List), Seville, Vienna. These conflicts originated the production of the Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape, (UNESCO 2011), containing guidelines on what remains one of the most conflicting themes in the management of cultural heritage, especially for the case of Brazil. The management mechanisms of the huge area that is part of the landscape of Rio de Janeiro are, surely, the most perennial and valuable gain of the candidacy: the creation of a Steering Committee brought together a group of urbanism, heritage and environment institutions from the three levels of government an unthinkable situation without a binding factor such as World Heritage status. In 2016, the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, in Belo Horizonte, was certainly the most objective and effective process of all experienced by Brazil. Several factors contributed to this: the object was clearly defined and recognized in the history of world architecture; Belo Horizonte mobilized a high-quality technical team, with a lot of accumulated knowledge about the area; the city already had an accumulation of urban legislation that adds up and, in some aspects, is even more effective than the norms of preservation, and, finally, the City Hall made bold and vital commitments for the application to be approved. At that moment, the maturity achieved by IPHAN’s international advisory was evident, going through the application step by step with method and rigor, distinguishing this experience from the “trials and errors” that 4 The
bodies that advise UNESCO on the evaluation of applications and the monitoring of goods inscribed on the World Heritage List are Icomos, for cultural heritage, and IUCN, for natural heritage.
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characterized the others. Icomos’ guideline was to classify Pampulha as an urban cultural landscape, materialized in an extensive buffer zone, which encompasses the typologies of garden-city installments that characterized the initial urban project and go much further. After recognition, the site management conditions became even more complex. Analogously to the case of Rio, a Steering Committee was created with the role of orchestrating the actions of the different entities. Three years after the title, the Committee remains active and plays a good role, especially internally at City Hall, but it has not yet been able to resolve differences regarding the rules on the buffer zone, nor to clearly define the operation of the bodies whose controls overlap over the area. In 2016, IPHAN presented a new candidacy to UNESCO, in line with the City of Rio de Janeiro and with social movements that were organized in the context of the transformations of the city’s port region. It is the Archaeological Site of the Valongo Wharf, a set of remnants of the wharf through which the largest contingent of enslaved Africans trafficked to the Americas arrived. Materially modest, the place is superlative in symbolic weight, moving to an extensive neighborhood, rich in African traditions, alive to the present. Valongo Wharf was registered in 2017, a candidacy made impossible by the eloquent representation of the crime against humanity that is slavery. However, the site is physically fragile and complex to manage, a considerable challenge for both Brazil and UNESCO. Finally, in July 2019, the first mixed site—cultural and natural—of the Brazilian List was registered, which won the title of Paraty and Ilha Grande—Culture and Biodiversity. UNESCO highly values the registration of mixed sites, due to their rarity (there are only 39 mixed sites, among the 1121 registered) and complexity, since cultural and natural values must be demonstrated with the same weight. Paraty’s first enrollment proposal had taken place in 2002—17 years ago!—and several later attempts were refused, until the narrative of the mixed site was chosen, including the historic center of Paraty and four protected natural areas of the Atlantic Forest.
3 Conclusion This is a path of visible maturity, which has been enriched, both externally and internally, far beyond the simple use of the Convention as an instrument to promote the visibility of the country’s heritage in the international context. We have evolved, among other advances, to take advantage of the application preparation process as a way of expanding social participation, as a stimulus for harmonizing management instruments and improving conditions for the preservation of assets. However, the current moment in Brazil is one of perplexity and uncertainty in the face of a country led by a kind of “sect”, which denies history, despises Science and Culture and rejects any ideal of humanity. An organization like UNESCO, dedicated to the ideals of the spirit, to the projects of the future, to the ideas of “common heritage”, “dialogue”, “diversity” seems to have no place in such a dissolving environment. A relatively
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reassuring figure, when it comes to heritage policy, is the fact that it has been historically spared, and in some ways even valued, during authoritarian periods, for being, in its most traditional version, an ideal of nationality that appeals to the most conservative. Skillfully, even in these circumstances, IPHAN did not give into indignities nor did it fail to produce with quality, obviously avoiding major conflicts. This has not been the fate of environmental policy, now fully exposed and massacred by the order installed in 2019. Recently, the theme of sovereignty has taken the front pages of newspapers, in a media game, aimed at the internal public, as a way of countering the criticisms of the international community for the burning in the Amazon. The concern to guarantee the sovereignty principles of the signatory countries has always been present throughout the history of the 1972 Convention, since its formulation. But, in addition to obviously having no implication in the autonomy of national states over the ownership of goods in their territory, what has been observed over the years is that the concept of exceptional universal value, which underpins the Convention, much more than concern with the “universal”, served to mobilize the feelings of nationality and the desire of each country to see its heritage recognized in the international context. In the case of Brazil, cultural goods—even Brasilia, the seat of the government’s headquarters!—never aroused such suspicions. The sovereignty issue only came up when the goods under study for applications were natural sites, especially in the Amazon, in indigenous areas or in border regions. In these cases, the Armed Forces, regularly consulted by the Itamaraty, have always expressed their opposition and sites with such characteristics had their candidacies aborted even before they were presented. The spectacle we have witnessed in the Amazon, however, makes us think that Brazil is indeed at serious risk of losing sovereignty over all this wealth, but that it will not lose it, as it is tried to propagate, to the greed of external agents. The country risks losing sovereignty to its own demons: disorder, lack of control, drug trafficking and above all to rural militias, morally sponsored by the State, formed by miners and land grabbers, such as those who promoted this “day of fire” in the month of August, 2019. The scenario is very difficult to predict. In the current situation, what seems to keep us anchored to the UN and UNESCO are not the values and principles of these organizations, in clear confrontation with the prevailing ideas, but the fear that an even greater isolation will bring economic consequences. Whichever path is taken, it is clear that, albeit on a smaller scale than in the environmental area, international pressure will make its contribution to curb eventual unrest. Our greatest asset, however, will be to persist in the bonds we create, from local communities to the international environment, using the institutionality of the World Heritage Convention, as an international treaty internalized by Brazilian law. It is necessary to continue supporting the belief in the existence of a “common heritage”, diverse and generous, a heritage that is the mirror where we will, hopefully, find our face.
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References Corrêa SRM (2012) O Programa de Cidades Históricas (PCH): por uma política integrada de preservação do patrimônio cultural – 1973/1979. (Dissertação de Mestrado). Brasília Leal CFB (org) (2008) As Missões da UNESCO no Brasil: Michel Parent. IPHAN. Rio de Janeiro Machado J (2017) Feito em casa: o Iphan e a cooperação internacional para o patrimônio. Revista do Patrimônio, n. 37, pp 245–284. IPHAN. Brasília Maio MC (2000) O Projeto UNESCO: ciências sociais e o “credo racial brasileiro. REVISTA USP, São Paulo, 46, pp 115–128, junho/agosto Nascimento FB (2016) Formar e questionar? Os cursos de especialização em patrimônio cultural na década de 1970. In: Anais do Museu Paulista. São Paulo. 24(1), pp 205–236 Novais BV (2013) Caminhos trilhados, horizontes possíveis: um olhar sobre a diplomacia cultural do estado brasileiro no período de 2003 a 2010. (Dissertação de Mestrado). Salvador Seixas Corrêa, LF (org) (2007) O Brasil nas Nações Unidas 1946-2006. Fundação Alexandre de Gusmão, Brasília UNESCO (1972) Convenção para a Protecção do Património Mundial, Cultural e Natural. Disponível em: http://whc.UNESCO.org/archive/convention-pt.pdf UNESCO (2012) Operational guidelines for the implementation of the world heritage convention. Paris. Disponível em: http://whc.UNESCO.org/archive/opguide12-en.pdf UNESCO (1950) The race question. Paris. http://unesdoc.UNESCO.org/images/0012/001282/128 291eo.pdf UNESCO (2011) Recommendation on the historic urban landscape, including a glossary of definitions. http://portal.UNESCO.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=48857&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_ SECTION=201.html
Preservation Actors: Challenges and Risks of Managing World Heritage Cities Marcelo Brito
Abstract In Brazil, the policy of preserving cultural heritage has been developed for over eighty years. The international recognition of Brazilian cultural properties has been established in the country since 1980, with the inscription of Ouro Preto on the UNESCO World Heritage List. After more than 40 years of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention (1972), 15 Brazilian cultural sites are part of this list, of which seven are historical cities, two are urban architectural ensembles, three correspond to archaeological sites, two of them in urban areas, one modern city, one urban cultural landscape and one mixed (cultural and natural) site. Analyzing the challenges and risks of preserving these sites implies understanding the actors of this preservation, what implications can be highlighted as a result of this recognition, and how to confront them with a view to providing sustainable management. The present text is based on the latest initiatives produced in the institutional field in order to contemplate, within the management framework, reflections and operative measures that favour the achievement of this objective. In this case, the national and international meetings produced at the initiative of Iphan in the discussion of the rehabilitation of historic urban sites (Brasília 2002), the management of historical cities (Goiás 2003), the management of modern cultural heritage (Belo Horizonte 2017), the management of World Heritage sites in Brazil (Goiás 2018) and the economic potential of the heritage in its tourist dimension (Porto Alegre 2019) should be highlighted. In addition to this, the text also addresses the fronts of action undertaken by the nongovernmental sector, committed in particular to the preservation of this heritage, such as the Organization of Brazilian World Heritage Cities—OCBPM, highlighting the results obtained in the process of articulation for a strategic management of Brazilian cities declared World Heritage, notably based on their national meetings. Finally, the text points out, on the one hand, the central demands of these cities in Brazil, identified and ratified in this process, and also signals the answers that the Public Power, Marcelo Brito—Director of the Department of Cooperation and Promotion of the National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage—IPHAN. Ministry of Tourism. M. Brito (B) Department of Cooperation and Promotion, National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage—IPHAN, Ministry of Tourism, Brasilia, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_2
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on the part of the administration, is seeking to give, culminating in the presentation of reflections on the challenges of managing this World Heritage in Brazil. Aspects such as the preferential attention to be given through customized investments, the construction of concertation processes between the public and private sectors and the citizenry in order to guarantee sustainable processes, programmatic integration in the face of the recognition of the transversality of cultural heritage and its economic potential, should be highlighted.
1 By Way of Introduction The first institution in Latin America to be created to undertake, at the national level, the policy of preserving cultural heritage was the National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage—IPHAN, initially called SPHAN—National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service. Throughout a trajectory of more than 80 years, it continues, in many aspects, at the forefront of the initiatives that have been undertaken in the region in response to a series of challenges in the preservation of cultural heritage. Created in 1937, IPHAN, as the Brazilian institution responsible for this policy with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization— UNESCO, started promoting international recognition of Brazilian cultural heritage from 1980, when the registration of the historic city of Ouro Preto on the World Heritage List was held. The Brazilian ratification of the 1972 World, Natural and Cultural Heritage Convention, took place in 1977. After more than 40 years of its validity, 15 cultural sites comprise a total of 1121 registered goods in a group of 167 countries that have ratified it, of which 869 are cultural properties, 213 natural properties, and 39 mixed properties. The current Brazilian contribution to the list, in quantitative terms, is still not so expressive, despite being the South American country with the largest number of registered properties: 22 properties, of which 15 are cultural. However, this is not the central attention that the Brazilian Government gives to this international representation. For IPHAN, as a cultural focal point of World Heritage sites with UNESCO, the contribution that it can provide with the registration of each asset is more important, either due to the concept of heritage it presents, through the management practice it advocates, or through the challenges that each application process imposes on all the actors involved increasingly, including the theme of heritage in national development strategies. Of this set of assets, seven are historic cities, two are urban architectural sets, three correspond to archeological sites, two of which are in urban areas, a modern city, an urban cultural landscape and a mixed site (cultural and natural). Each of these sites potentially provides experiences and expresses challenges that impose different efforts on the part of those responsible for ensuring their exceptional universal value.1 1 As
of December 2019, the Brazilian sites (cultural and mixed) declared as World Heritage are the historic city of Ouro Preto (1980), historic center of the city of Olinda (1982), Jesuit Missions of the
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Analyzing the challenges and risks of preserving these sites implies understanding in this trajectory who are the actors in this preservation, what implications can be highlighted as a result of this recognition and how to confront them with a view to providing sustainable management. These have been the biggest bets that IPHAN has been putting on its performance in this field, aiming at the relationship between the process of international recognition and the opportunity to improve its preservation policies and management practices on those recognized heritages.
2 By Way of Analysis Here, a number of aspects could be pointed out to be used to analyze the challenges and risks of preserving cultural sites declared as World Heritage. For the purposes of the proposed objectives and reflection, the following can be highlighted: I. Latest initiatives produced in the institutional field; II. Performance fronts undertaken by the non-governmental sector; III. Central demands of these historic cities are world heritage sites. For the purpose of what is intended here, I would like to highlight the initiatives produced at the institutional level directly related to the objective of reflecting on the topic at hand, in order to provide in the field of management a greater understanding of the challenges that are present. Therefore, the national and international meetings produced by the initiative of IPHAN and which deserve to be highlighted, due to their objectives, their agenda and their developments, even if they are different from each other, should be highlighted. The first of them, the International Seminar on the Rehabilitation of Urban Historic Sites, held in Brasília, in 2002, focused on the problems related to the intervention, and because of this, the conceptual approach to rehabilitation as a procedure and political-institutional orientation and technique has to be followed. Structured with the objective to expose and ratify assumptions for the urban rehabilitation of historic sites in the Brazilian context, it also combined the presentation of national experiences resulting from government programs that were under surveillance at the time, such as the Monumenta Program, the Program for the Revitalization of Historic Sites and the Urbis Program. Among them are the presentation of international experiences, from different latitudes and premises that emphasized intervention models directly related to the economic capacity installed in these countries, resulting from their macroeconomic principles, having as references the Cuban, Argentine and Portuguese cases. Guaranis. Ruins of São Miguel das Missões (1983), historic center of Salvador (1985), Bom Jesus de Congonhas Sanctuary (1985), Brasília (1987), Serra da Capivara National Park (1991), historic center of São Luís (1997), historic center of Diamantina (1999), historic center of Goiás (2001), São Francisco Square in São Cristóvão (2010), Pampulha Modern Ensemble (2016), Valongo Wharf (2017), Rio de Janeiro, Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea (2012) and Paraty and Ilha Grande: cultural and biodiversity (2019). See UNESCO. WHC. World Heritage List. Available at: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. Accessed: 25 April 2020.
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Also, the presentation of urban rehabilitation experiences in Brazilian cities, especially capital cities, addresses what happened in São Luís, Recife, Salvador, Belém and Ouro Preto. Finally, the action of museums in urban dynamics is addressed, with statements about the contents provided by the Imperial Museum, in Petrópolis, and the Museum of Inconfidência, in Ouro Preto. From this arsenal of information conveyed, working groups were formed to discuss specific topics, such as the legal aspects of urban rehabilitation of historic sites; the financing of this urban rehabilitation; the promotion and participation of the public, private and cooperative sectors in this process; historical archeology applied to the process of urban rehabilitation of historic sites; the information system, indicators and evaluation of these actions in these areas; and the museological action in education for the urban rehabilitation of these sites. As can be seen from the above, the following objectives can be mentioned in carrying out this meeting2 : (a) “To debate and reflect on experiences of urban rehabilitation of historic sites in Brazil and abroad; (b) Enable the deepening of urban rehabilitation issues through access to specific information on this issue; (c) Identify consensual aspects related to current conservation policies and practices, seeking greater conceptual homogenization of urban preservation, considering the rehabilitation processes and the concept of expanded sustainability; (d) Collect subsidies for the formulation of a complementary bill on the management of urban historic sites; and (e) Consolidate a conclusive document of recommendations for the preservation of urban cultural heritage, in order to guide the process of formulating municipal master plans for cities with listed historic sites”. Of the exchanges and debates that have taken place, it is worth emphasizing here some transcendent aspects: the first, related to the very concept of urban rehabilitation, which, at the time, was considered still new and permeated by several meanings that demanded a greater conceptual alignment that is still seen as a demand. From this perspective, and from the point of view of the built heritage, the recognition of specific regimes should guide this intervention, according to the nature and the recipient of the enterprise, as well as the type of entrepreneur, with specific financing conditions (Brito Apud IPHAN 2003, 04). With regard to the concept of urban rehabilitation, to understand it as an intervention that aims to combine “strategic urban management actions aimed at the requalification of the areas where it operates, through interventions aimed at enhancing its functional and socioeconomic potentialities and, consequently, improving the living conditions of the resident population”, constituting “procedures based on a basic tripod, that is, physical recovery, associated with urban functional revitalization and improvement of local management” (Brito Apud IPHAN 2003, 07).
2 IPHAN
(2003), p. 04.
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On the other hand, regarding its operating fields, the following can be highlighted, based on the experience produced so far: (a) “Free rehabilitation: produced by the market for the market; that is, the developer rehabilitates the property for later selling or leasing at market price. It is an operation that must be carried out with the financial instruments of compatible incentives; (b) Protected rehabilitation of public initiative: promoted by the State, of public interest or social character, it is destined to own assets and/or to disadvantaged and low-income population sectors. In this case, the developer rehabilitates the property for its own use (of institutional nature) or that of a third party (of public and/or collective nature) or for the maintenance of its current occupants, either through the current lease legislation or for its preferential sale to current occupants at compatible and subsidized prices; and (c) Protected rehabilitation of private initiative: promoted by the market, of private initiative but of social character, it is destined to own assets and/or disadvantaged sectors of medium to low income. In this case, the private developer (an individual or legal entity under private law) rehabilitates the property for the maintenance of its current occupants (tenants), either through the current lease legislation or through its preferential sale to current occupants at compatible prices and subsidized” (Brito Apud IPHAN 2003, 08). In summary, in view of the debates that have taken place, the following proposals for operational measures for the countryside can be highlighted, with a view to building a new management of historic sites in cities: (a) In relation to the legal aspects of urban rehabilitation in historic sites, a complementary bill should be formulated and implemented, aimed at the management of these sites and that the legal instruments established in housing policies in its various spheres of government include the preservation of the existing built park, especially those located in the central and culturally interesting areas; (b) In relation to the financing of the urban rehabilitation of historic sites, a national rehabilitation fund should be created for use in urban centers of heritage interest, as well as a national management commission aimed at the establishment of policies for the application of these resources according to criteria qualification of the municipalities to be served, and in this sense, the constitution of local management commissions, autonomous entities and with their own legal personality to create and manage local rehabilitation funds, thus providing a networked governance across the country to face the challenge of rehabilitation; (c) In relation to the promotion and participation of the public, private and cooperative sectors in the urban rehabilitation process, the institution of a national forum listed cities to discuss the problems related to the preservation of their historic sites and point out the relevant solutions, considering the application knowledge and communication tools about this heritage, such as inventories and heritage education programs;
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(d) In relation to archeology applied to the process of urban rehabilitation of historic sites, the need for a conceptualization of the understanding of historic archeological sites and, on the other hand, for the incorporation of recommendations on the dimension of historic archeology for projects of urban intervention and conservation of structures and archeological remains; (e) In relation to the information system, indicators and evaluation of actions for the urban rehabilitation of historic sites, the creation of an information system, especially for the production of updated cartographic bases of cities with protected areas, indicating the production of inventories and other surveys could be developed to help and support urban rehabilitation actions; and (f) In relation to museological action in education for the urban rehabilitation of historic sites, the importance of the museum space as an organic agent in improving the quality of life of the communities and in the process of local development when implementing the rehabilitation process was recognized (Brito Apud IPHAN 2003, 08). Another important initiative, the First National Meeting of Historic Cities, held in Goiás, 2003, sought to deal with the management of historic cities in an incisive manner that resulted in the municipal managers of sites declared World Heritage claiming a priority within the scope of government policies and asking for recognition of their additional responsibility attributed to these post-recognition managers without due and corresponding assistance, especially financial aid. Technically, they could continue to rely on IPHAN’s technical expertise in matters related to the preservation of their historic sites and, in addition, from UNESCO through international technical assistance procedures that would be applied when necessary. On the basis of discussion on the need to build a shared management within the scope of this cultural heritage, the meeting was attended by several mayors of historic cities, including those that have sites declared World Heritage. It highlighted the need in functioning by focusing on management problems, the issue of shared management as central, and debated IPHAN’s proposals at the time for the promotion of management mechanisms and instruments that could face this challenge on local management commissions and plans for the preservation of historic urban sites. The local management commissions would correspond to instances instituted by the public power composed of representatives of the institutions at the three levels of government—federal, state and municipal—responsible for the preservation of cultural heritage in their respective political–administrative spheres, in addition to representatives of civil society directly related to the matter. Previous experiences provided by IPHAN and welcomed by the municipal administration, as was the case of Olinda during the process of redemocratization of the country, in 1985, allowed to debate and guide, at that moment, the constitution of these instances, in order to allow greater articulation, convergence and coordination of actions. The plans for the preservation of urban historic sites—PPSH considered the challenge that the preservation of urban historic sites imposed in Brazil, the search for new forms of action that would enable the effective preservation of these sites, understanding that the preservation of these historic urban sites should be supported in
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urban planning and management, and that it was necessary to provide an instrument capable of consolidating an urban culture of heritage. The preservation plan was proposed and designed by IPHAN as an instrument that, recognizing the territorial base of interest for the preservation, should be able to incorporate aspects of urbanism into the analysis of heritage problems that would make the existing problems understandable and would point to initiatives in a broader approach, that is, beyond the isolated monument. Thinking of its normative, strategic and operational dimensions, it intended to address the preservation of urban cultural heritage throughout its management cycle, that is, from a general term of reference, to guide its formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation (Brito 2005). In short, the PPSH proposed to3 : (a) “seek the institution of a regime of urbanistic and building discipline compatible with the regime of protection of urban historic sites; (b) make comprehensible and explicit the principles, criteria and norms of preservation that should guide public and private actions in the listed sites at the federal level; (c) create new standards for approaching the preservation of urban historic sites, supported by urban planning and management; (d) improve and intensify the articulation between the different political and administrative spheres with competence in these areas, aiming at a greater efficiency in the management of urban cultural heritage; and (e) deal effectively with the new social, economic and environmental role attributed to urban cultural heritage”. The PPSH, therefore, had the objective to: (a) preserve the city’s cultural heritage for its population and for the collectivity; (b) provide the establishment of guidelines and regulations for the guidance, planning and promotion of actions to preserve urban historic sites; (c) promote a concerted public action; (d) integrate proposed actions with a view to achieve an urban preservation process; (e) focus and territorialize sectoral policies in urban historical sites; and (f) promote the sharing of responsibilities between the various public agents involved and their common application. In this way, the preservation plan “was designed to check, based on the accumulated experience, possibilities for its application in the future in other areas of the city, since in its conceptual framework the desire for preservation to be understood was clearly established and treated as an urban phenomenon, that is, a form of urban development and no longer an action of exception and exceptionality in the city” (Brito 2009, 150). Thus, the intention was, based on a government program, to establish strategic action that advocates the construction of a shared management of 3 IPHAN. Ordinance nº 299, 6 July (2004), Brasília. Section 1: To create the Plan for the Preservation
of the Historic Urban Site—PPSH (Criar o Plano de Preservação de Sítio Histórico Urbano - PPSH). See: http://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/legislacao/Portaria_n_299_de_6_de_Julho_de_2004.pdf.
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actions and responsibilities for the preservation of cultural heritage in cities, based on the institution of: (a) A shared management mechanism, materialized in the Local Management Committee, aimed at providing the necessary and adequate intergovernmental and interinstitutional articulation between public administration and society, as well as the integration of traditional sectorial areas that affect the urban (housing, basic sanitation and urban transport) to the areas of employment and income, education, environment, culture and tourism, among others; and (b) An instrument of shared management, materialized in the preservation plan, constituting an instrument of a normative, strategic and operational nature for these sectors of the cities, destined to define strategically and physicallyspatially the actions in the area, according to the public, private and cooperative sectors and in the segments referring, in principle, to: i. recovery of public and private buildings for residential, commercial, service and mixed uses; ii. recovery and/or installation of urban infrastructure such as basic sanitation, compatible public lighting, road system, etc.; iii. recovery of public spaces, such as green areas, parks, gardens, squares, boulevards etc.; iv. recovery and/or installation of collective cultural equipment such as museums, libraries, cinemas, theaters and/or public services of proximity; v. recovery and/or installation of compatible urban furniture, such as urban, tourist and cultural signage, lamps, kiosks, bus stops, fountains, sculptures, banks, etc.; vi. stimulate the revitalization of local activities that generate employment and income, associated with the socio-cultural and economic dynamism of the area, with special attention to micro and small companies and the cooperative sector in the training and qualification of entrepreneurs for generating business, such as handicrafts and cultural tourism; vii. support the revitalization of installed capacity in the area, through the implementation of school workshops for training and recycling of labor in urban rehabilitation tasks, as well as in the training and qualification of entrepreneurs for the generation of businesses focused on aspects and added values to these historic sites, especially in those sectors related to handicrafts and cultural tourism” (Brito Apud IPHAN 2002). It is worth mentioning the initiative carried out in Belo Horizonte, by IPHAN, in 2017, regarding the International Seminar on Challenges in the Management of Modern Cultural Heritage, in response to the Brazilian Government’s commitment to UNESCO, due to the recognition of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble as Heritage in the previous year. This technical meeting, due to the nature of its theme, focused on the problems of intervention on heritage, highlighting the importance of preventive maintenance as a basic procedure that needs to be assumed in a more forceful and generalized way within the scope of policies for the cultural heritage preservation. In fact, the modern heritage, for what it enshrines and represents, in general, is difficult to apprehend
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and consider, having seen how the urban centers of many Brazilian cities are found in particular. Thus, the meeting, in order to deepen the discussions related to the heritage assets of modern architecture and urbanism, especially in its aspects of protection, conservation and management, was organized in two emblematic moments, related to the specific themes of the Brazilian assets that are declared as World Heritage, in the representation of Brazilian expression to the international movement: Pampulha Modern Ensemble, in Belo Horizonte/MG, which, at the time, had celebrated a year of recognition by UNESCO, and the Urban Ensemble in Brasília/DF, which has already been on the World Heritage List for 30 years. In this sense, issues related to the interventions produced in this heritage typology, whether from the point of view of conservation or management, both for the techniques and materials used, in general, different from what were traditionally used, brought up discussions regarding the intervention criteria, the relationship with the technologies used, the context with the urban environment, the integrated movable properties, and so many other specific issues of the 20th century architecture and urbanism.4 On the occasion, the approximation with international cases allowed to obtain information and exchange experiences regarding the challenge of managing this heritage, in order to promote institutional strengthening actions through the expansion of international cooperation with countries with similar cases of cultural heritage, recognized by UNESCO and related to modernist properties. Thus, international experiences from UNESCO-recognized sites, such as the White City of Tel Aviv (Israel), Le Havre (France) and the Central Campus of the National Autonomous University City of Mexico—UNAM (Mexico), offered valuable subsidies to advance the more comprehensive discussions on the management of Brazilian modernist assets that are covered by IPHAN. Currently, 46 representative assets of the modern movement are protected by the Federal Law on preservation of cultural heritage throughout the national territory (Figs. 1, 2 and 3). From this meeting, the following recommendations were highlighted5 : (a) “From the point of view of Identification: Inventories must be prepared in collaboration with federative entities, with the participation of the community, in order to identify the cultural meanings attributed to the property; (b) From the point of view of Recognition: the recognition of Modern Heritage must consider its cultural significance, in agreement with local communities and public agents; (c) From the point of view of Conservation: the development of standards must have a guiding character, with views to manage interventions and functional dynamics in order to maintain the cultural significance of the property. The conservation of Modern Heritage assets implies considering their production processes and the conservation of that heritage must also cover the related documentation; 4 IPHAN.
International Seminar: Challenges in the Management of Modern Cultural Heritage (Desafios da Gestão do Patrimônio Cultural Moderno), Belo Horizonte (2017). 5 IPHAN. Charter of Pampulha. Belo Horizonte (2017), pp. 01–02.
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Fig. 1 Detail of the Valongo Wharf, Rio de Janeiro. Photo Oscar Liberal. Iphan Collection
Fig. 2 Detail of the city of Paraty. Photo Oscar Liberal. Iphan Collection
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Fig. 3 Detail of the historic center of Diamantina—MG. Photo Oscar Liberal. Iphan Collection
(d) From the point of view of Management: the establishment of management on the recognized property must be guided by the construction of a Diagnosis, which allows identifying “what to do” and “when to do”, and must include at least the following aspects: to promote planning for the conservation and monitoring of the property; to manage conservation from an interdisciplinary perspective; to promote the appropriation of Modern Heritage in its contemporaneity; to consider the property in its contextual relations; to ensure permanent maintenance actions; to promote a strategic communication of the property and its interpretation as a way for its understanding and enjoyment; and to consider using it as a strategy to ensure the sustainability of the property. On the other hand, considering the established diagnosis, it is necessary to foster a Governance that allows defining the “how to do it”, contemplating, at least, the following aspects: scope of action, whether sectorial or multisectoral; definition of instances, establishing levels of government and community participation; establishment of a matrix of responsibilities, with the definition of actions, actors and deadlines for their realization, in order to make explicit commitments
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within a specific timeframe and the consequent monitoring of defined actions; to promote training for shared management, providing tools for the actors in the governance process; to conduct educational activities to mediate understanding of Modern Heritage; and to promote and disseminate the Modern Heritage as a strategy for maintaining its cultural significance over time with society”. In this list of initiatives and facing the challenge of advancing the management of World Heritage in the country, the International Seminar on Management of Cultural Sites of World Heritage in Brazil was held in Goiás, in 2018. The main objective of this meeting was to promote the exchange of experiences in the management of these sites, enabling Brazilian agents to learn about experiences in countries such as Portugal, Mexico, Colombia and Spain, that is, places with the same cultural orbit as Brazil. This meeting focused on governance problems, seeking to advance the reflection on management mechanisms and instruments, in search of greater sustainability of the corresponding processes. For IPHAN, it was necessary to establish a new pact between government entities directly involved in the management of this heritage, strengthening relations and creating an intersectoral commitment between governmental public policy areas at the federal level, in order to provide “effective means for the requalification of cities with sites declared by UNESCO as World Heritage, through transversal and intersectoral actions articulated at different government levels”.6 With a program aimed at highlighting the challenges of management in cities that hold World Heritage and, on the other hand, the benefits resulting from this recognition, an intense exchange of views was held between the managers of this heritage, considering the experiences presented, such as that of the Clérigos Church in the city of Porto; the actions in the Historic Center of Guimarães; the work undertaken in the region of Castilla y León, Spain, and the Historic Center of Morelia, Mexico, as well as the management of the Port, Fortresses and Group of Monuments in Cartagena de Indias, an important tourist center in Colombia. The debates produced about these experiences allowed to reinforce the need to “strengthen the management structures in the three spheres of government responsible for the preservation of the Brazilian cultural heritage through the improvement of its installed capacity”. Thus, the meeting recommended: (a) “To grant different treatment to Brazilian historic cities, under the budgetary aspect, within the scope of development policies, with priority to sites declared by UNESCO as World Heritage; (b) To extend the scope of actions and investments made possible by the programs developed for the recovery and dynamization of historic cities, primarily with sites declared by UNESCO as World Heritage, recognizing their different territorial dimensions, environment, technical capacity, diversity of collections and economic potential, with a view to their sustainable development;
6 IPHAN.
Agreement of Goiás. Goiás, 2018, p. 01.
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(c) To prioritize historic cities, primarily with sites declared by UNESCO as World Heritage, in investments in tourist and urban infrastructure such as sanitation, mobility and accessibility, in addition to support for project development; (d) To encourage the development of credit lines and new financial instruments, including the attraction of partners and private investments to stimulate the recovery of private properties, considering their diverse uses, especially housing; (e) To ensure the continuity of the BNDES Department of Cultural Economy as an important space and mechanism to promote the preservation of cultural heritage7 ; (f) To develop integrated actions for the economic promotion of heritage, in particular for tourism in Brazilian cities with sites declared by UNESCO as World Heritage, based on good national and international practices, including considering them in the “Convergence and Synergy to Transform Program destinations”, developed through a partnership between the Ministry of Tourism, SEBRAE and EMBRATUR; (g) To provide a specific investment fund for the preservation and safeguarding of cultural heritage, including an endowment (permanent heritage fund) to be instituted by law; (h) To promote initiatives to train staff in the three levels of government for the management of the preservation of the Brazilian cultural heritage; (i) To integrate the approaches of material and immaterial heritage in the processes of requalification and dynamization of areas of cultural heritage interest, improving and expanding the dialogue with the civil society that holds this heritage and intensifying the communication of the actions to be undertaken; (j) To institute the National Policy for the Tourism Management of World Heritage, in compliance with Judgment 311/2017—TCU Plenary8 ; and (k) To articulate and promote actions for the constitution of the National Cultural Heritage System”. Finally, it is worth mentioning the International Seminar on the Economic Potential of Heritage in its Tourism Dimension,9 held in Porto Alegre, in 2019, where 7 The
recognition of strategic instances for promoting the achievement of the intended objectives is assumed and highlighted here. The search for strategic alliances with institutional partners, in particular, agents for fostering development is imperative. IPHAN considers it essential to qualify institutional articulations, promoting cooperative entities to collaborate in the implementation of actions. The Agreement of Goiás results, therefore, from the consent between the then ministers of Culture, Tourism, Environment and Cities and the mayors of historic cities and IPHAN. 8 This TCU Judgment, of an operational nature, enabled a greater articulation between the areas of heritage, tourism, urban development and the environment, by advocating the need for greater synergy between the corresponding sectoral policies. By recommending the establishment of a national policy aimed at World Heritage sites, with an emphasis on the tourist dimension, new opportunities were created to overcome different readings generated from specific benchmarks, making it evident that heritage management is by nature transversal and the agents involved, directly or indirectly, need to interact more intensely. See TCU. Judgment No. 311/2017—Plenary. 9 Held in conjunction with the 6th Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic and World Heritage Cities, in partnership with the OCBPM—Organization of Brazilian Cities World Heritage and the Ministry of Tourism—MTUR.
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the focus was on the economic potentials of heritage, with emphasis on tourism. At this meeting, experiences in Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil served as a sample to offer an overview of the challenges present in recognizing the potential of heritage and, in the perspective of tourism, how these challenges have been faced. With specialists in cultural heritage, academics public and private managers in the cultural and tourism area, it aimed to offer a space for the promotion and debate of innovative ideas, good practices and successful experiences in heritage and tourism management. As a result, the discussion about what is cultural tourism and what are the expectations of cultural tourists raised important questions that resulted, especially, in the understanding of10 : (a) “Need for sustainable tourism planning in order to enhance the economic opportunity of cultural tourism and minimize the risks and threats of this practice, if developed improperly, aiming at the preservation and safeguarding of the heritage for the enjoyment of current and future generations and restraining the trivialization and simulation of heritage, both in its material and immaterial dimensions; (b) Promotion of cultural tourism integrated with territorial and urban planning, aiming at economic and social equity as a strategy to establish communities in their traditional territories; (c) Induction of sustainable management processes of historic tourist sites as heritage destinations, through shared management, articulating public power, private initiative and civil society; (d) Promotion of community-based tourism, aiming at the protagonists’ role as an action to promote citizenship and safeguard knowledge; (e) Induction of processes that enable the certification of heritage destinations, favoring the excellence of tourism activity in these historic tourist sites; (f) Consolidation of world heritage sites as innovative examples of policies, responsible and sustainable management of cultural tourism; and (g) Differentiation and prioritization of the various lines of promotion and financing that exist for world heritage cities and cities that hold intangible heritage of humanity”. In view of these aspects, the consideration regarding the diversity of actors to be considered in this intersectoral policy is imperative, given the specificities of each sector, heritage and tourism, and the necessary articulation between them. Hence the signaling by a programmatic instrumentation favors this intent, with encouraging perspectives, but yet have to materialize, such as the national cultural tourism program and the certification system for heritage destinations. Lessons to be learned, especially when paying attention to “how to qualify this tourist activity and what strategy can be adopted to build an intelligent dialogue between sectorial fields of
10 IPHAN. Charter of Porto Alegre. International seminar Heritage + Tourism 2019 (Patrimônio + Turismo 2019) and 6th Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic and World Heritage Cities Meeting. Porto Alegre, 2019, pp. 01–02.
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public policy—heritage and tourism” (Brito 2019a, 33) in order to favor “the development and consolidation of a transversal field that articulates heritage and tourism as parts of the same platform, the so-called cultural tourism” (Brito 2019a, 34). In another perspective of analysis, it is worth highlighting the role played by the Organization of Brazilian Cities World Heritage—OCBPM, a civil organization with a legal entity under private law, non-profit,11 in the effort to promote and qualify municipal action, par excellence, betting on the “Establishment of cooperation networks between the government, the community and the private sector to implement public policies aimed at preserving, promoting and integrating historic sites with the city and with an inclusive local development process”.12 Here we highlight the main results obtained in the articulation process undertaken by the OCBPM for a strategic management of the Brazilian cities declared World Heritage, notably based on their national meetings. The 1st Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic Cities and World Heritage, held in Olinda, in 2014, dealt with the need to formulate an agenda with structural proposals for the historic cities declared by IPHAN national heritage and those recognized by UNESCO as world heritage, in that the following claims were pointed out13 : (a) “Reduction to 1% of the mandatory consideration in agreements or contracts with the Government (Federal or State); (b) Prioritization of the programs and public policies of the Federal and State Governments to serve the national and world heritage cities; (c) Permanent program to promote Cultural Tourism in Brazil and abroad; (d) Viability of the PAC for Historic Cities (PCH) and expansion to the other cities of world heritage and national historic heritage; (e) Action with the National Congress to approve federal legislation that guarantees regular and permanent financial resources with automatic transfer (special fund, fraction of the FPM, new contribution/tax or lotteries), aimed at the preservation, conservation and support of the infrastructure of cities declared as world heritage and national historical heritage; and (f) Reform of the Rouanet Law, in order to facilitate the promotion of projects to the world heritage and national historical heritage cities”. At the 2nd Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic Cities and World Heritage, held in São Luís, in 2016, attention was focused on establishing a common strategy between these cities, based on four major guidelines, that is, the preservation and enhancement of heritage historical and cultural promotion of this heritage sustainability of historic
11 Cf. Consolidated statute of the Organization of Brazilian Cities as a World Heritage Site (Estatuto
consolidado da Organização das Cidades Brasileiras Patrimônio Mundial). Brasília, 11 May 2016. 12 RIBAS, Mario. 6th Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic and World Heritage Cities Meeting. Accessed: 18 April 2020, in: http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/palavra-presidente-ocbpm. 13 Carta de Olinda. Accessed: 18 April 2020. Available at: http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/ass ets/download/carta-de-olinda.pdf.
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cities, and its governance. At the time, according to these guidelines, several specific action proposals were highlighted, which can be highlighted here14 : (a) “To insert the concept of preventive conservation of historical and cultural heritage in actions to preserve historical and cultural heritage; (b) To review and propose alternatives to the legislation that regulates physical interventions (works) in listed sites; (c) To establish a signaling manual and also elaborate studies and projects for urban rehabilitation and that there is investment in technology so that the tourist signaling can be improved; (d) To stimulate the creation of a real estate fund with private capital for the recovery of private properties located in historic centers; (e) To establish an agreement on the preservation norms of historic centers among the main actors (owners, users, entrepreneurs, managers of preservation agencies, municipal managers, among others); and (f) To provide improvement of public infrastructure (basic sanitation, signage, paving, squares, parks, communication, lighting, cultural spaces and urban facilities) for the development of historic tourist cities and World Heritage”. The 3rd Brazilian Meeting Tourist-Historic Cities and World Heritage, held in Brasília, in 2017, reaffirmed the guidelines pointed out at the São Luís meeting, in order to enable the implementation of the recommendations issued by the TCU Judgments 3,155/2016 and 311/2017, with a view to the elaboration of the National Policy for the Tourism Management of World Heritage. It defended initiatives to be undertaken, such as15 : (a) “To encourage the creation of a tax incentive policy to attract investments and compatible uses (technological, gastronomic, educational) in historic cities; (b) To agree among the managers of historic and tourist cities the need for the permanent practice of preventive conservation of cultural heritage; (c) To promote cooperation agreement between the Ministries of Culture, Tourism and Environment, together with IPHAN, Ibram, Embratur, UNESCO and OCBPM for the development of policies and joint actions to promote and enhance cultural heritage; (d) To encourage the visitation of sites recognized as World Heritage in Brazil, through the creation of tourist routes; (e) To promote public policies aimed at heritage education, in order to favor the appropriation of historic cities by communities; (f) To make possible, in the Tax Reform under construction in the National Congress, the increase in the FPM index of Historic Tourist Cities and World Heritage as a permanent way of financing infrastructure and services in the 14 Charter of São Luis Accessed: 18 April 2020. Available at: http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/ assets/download/carta-de-sao-luis.pdf. 15 Charter of Brasília, Accessed on: 18 April 2020. Available at: http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org. br/assets/download/carta-de-brasilia.pdf.
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said Municipalities, in view of the floating population and its importance for development Brazil’s economic system; (g) The municipal governments should use the results of the audits of the TCU and the CGU as a signaling instrument to the Federal, State and Municipal governments to implement good governance practices in historic cities; and (h) Implementation of the national cultural heritage system (SNPC), providing the federal, state and municipal government spheres with structure and trained technicians for cultural heritage management”. The 4th Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic Cities and World Heritage, held in Foz do Iguaçu, in 2017, incorporated the dimension of natural heritage to the topics discussed with local managers, highlighting the following points16 : (a) “Integration of projects to enhance cultural and natural heritage, with the main objective of developing tourism; (b) To encourage Municipalities, regardless of size, to enhance their tourist resources through the structuring of municipal plans, considering identity and cultural values and the environment; (c) To support the creation of international tourist routes integrated with borders based on common cultural identities; (d) Creation of unbureaucratic financing lines such as transfers from fund to fund and/or through the FPM17 ; and (e) To support strategies for attracting financial resources to promote the qualification of the offer of products, services and the governance of tourist regions/routes in Brazil”. In turn, the 5th Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic Cities and World Heritage, held in Manaus in 2018, emphasized the theme “Sustainable Tourism in Development and World Heritage”, where the following forwarding proposals were highlighted18 : (a) “To hold events on cultural and natural heritage, national and international, in order to broaden the discussion and create strategies for the development of management qualification and natural and cultural tourism in Brazil; (b) To support fundraising for the execution of road tourist signage projects and world heritage sites; (c) To support, through the CNM in partnership with the Federal Audit Court (TCU), the implementation of the new General Governance Law; (d) To establish actions for the execution of the National Policy for the Tourism Management of World Heritage; and (e) To support and strengthen public consortia through advisory and management qualification. 16 Charter of Foz do Iguaçu, Accessed: 18 April 2020. Available at: http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm. org.br/assets/download/Carta_de_Foz_Final.pdf. 17 Municipality Participation Fund. 18 Charter of Manaus. Accessed: 18 April 2020. Available at: http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/ assets/download/carta-de-manaus-final.pdf.
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And, finally, the 6th Brazilian Meeting of Tourist-Historic Cities and World Heritage, held in Porto Alegre, in 2019,19 ratified the need to move forward in objective proposals, among them20 : (a) “To establish Interpretation Centers21 for world cultural heritage sites, as a way to enhance the understanding of the values attributed to the sites and the experience of the visitors; (b) Strengthening of actions to promote and market cultural, natural and mixed sites of UNESCO’s World Heritage in Brazil; and (c) Creation of an endowment fund to support Brazilian Cultural Heritage, in accordance with Law 13,800/2019, which authorizes the creation of private equity funds by public institutions in the country. Given this trajectory of initiatives, the following central demands of these cities in Brazil can be briefly pointed out, identified and ratified in this process as: (a) Financing: there is a clear and incisive demand for preferential investments for world heritage sites. Local managers resent the increased responsibilities imposed by international recognition without this automatically implying additional contributions for the implementation of the corresponding policies at the municipal level; (b) Programmatic integration: recognition of the transversality between the fields of heritage and tourism, in particular, which requires programmatic public policy instruments that express this reality, for which the establishment of a cultural tourism program presents itself as a response effective; (c) Strategic articulation between government agents: the constitutional framework, the framework of political-administrative competences and the Brazilian institutional reality are demanding objective measures toward the national cultural heritage system, so much decanted, but still little consolidated in the country; (d) Coordination between the public, private sector and citizenship: the maturing of Brazilian society in the deepening of its democratic process emphasizes the need to improve governance within the scope of government management, ensuring the existence and functioning of management committees and the formulation, implementation and evaluation of management plans for the development of heritage policies; 19 Held in conjunction with the International Seminar on the Economic Potential of Heritage in its Tourism Dimension. 20 Charter of Porto Alegre. Accessed: 18 April 2020. Available at: http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org. br/assets/download/carta-de-porto-alegre.pdf. 21 The Interpretation Centers are “spaces for welcoming visitors who present and interpret these places in accessible language for both adults and children, preparing and ordering visits to these places, as an inducing element for managing the flow of visitors”, constituting themselves in the “space where the tourist offer associated with the place can be promoted, providing the visitor with new ways of approaching tourist-cultural information, using interactive technological resources and making it more permeable to the public when transmitting the content that is meant to be disseminated”. In: BRITO, Marcelo. Interpretation Center in Heritage Cultural Sites. IPHAN, Brasília, 2019, p. 02.
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(e) Training for shared management: recognition of the need to increase installed capacity in all spheres of government, seeking to intensify this training beyond specialists, which implies giving special attention to the training of generalists to work in the management of cultural heritage as strategic agents of politics; and (f) Strategic dissemination of heritage: interpretation centers and national and international promotion are fundamental measures for the positioning of world heritage sites before the public, whether local or visitor.
3 By Way of Conclusion In view of the aspects pointed out that highlight and summarize objective and central demands of these historic cities declared World Heritage, it is for reflection to observe what responses the Public Sector, on the part of the administration, may be given. Certainly, the preferential attention to be given through customized investments, the construction of consultation processes between the public and private sectors and citizenship to guarantee sustainable processes, the programmatic integration in view of the recognition of the transversality of cultural heritage and its economic potential are the ones that deserve a greater focus here. The ongoing responses by the management in Brazil can be summarized as follows: (a) Implementation of management mechanisms and instruments in world heritage sites: management committees and management plans are essential tools for the sustainable management of these areas and their implementation process. Although with greater or lesser impact, depending on what the situation allows, it constitutes an unavoidable agenda, given the recognition of the results already achieved in places like Pampulha in Belo Horizonte, the cultural landscape of Rio de Janeiro, São Francisco Square in São Cristóvão, Paraty and Ilha Grande in Angra dos Reis. It is, therefore, an initiative that should be developed, progressively, for all Brazilian cultural sites; (b) Interinstitutional cooperation: the establishment of the federal decree on the national policy for the tourism management of world heritage sites22 constitutes a landmark for the intersectoral field of sustainable tourism in historic cities and sites recognized by UNESCO. Conforming to a new promotion agenda, in this case, being supported by the cultural tourism that needs to be structured and developed with quality in the country. This instrument seeks to “guarantee a convergence agenda between culture, environment, urban development and tourism, in order to achieve the objectives of sustainable development”.23 (c) Promotion: outstanding attention that has been given to world heritage sites, having as examples the PAC-Historic Cities, PRODETUR + Tourism, Investe 22 Brasil 23 Id.,
(2019). Ibid., Art. 5th, item VIII.
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Tourism and the certification of heritage destinations, that is, undertaken or developing initiatives, or even in formulation that take as a base of reference and contemplate, notably, these sites; (d) Call for training of municipal employees of the World Heritage Cities: concentrated effort to provide training offers in the field of wealth management with a comprehensive perspective, for professionals working in the sector, such as the one held in 2019 by the Lucio Costa Center, IPHAN Heritage School, recognized as a UNESCO Category II center for the training of heritage managers aimed at Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries in South America, Africa and Asia; (e) Call for the promotion of seminars in World Heritage cities to develop shared management: to encourage local debate, based on case studies about management experiences produced by the government, the private sector and civil society, in the search for models that, given the needs and realities of each location, can be implemented in these sites.24 Finally, it is worth reflecting that the processes for applying for sites to the World Heritage List are voluntary, based on the motivations that each country—Member State to the World Heritage Convention—establishes, mobilizing different actors in search of international recognition of their assets, processes that are increasingly laborious. Achieving success in these endeavors is always something that everyone expects, however, it should also be noted that the post-recognition requires commitment and perseverance, in order to continue the effort undertaken in the challenge of obtaining said recognition, providing and guaranteeing conditions for maintaining the exceptional universal value of the properties included in the List. This, surely, is the biggest challenge to be faced after more than 40 years of ratification of the World Heritage Convention.
References Brasil (1977) Decreto Legislativo nº 74, de 1977, que aprova o texto da Convenção relativa à Proteção do Patrimônio Mundial, Cultural e Natural Brasil (2019a) Decreto nº 9.763, de 11 de abril de 2019, which regulates the provision in item XI of the caput of art. 5 of Law nº 11.771, of September 17, 2008, which provides for the National Tourism Policy, with a view to developing, ordering and promoting the tourist segments related to the World Cultural and Natural Heritage of Brazil Brasil (2019b) Lei nº 13.800, de 4 de janeiro de 2019, authorizes the public administration to sign partnership instruments and terms for the execution of programs, projects and other public interest purposes with heritage fund management organizations; amends Laws 9,249 and 9,250, of December 26, 1995, 9,532, of December 10, 1997, and 12,114 of December 9, 2009; and make other arrangements 24 In December 2019, the first seminar was held in the city of São Cristóvão, which was attended by the city’s City Hall, Universities, Civil Defense, State Government, UNESCO and IPHAN. Accessed: 19 April 2020. Available at: http://portal.iphan.gov.br/noticias/detalhes/5496.
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Brito M. (Coord.) (2005) Plano de Preservação de Sítio Histórico Urbano. Termo Geral de Referência. IPHAN, Brasília Brito M (2019a) A certificação de destinos patrimoniais na qualificação do turismo cultural no Brasil. In: IPHAN. Revista do Patrimônio. Dimensão turística no Brasil e Região Sul. Oportunidades e desafios para a gestão patrimonial. Brasília, Nº 40, 392p Brito M (2019b) Centro de Interpretação em Sítios Culturais Patrimoniais. IPHAN, Brasília Brito M (2009) Ciudades históricas como destinos patrimoniales. Una mirada comparada: España y Brasil. Junta de Andalucía, Consejería de Cultura, IAPH. Sevilha, p 150 Brito M (2003) Pressupostos da reabilitação urbana de sítios históricos no contexto brasileiro. In: IPHAN, Anais do Seminário Internacional sobre Reabilitação Urbana de Sítios Históricos. Documento Síntese. Brasília, setembro Brito M (2002) Urbis, uma estratégia de atuação. Arquitextos, 022.06, ano 02, março, 2002. https:// www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/arquitextos/02.022/803. Accessed 16 Apr 2020 IPHAN (2003) Anais do Seminário Internacional sobre Reabilitação Urbana de Sítios Históricos. Documento Síntese. Brasília, setembro IPHAN (2017) Carta da Pampulha. Belo Horizonte IPHAN (2019) Carta de Porto Alegre. Seminário Internacional Patrimônio + Turismo 2019 e 6º Encontro Brasileiro das Cidades Históricas, Turísticas e Patrimônio Mundial. Porto Alegre, pp 01–02 IPHAN (2018) Compromisso de Goiás. Goiás IPHAN (2004) Portaria nº 299, de 06 de julho, Brasília. Creates the Plan for the Preservation of the Historic Urban Site - PPSH IPHAN. (2017) Seminário Internacional sobre Desafios da Gestão do Patrimônio Cultural Moderno. Belo Horizonte OCBPM. Carta de Brasília. http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/assets/download/carta-de-brasilia. pdf. Accessed 19 Apr 2020 OCBPM. Carta de Foz do Iguaçu. http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/assets/download/Carta_de_ Foz_Final. Accessed 18 Apr 2020 OCBPM. Carta de Manaus. http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/assets/download/carta-de-manausfinal.pdf. Accessed 18 Apr 2020 OCBPM. Carta de Olinda. http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/assets/download/carta-de-olinda. pdf. Accessed 18 Apr 2020 OCBPM. Carta de Porto Alegre. http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/assets/download/carta-deporto-alegre.pdf. Accessed 18 Apr 2020 OCBPM. Carta de São Luís. http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/assets/download/carta-de-sao-luis. pdf. Accessed 18 Apr 2020 OCBPM. Estatuto consolidado da Organização das Cidades Brasileiras Patrimônio Mundial. Brasília, 11 de maio de 2016 Ribas M. Palavras do Presidente da OCBPM. 6º Encontro Brasileiro das Cidades Históricas Turísticas e Patrimônio Mundial. http://cidadeshistoricas.cnm.org.br/palavra-presidente-ocbpm. Accessed 18 Apr 2020 TCU. Acórdão nº 311/2017 – Plenário. Highlight: Decision that recommended to the body the elaboration of a national World Heritage management policy TCU. Acórdão nº 3155/2016 – Plenário. Highlight: Audit report carried out at the Ministry of Tourism, with the objective of evaluating the allocation of decentralized federal resources to the municipalities, verifying the established priorities, especially for those that shelter the sites or sets declared world heritage UNESCO. WHC. World Heritage List. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. Accessed 25 Apr 2020
Current Challenges and Risks for Preservation of the Historic Center of Salvador Nivaldo Vieira de Andrade Junior
Abstract Since the listing of the first churches and convents located in the Historic Center of Salvador (CHS), in 1938, a few months after the creation of IPHAN, the tutelage of the federal preservation agency over the area has progressively expanded. Today, the architectural, urban and landscape complexes of the Historic Center of Salvador and Lower Town, contiguous and protected by IPHAN, cover an area of more than 80 hectares, containing tens of thousands of properties. Although, over the past 80 years, there has been a progressive expansion of the legally protected areas in the CHS, it is not possible to say that the area is in a better state of conservation or with greater vitality than at the beginning of this process. This situation arises from several processes, which include, since the creation of a new urban centrality, in the 1970s, a few kilometers east of the founding city, to the adoption of requalification programs that proved to be wrong, and also by the weak articulation between the various spheres of government in the management process and in the planning of interventions carried out in the area.
1 Introduction Since the listing of the first churches and convents located in the Historic Center of Salvador (CHS), in 1938, a few months after the creation of IPHAN, the tutelage of the federal preservation agency over the area has progressively expanded. Today, the architectural, urban and landscape complexes of the Historic Center of Salvador and Cidade Baixa, contiguous and protected by IPHAN, cover an area of more than 80 hectares, containing tens of thousands of properties. Although, over the past Nivaldo Vieira de Andrade Junior—Professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the Federal University of Bahia (FAUFBA), Postgraduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism (PPGAU/UFBA) and the Professional Master’s Degree in Conservation and Restoration of Monuments and Historical Centers of the same institution (MP-CECRE/UFBA). N. V. de Andrade Junior (B) Faculty of Architecture, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_3
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80 years, there has been a progressive expansion of the legally protected areas in the CHS, it is not possible to say that the area is in a better state of conservation or with greater vitality than at the beginning of this process. This situation arises from several processes, which include, since the creation of a new urban centrality, in the 1970s, a few kilometers east of the founding city, to the adoption of requalification programs that proved to be wrong, and also by the weak articulation between the various spheres of government in the management process and in the planning of interventions carried out in the area. This article aims to present an analysis of the heritage process and the main changes in CHS over this period, as well as some reflections on the current challenges and risks of its preservation. We will see how the clashes, which began in the late 1960s, between the interests of the low-income population living in the CHS for many generations and the actions of the public authorities aiming at promoting tourism in the area have been recurrent over half a century, with subtle differences in plot and characters.
2 Deterioration and Patrimonialization of the Historic Center of Salvador The urban reform undertaken in Salvador during the first term of Governor José Joaquim Seabra (1912–1916) resulted in a radical transformation of the city’s central area through monumental works. Among these, it should be noted that the beginning of the execution of an immense embankment in the Lower City, including the construction of an organized port, which would be completed in the 1930s, and the opening of the Avenida Sete de Setembro, connecting Castro Alves Square— southern limit of the colonial city and which housed the São João Theater at the time—to Campo Grande. From the government of Muniz de Aragão (1916–1920), the construction of the Avenida Oceânica begins, connecting the city to the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The opening of these roads was decisive in the process of urban expansion and the wealthy families who, since the foundation of the city, concentrated in its core and surroundings, then migrated to the new neighborhoods in the south, such as Vitória, Barra, Graça and Canela (Andrade Junior 2007). At the beginning of the 1930s, the impoverishment of the residential sector in the central area of Salvador was accentuated by the decision of the police authorities to concentrate on Maciel, a neighborhood located at the outskirts of Largo do Pelourinho, the red-light district of Salvador (Palacios 2009). Less than four decades later, 57.6% of the residents of Maciel-Pelourinho were prostitutes, according to a socioeconomic survey produced by the Government of the State of Bahia between 1967 and 1969 (Bastos 2019, p. 133). The 1930s were also marked by the beginning of the CHS patrimonialization process, with the listing of 18 monuments by IPHAN, in 1938, mostly churches and convents built in the colonial period. The impoverishment and physical deterioration would spread, in the following decades,
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for a good part of the area corresponding to the city at the end of the 16th century, contrasting with the Chile street and surroundings, which would shelter, until the 1970s, the most sophisticated and expensive trade of the city. In his doctoral thesis in Human Geography on “The Center of the City of Salvador”, defended in 1958 at the University of Strasbourg, Milton Santos (2008, p. 31) highlights the “Old City, where, today, a heterogeneous and poor population” and the presence, next to a set of modern buildings, of the remains of the past, rich old houses that have lost their former residential role and that are being degraded. The old picture, a legacy from the past, has not been completely replaced, while, on an artificially created site, a modern, American-style city was born on recent landfills (Santos 2008, p. 30).
In 1959, the first architectural and urban sites in Salvador are listed by IPHAN, located in different neighborhoods of the city. Among the listed sites, there are subdistricts of Sé and Passo, corresponding to the area between Terreiro de Jesus and Largo de Santo Antônio Além do Carmo, in Cidade Alta, and that of the sub-district of Conceição da Praia, comprising the area of the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia to the Convent of Santa Teresa, between the Lower City and the slope that separates it from the Upper City. The listing of these two urban sites had an eminently architectural bias, as can be seen by the lack of protection of the section corresponding to the foundational city, between the Basilica Cathedral and Castro Alves Square, which had undergone major urban transformations in the first decades of the 20th century and whose architecture had also been greatly modified in the same period, although the road layout remained largely unchanged.
3 Michel Parent’s Mission and the Pelourinho Project: Tourism and Social Exclusion The management of monuments and heritage sites would undergo a paradigm shift in the second half of the 1960s, after Brazil began a military dictatorship that would last more than two decades. In the Latin American context, the “Norms of Quito”, a document resulting from the “Meeting on the preservation and utilization of monuments and sites of artistic and historical value”, was promoted by the Organization of American States (OAS) in the Ecuadorian capital at the end of 1967, and in which Brazil was represented by the then Director of IPHAN, Renato Soeiro. The “Norms of Quito” recognize that “cultural heritage resources are an economic asset and can be made into instruments of progress” and that “The economic and social advantages of tourist travel vis-a-vis monuments are evident in most modern statistics, particularly in those European countries that owe their present prosperity to international tourism", with cultural properties "among their major sources of wealth” (apud Cury 2004, pp. 105 and 115). Also, in the 1960s, the first missions to Brazil by international consultants in heritage preservation took place, based on a partnership between IPHAN and UNESCO. Among the missions carried out in the period, we highlight those carried
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out in 1966 and 1967 by Michel Parent, who at the time was Inspector General of French Historical Monuments, within the scope of the “Cultural Tourism” program of UNESCO. Although he visited 35 cities in his two missions to Brazil, Parent (2008, p. 88) paid special attention to Salvador, which he considered “the first city of art in Brazil”. The theme of touristic exploitation of monuments and CHS will be the focus of the French consultant’s report:1 Tourism can certainly be one of the sources of the future development of national income and provide an economic alibi for the considerable efforts that must be made if we are to safeguard the vast cultural heritage that has long been in danger, but whose ruin will soon be irreversible (Parent 2008, p. 46)
Despite Parent’s defense of tourism as a strategy for transforming cultural heritage into a vector for economic and social development, in line with the thinking that was then prevalent at UNESCO—and which would also be defended in the “Norms of Quito”—Parent himself had reservations about this strategy: But tourism cannot do everything. Leaving the heritage solely to the criteria of immediate tourist profitability would be making contestable choices, aggravating certain imbalances, confronting “facade effects” with the increase of internal degradation […]. On the contrary, it is important that tourism does not constitute an end in itself, nor even a means of simultaneously satisfying the curiosity and comfort of non-Brazilians or a few Brazilians disconnected from the national reality, but that the technical model of infrastructure associate the way of knowing the Brazilian culture with the way of living it and, in this way, can integrate the tradition, science and the safeguarding of the values of ancient Brazil to the development of the future Brazil (Parent 2008, pp. 46–51).
With specific regard to the CHS, where, according to Parent, “the degradation occurs by itself […] very quickly”, it would be necessary to implement “major urban renewal operations of a social and cultural character”: To achieve this goal, ‘Heritage’ [IPHAN] cannot act alone. It is necessary to join efforts with those of the National Housing Bank, Embratur (new national tourism body), the states, the Federal Planning services and, finally, those of international cooperation. […] It would be desirable to reserve a substantial part of the capital allocated to Embratur for the tourist infrastructure of cities and tourist stations that would be simultaneously selected in an urban renewal and safeguarding cultural heritage plan. Another part should be devoted to cultural animation (especially festivals) based on appropriate regionalization. The National Housing Bank, for its part, could be asked to give priority to the resettlement, in the old neighborhoods of these cities, of its former residents. (Parent 2008, pp. 64–66)
In his report, Parent (2008, p. 89) establishes a series of guidelines aimed at “transforming Salvador’s economic vocation, provided that the most beautiful stretches of the city—Pelourinho, Anchieta square and Soledade neighbourhood— are completely restored, constituting the main urban attraction in South America”. For the “Pelourinho neighborhood”, which would cover Carmo, Pelourinho Square and adjacent streets, Parent proposed a “restoration plan” that would include the 1 It
should be noted that, through Decree-Law No. 55, of November 18, 1966, the national tourism policy, the Brazilian Tourism Company (EMBRATUR) and the National Tourism Council were created at the same time.
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acquisition of 30 properties located in Pelourinho Square, with compensation to the tenants, to allow them living in other neighborhoods, and “association of those who stay with renovation work”; the restoration of the “external façades” of these properties and their “Conversion […] for commercial, tourist, cultural and residential use”. Parent also proposed the “Creation of a ‘public foundation’ that recovers the interior of these properties, renovating them according to needs and renting or exploiting them directly, and eventually reselling a part in order to create resources to continue to operation” (Parent 2008, pp. 89–90). This foundation would have the faculty to acquire the deteriorated buildings of Pelourinho, and then of the other neighborhoods, to restore them and then integrate them into the cultural and commercial life of the city, as indicated above. The plan to be established would necessarily be placed under the control of ‘Heritage’ [IPHAN], but it is certain that all concrete work must be preceded by a more precise overall planning, not only in terms of the choice of restoration, but also in terms of reconversion of use. (Parent 2008, p. 94)
Still in 1967, in response to Parent’s recommendation, the Government of the State of Bahia would create the Foundation for the Artistic and Cultural Heritage of Bahia, called the Pelourinho Foundation. The Foundation would later be transformed into the Institute of Artistic and Cultural Heritage of Bahia (Ipac), still operating today. Another UNESCO consultant, Englishman Grame Shankland, who carried out a mission in Salvador and other cities in Bahia at the end of 1968, would defend, with respect to the challenge of promoting tourism in an area occupied by a very poor population, that “Direct police action against the prostitutes is totally unacceptable” and that, in CHS, “The removal of population should be kept at the minimum” (apud Bahia 1979, p. 13). Despite the Shankland report, the policy implemented for the area from the end of the 1960s by the Pelourinho Foundation—chaired, at first, by the architect Wladimir Alves de Souza and with the anthropologist Vivaldo Costa Lima as executive secretary—was promoting tourism and social exclusion. It should also be noted, in the implementation of the so-called “Pelourinho Project”, the determining role of Antônio Carlos Magalhães, better known as ACM, first as the bionic Mayor of Salvador (1967–1970) and, subsequently, as the bionic Governor of the State of Bahia (1971–1975). As Jornal da Bahia recorded on June 21, 1969, the “Pelourinho Project” proposed to install “strong commerce” and “bank branches” in the area, in addition to […] ateliers, art galleries, theaters, cinema, craft workshops, venues for the presentation of maculelê and capoeira folk ‘shows’ and an appropriate place for candomblé. The plan to concentrate the artistic movement of Bahia in Pelourinho alongside African-Brazilian customs, reasons of tourist attraction, was taken from the project prepared by technicians and approved by UNESCO. The Mayor, however, will have to execute his recovery plan, carry out a complete social exclusion transferring the families that live in the tenements existing in the buildings and transfer to another area or eradicate the red-light district that has been installed in the area (apud Bahia 1997, pp. 73–74, emphasis added).
The articles published by the major national media outlets at the time recorded that the “Pelourinho Project” had the direct support of IPHAN and the endorsement
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of UNESCO. The newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, for example, reported in its May 10, 1969 issue: In 1973, if everything goes according to the projects to be carried out by technicians from the Historical Patrimony Service and UNESCO, […] the Pelourinho neighborhood in Salvador, one of the oldest in Brazil, will be transformed into the focus of tourist attraction. According to […] Renato Soeiro, the thousand buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries that make up the neighborhood and which are currently almost collapsing, will be restored. (…) Almost all of the neighborhood’s population will be transported to homes provided by the National Housing Bank. The empty units, after being restored […], will be transformed into hotels, cinemas, theaters, atelier of popular artists, schools of fine arts, exhibition rooms and shops of typical objects (apud Bahia 1997, pp. 28–29).
As of 1969, the State Government, which already owned several properties in the area, started to acquire, through the Pelourinho Foundation, other properties, which were restored and started to be used as the Foundation’s headquarters. According to Mario Vitor Bastos (2019, p. 128), the acquisition of real estate in the area by the State became a current practice and “helped to transform the State of Bahia into one of the main property owners in the central area of the city today”. Vivaldo Costa Lima (1973, p. 163) would register, in 1971, that the Foundation’s Planning and Research Sector […] developed a special indemnity plan for the residents of the area, taking into account the time of residence in the place, occupational activity and the number of dependents of each family group. Within these criteria, eight buildings were vacated in Largo do Pelourinho, for a total of 292 (two hundred and ninety-two) people distributed in 112 (one hundred and twelve) family units. […]
It should be noted that, from the first half of the 1970s onwards, a series of private and public initiatives would create new urban centers in unoccupied areas miles from the one that had housed the city center for more than four centuries, which would accentuate the functional emptying of the CHS, especially with regard to administrative and commercial functions. On the one hand, the State Government, during the first ACM government (1971– 1975), transferred all state civil servants to a new area in a distant and uninhabited location: the new Administrative Center of Bahia (CAB), built more than 10 km away from the CHS between 1972 and 1974. On the other hand, the private sector built the Shopping Center Iguatemi in 1975, halfway between CHS and CAB, the second one in the country, in addition to opening, in the vicinity of the new shopping center, a series of allotments aimed at the wealthier classes, such as Caminho das Árvores (1973) and Itaigara (1976). The State Government, in turn, inaugurated, in the vicinity of Shopping Iguatemi, a new Bus Station (1974), abandoning the one opened in the vicinity of CHS just ten years before. It should be noted that the idea of creating a new centrality for Salvador in a more central geographic location on the peninsula, that is, less eccentric geographically than that of the colonial city, goes back to the Master Plan of the Industrial Center of Aratu, elaborated in 1966 by the economist Romulo Almeida and the architect and urban planner Sérgio Bernardes. According to Heliodorio Sampaio, the plan of the Industrial Center of Aratu defended that “the traditional center would assume the
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tourist function, and the functions of state and municipal government move to a new center, located in the vicinity of Cabula neighbourhood” (Sampaio 1999, p. 234). As the slogan of the State Government used to say, in the first administration of ACM as governor (1971–1975), “Bahia builds the future without destroying the past”. Or, as recorded in the State Government advertising material at the end of the first ACM term: THE SOFT SIDE OF PROGRESS Multiple convergent efforts were undertaken by the Antônio Carlos Magalhães Government, with the purpose of stimulating the full exploitation of the tourist potential of Bahia, one of its priority goals. […] The restoration of the magnificent colonial architectural complex of Pelourinho, carried out with State Government funds, also represents, alongside its cultural aspect, an important stimulus to tourism development. It should be noted that many promised support for the recovery of Pelourinho. UNESCO, OAS, private companies, economic groups, etc., but it was the State Government with its own resources that carried out the work. Only the Golbenkian Foundation [sic] helped to restore a building. Everything else was the Government in the ‘chest and the race’, in the expression of a popular, who was born, resides and hopes to live all his days in Largo do Pelourinho. Bahia is today, mainly Salvador, the great tourist pole of the country (Bahia 1975, n.p.).
4 The Historic Cities Program (PCH) In 1973, the Federal Government created the Historic Cities Program (PCH), whose activities were limited, initially, to a set of historic cities in the Northeast Region, starting to cover, from 1976, cities in other Brazilian regions. Márcia Sant’Anna (2016) notes that The PCH emerged and developed as a product of a rare confluence of paradigm shifts. On the one hand, a significant change in the orientation of policies for the preservation of urban heritage in Brazil and, on the other, the resumption, on new bases, of the developmentalist and integrated bias of the federal government’s economic and urban policy then aimed at the elimination of regional inequalities, for the productive and demographic deconcentration and for the strengthening of the urban network. Tourism emerged, at the time, as the ideal point to combine the economic use of urban heritage with regional development. In other words, as the most adequate productive activity to remove some cities and their regions from the swamp of physical deterioration and economic stagnation.
Sant’Anna (2016) also observes that, “before the PCH, never before had so many financial resources been invested in the preservation of heritage”: a total of US$ 73.9 million was invested between 1973 and 1983, including the counterparts contributed by state governments. Mário Vítor Bastos (2019, p. 129), in turn, points out that “Bahia was the State of the Northeast that received the most resources from the PCH between 1973 and 1979, and the one that most executed actions of the Program among all the contemplated States”, emphasizing that this prominent role in Bahia was largely due to the existence of the Pelourinho Foundation, which was able to become the executing agency for the project. A significant part of the resources invested in CHS through the PCH was aimed at restoring listed monuments, especially Baroque churches, for tourist visitation.
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Thus, the Church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Pretos (1976–1978), in Largo do Pelourinho, and the Basilica Cathedral (1977–1980), in Terreiro de Jesus, were restored. In turn, the architectural complex of the former Faculty of Medicine of Bahia, former College of the Jesuits, in Terreiro de Jesus, was restored in 1974 to be transformed into an Afro-Brazilian Museum and Museum of Medicine. A significant part of the PCH’s resources was used to restore and adapt townhouses and other noble properties to house the facilities of the Pelourinho Foundation itself, as was the case with the Solar Ferrão, one of the oldest and most monumental examples of the civil architecture of the colonial period in CHS, restored between 1977 and 1981. As it was occupied by several families, in addition to a workshop, a sawmill and a school, the intervention began with the transfer of the residents to another property acquired by the Foundation with this purpose, located in Largo do Pelourinho (Bahia 1979). It is interesting to note that, in addition to restoration works for tourist purposes or to meet the demands of the Foundation itself, works aimed at providing infrastructure and services to the local community were carried out at the end of the 1970s, such as the Maciel Child Care Center and the Maciel Cultural and Recreation Center. The first, better known as Maciel Nursery, occupied several properties located on Inácio Acioly, Gregório de Matos and Francisco Muniz Barreto streets and aimed “to “meet the basic needs of Maciel’s pre-school child and make more comprehensive community health and education programs and development in the area”, offering “daycare services (nursery), maternal, pre-primary and literacy services” (Bahia 1979, p. 50). In turn, the Maciel Cultural and Recreation Center, installed in three buildings on Rua Gregório de Matos, aimed to […] offering alternatives of leisure, recreation and diverse cultural activities to the residents of Pelourinho: to serve as an educational complement to teaching and student activities; provide the participation of parents and children in educational and other activities related to recreation. Assist the art groups of Salvador and the carnival associations and various associations that are located in the area. (Bahia 1979, p. 58)
The action of the Pelourinho Foundation during the execution of the PCH synthesized, in a way, the dilemma that would characterize the performance of the government in the area until today: on one side, removing families from historic buildings to restore and adapt them to uses linked to tourism; on the other, to meet the social demands of the local population. If, on the one hand, 21.9 million cruzeiros were invested within the PCH for the installation of the Afro-Brazilian Museum in the building of the former Faculty of Medicine and 12 million in the restoration of the Rosário dos Pretos Church, on the other hand, 19.9 million cruzeiros were invested in the Creche do Maciel and 11.7 million in Centro Cultural e Recreativo do Maciel, to name just a few of the actions of the SHP that involved more resources (Bahia 1979). With regard to this social nature—or assistentialist nature, according to its detractors—of the PCH, other Foundation’s projects which were not carried out should be highlighted, such as “the recovery of two blocks of Maciel [...], covering all the architectural units that constitute them”, within the scope of the Pelourinho Housing Program:
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Most of these properties were acquired by the Foundation and the rest, already expropriated, are gradually being incorporated into its assets. […] The projects provide for the restoration of properties transformed into housing units with complete conditions of accommodation and comfort, and the integration of all free spaces at the back of the houses as a leisure space for the communities that will inhabit these centers. (Bahia 1979, p. 83)
Sociologist Gey Espinheira, a technician at the Pelourinho Foundation since its creation, argues that the agency did not have “a very clear discourse”: We formed an elite team to educate and work with those boys and girls, within the best possible conditions of human resources, giving the best. […] We managed to set up a craft store, we managed to get all those people involved in the discussion process. We created a certain solidarity among the elements of the community. The most objective discourse of Ipac [successor of the Pelourinho Foundation] was the discourse, say, of investing in that population to raise the social condition of that population. But, at the same time, one hand did that, the other hand pushed out, humiliated, called the police. There were these kinds of things, these institutional contradictions, because Ipac belonged to the Government and the Government was also the police, it was also Antônio Carlos Magalhães who, one day came, put his hand on my chest and said: ‘My son, I don’t want to see a son of a bitch here, I want to see a foreigner visiting Pelourinho’. He told me that in the first exhibition that we opened, at [Largo do] Pelourinho [number] 12, in which I had the task of showing the exhibition to the then mayor (apud Palacios 2009, pp. 99–100).
This ambivalence of the Pelourinho Foundation’s performance received divergent evaluations from Brazilian and international specialists. In an interview with Jornal da Bahia in June 1980, Argentine Jorge Hardoy, coordinator of a team of UNESCO consultants then on a mission in Salvador, “warned of the danger that the Historic Center could become an exhibition place for tourists, if its conservation is not accompanied by a process of integration of the community that lives there” (apud Bahia 1997, p. 51). The French Raul Pastrana (apud Bahia 1997, pp. 82–83), also a consultant to UNESCO, would say, in testimony to the newspaper A Tarde during a mission carried out in 1978, that “the work of the Foundation must be emphasized […] since in addition to buying some properties that will be restored, a global plan was also made, which had as a main principle the permanence of the local community: There was no concern with doing work aimed at the exploration of tourism, which would be disastrous for the preservation of cultural and even social values. […] The important thing is that Pelourinho is revitalized with the population that is concentrated there, since changing its inhabitants would not be the solution, because it would just transfer the problems, from there to another area.
The position of international consultants in defense of the permanence of the CHS local community was viewed with suspicion and even with indignation by certain sectors in Salvador. The same newspaper A Tarde published an editorial, the day after the publication of Pastrana’s testimony, diverging from it: Anyone who takes the time to get to know his [Pelourinho’s] past will see that his cultural and social value is not what Mr. Pastrana supposes. And any sensible initiative in the sense of preserving it, it cannot involve the social segments that today occupy a good part of the site. They have occupied it, facilitated by the degradation to which the whole neighborhood was left. The townhouses, the churches, the monumental convents that exist in it are living
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Paulo Ormindo de Azevedo (1984, pp. 228–230) would observe in 1983 that As a result, I believe, of the Foundation’s impossibility to intervene in the social structure of the neighborhood, it embarked on a paternalistic, assistentialist line, but without taking any measures that would, in the end, prevent the expulsion of that population. […] there was an expectation in certain sectors of Bahian society, including sectors supported by some newspapers, in the sense of transforming Pelourinho into a kind of postcard, an area to attract tourists from abroad. And the Foundation’s position, justice be done, has always been contrary to this type of posture. It always defended that the population residing there should remain. But, for lack of the necessary instruments to intervene, the Foundation started to make a policy with two poles. On the one hand, it met certain requirements that the Governor made, and did not give up, and on the other, it created an assistance system. For example, Largo do Pelourinho and Ladeira do Carmo had their facades and some buildings restored, because they were part of a tourist itinerary. The performance of this type of work determined, albeit indirectly, a series of expulsions. Today, practically, no one else lives in the Pelourinho area. In Carmo, yes. Of the old houses, many were converted according to the institutional type or services. […] The fixed population moved to other contiguous neighborhoods, such as Maciel, Taboão and, in most cases, settled in worse conditions. […] But, to compensate for this type of policy imposed by the Governor, the Foundation began to implement an assistance system that consisted of creating schools, a health center, a day care center, and a series of services that, in fact, do not solve the problem, because that population is extremely rotating. […] The entire population that lives in the central district of Salvador is a population of tenants. The fixation of this population was not promoted, the investments made only favor speculation. Those properties, today, are worth more insofar as they are in areas very visited by tourists. Owners, once they get facilities to evict their tenants, never allow them to return, because they aim to rent the property for a business, for an artist, or for someone who can afford to pay more. I would say that the Foundation’s three lines of action were focused on the following: the development of an assistance program, in the medical, pedagogical and even, to a certain extent, housing fields. […] The Foundation’s other line of action was ‘volumetric restorations’, which were restoration of facades and roofs. An operation, in fact, under great pressure from the Governor. The third line consisted of buying property and restoring it with new functions, usually public services. This policy had a different face, displaced the population that lived there and increasingly transformed the neighborhood into a service sector.
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5 Interinstitutional Articulation and Inscription of CHS on the World Heritage List In the first half of the 1980s, the federal government (through the Regional Directorate of IPHAN in Bahia), the state goverment (through the Ipac) and the municipal goverment (through Oceplan, the Central Planning Agency of the City) developed, in partnership with the Center for Architecture Studies in Bahia from the Faculty of Architecture of the Federal University of Bahia (Ceab/Faufba), a series of surveys and studies aimed at promoting the inscription of CHS in the UNESCO World Heritage List, in the wake of the Ouro Preto inscriptions (1980) and Olinda (1982). The products of integrated work between IPHAN, Ipac, Oceplan and Ceab/Faufba were completed in July 1983, with consequences in the municipal, federal and international spheres. On September 21 of that year, Municipal Law No. 3,289 came into force, creating the Cultural and Landscape Protection Areas (APCP). The CHS APCP is formed by two polygons: the smaller Rigorous Protection Area (APR) and the larger Contiguous to the Rigorous Protection Area (ACPR), limited by Campo Grande, to the south; the Todos os Santos Bay to the west; the Calçada, to the north; and Dique do Tororó and Djalma Dutra street, to the east. Less than a month after the approval of the municipal law, on October 20, the Consultative Council for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage, an advisory body of IPHAN, unanimously approved the re-ratification of the listing of the CHS, which now corresponds to a large part of the Municipal APR, including the two sites listed in 1959 and areas such as the matrix spot of the foundational city and the slope that separates the Upper and Lower Cities. The new polygonal of the CHS covers an area of 750 thousand square meters, in which 60 thousand buildings and 28 individually listed monuments are located (Centro … , 1983, p. 11). Its limits became, to the south, the Convent of Santa Teresa and the Monastery of São Bento; to the west, the first line of buildings at the foot of the slope, in the lower city; to the north, the Ladeira da Água Brusca; and to the east, J.J. Seabra street, better known as Baixa dos Sapateiros. On May 31, 1984, at the 108th meeting of the Consultative Council for National Historical and Artistic Heritage, the delimitation of the CHS surroundings was approved, corresponding to the APCP APR created by Municipal Law No. 3,289/83. On the same day, the “Definitive Listing—Redefinition of the Historic Center of Salvador” is widely disseminated by IPHAN through an announcement published in the three main local newspapers and, on July 20 of the same year, the Architectural, Landscape and Urbanistic Complex—Historic Center of the City of Salvador was finally listed in the Book of Archeological, Ethnographic and Landscape Heritage. The inscription of CHS on the UNESCO World Heritage List, scheduled to take place at the 8th session of the World Heritage Committee, held in Buenos Aires between October 29 and November 2, 1984, had to be postponed to the next session, due to the fact that the experts of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) have not completed the corresponding technical reports in time. Finally, during the 9th session of the World Heritage Committee, held at UNESCO
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headquarters in Paris, between December 2, 1985 and December 6, 1985, the CHS was inscribed on the World Heritage List. The Outstanding Universal Value of CHS that justified its inclusion in the World Heritage List was based on two criteria. Criterion IV, “to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage (s) in human history”), was based on the argument that Salvador is an eminent example of Renaissance urban structuring adapted to a colonial site having an upper city of a defensive, administrative and residential nature which overlooks the lower city where commercial activities revolve around the port. The density of monuments, with Ouro Preto (included on the World Heritage List in 1980), makes it the colonial city par excellence in the Brazilian North-East. (Icomos 1985, pp. 2–3)
In turn, criterion VI, “to be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance. (The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria)”, was justified with the defense that Salvador is one of the major points of convergence of European, African and American Indian cultures of the 16th to 18th centuries. Its founding and historic role as capital of Brazil quite naturally associate it with the theme of world exploration already illustrated by the inclusion on the World Heritage List of the Old Havana (1982), Angra do Heroismo (1983), San Juan de Puerto Rico (1983), and Cartagena (1984). (ICOMOS 1985, p. 3)
The ICOMOS evaluation that justified the CHS’s inclusion in the World Heritage List highlights the character of the site as a space for convergence and integration between different cultures, due to the contribution of different ethnic groups (Europeans, Africans and Amerindians) in the constitution of the city of Salvador. An article published in Jornal do Brasil on November 3, 1984, symptomatically entitled “Salvador postponed listing will cause damage to tourism” records the “frustration and disenchantment” of the “authorities and technicians of the state and municipal governments, the Church, merchants and leaders of agencies linked to tourism and the protection of the city’s architectural, artistic and cultural heritage” by postponing the decision, which […] should affect negatively from the tourist flow - the City Hall and Bahiatursa [State tourism company] planned to launch campaigns to attract visitors with the appeal of the listing [sic] - to important plans aimed at preserving and animating the historic center, for which, in the short term, it had the help of the World Bank. (TOMBAMENTO … 1984, n.p.)
The interinstitutional working group created in 1983 to produce the technical studies aimed at inscribing the CHS on the World Heritage List was the starting point for the creation of the Technical Licensing and Inspection Office (Etelf), formed by representatives of IPHAN, Ipac and Oceplan, “ with, in practical terms, the goal of correctly solving issues related to the preservation of the municipality’s cultural and natural heritage” (Centro … , 1983, p. 12). Etelf functioned, in an integrated and uninterrupted way, for more than 30 years, until 2014, when it was extinguished.
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6 Lina Bo Bardi and the Special Program for the Recovery of Historic Sites The second half of the 1980s is the period of Brazilian re-democratization, marked by the election—albeit indirect—in 1985, of the first civilian president in 21 years; it is also the period of the promulgation of the Federal Constitution of 1988. In 1986, Salvador had the first direct elections for Mayors in 20 years, Mário Kertész won and returned to occupy the seat he had held, as bionic mayor, between 1979 and 1981. In Kertész’s second administration, the City Hall would formulate and partially implement the Special Program for the Recovery of Historic Sites in the City of Salvador (PERSH), coordinated by the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. For Bardi (2008, p. 270), this “is not a tourist job, done with the intention of transforming Pelourinho into an ice cream city”; it is the “fight against folklore”; “It is not the preservation of important architectures, (as it would be in Minas) but the preservation of the Popular Soul of the City”: In a nutshell: the plan must be “socio-economic” in order not to repeat the mistakes of wellknown interventions in illustrious cities, such as Rome, Bologna, Venezia, and countless wonderful corners of the Old World that changed the social base of entire Regions, with the residents of years and years thrown away and middle-middle class taking over. In order to avoid this, we are trying to add work to housing [„,] and small commerce: a kind of underground economy. (Bardi 2008, p. 270)
Only five projects conceived under the PERSH were carried out: Gregório de Matos Theater (1986), Belvedere da Sé (1986), House of Benin in Bahia (1987), Olodum House (1988) and Ladeira da Misericórdia Pilot Project (1987). Of these, the latter deserves to be highlighted, as it corresponds to a pilot project that should be replicated in most CHS buildings, combining commercial functions and small services and crafts, on the ground floor, to the residential function, on the upper floors, in addition to a restaurant and bar. About this pilot project and how he intended to face “the social problem”, Bardi (2008, p. 295) wrote: In general, people are taken out of housing, other shelters are provided on the outskirts of cities. In the restored buildings, tourist boutiques, exhibitions, handicrafts made in São Paulo, etc. are installed. Now the main idea of recovery in Salvador is precisely to maintain the population that lives in the houses that need to be restored, recovered. The general idea is to do subsistence trade below, that is, production of food, small jobs, recovery, restoration, repair of things. And, on top, housing.
With the end of Kertész’s administration in 1988, PERSH did not continue and the Ladeira da Misericórdia project, still in execution, had its program changed, never reaching formal terms as housing. If PERSH had the merit of bequeathing some important cultural facilities to the area, such as the Gregório de Matos Theater and House of Benin in Bahia, on the other hand, it was unable to consolidate the occupation model that should prevail in the area, associating local housing and commerce.
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7 The Recovery Plan for the Historic Center of Salvador (PRCHS) The Recovery Plan for the Historic Center of Salvador (PRCHS), conceived at the beginning of ACM’s third term as Governor of Bahia (1991–1994), was, in its first six stages carried out by Ipac between 1992 and 1997, the largest program intervention in historic centers already carried out in a continuous area in Brazil. The program operated in an area of 55,000 square meters, covering 531 properties, in addition to the restoration of the Basilica Cathedral and the Church of the First Order of Saint Francis. The total amount of resources invested was 100 million dollars, in values at the time, and its execution enabled the recovered properties to survive. The PRCHS adopted as a strategy the physical recovery of Pelourinho, Maciel and Carmo, areas of undeniable symbolic appeal, through tourism and cultural animation. It had great international repercussion and its impacts can be perceived until today. The PRCHS promoted the elimination of vehicle traffic from the main streets, ending the damaging vibration to the existing structures and excluding the risk of collisions with the listed buildings and of pedestrians running over narrow streets. The elimination of vehicle traffic was possible due to the implantation of three garage buildings. The plan also included the renovation and expansion of an extensive underground network, housing energy, telephone, water and sewage services, bringing a clear improvement in the urban landscape, due to the removal of wires and other related equipment and guaranteeing qualified public services to the area, non-existent in many other areas of the city. Despite these positive aspects, the PRCHS presented several mistakes in the conceptualization and methods adopted in architectural interventions and was involved in controversies. In order to allow the creation of a scenographic environment with multicolored houses, as part of a marketing strategy, 2,909 families living in 470 tenement buildings were expelled from the area. These families were offered two alternatives: the receipt of their own property, in a remote neighborhood located on the northern limit of the municipality, or an indemnity. It should be noted that the population of the area, poor and, almost entirely, of African descent, had consolidated social and neighborhood relationships, built over generations. It was these social relations that resulted, for example, in the founding, in 1979 of Olodum, one of the main Afro-blocks in Salvador and that would have its history inextricably linked to the Pelourinho community and to this CHS region. If black culture and Olodum itself played a fundamental role in the aesthetic constitution of the “new” Pelourinho—a name by which CHS became known worldwide—the same cannot be said of the population that until then resided in the region, predominantly black. Most of the previously inhabited properties were transformed into cultural spaces, shops, bars and restaurants aimed at tourists and a portion of the population with greater purchasing power. In compensation for the nearly 3,000 expelled families, the State Government invested US$ 3.9 million—a paltry average of US$ 1.340 per family and a negligible amount compared to the nearly US$ 100 million invested in infrastructure works and building restoration. The compulsory
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withdrawal of this population from the area resulted in the destruction of consolidated community ties and neighborhood relations. Many of the families who chose to receive a new property on the outskirts of Salvador lost, with the move, the only source of income they had, often linked to informal activities intrinsically connected to CHS, such as street food and souvenir trade, for example. Those who opted for compensation, in many cases, ended up spending it in a short time and started to live in the same conditions as before—or in worse conditions—in other areas in the vicinity of the CHS, such as Baixa dos Sapateiros, Saúde, Palma and Mouraria. As noted by Angela Gordilho Souza (2010, p. 93), The expulsion of the former inhabitants [helped], in recent years, to promote the intensive occupation of the slopes of Pilar, Lapinha, Santo Antônio and Taboão. On the other hand, new slums appear in Baixa dos Sapateiros e Saúde, followed by the systematic occupation of unoccupied and ruined buildings.
The execution of the PRCHS represented the completion of the tourism and social exclusion project in Pelourinho and Maciel planned almost 30 years earlier by the same political group, led by ACM. The PRCHS also represented the consolidation of the protagonism of the State Government in the CHS, already rehearsed since the PCH, with the unjustifiable absence of the municipal public power and the almost non-existent participation of the private initiative. The State Government acquired 432 properties and took advantage of another 133, becoming the largest owner of the Historic Center of Salvador and its direct manager, through Ipac. Thus, the CHS was transformed into an urban enclave managed by the State Government and dissociated from the rest of the city. This decision resulted in an inconsistent integration of private initiative in the CHS recovery process, restricting itself to installing small commercial enterprises in properties recovered by the State and owned by the State, at the expense of monthly rentals with symbolic values.
8 The 7th Stage of the PRCHS and Social Housing in the CHS It became clear in a short time that those responsible for the design and implementation of the PRCHS had overestimated the capacity of tourism and cultural animation to maintain the economic dynamics of the area: the State Government had to invest, for more than a decade, tens of millions of dollars in the maintenance of cultural programming, through the Pelourinho Day and Night Program, and in the operation of cultural spaces managed by private organisations. Most of the restaurants, bars and designer stores installed in the 1990s closed their doors in the following decade. The understanding of the limits of tourism in the “recovery” of the CHS coincided with an important change in the institutional and operational aspect: the 7th stage, unlike the previous stages of the PRCHS, would not be performed directly by the State Government, through Ipac, but by the recently created Monumenta Program of
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the Ministry of Culture, with resources from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and support from UNESCO. In Salvador, the Project Executing Unit (UEP) of the Monumenta Program would be implemented in another State Government institution, the Bahia State Urban Development Company (Conder). Executed from 2002 on, the 7th Stage covers an area of approximately 50,000 square meters, between Terreiro de Jesus and Baixa dos Sapateiros, containing dozens of ruined townhouses or in an advanced state of degradation. The 7th Stage privileged, at first, specific works to restore monumental buildings, such as the Church of Nossa Senhora da Ajuda, the Casa dos Santos of the Church of the Third Order of Saint Francis and the old São Damaso Seminary. In addition, two buildings from the first quarter of the 20th century located on Rua do Tesouro were recovered to house the National Museum of Afro-Brazilian Culture (Muncab), which, although officially opened in 2011, has not yet fully functioned. Even due to the problems identified in the previous stages of the PRCHS, the Monumenta Program aimed to privilege housing use in the 7th Stage. The initial proposal was to create, in the 76 buildings to be recovered, 332 housing units for state servants with monthly income of up to 10 minimum wages, through the Housing Program for Public Servants (Prohabit), with funding from Caixa Econômica Federal. However, more than 100 families then residing in these properties demanded the right to remain in the area, through a Direct Action of Unconstitutionality (Adin) filed by the Association of Residents and Friends of the Historic Center of Salvador (Amach). Faced with this demand, Public Prosecutor’s Office filed a Public Civil Action that, through a Term of Conduct Adjustment (TAC), signed with Conder in 2005, managed to guarantee the permanence of families that wished to remain in the CHS. Thus, of the 332 apartments to be built, 229 would be destined to civil servants, with resources initially estimated at R$ 14.5 million, and the remaining 103 would be destined to families who wish to remain in the area, through the Social Interest Housing Program (PHIS), with resources from the Ministry of Cities initially estimated at almost R$ 6 million (Bahia 2010). Fifteen years after the signing of the TAC, almost a third of the 103 families benefiting from PHIS have not yet received their permanent residences and continue to live in precarious “temporary houses”. While the 7th Stage interventions began to be carried out in the Upper City, two other State Government initiatives were conceived aimed at recovering historic townhouses and adapting them to social housing. In the neighborhood of Santo Antônio Além do Carmo, on the north end of the CHS, Conder, within the scope of the Caixa Econômica Federal Residential Rental Program (PAR), with the support of UNESCO and IDB resources, recovered some properties in ruins that were transformed into residential complexes, preserving the façades and reconstructing the external volumetric reading of the buildings, based on a project by the architect Demetre Anastassakis. Of the various properties contemplated in the project stage, only a few were actually recovered. Another contemporary initiative to the 7th Stage is the Pilar Urban Rehabilitation Plan (RUP), which results from an agreement between Conder and Faufba, signed in 2003. It includes some empty lots and, mainly, dozens of houses in an advanced state of degradation located on the streets of Pilar, Julião and Caminho Novo do Taboão, at
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the foot of the slope that separates the Lower and Upper Cities, on the northern limit of CHS.2 Many of the townhouses are occupied, transformed into tenements, and the main objective identified by the Plan, which guided the various architectural projects prepared from it between 2003 and 2008, was to promote housing for the population already residing in the area, qualifying the properties in terms of habitability. The first project developed within the scope of the RUP corresponded to the adaptation and expansion of the former State Ice Factory, a robust-reinforced concrete structure erected in the 1940s between Jequitaia Avenue, the hillside and the access bridge to the Américo Simas tunnel. The old structure was supposed to be adapted to house 107 families residing in irregular buildings erected a few meters away, at the foot of the Ladeira do Pilar. The majority (73%) of these families had an income of less than half the minimum wage and their transfer was urgent, either because of the risk situation in which they found themselves, due to the constant threats of landslides, or due to the impact that this occupation had on the landscape of the listed site. The Pilar 1 Housing Complex was finally opened in 2012, after a series of changes in the project, including the decision to demolish the existing concrete structure and build the three ex novo apartment blocks. The Pilar 1 Housing Complex would be the only project prepared in the RUP/FAUFBA and Conder agreement to be effectively built. The other projects, developed between 2005 and 2008 and corresponding to the restoration and recycling of ruined properties or to new buildings to be built on vacant lots on Julião street and Caminho Novo do Taboão, would create hundreds of housing units aiming to shelter the resident population in the area. In addition to the projects not having been executed, many of the townhouses that should have been restored and requalified were ruined to such an extent that, in 2010, they had to be propped up, as happened with those located on Julião street, between the numbers 01 and 09. The adoption of shoring as a strategy by the preservation agencies has only delayed the collapse of these buildings, since the metal struts also degrade, and, in the absence of actions aimed at the effective recovery of the buildings, they end up transforming, after a few years, in an overload for already damaged structures.
2 The
Agreement was signed as a consequence of the International Project Seminar: Urban Rehabilitation and City Culture, promoted in 2001 at Faufba, with the participation of professors and students from Brazilian, Italian and Chilean universities and sponsored by Conder, with the area between the streets of Pilar and Julião and Avenida Jequitaia as an intervention area. From the signing of the agreement, in 2003, the Pilar Urban Requalification Laboratory (RUP) was created, within the scope of Faufba, to elaborate the aforementioned plan and a series of architectural projects for the area. Both the seminar and the RUP were conceived and coordinated by Profa. Esterzilda Berenstein de Azevedo; the author of this article participated in the aforementioned seminar, still as a student of the undergraduate course in architecture and urbanism at Ufba, and, between 2003 and 2006, integrated, as an architect and master’s student in the Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism at Ufba, the RUP technical team, co-authoring many of the projects developed for the area.
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9 The Late 2000s: Political Changes and New Programs and Plans for the CHS In 2007, a new phase began in the management of the CHS by the State Government: after more than 30 years of almost uninterrupted dominance of the group led by ACM in Bahia’s political context, the opposition leader Jaques Wagner was elected governor. In its term, the Secretariat of Culture and Tourism, which existed throughout the period in which the State Government was in the hands of the group led by ACM, was splitted into two, and the new government adopted a strategy radically different from that implemented until then in CHS: the continuous contribution of public resources to the maintenance of cultural spaces managed by nongovernmental organizations, such as Teatro XVIII and Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado, was suspended, as were the significant amounts invested monthly in the cultural animation of the region. As if to mark this new policy of the State Government for the CHS, less focused on tourism and more focused on its inhabitants, the first Secretary of Culture of the State of Bahia, the theater director Márcio Meirelles decided to hold his inauguration ceremony at Vila Nova Esperança, a community located at the back of the old Faculty of Medicine of Brazil, a few meters from Terreiro de Jesus. Formed by 49 families, “the Vila Nova Esperança community is notably one of the last strongholds of resistance of the black population in the Historic Center”, being, according to one of the residents, “the only community that remained in the entire revitalization process do Pelourinho” conducted by the State Government in the 1990s (Teixeira and Espírito Santo 2009). Meirelles’ inauguration corresponds to a political act. About it, he would write, three years later: “In that January of 2007 it was raining and there was a lot of mud in Vila Nova Esperança, but seven secretaries and the first lady were in that community, where the State had never been before, except through the police” (Meirelles 2010). Also, in 2007, the government of the State of Bahia would hire the São Paulo office Brasil Arquitetura, formed by former associates of Lina Bo Bardi—among them Marcelo Ferraz, co-author of the Pilot Project of Ladeira da Misericórdia— to develop a requalification project for Vila Nova Esperança. Despite having been developed with the intense participation of the community and having received the 1st place in the Prize of the Institute of Architects of Brazil—São Paulo Department (IAB-SP) in 2008, in the category “Public Social Housing”, the Brasil Arquitetura’s proposal for Vila Nova Esperança had its construction started by Conder only in 2012 and the works were stopped a few months later. In 2018, a new bid was carried out to continue the execution of the works.3 Also in 2007, a Technical Cooperation Agreement was signed between the Ministry of Cities, IPHAN, the state secretariats of Culture and Urban Development, 3 For
more information on the Pilar Urban Rehabilitation Plan and the architectural projects developed within the scope of the RUP/Faufba, as well as the Brasil Arquitetura project for Vila Nova Esperança and other social housing projects developed for CHS in the last decades, cf. Andrade Junior (2015).
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Conder and the Salvador City Hall aiming at the elaboration and implementation of the Old Center of Salvador’s Participatory Rehabilitation Plan (PRPCAS). In order to facilitate the elaboration and implementation of the plan, in October of that year, the Reference Office of the Old Center of Salvador (ERCAS) was created, initially linked to the State Secretariat of Culture and later transformed into the Directorate of the Old Center of Salvador (Dircas), linked to Conder. The Old Center of Salvador (CAS) basically corresponds to the CHS APCP created in 1983, covering a total area of 7 square kilometers and housing approximately 80 thousand inhabitants—a population 40% smaller than that of 1970 (Bahia 2010, p. 20). One of the main challenges of PRPCAS would be to combat the process of population emptying and degradation of the CAS and, for that, it was essential to review public policies aimed primarily at tourism, as noted by Governor Wagner in the text presenting the plan: The revitalization restricted to Pelourinho, which occurred in the 90s, made the region one of the largest tourist destinations in the country, thanks to the wealth of its artistic and cultural heritage. Such an intervention, however, did not contemplate the economic, social, urban and environmental sustainability of this important site. (apud Bahia 2010, p. 6)
Among the 14 proposals of PRPCAS for the Old Center of Salvador was the “incentive to housing and institutional use in CAS”, explained in the following terms: Currently, in the CAS there are about 1,100 closed properties, ruined buildings or vacant lots, which, based on technical and financial feasibility studies, may be adequate to meet the demand for housing in CAS, with the potential to produce approximately 8,000 new units, considering the complementary functions to housing such as commerce, leisure and the provision of services. Among the closed and ruined properties, it is proposed to build 5,000 new housing units for middle-income families. […] The strategy is not only to attract a new portion of the population to the CAS, but also to guarantee the permanence of those who already live there. The Plan includes the viability of living conditions for the maintenance of the resident population in a situation of social vulnerability, about 3,000 families, of which 2,000 are homeless, living in slums and tenements. Of these, 103 are already benefiting from MONUMENTA Program resources [in the 7th stage]. Another 1,000 at-risk families currently reside on the hillside, of which 946 are already included in housing programs with allocated resources. […] The 3,000 families living in situations of social vulnerability will be relocated to new housing in the CAS perimeter, avoiding the expulsion of these low-income residents from the central area. The housing projects involve the construction of equipment for collective use that generates employment and income and the participation of community groups and social movements linked to this population. (Bahia 2010, p. 295)
Despite the PRPCAS speech in defense of housing in the CHS, few families living in socially vulnerable situations have been effectively served by the State Government, which continues to concentrate efforts on designing and executing projects aimed at tourism and to cultural entertainment, such as the sliding stage in the Largo do Pelourinho, conceived by the architect Pasqualino Magnavita in 1992, with resources of R$ 4.68 million, 90% of which contributed by the Ministry of Tourism, whose construction however, was paralyzed after being initiated by Ipac in 2010. Regarding the performance of IPHAN in CHS during the period, the decision at the meeting of the Advisory Council for Cultural Heritage held on October 15, 2009, to list the Architectural, Urban and Landscape Site of Lower City, contiguous
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to the urban site of CHS listed by IPHAN in 1984, and the PAC Cidades Históricas Program, conceived in 2009 and whose actions began to be implemented in CHS from 2013. PAC Cidades Históricas, direct successor to the PCH and the Monumenta Program, aims to promote economic and social development with sustainability and quality of life through interventions in 44 urban sites listed by IPHAN. In and around the CHS, PAC Cidades Históricas intended to invest around R$ 142 million in 23 interventions. Despite initially contemplating structuring projects such as the funicular connecting Castro Alves square, in the Upper City, and Conceição street, in the Lower City, PAC Historical Cities ended up prioritizing, in its execution, the restoration works of monuments of the colonial period, in addition to the adaptation of newer buildings to house events, museums or public agencies. By the end of 2019, more than R$ 80 million from the PAC Cidades Historicas were invested at the CHS in interventions such as the restorations of the Fort of São Marcelo, the Basilica Cathedral and the churches of the Third Order of São Domingos and the Santíssimo Sacramento da Rua do Passo, as well as the restoration and conversion of townhouses in the Casa do Carnaval, the new headquarters of the Gregório de Mattos Foundation and the Reception Hall at Conceição da Praia.
10 The Private Initiative and the “Discovery” of the Todos os Santos Bay The “discovery” of the economic potential of the landscape values of the stretch of Todos os Santos Bay in the vicinity of the CHS, in the last decades of the 20th century, results in the implantation of a private marina in the surroundings of the southern limit of the CHS. Bahia Marina is probably the most ambitious private project ever conceived for the immediate surroundings of CHS: although the first feasibility studies date back to 1983, its first stage was only opened in 1999. Even today, more than 30 years later, the Bahia Marina project remains on the agenda, under the perspective of multiple expansions of the built area and involved in controversy due to the environmental and landscape impacts it causes. In the second half of the first decade of the 21st century, the privileged view of the Bay of Todos os Santos Bay is the motto of high-end residential developments carried out north of Bahia Marina, close to Ladeira da Preguiça, one of the oldest in CHS, always under great controversy, such as Porto Trapiche Residence (2006–2007), Trapiche Adelaide Residential (2009) and Cloc Marina Residence (2008–2015)— the first two built on the margins of Todos os Santos Bay and the last one on the top of the hillside. The construction of these developments, however, does not promote the effective requalification of the public space or of the surrounding properties, since they
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constitute gated communities and are accessed by their residents, invariably, by car.4 Therefore, in addition to negatively impacting the protected landscape, these ventures promote social segregation in the area. Other private developments aimed at the high-end market were conceived, in the same period, for the southern end of the CHS, in the stretch between Largo Dois de Julho and the Convent of Santa Teresa, but later were aborted due to the controversies raised, such as the Txai Salvador Hotel & Residence complex (2006) and the Santa Teresa cluster plan (2007), through which groups of investors who purchased ruins, land and buildings in the surroundings of the convent intended to create a luxury neighborhood, with hotels, apartments, shops, restaurants and offices. Six years later, in 2012, the Santa Teresa cluster plan, which was private, was incorporated by the Municipality of Salvador and renamed as the “Project for the humanization of the Santa Teresa neighborhood”. This project was rejected with great vigor by the residents of the area, from the middle and lower classes, either due to the absence of any debate with the community, or due to its gentrifying character, which even changed, as a marketing strategy, the historical denomination of the area, known as Dois de Julho, to Santa Teresa. As a direct result, in the same year, the “Our neighborhood is Dois de Julho” movement was created, aiming to mobilize the community to face the project, which was subsequently abandoned. From the first years of the new millennium, the first significant private investments—albeit scattered—took place in the northern end of CHS, in the neighborhoods of Carmo and Santo Antônio Além do Carmo, with the installation of inns in restored historic townhouses, which would reverberate, in the following years, in dozens of similar interventions, such as the Pousada Solar do Carmo (2003), Pousada Villa Carmo (2003) and Pousada do Carmo (2005), the latter installed in the former Carmelite convent, a monument individually listed by IPHAN. The installation of these inns, associated with the acquisition of dozens of properties as second homes of people residing in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian and foreign cities, almost always on the west side of Rua Direita do Santo Antônio, on the top of the hillside above Todos os Santos Bay, resulted in the gentrification of a neighborhood that had managed to maintain, for decades, its middle class residential character. The interests of the private sector in the Santo Antônio Além do Carmo neighborhood were not limited, in this period, to the hotel sector, as demonstrated by the project to create an open-air mall in the neighborhood, disclosed in 2007. The acquisition, by businesswoman Luciana Rique, of dozens of properties on Rua Direita do Santo Antônio and the non-implementation of this project contributed decisively to the emptying of the neighborhood, due to the substantial increase in property prices and also to the decision to vacate the properties purchased during the development of the project, which ended up being abandoned in 2013. Similar to the Dois de Julho 4 The
apartments at Trapiche Adelaide Residencial, for example, had, at the time of their construction, in 2009, the most expensive square meter in the real estate market in Salvador, in the order of R$ 10,000 (Grupo …, 2009). Today, after more than ten years, they have grown even more: a one-bedroom apartment in Porto Trapiche Residence, with 95 m2 of private area, is currently being sold for between R$ 1.25 million and R$ 2.1 million - a value between R$ 13,000 and R$ 22,000 per square meter. (source: Research conducted on the website imoveis.trovit.com.br on June 3, 2020).
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neighborhood, the threat of gentrification led to the emergence of the “People could be living here” Movement, led by residents of Santo Antônio Além do Carmo.
11 Recent Interventions in Ladeira da Montanha It is not just projects from the private initiative that have been the subject of controversy in recent years at CHS. Some proposals from IPHAN itself and the City Hall of Salvador have also been the target of rejection by CHS residents, such as the requalification project of the arches of Montanha, which aims to restore and recover the 17 properties located in Ladeira da Conceição, inside the arches of the Ladeira da Montanha. Built in the second half of the 19th century, these buildings have been occupied, for more than a century, by blacksmiths, whitesmiths, marble workers and other artisans and craftsmen linked to traditional crafts, such as the production of sacred candomblé objects. The requalification project foresaw the adaptation of these properties into “artistic residences” and was conceived by the Superintendence of IPHAN in Bahia within the scope of PAC Cidades Históricas, with the support of the City Hall, which owns the properties. In July 2014, the occupants of the properties, who were unaware of the IPHAN project, received notification from the City Hall, giving them 72 h to vacate them. The negative reaction was immediate, and the repercussion was national. The mobilization of the Artisans of Ladeira da Conceição da Praia, concerned with the possibility of not returning to the properties after their restoration, had the support of several agents and groups, such as professors and researchers and the Department of Intangible Heritage of IPHAN itself, resulting in the retreat of the City Hall of Salvador and the Superintendence of IPHAN in Bahia. The entry of the Public Defender’s Office of the State of Bahia as a mediator between IPHAN and craftsmen resulted in the revision of the project, in order to guarantee the permanence of the craftsmen after the restoration. The revised project was carried out by the City of Salvador, which started the works, budgeted at R$ 3.5 million, in September 2019. Another action by the City Hall and IPHAN that was involved in controversy was the demolition of several buildings located on the slopes of Montanha and Preguiça, after the collapse of two houses in Ladeira da Preguiça, on May 18, 2015 and a landslide in the Ladeira da Montanha, two days later, that reached six buildings. Based on these events, and the death of two people who occupied these buildings, resulting from the landslides caused by the intense rains, the City Hall, with the endorsement of IPHAN, demolished 31 buildings and removed 30 families from the area. The high number of demolitions and removed families, associated with the existence of a series of expropriation decrees for the area published by the City Hall in the previous months, were interpreted by residents and other sectors of society as actions whose ultimate purpose would be the social exclusion, aiming at the future occupation of those lands, with privileged views to the Todos os Santos Bay, by private initiative. This situation caused great controversy and the reaction of the
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communities living in the CHS, as well as of the entities of architects of the state of Bahia.5
12 Final Considerations Despite almost 50 years of large public investments in tourism in CHS, often to the detriment and even with the expulsion of communities residing in the area for generations, the numbers of tourist activity in Salvador and Brazil remains very low in relation to other cities and countries. In 2018, Brazil received a total of 6.6 million foreign tourists, a small number compared to European countries such as France (89.4 million foreign tourists in the same year), Spain (82.8 million) and Italy (61.6 million), but also less representative than American countries such as the United States (79.7 million), Mexico (41.3 million) and Argentina (7.5 million) (UNWTO 2020). Even a single monument in the French capital, the Louvre Museum, receives more foreign tourists (7.6 million) than all of Brazil. Although international tourism in South America has been growing in recent years (6.3% in 2016 and 8.4% in 2017), in Brazil, this growth was much lower (4.5% in 2016; 0.6% in 2017; and 0.5% in 2018) than the average and countries like Peru and Argentina, in which international tourism grew 10% and 7.5% in 2018, respectively (Lis and Gravia 2019). Salvador, despite offering both natural attractions, such as beaches, as well as cultural attractions, such as CHS, was only the seventh Brazilian city with the largest number of foreign tourists in 2017. If the greater number of international visitors in cities such as Florianópolis, Foz do Iguaçu and Bombinhas is justified by the proximity to other countries, the same cannot be said of Rio de Janeiro, Búzios and São Paulo, also ahead of Salvador in this ranking (Santos 2019). Rio de Janeiro, the city that receives the largest number of tourists per year in Brazil and the only one in the country included in the list of the 100 most visited cities in the world, received only 2.3 million foreign tourists in 2018, many times less than others cities that host sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, such as Paris (16.9 million people), Istanbul (12.1 million), Rome (9.7 million), Venice (5.4 million) and Lisbon (3.8 million). In South America, cities like Lima 5 The Institute of Architects of Brazil - Department of Bahia (IAB-BA), the Council of Architecture
and Urbanism of Bahia (CAU-BA) and the Union of Architects and Urban Planners of the State of Bahia (Sinarq-BA) have forwarded it to the Unesco’s World Heritage Committee in Paris, on June 30, 2015, a document denouncing the state of abandonment of the CHS and, “in view of the seriousness of the situation and the imminence of new demolitions”, they asked that Committee “ send, with urgency, a monitoring mission with the objective of assessing the ruin situation of the Historic Center of Salvador and its possible declaration as a World Heritage in Danger site”(Instituto … 2015, p. 4). Although the entities received, on August 4, 2015, a letter from the UNESCO World Heritage Center acknowledging receipt of the complaint and committing themselves to take the appropriate measures (UNESCO 2015), until now, after five years, there is no news of any action in this regard.
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(2.6 million), Santiago (2.6 million) and Buenos Aires (2.4 million) receive more foreign tourists annually than Rio de Janeiro and Salvador. (Geerts 2018). The recent pandemic of Covid 19, which caused the suspension, for months and on a global scale, of a significant part of tourist activities, with the cancellation of thousands of flights and the closure of millions of monuments, museums and hotels, further explains clearer the limits of tourism as the main economic activity to sustain heritage sites such as CHS. On the other hand, as we have seen, housing projects for CHS and its surroundings, with rare exceptions, have not been successful, with the exception of a handful of luxury developments overlooking the Todos os Santos Bay. Thus, the population of the CHS continues to decrease: from 11,949 inhabitants in 1991, it reduced to 8,255 inhabitants in 2000—a decrease of about 30% in nine years—and to 5,985 inhabitants in 2010—a reduction of 28.5% in ten years (Gordilho-Souza 2010). Although the population loss in the 1991–2000 period can be justified by the expulsions promoted under the PRCHS, the same cannot be said with respect to the 2000–2010 period. Another serious problem with CHS is the lack of coordination between the various governmental bodies active in its management. The City Hall, the various bodies of the State Government (Ipac, Conder and ERCAS) and IPHAN (of the Federal Government) have little dialogue with each other, nor are they articulated with residents and investors in the area. An example of this disarticulation is the proposal made by the Secretariat of Tourism of Bahia in 2013 to build an arena for shows and other events, with a capacity for 5,000 people, on the slope between Sodré street and the bottom of the Preguiça slope, at a cost of R$ 25 million. The landscape and traffic impact of this, which is the main car access to CHS, as well as the noise pollution that its implementation would cause, are absolutely incompatible with the two high-standard hotels then in the process of being installed in the surroundings, the Fera Palace Hotel, opened in 2017, with 81 apartments, and Fasano Salvador, opened in 2018, with 70 rooms. To make this disarticulation even clearer, just remember that, at the same time, IPHAN contracted, through PAC Cidades Históricas, the elaboration, for the same plot, of a project for the construction of an funicular connecting the Upper and Lower Cities, with an estimated cost of R$ 3 million, to be managed by the City Hall, which owns the land. Not to mention that the same plot had already been the subject of several occupation proposals in previous years, such as a municipal theater (2009), a convention center (2009) and a cultural center (2007), to name only those who were conceived within the scope of the City Hall. None of these projects, however, came to be executed. Moreover, the last origin-destination survey conducted in the Metropolitan Region of Salvador (RMS)6 , in 2012, points out that, if, in the morning peak hour (between 7 and 8 am), the Iguatemi /Tancredo Neves region is the one that most attracts trips in individual mode—that is, by car, truck or motorcycle-with regard to trips in collective mode—buses, school transport or chartered transport—the region with the greatest 6 The
Metropolitan Region of Salvador (RMS) has a population of 3,9 million inhabitants and consists of 13 Municipalities.
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attraction is CAS, that is, CHS and its surroundings (Bahia 2012). Although part of this attractiveness results from the location, in CAS, of the city’s main transfer station—Estação da Lapa—it demonstrates that, for the lower classes, the CHS and its surroundings, where important axes are concentrated such as commercial establishments, numerous secondary and higher education establishments and a good part of the hospitals of the RMS, continues to attract thousands of people daily, consisting, even today, in an important metropolitan centrality. Only the absence of adequate public policies can justify that, in an area with services and infrastructure such as CAS, there are over a thousand vacant or underutilized properties, which could house more than five thousand housing units, considering that the RMS has a deficit of tens of thousands of homes. Despite the recurrent focus on tourism as the main economic activity for CHS, this area needs to be understood as a service and leisure center for the inhabitants of Salvador and should receive greater investments aimed at expanding the offer of housing units for all social classes, from social housing financed by the public authorities to high-end housing produced by the real estate market, always integrating families that have lived in the area for generations and depend on this central location for their livelihood. The most recent and praiseworthy action to reverse the functional emptying of the CHS and its immediate surroundings consists of the #vemprocentro program, “Integrated Program for the requalification of the Historic Center” promoted by the City Hall, under the management of Mayor ACM Neto, which provides for investments by R$ 300 million in 60 actions in the area, including housing for municipal employees, social housing, restoration of monuments, requalification of public spaces, creation of an incubator for startups and a hub of creative economy, creation of cultural facilities and the installation of a Municipal Administrative Center (CAM) in the Comércio neighborhood. The creation of CAM in Comércio was announced by the City Hall in August 2018 and aims to recover several vacant properties, which will house 80% of the municipal public bodies by the end of 2020, hitherto spread across different neighborhoods in the city. In April 2019, the Department of Policies for Women, Children and Youth was the first to migrate to Comércio, followed by the Department of Culture and Tourism and the Salvador Tourism Company, in September 2019, and the Department of Sustainability, Innovation and Resilience, in February 2020. The transfer of these departments to the neighborhood increased the number of people circulating in the area by hundreds or thousands of people daily, expanding its urban dynamics and indirectly promoting the emergence of several commercial establishments in the surroundings. Regarding the creation of housing in Comércio, an exclusively commercial neighborhood, Tania Scofield, President of the Mario Leal Ferreira Foundation, the municipality’s urban planning body, says: Comércio, according to our research, has more than 130 thousand square meters of unoccupied area. On the other hand, we have a very high demand for housing in Salvador. The plan aims to reconcile empty properties in a well infrastructure served area, since Comércio offers
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N. V. de Andrade Junior everything from the basic structure of sanitation, energy and sewage, to the infrastructure of services and transportation, with housing (apud Prefeitura … 2008)
Half a century after Mayor ACM proposed the CHS “social exclusion” to promote its “tourist exploration”, his grandson, occupying the same position, recognizes that “the Historic Center [of Salvador] cannot depend on the seasonality of Tourism” and that, since “The soteropolitano7 does not have the Historic Center as a destination”, it is necessary to invite “the population of Salvador to participate in a movement of collective transformation of the public space of the Historic Center” (Salvador 2019, pp. 5–7). With 50 years of delay, the government seems to finally recognize the limitations of tourism as a central activity to be imposed on the CHS, as well as the pertinence of moving the economy of the area through the expansion of housing and institutional uses.
References Andrade Junior NV (2007) “A Influência Italiana na Modernidade Baiana: o caráter público, urbano e monumental da arquitetura de Filinto Santoro”. 19&20, Rio de Janeiro, v. I, n. 4, out. http:// www.dezenovevinte.net/arte%20decorativa/ad_fs_vnaj.htm. Accessed 20 Jan 2020 Andrade Junior NV (2015) “Habitação de interesse social em centros históricos: Experiências e desafios em Salvador (e um contraponto limeño)”. In: GOMES, Marco Aurélio A. de Filgueiras; LUDEÑA URQUIZO, Wiley (Orgs.). Diálogos metropolitanos Lima / Salvador: Processos históricos e desafios do urbanismo contemporâneo. Salvador: Edufba, pp 149–182 Azevedo PO (1984) “O caso Pelourinho”. In: Arantes, Antônio (Org.). Produzindo o passado: Estratégias de construção do patrimônio cultural. Brasiliense, São Paulo, pp 219–255 Bahia (1975) Bahia constrói o futuro sem destruir o passado. Governo do Estado da Bahia, Salvador Bahia.(2010) Centro Antigo de Salvador: Plano de Reabilitação Participativo. Secretaria de Cultura, Fundação Pedro Calmon, Salvador Bahia (1979) Fundação do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural da Bahia. 10 Anos de Fundação. FPAC, Salvador Bahia (1997) Instituto do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural. 30 anos do IPAC nos jornais. Instituto do Patrimônio Artístico e Cultural, Salvador Bahia (2012) Secretaria de Infraestrutura. Pesquisa de Mobilidade na Região Metropolitana de Salvador. Síntese dos resultados das pesquisas domiciliar. Salvador: Secretaria de Infraestrutura do Estado da Bahia. http://www.infraestrutura.ba.gov.br/arquivos/File/publicacoes/sinteseODSal vadorRMS.pdf. Accessed 30 Mar 2020 Bardi LB, Ferraz MC (Org.). (2008) Lina Bo Bardi. Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi, São Paulo Bastos MVSB (2019) O Programa de Cidades Históricas: A experiência e seus desdobramentos no Centro Histórico de Salvador (1973-1990). Dissertação (Mestrado em Arquitetura e Urbanismo) – Faculdade de Arquitetura, Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador Centro Histórico de Salvador: SPHAN cumpre exigência da UNESCO e amplia área tombada. Boletim SPHAN Pró-Memória, Brasília, nº 26, pp. 11–12, set./out. 1983 Cury I (Org.) (2004) Cartas Patrimoniais. Iphan, Rio de Janeiro
7 "soteropolitano"
is the person born in Salvador
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Geertz W (2018) Top 100 City Destinations 2018. Londres: Euromonitor International. http:// go.euromonitor.com/rs/805-KOK-719/images/wpTop100CitiesEN_Final.pdf?mkt_tok=eyJpIj oiT0RFMk1HTXlZV1k0WTJNeCIsInQiOiJVTjUwcFVUUGlsMW8zeU5OTkRCN2pBSkNS KzBWSUVlVW96WHpNR0EzQkE4bGJMNVdVNG1OZm9uVDVXU3cwcmJvdlYwRnIx eHdKRGFMKzNFU2VjZG1PNnRrRU9XaHJlVUU3TkVvT2RRUDUrckE0QjBmWlFld2U xVEFwbzVLb1wvdnYifQ%3D%3D. Accessed 30 Mar 2020 Gordilho-Souza  (2010) “Ocupação Urbana e Habitação”. In: BAHIA. Centro Antigo de Salvador: Plano de Reabilitação Participativo. Secretaria de Cultura, Fundação Pedro Calmon, Salvador, pp 72–101 Grupo espanhol investe no Cloc Marina Residence na avenida Contorno”. BahiaJá. Jornalismo da Integração. Salvador, 03 fev 2009. http://www.bahiaja.com.br/salvador/noticia/2009/02/03/ grupo-espanhol-investe-no-cloc-marina-residence-na-avenida-contorno,13340,0.html. Accessed 30 Mar 2020 ICOMOS (1985) International Council on Monuments and Sites. Liste du Patrimoine Mondial / World Heritage List n. 309. Paris: Icomos, Juillet/July. https://whc.unesco.org/document/153156. Accessed 20 Apr 2020 Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil – Departamento da Bahia; Conselho de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Bahia; Sindicato dos Arquitetos e Urbanistas do estado da Bahia. Denuncia del estado de abandono del Centro Histórico de Salvador de Bahia, Brasil. 30 jun. 2015. https://iab.org.br/ sites/default/files/Denuncia_iabba_Abandono_del_CH_de_SSA.pdf. Accessed 20 Apr 2020 Lima VC (1973) “O Projeto Pelourinho (Avaliação Crítica – 1971)”. In: IPHAN. Anais do II Encontro de Governadores para preservação do patrimônio histórico, artístico, arqueológico e natura do Brasil, realizado em Salvador, Bahia, de 25 a 29 de outubro de 1971. IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro, pp 160–165 Lis L, Gravia G (2019) “Brasil recebe menos estrangeiros que o Louvre; plano quer dobrar turistas no país até 2022”. G1 Turismo e Viagem, 19 maio. https://g1.globo.com/turismo-e-viagem/not icia/2019/05/19/brasil-recebe-menos-estrangeiros-que-o-louvre-plano-quer-dobrar-turistas-nopais-ate-2022.ghtml. Accessed 30 Mar 2020 Meirelles M (2010) Discurso de transmissão de cargo do Ex-Secretário de Cultura Marcio Meirelles. 23 jan. http://www2.cultura.ba.gov.br/2011/01/25/discurso-de-transmissao-de-cargo-do-ex-sec retario-de-cultura-marcio-meirelles/. Accessed 12 Apr 2020 Neville S-L (2013) Introduction. In: Association pour la Sauvegarde et la Mise en Valeur du Paris Historique. À l’origine de Paris Historique: Le Marais sauvé para son Festival. Association pour la sauvegarde et la mise en valeur du Paris historique, Paris, pp 5–32 Palacios MGLS (2009) A reforma do Pelourinho: o período pré-1992. 2009. Dissertação (Mestrado em Sociologia) – Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte Parent M (2008) Proteção e valorização do patrimônio cultural brasileiro no âmbito do desenvolvimento turístico e econômico. In: LEAL, Claudia Feierabend Baeta (Org.). As missões da Unesco no Brasil: Michel Parent. IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro, pp 35–191 Prefeitura cria plano para ampliar moradias no Comércio (2019) Bahia Notícias, Salvador, 30 Apr. https://www.bahianoticias.com.br/noticia/235333-prefeitura-cria-plano-para-ampliarmoradias-no-comercio.html. Accessed 30 Mar 2020 Salvador (2019) Prefeitura Municipal de Salvador. Centro Histórico. Salvador: Prefeitura Municipal de Salvador. http://vemprocentro.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/VemProCentro.pdf. Accessed 20 Mar 2020 Sampaio AHL (1999) Formas Urbanas – Cidade-Real & Cidade-Ideal: contribuição ao estudo urbanístico de Salvador. Quarteto, PPGAU/UFBA, Salvador Sant’anna M (2016) “A herança do PCH: balanço crítico e desdobramentos 40 anos depois”. Anais do Museu Paulista, vol. 24, nº 1, São Paulo, jan./apr. https://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script= sci_arttext&pid=S0101-47142016000100059#fn29. Accessed 20 May 2020
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Santos G (2019) “Salvador é a única do Nordeste entre as 10 cidades brasileiras mais visitadas”. Correio*, Salvador, 12 jan. https://www.correio24horas.com.br/noticia/nid/salvador-e-a-unicado-nordeste-entre-as-10-cidades-brasileiras-mais-visitadas/. Accessed 30 Mar 2020 Santos M (2008) O centro da cidade do Salvador: estudo de geografia urbana. Edusp; Salvador: Edufba, São Paulo Teixeira AN, do Espírito Santo MTG (2009) “A ZEIS de Vila Nova Esperança: habitação de interesse social no Centro Histórico de Salvador (Pelourinho/BA)”. Revista VeraCidade, Salvador, vol 8, pp 21–35 Tombamento adiado de Salvador trará prejuízo ao turismo. Jornal do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, n.p., 3 nov. 1984 UNESCO (2015) Centro del Patrimonio Mundial. Ref.: CLT/HER/WHC/CMT/RP/1975. 04 ago. 2015. http://www.iab-ba.org.br/2013/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/carta_resposta_unesco. pdf. Accessed 17 Jan 2020 UNWTO (2020) United Nations World Tourism Organization. World Tourism Barometer, vol. 18, Issue 1, jan. https://www.e-unwto.org/doi/pdf/10.18111/wtobarometereng.2020.18.1.1. Accessed 30 Mar 30 2020
World Heritage in Brazil: Reflection and Criticism Simone Scifoni
Abstract This paper aims to discuss the meaning of the title of world heritage site in Brazil by problematizing the site selection process run by the State, based on an analysis of assets that have already been listed, as well as those included in the indicative list. Keywords World heritage · Decoloniality · Public policy
1 The Heritage Experience in Brazil In the 1980s, in the midst of the 1988 Federal Constitution’s formulation, heritage came to be understood as a social right, a fact hitherto unprecedented in the country. The conception given to cultural heritage by the writing of article 216 represented a milestone in policies: the understanding was expanded beyond what is material, also incorporating practices, that is, the immaterial; the natural was declared as part of the cultural, eliminating dichotomies; the protection of heritage was established as a task shared by public authorities and the community, breaking with a vision of discretionary politics, without dialogue with society; and, finally, it was established that the value of heritage is given and instituted by social groups, insofar as assets, places and practices must be understood as a reference to their action, memory and identity. Thus, as Meneses (2012, 2017) reminds us, from the Federal Constitution onwards, the State has only a declaratory role for heritage, and no longer an instituting one, as it happened before, in relation to Decree-Law No. 25, of 1937, the origin of their legal protection. To this, the author called the displacement of the Simone Scifoni—Professor at the Department of Geography (Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences - FFLCH - USP) and deputy director of the Cultural Preservation Center (Pro-rector of Culture and University Extension). S. Scifoni (B) Department of Geography, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences, FFLCH – USP, São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_4
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valuation matrix, a 180° turn in what selection processes should be, since article 216 removes from the State the instituting role of value, which was given by means of the tipping instrument. For author, the Federal Constitution recognized that cultural values are not created by the government, but by society. It is clear that the state and the government can participate in the creation of these values, privileging or marginalizing each other, but always in the game of social practices. These are the generating womb. Public power now has a declaratory role and it is primarily responsible for protection, in collaboration with the producer of value, the community (Meneses 2012, p. 34).
Thus, everything should change in politics from that moment on: the ways of viewing and treating heritage, speeches and institutional practices; however, rhetoric has moved ahead, while actions have been more in the past. Based on this framework, heritage as a social right should be democratized, generalized to all groups that form society. But that did not happen, more than 30 years after the new Constitution. Contrary to real and effective democratization, in the experience of preservation over time heritage has been strengthened as a privilege of certain social classes, as only some groups are able to have registered the assets representative of their history, while others, the subaltern classes, have found enormous difficulties in seeing themselves in the set that the State calls national memory. Even with the changes that occurred since the 1980s, the national heritage is still a group formed mainly by assets representative of the dominant classes, that is, it is necessary to recognize that the public policies for the preservation of memory have a class cut. Examples of this are assets that abundantly make up the national heritage, such as the headquarters of farms and mills linked to the large monoculture export estates, or palaces and townhouses of the wealthy families, who are also large landowners in the cities. The working class, rural or urban, on the other hand, is not properly represented in the memory of the national, that is, it is as if it were not part of the forming subjects of the nation. This view of patrimony abstracts the worker as a producer of the nation’s wealth and ignores work as the source of wealth and its founding element. Thus, through heritage, wealth appears as something innate to the dominant classes and, thus, heritage as part of the instruments of the official memorialization process ends up contributing to the invisibility of the working classes. But it has also become a privilege of certain classes when interventions, in terms of restoration, recovery, requalification, have constantly evicted the poorest local population from the historic centers that have fallen, which happens directly through mechanisms of expropriation and/or reallocation, but also for the spatial valorization generated in these projects that make the permanence of these residents unfeasible. Therefore, such interventions have made heritage a social villain, insofar as, in its name, the right of the poorest to remain in their places of origin and housing is denied, as well as their affective and memorial relationships. They build relationships with places, and they refuse to inhabit the city as belonging and live in the city. If these issues are related to heritage policies in Brazil, on the other hand, there is no way to think about world heritage without taking these same considerations into
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account. World heritage is not something displaced from the daily life of cities, from the memories of residents, from groups that are represented there or made invisible in the narratives that are built on assets. In this sense, the objective of this article is to think about the experience of world heritage in Brazil from the following questions: what are the assets selected to compose the list of heritage and what is it possible to say about these choices? What are the narratives used by the State for the promotion and dissemination of these assets? What are the meanings of these choices made? What are the assets in Brazil communicating, both internally and internationally? The starting point of this reflection is the need for a critical reading of public policies for the preservation of cultural heritage and, therefore, the role that the State plays in this process of official memorialization. Policies are not only to preserve certain memories but also to erase others. Nothing is natural in this process and it is necessary to problematize what has been the selection.
2 Brazil on the World Heritage List On several occasions, Meneses (1996, 2012, 2017) insisted on showing that the matrix of meanings and values of heritage is not found in things itself, but are produced in the concrete game of social relations. Values qualify objects, practices and ideas and are not immanent and much less permanent; they change over time, according to the author. “In other words, cultural values are not spontaneous, they do not impose themselves. They are not born with the individual; they are not products of nature. They stem from social action” (Meneses 1996, p. 92). Likewise Smith (2011) warns the fact that heritage is not a thing, place or practice with an innate value, which is found in its essence. It is, above all, a process that creates and recreates memories, values and meanings; therefore, it validates, sustains and legitimizes certain memories and certain readings of the past, while making others invisible. However, for the author, this fact is hidden through what she calls the authorized discourse on heritage (AHD), the one whose origin is found in the institutional practices of preservation in European countries and which has spread internationally with the Convention of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, from 1972. This authorized discourse obscures the political dimension of the selection process, attributing to it a purely technical and neutral character: as if it were just a job of recognizing values inherent to assets. Heritage has no neutrality, since technical discourse is also the construction of narratives that seek to legitimize choices that are the product of political decisions. Technical discourse is a justifying alibi that conceals politics. This authorized discourse, therefore, has consequences, practical and theoretical effects; it creates a heritage that communicates something, according to Smith (2011). The question is to ask about what these assets that were successively selected by the State to be inscribed on the World Heritage List have to say about Brazil, and what are their consequences. To answer this question, it is first necessary to look carefully at the data relating to world heritage in the country.
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The World Heritage List was established in 1977, when the first edition of the Operational Guidelines for the implementation of World Heritage was published, guiding the identification and valuation actions by the World Heritage Committee, the governing body of the Convention World Heritage. The role of the List is to represent the cultural and natural diversity that exists worldwide, expressed in assets that are exceptional to the point of being of common importance to current and future generations (UNESCO 2017). According to this document, the World Heritage Committee seeks to establish a balanced, representative and credible list and, to that end, a global strategy has been established that seeks, based on the identification of gaps, to encourage unrepresented states parties to submit inscriptions of their assets. In order to understand the role that Brazil has played in the composition of the so-called cultural and natural world diversity, it is necessary to examine the set of Brazilian assets that make up this list. The list of World Heritage Sites in Brazil brings a set of 22 assets, until 2019, as shown in Table 1. Table 1 List of World Heritage Sites in Brazil, divided by categories, according to UNESCO UNESCO heritage category
Cultural heritage
Cultural heritage (14 assets)
Brasília (DF) Valongo Wharf - Rio de Janeiro (RJ) Historic Center of Goiás (GO) Historic Center of Diamantina (MG) Ouro Preto Historic Center (MG) Historic Center of Olinda (PE) Historic Center of São Luís (MA) Historic Center of Salvador (BA) Modern Complex of Pampulha—Belo Horizonte (MG) Guarani Jesuit Missions—in Brazil, ruins of São Miguel das Missões (RS) Serra da Capivara National Park (PI) São Francisco Square, in São Cristóvão (SE) Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro landscapes between the mountain and the sea (RJ) Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos - Congonhas (MG)
Natural heritage (7 assents)
Pantanal Protected Areas Complex (MT/MS) Central Amazon Conservation Complex (AM) Discovery Coast: Atlantic Forest Reserves (BA/ES) Atlantic Islands: Fernando de Noronha and Atol das Rocas (PE/RN) Iguaçu National Park (PR) Atlantic Forest Reserves (PR/SP) Cerrado Reserves: Chapada dos Veadeiros and Emas National Parks (GO)
Mixed Heritage (1 asset)
Paraty and Ilha Grande (RJ): Culture and Biodiversity
Source www.iphan.gov.br (organized by Simone Scifoni)
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When looking at these numbers and looking for the narratives constructed by the State to justify the selection,1 the following situation is verified: 41% of the total assets refer to the history of the country’s colonization; 32% of the total assets are linked to nature protection narratives (importance of biodiversity); 2% concern the importance of modern architecture and urbanism; and 25% are related to other reasons (archeological and artistic importance). It appears that there is a concentration of assets that make up the List in the key of the “colonial”. This reproduces and is a consequence of the same condition that exists in the set of Brazilian heritage, having been the object of a critical approach in intellectual production on heritage, by several authors, among which Rubino (1996, p. 103) stands out, who points out the existence of an uneven map of past Brazil, in which “[…] the Colony is the period par excellence of the national heritage […]”. The fact that the colonial predominates in the recognized group is not a new finding, since UNESCO itself, in 1999, during the application procedures of Diamantina (MG), guided the country to diversify its applications for registration, as shown by Ribeiro (2007). According to the author, the argument used was related to the fact that, as it is a representative and not exhaustive list, the registration of Brazilian colonial cities would no longer fit, which ended up making Paraty’s candidacy difficult for many years. The same was verified, also, by the Brazilian government in the opportunity of revising the Brazilian Indicative List, in 2015. The Indicative List provided for by UNESCO’s operational guidelines, in its paragraphs 62–76, must be prepared by each state party as planning activity in the formality of the registration of assetss. It must contain information on those assets that each state party intends to send to the selection, being necessary to re-evaluate and update it at least once every ten years. No caso do Brasil, a lista indicativa foi atualizada em 1996, e posteriormente em 2004, 2014 e 2015, de acordo com o relatório do Iphan (2015). Segundo esse estudo, foi feita uma análise sobre a distribuição dos bens protegidos em nível federal, os bens incluídos na Lista Indicativa até então vigente de 1996 e os estudos dos órgãos consultivos da UNESCO para uma Lista do Patrimônio Mundial mais representativa cultural e territorialmente. A partir desse quadro de dados foram definidos quatro critérios para avaliar a representatividade e selecionar aqueles bens culturais a serem contemplados na Lista Indicativa brasileira. The first criterion, according to Iphan, took into account the historical dimension, that is, the contribution that Brazilian cultural goods could bring to the understanding of the civilizing process of humanity. Thus, there was a concentration of goods related to the colonization process, particularly between the 16th and the 18th centuries, related to the sugar and mining export economy. As a gap, there was a need to indicate goods representative of Brazilian prehistory and the post-colonial period, 1 The
narratives elaborated by the institution were sought in order to promote and disseminate the World Heritage in Brazil. In this sense, the texts presented for each item on the List on the institution’s website were used. As they are not long texts, due to the nature of their dissemination in digital media, they seek to present each item in a synthetic way. The summaries say a lot about how the institution sees each asset.
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linked to the coffee economy of the southeastern region and the production of rubber in the northern region and, also, to the Brazilian industrialization process. The second criterion for selection was related to the anthropological dimension, that is, the need to insert goods that could represent Brazil in the composition of the wealth of the world’s socio-cultural diversity. In this case, there was a need to invest in the diversification of expressions across the territory, since the predominance of Lusitanian and Christian culture in recognized goods did not sufficiently meet the condition of Brazilian cultural diversity. The third criterion pointed to the typological dimension, alerting to the need to indicate goods that express different models or examples, in addition to the urban ensemble, of a monumental character linked to the architectural language of the Baroque that predominated in the List. It was suggested, therefore, to prioritize proposals for cultural landscapes and types of modern and archeological heritage and, when possible, serial goods, distributed throughout the national territory. Finally, the last criterion indicated the territorial dimension, which recalled that goods should also express a diversity of manifestations that occur territorially. According to this assessment, the updating of the Indicative List prepared by Iphan and published in 2015 incorporated the following assets. It is worth mentioning that only the proposals for cultural heritage made by Iphan are analyzed here, since the suggestions for insertion of natural heritage sites are made by ICMbio, Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation (Table 2). Table 2 Indicative List to World Heritage, 2019 Indicative List Indicated goods and location in Brazilian states 1996
Pampulha architectural complex (Minas Gerais)a Franciscan Convent Assembly (Alagoas, Paraíba, Pernambuco and Bahia) São Bento Church and Monastery (Rio de Janeiro) Palace of Culture, former headquarters of the Ministry of Education and Health (Rio de Janeiro)
2004
Caminho do Ouro in Paraty and landscape (Rio de Janeiro)b
2014
Cultural Landscape of the Vila Ferroviária de Paranapiacaba (São Paulo) Archaeological Site of Valongo (Rio de Janeiro) Ver-o-Peso (PA)
2015
Cultural Landscape of the Cedro Dam in the Monoliths of Quixadá (CE) Set of Brazilian Fortifications (AP, BA, MS, RJ, RO, PE, RN, SC and SP) Geoglyphs of Acre (Acre) Itacoatiaras of the Ingá River (Paraíba) Cultural Landscape of Roberto Burle Marx Site (Rio de Janeiro) Amazon Theaters (Amazonas and Pará)
a Well
recognized by UNESCO in 2016 by UNESCO in 2019, under the name “Paraty and Ilha Grande (RJ), Culture and Biodiversity” Source IPHAN (2015). Organized by Simone Scifoni)
b Well recognized
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It appears in this list that there was an effort by Iphan over the years, especially in the period from 2003 to 2016,2 to diversify the enrollment of other types of goods; in particular, those that refer to past history as is the case with the Geoglyphs of Acre, and the archeological sites in the Brazilian Amazon. Geoglyphs are earth structures dug into the ground, in the form of ditches, sometimes of short walls, which form geometric figures of great geographical extension, only noticeable in their shape, from an aerial view. In the state of Acre alone, 300 archeological sites of geoglyphs have been identified, according to Iphan. The study of these land structures increasingly confirms that the process of occupation and settlement of the Amazon region, in the first millennium of the Christian era, was undertaken by numerous indigenous groups and with great technological capacity to modify the land and lowland environment, printing in the landscape characteristics of its identity. Due to their exceptionality and relevance to the understanding of the pre-colonial period, these sites represent a unique example of the historical and social heritage that leads to new perspectives for the preservation, management and dissemination of these cultural assets. They also have great relevance to the Amazonian identity as they constitute a cultural landscape resulting from social and symbolic marks that express not only the technological capacity for managing the environment, but, above all, the landscape with indigenous characteristics. (http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pagina/detalhes/822. Accessed on 3/21/2020) (Separar o “accessed on” do link para que ele funcione corretamente: (http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pag ina/detalhes/822. Accessed on 3/21/2020))
Another item equally representative of the history of the original peoples, the Itacoatiaras do Rio Ingá, correspond to rock engravings found in an archeological site in the rural area of the municipality of Ingá, state of Paraíba. It was the first protected rock art monument in Brazil, listed by Iphan in 1944, and also the only one recognized for its artistic content, in addition to its historical importance, a fact that led the agency to include it in two Tombo Books, the Historical Books and Fine Arts. The engravings are unique, since they do not repeat the figurative elements of other sites, constituting abstract drawings. The characteristics of the site make it an exceptional testimony to the set of tangible elements that characterize the process of human occupation in this region of the American continent. The site is the most representative example of how the human groups associated with the “itacoatiaras tradition” appropriated a specific natural environment, formed from the direct interaction between rocks and water, still preserved, and transformed it for social, religious and cultural purposes and artistic and expressed their own aesthetic content, whose engravings found demonstrate the mastery of the rich technique of expression that these groups achieved. (http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pagina/detalhes/822. Accessed on 3/21/2020) (Link repetido, acredito que o correto seja o seguinte: http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pagina/det alhes/824. Accessed on 3/21/2020)
Also noteworthy are three other goods that are out of the colonial key: Vila Ferroviária de Paranapiacaba, exemplary testimony of the Brazilian industrialization process; the Cedro Dam in the Quixadá Monoliths, the first major engineering work 2 Governments
of President Lula and President Dilma Rousseff, of the Workers’ Party (PT).
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to combat droughts in northeastern Brazil, during the end of the Empire; and Vero-Peso, an architectural and landscape complex that includes a series of buildings, including two Markets, Fish and Meat, a gateway to açaí collected in the Amazon Forest and the heart of social life of the city of Belém. These goods have an important potential to present the world with another image of Brazil, contemplating cultural diversity and breaking with the traditional view of the colonial. However, Iphan, in the last years, chose to concentrate its priority actions on the candidacy of the Set of Brazilian Fortifications, a consecrated and traditional stone and lime heritage, once again reinforcing the country’s colonial image, since the fortifications were equipment implemented in the Brazil Colony to protect the appropriate territory against threats of invasion, but also to protect against the rebellions of native peoples. More of the same, that is, goods representative of a certain past, the “colonial”, already quite emphasized and valued, reinforcing its predominance in the image of Brazil, built by heritage. But if the finding of concentration in the “colonial” brings nothing new to the discussion, it is also necessary to remember that the criticism has been limited to the fact that such choices have led to an emphasis on a greater appreciation of colonial architecture and urbanism in relation to the heritage as a whole, compared to other aesthetic languages and other periods in the history of architecture. However, this finding has not yet generated a critical debate, problematizing the weight that the narrative about colonization plays in relation to the country’s history and also how colonization as a heritage discourse has been made.
3 Heritage as a Communicative Act: What Does It Communicate? The authorized discourse on heritage imposes on social groups what must be remembered and forgotten. The process of official memorialization, of which heritage policies are an essential part, consists of discretionary actions, which take place without dialogue or dialogue with different social groups. Thus, what is preserved is the product of political decisions, but which is communicated to society as the memory of all. Smith (2011) recalls that heritage is a communicative act; he says something to the present and future generations. So, it has a practical effect, which is linked to its pedagogical role, the ability to, from it, talk about something, value a certain past, obscuring conflicts, tensions. Therefore, based on the data collected above, the question is: what have world heritage sites in Brazil communicated, that is, what do they have to say about Brazil? What country vision is presented to the world through these chosen goods? To problematize the issues raised, we used the information that Iphan makes available to disseminate and promote the country’s cultural world heritage, which are reproduced in Table 3. They are relatively short texts, therefore, prepared in order to present the synthesis of the information that qualify these world heritage
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Table 3 Excerpts from explanatory texts on goods from the World Heritage List in Brazil Cultural heritage (title year)
Explanatory text excerpt
Ouro Preto Historic Center (1980)
Main city of the gold cycle, moment of the economy in Brazil Colony
Olinda Historical Center (1982)
Refers to the beginning of Portuguese colonization
Guarani Jesuit Missions (1983)
Evangelization of the Society of Jesus in the colonies
Historic Center of Salvador (1985)
Exemplary Portuguese overseas urbanism
Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos (1985)
Masterpieces of the world baroque
Brasilia (1987)
Main urban artifact in line with the urban and architectural principles of the modern movement
Serra da Capivara National Park (1991)
Archaeological remains of the most remote presence of man in South America
São Luiz Historic Center (1997)
Example of a Portuguese colonial city
Diamantina Historic Center (1999)
Unique condition of implantation of Portuguese colonial nucleus
Goiás Historical Center (2001)
Witnesses occupation and colonization of Central Brazil
São Francisco Square (2010)
Single testimony union Crowns of Portugal and Spain
Modern Set of Pampulha (2016)
Cultural landscape of modern heritage, total work of art, integrating the artistic pieces into the buildings and these to the landscape
Valongo Wharf (2018)
Memory of violence against humanity represented by slavery
Paraty culture and biodiversity (2019)
Portuguese colonial architecture
Source www.iphan.gov.br. Accessed on 3/21/2020. (organized by Simone Scifoni)
sites for an audience that does not know them. They communicate what Brazil is on the world heritage list. These excerpts show that there is a predominance of the colonization discourse in the construction of the image created of the country based on the chosen world heritage, both internally and internationally, showing the central role that colonization has in the representation that Brazil makes for Brazilians and foreigners. This has practical consequences and effects when one thinks of the pedagogical role that heritage plays, insofar as such narratives about the colonial, when they are reduced to architecture, technique, urbanism and the economy, have removed conflicts and eliminated violence from the process that constitute these assets. There are two central problems that these numbers and speeches pose. The first concerns the fact that the “colonial” is placed as a kind of brand, an adjective that legitimizes certain goods over others that are considered to be minor, inferior in the hierarchy of historical times that was built in this view. Thus, a more legitimate
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past is imposed over the others, since it is more valued in these elected patrimonies. The “colonial” thus works in the field of heritage as an almost magical moment, its founding myth. According to Chauí (2013), the founding myth refers to a moment in the past that is seen as the original moment that offers a repertoire of representations of reality, which can, over time, be reorganized, expanded, updated, but which remains as the origin, a past that, by remaining permanently present, does not allow the understanding of the present as such. The second problem posed by this preponderance of the “colonial” is the fact that the narratives are built positively on the process, idealizing it, removing from it all the violent and conflicting nature. One of the ways to idealize and neutralize the discussion about colonization is to understand it only in its economic dimension. According to Bosi (2014), colonization was not merely an economic process. Although this was the engine, it was a project of total domination: it took place through culture and memory, and it implied the exploitation of labor to produce wealth through the domination of bodies and minds. For this author, colonization is both material and symbolic. Colonization used culture as an instrument of political and economic domination, first of all, by imposing on natives another way of living, of doing, thinking and being, through education, religious catechesis, a value system and beliefs and language, and it/they did it by delegitimizing and destroying those most rooted elements of native culture. This evidences its character of violence, not only physical but also symbolic, which the narratives of the heritage suppress, making it positive, naturalizing it. But symbolic violence does not end there, since secondly, an idealized memory of the process is built, which is seen as positivity, progress and civilization. For Bosi (2014), this is because culture has the function of giving meaning to life and, in this case, it was necessary to give meaning to a society born from violent processes. The construction of this positive memory of colonization thus plays a central role in maintaining and perpetuating what the author called the colonial condition, a set of concrete, interpersonal and subjective experiences, which shape ways of living, surviving and dying. The colonial condition is not the past; it is presently rooted in everyday life as it is part of the formation of Brazilian society and is reproduced through cultural heritage policies. From the past, the memory chosen to be remembered helps to compose the appearances of the present, says the author. Untiringly reproduced over time, it ends up hiding the barbarism of the process, violence against the land and nature, against native populations and, also, against the African people enslaved and forcibly brought to Brazil, to continue the process of exploitation of the workforce. Cultural heritage as one of the preferred places in this official memory reproduces this naturalized view of colonization, especially when it shifts the essential focus of its understanding to the specificities of architecture as a technique or aesthetics, contributing to reify the object. Heritage policies thus express the coloniality of knowledge. Originally instituted at the heart of the colonization process in the 16th century, as a way of thinking about the world, the coloniality of knowledge survives and reproduces invisibly in time.
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For Maldonado-Torres (2007), if modern colonialism did not resist emancipatory and decolonization movements in the 20th century, the coloniality of knowledge, on the contrary, remains present in daily life and roots, increasingly strong, as a pattern of power so powerful that it dispenses with formal relations of political power between nations. Coloniality implies a relation of strength, a symbolic power, to use the terms of Bourdieu (1989), whose power lies precisely in the fact that it seems invisible, that it is not identified as such, ignored as arbitrary because it seems natural. The State has been the preferred subject of this reproduction, which occurs through public policies to protect cultural heritage based on this colonized knowledge. The selection criteria for the goods to be protected is an example of this, since they are born from a European experience and centered on their own values of monumentality, exceptionality, antiquity, centered on technique and aesthetics. Based on these criteria, the practices have also led preferentially to the affirmation of colonization as the founding moment, since the colonial is considered to be the highest degree of importance of the past. Although important changes took place in the 1980s, they have not yet been able to transform neither the heritage set nor the institutional practices, which are still founded on these aesthetic-stylistic criteria and on a sacred view of architecture. Criteria that serve to reinforce the same type of patrimony, no matter how much it changes, it continues to do the same. The coloniality of thought prevents institutional practices in Brazil from looking at the materiality of heritage as the physical support of memories, identities, senses, collective meanings, from different social groups that lived those experiences. Being a reference to the memory, identity and action of social groups, means, according to Meneses (2017), that this materiality is a mediator and driver of memory and identity, having the role of trigger or guiding guide. The construction of narratives about recognized goods is another expression of the coloniality of thought, as it reinforces an idealization of colonization, naturalizing the process by removing its violent and conflicting dimension. In other words, coloniality does not cease to act, even today, when heritage continues to reinforce this pedagogical function of reproducing official memory. Thus, heritage has contributed to internalize this coloniality of thought in social consciousness.
4 Final Considerations: Decolonizing Heritage and Memory It is necessary, therefore, as an essential part of the construction of an emancipatory project, to decolonize cultural heritage and memory. For this, it is necessary, in the first place, to take a perspective against the grain, as proposed by Benjamim (2011), reconstructing the narratives that are the result of the coloniality of thought to expose the violence of the process. The counterpoint is a necessary and urgent invitation to transform the field of cultural heritage. This calls for a critical attitude that breaks with the celebratory approach to power, so rooted and naturalized in the
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institutional discourses justifying the attribution of value to cultural goods. It also means understanding cultural heritage in its dialectic, as a cultural monument that, contradictorily, brings its dimension of barbarism document, as the author puts it. However, the expression against the grain may also indicate another path, as breaking with the reading identified with power also means going beyond a look that has hegemonic subjects at its core. Otherwise, it is necessary to place other social subjects at the center of debate and research. The counterpoint is a perspective of historical identification with the subjects who lived the experiences of oppression and exploitation of work, and those stripped of their cultural heritage on which knowledge production is demanded. Decolonizing memory calls for a critical attitude toward official memorialization, also moving away from its celebratory reproduction. On the other hand, this implies giving visibility and valuing the so-called underground memories, those that Pollak (1989) defined as minority and dominated cultures, which are opposed to official memory. Decolonizing heritage and memory mainly implies radically changing the set of recognized and protected heritage, which is still predominantly marked by the coloniality of a knowledge that preferably chose what is representative of economic, political, military and religious power. If heritage is a mirror of society, as stated by Choay (2001), it is asked which social subjects can see themselves in this reflection? Thus, it is necessary to make this heritage set a mirror that reflects the real portrait of a popular and diverse Brazil, where the dominated, exploited and oppressed, that is, the subordinates, can see each other.
References Benjamin W (2011) Magic and technique, art and politics: essays on literature and the history of culture. Brasiliense, São Paulo Bosi A (2014) Dialectic of colonization. Companhia das Letras, São Paulo Bourdieu P (1989) Symbolic power. Bertrand Brasil, Rio de Janeiro Brazil. Federal Constitution of 1988 Chauí M (2013) Brazil. Founding myth and authoritarian society. Perseus Abramo, São Paulo Choay F (2001) The allegory of heritage. Liberdade Station/Unesp, São Paulo Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) (2015) Brazilian Indicative List 2015. Brasília IPHAN (2020a). http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pagina/detalhes/822. Accessed 20 Mar 2020 IPHAN (2020b). http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pagina/detalhes/824 Maldonado-Torres N (2007) On the coloniality of being: contributions to the development of a concept. In: Castro-Gomes S, Grosfoguel R (orgs.). The decolonial spin. Reflections for an epistemic diversity more than global capitalism. Siglo del Hombre Editores; Universidad Central, Instituto de Estudios Sociales Contemporáneos y Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Instituto Pensar, Bogotá, pp 127–167 Meneses UTB (1996) The “cultural uses” of culture. Contribution to a critical approach to cultural practices and policies. In: Yagizi E et al (orgs). Tourism, landscape and culture. Hucitec, São Paulo, pp 88–99 Meneses UTB (2012) The field of cultural heritage: a review of premises. In: Proceedings of the 1st National Forum on Cultural Heritage, Volume 1, Brasília, DF, Iphan
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Meneses UB (2017) Repopulating the urban environmental heritage. Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, Brasília 36:39–51 Pollak M (1989) Memory, forgetfulness and silence. Revista Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro 2(3):3–15 Ribeiro RW (2007) cultural landscape and heritage. Iphan, Rio de Janeiro Rubino S (1996) The map of Brazil in the past. National Historical and Artistic Heritage Magazine, Brasília 24:97–105, Feb Smith L (2011) El “espejo patrimonial. Narcissistic illusion or multiple reflections? Antipoda Revista Antropologia e Arqueologia, no. 12, Bogotá, January-June 2011, pp 39–63 UNESCO/World Heritage Center (2017) Operational guidelines for implementing world heritage. UNESCO, Paris
When Sensitive Memories Sites Become Heritage: The Case of the Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro Monica Lima e Souza
Abstract How to deal with the pain related to the memory of the slavery, when it becomes heritage? Could the process of patrimonialization become a way of healing this traumatic past? In this chapter I propose to discuss the meaning of sensitive memory sites related to the history of African slavery in Brazil, focusing on the case of Valongo Wharf, recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2017. I also intend to analyze how local black communities could participate, discussing the ways of representing the history of our ancestors, considering the suffering of slavery and also their capacity to fight for life and freedom. The history that can be narrated when crossing the pathways of the Valongo Wharf, in Rio de Janeiro, where thousands of enslaved Africans landed between the end of the 18th century until 1831, is at the same time painful and affirmative. In addition to the crucial aspects of violence, there is also resistance and celebration of the struggle for life as strong symbols. The region of Valongo as a whole is a place of memory. In the area near the quayside, besides the warehouses where enslaved people were sold, dwellings of a population that worked in the services offered by the port and commercial activity began to appear, especially from the second half of the 19th century onwards. In the houses of black families, often headed by women, nocturnal drums accompanied religious celebrations in which deities of African origin took on new garments in the Brazilian diaspora. I will tell a story that, in a broader perspective, crosses the ocean and relates to the African Diaspora in the Americas, as well as to many other parts of Brazil, in which, through the internal and coastal routes, black people circulate - and with them, their ideas, knowledge, technology, and spirituality. Keywords Valongo Wharf · Sensitive memory sites · African slavery history Monica Lima e Souza—Professor of African History, of the Graduate Program in Social History (PPGHIS) and the Graduate Program in History Teaching (PPGEH) of the Institute of History of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IH-UFRJ). Coordinator of the Laboratory of African Studies (LEÁFRICA) at IH-UFRJ. M. L. e Souza (B) African History, Social History (PPGHIS), History Teaching (PPGEH) of the Institute of History, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (IH-UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_5
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This chapter aims to discuss the meaning of sensitive memory sites related to the history of African slavery in Brazil, focusing on the case of Valongo Wharf, recognized as UNESCO World Heritage in 2017. It also intends to analyze how local black communities could participate in the process of patrimonialization. The stories that give meaning to Valongo Wharf as heritage have the role to remind us that, as much as all the beauty and power of creation, pain is part of the heritage left by our African ancestors. The pain that crosses the sensitive memory of the descendants makes the trauma of slavery a cultural process in the formation of Brazilian identities in the post-abolition period. That is even more true because, as the African oral tradition, this dimension of history is alive, and we can hear about it on the streets and alleys of the Valongo region. The collective trauma has not been overcome and, in its discussion, it may be possible to learn somehow how to deal with it. One of these paths would be, within the narrative structure that constitutes the subject itself, to be able to consider the dimensions of suffering articulated to the forms found historically to face it. The history that can be narrated when crossing the pathways of the Valongo Wharf, in addition to its aspects of violence and pain, also crosses spaces in which resistance and celebration of struggle and life emerge as strong symbols. If in the surroundings of the píer there is the Cemetery of New Blacks, in which the newcomer Africans who did not resist the hardness of the crossing were buried in the common grave, there is also the Pedra do Sal site, where, since the end of the nineteenth century, captives and freed men and women met to tell each other about their stories and sing of them, after days of hard work in the port—and it is the same place that later formed a marroun community woven in black identity and solidarity, by migratory processes in the post-abolition period. The region of Valongo as a whole is a place of memory. In the area near the quayside, in addition to the warehouses, especially from the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, dwellings of a population that worked in the services offered by the port and commercial activity began to appear. In houses of black families, often headed by women, nocturnal drums accompanied religious celebrations in which deities of African origin took on new in the Brazilian diaspora. Harshly repressed, they were closely related to the bond with Africa and the Atlantic that the then-hidden pier still stood for. In addition, the Afro-Brazilian religious houses, whose celebrations were forbidden, became places of welcoming for Africans and Afro-descendants who came from other parts of the
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country. In the slums of the Valongo region, Africans and their descendants wrote a story that is localized, marked on the stone steps, corners, stairways, and hillsides. But, in a broader perspective, it crosses the ocean and relates to the African Diaspora in the Americas, as well as to many other parts of Brazil, in which, through the internal and coastal routes, these people circulate—and with them, their ideas, knowledge, technology, and spirituality. The Valongo Wharf, located in the port area of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was recognized by the UNESCO General Assembly as World Heritage in July 2017. In Brazil, there are currently 22 sites or sets on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. However, due to its history and the way in which its candidacy for this post was built, Valongo Wharf has unique characteristics. For the first time, a cultural heritage of this nature was presented by Brazil with the history of slavery and relations with the African continent as the center of its justification. And, in the elaboration of the dossier that was taken to UNESCO, there was an unprecedented process of intense debate with leaders of the black movement, local and intellectual associations, who directly influenced the writing of the technical document that defended the candidacy. And what is the history of the Valongo Wharf? It is the archeological site located in the cove that was the center of the landing site for the largest number of enslaved Africans who arrived alive in the Americas. Built on the beach in the first decades of the nineteenth century, we know that nowhere else in the world, such as in the Brazilian territory, so many Africans have landed, brought by the transoceanic slave trade, as informed by various studies and research results in demographic history, about which, in addition to the specific updated bibliography, data is available on the website www.slavevoyages.org. This long-lasting activity, which came to be known as the infamous trade in the nineteenth century, created connections that linked Brazil to Africa irrevocably. And Rio de Janeiro was the main region for the arrival of captives brought from the African continent, especially between the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century. This intensification was due both to the increase in mining activity and the growth of cities in Minas Gerais, as well as to the development of port and commercial activity in the city, which at that time was the capital of colonial Brazil.
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Source www.slavevoyages.org
The Valongo cove was where this landing took place most intensively from the final decades of the eighteenth century until 1831, reaching at least 700 thousand enslaved Africans—a total that, according to some historians’ estimates, could have reached one million (Karash 2000, 67). They made constant trips in ships loaded with people in their holds, in crossings that could last from 35 to 50 days or more, depending on the conditions of the trip and the port of departure in Africa (Gutiérrez 1989, 64). Each of these trips brought hundreds of captives, who walked with fragility and fear onto the stones of the pier and the rocky sand of the streets of that region. It was only after 1831, with the illegalization of the transoceanic slave trade to Brazil, that these landings stopped occurring in the central areas of the city and began to take place in clandestine ports in Guanabara Bay and the nearby coastal region—such as in Sepetiba bays and Ilha Grande, in Búzios, in Parati, among other places. These areas of the coast of Rio de Janeiro were protected and had disembarkation facilities, in addition to being close to the roads and paths that would allow the captives to be transported to the interior of the Rio de Janeiro province, as well as to the provinces
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of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, where the coffee production demanded more and more workers. And work, in that context, meant slavery. In the ports of illegal disembarkation, structures were created to support the arrival of enslaved groups brought from Africa. As the English inspection against the activity of the slave trade was increasingly intense, the trips were consequently on smaller boats—to be faster—and with a greater number of captives, these ended up arriving in a very poor state. Thus, fattening farms were created in the vicinity of these ports to provide better health and appearance to the enslaved, in order to make them more attractive for their commercialization. Camilla Agostini’s studies, with a methodological approach that associates history and archeology, brought data and produced relevant results in the knowledge about these places of memory of slavery and its history (Agostini 2019, 34). Quilombola communities also emerged in these locations, whose existence can be associated with this context, and it is in them that the living memory of these events is found, in reports passed down from generation to generation.1 Also in the vicinity of Valongo Wharf, in the post-abolition period, the Quilombo da Pedra do Sal community was formed, with families originating from the migratory flow of freedmen and enslaved people from the interior of the state of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais. This community, recognized by an official report from the Brazilian State bodies, keeps alive the struggle for the right to its territory and in its celebrations the character of resistance and affirmation of the local black population.2
1 The Slave Complex of Valongo and Its Spaces […] so that new blacks, who come from the ports of Guinea and the African Coast, are not kept in that city, ordering that both those who are in it, and those who come again from those ports, on board the same boats that take them, after a given health visit, without jumping on land, be immediately taken to the Valongo site, where they will be preserved, from Pedra da Prainha to Gamboa and there they will leave and heal the sick and they will bury the dead […] so if it is to be observed from now on, until El Rei Meu Senhor does not order otherwise. May God keep you. Rio de Janeiro, April 12, 1774.3
The document excerpt above shows that the Marquis of Lavradio, Viceroy of the State of Brazil, decreed, in a definitive manner, that the traders transfer the landing and the slave trade to the Valongo region, as well as all related activities: the treatment of those who arrived sick and the burial of those who died. The Marquis acknowledged 1 Reports about these landing sites were left in the memory of the black population that lives nearby
and are recorded in the documentary Memories of Captivity, in the book of the same name by Ana Lugão Rios and Hebe Mattos and in several interviews with residents, available online in: http:// www.labhoi.uff.br/narrativas/home. Access in July 19, 2020. 2 Available at: http://www.incra.gov.br/media/docs/quilombolas/memoria/pedra_do_sal.pdf. Access in: July 20, 2020. 3 National Archive of Rio de Janeiro, Códex 70, volume 7, page 231.
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that this issue had already been dealt with by the city council since 1758, but that the traders refused to obey. The document serves to clear up a series of confusions regarding the date of transformation of the Valongo region into an exclusive place for the commercialization of newly arrived Africans. From then on, between the end of the eighteenth century and 1831, the slave market was formed around the Valongo cove with its various stores, in which people were offered for sale as goods. In the same region, there was a lazaret, which was the treatment hospital for those who arrived from the terrible transoceanic voyage, where they sought to cure the sick so that they could be put on the market or delivered to their buyers. Also nearby, the New Black’s Cemetery, the destination of those who could not resist the illnesses contracted on the journey in the slave ships or acquired shortly after their arrival. A slavery complex was being created in that region, fueled by the constant arrival of new landings and by the demand for more and more captives in Brazil. However, the significant presence of Africans went beyond exposure in the market and was perceived in the world of work. They were seen circulating in the streets performing various activities, providing services, unloading goods from boats, transporting objects, selling products, and meeting different demands. These people and their direct descendants were transforming that space, affirming and recreating their cultural heritage in contact with each other and with the other inhabitants of the city. All of this came to constitute the raw material of musicality, religiosity, science and technology brought and created by the black population in Brazil. The pier therefore symbolizes this intense historical relationship, marked by death, pain, and suffering and, at the same time, the contemporary presence of a rich, vibrant, and pulsating African cultural heritage, which is at the center of our identity as a people. The Valongo Wharf became, through this history, a representative landmark of the arrival in the Americas of thousands of enslaved Africans, after crossing the Atlantic in the slave ships. It is a place in which the warehouses—where the newly arrived captives were exhibited and sold—were located, close to the Lazareto where the sick of the horrible trip would be treated and soon near the destination of those who did not survive: the New Black’s Cemetery. Therefore, it is part of the slave complex of the most important Afro-Atlantic city in history and today it is part of a set of places of memory that refer to aspects of pain and survival in the history of our ancestors. The long and intense presence of African slavery in the history of the Western world left its mark on the objects and monuments built and on the dense set of documents that became sources for the knowledge of this long history. However, the evidence and traces of the history of Africans in captivity go beyond the limits of material and written culture, and are projected as content in various aspects of social memory and in the expression of traditions and cultural practices of societies on the American continent. The history of African slavery in the Americas remains a present past until today, no matter how much we have tried to silence written references, destroy documents, or build on their material bases. In Brazil, this memory is revealed in the accounts of descendants of the former slaves, in the religious practices of various matrices, in celebrations and events marked by different expressions of resistance, in
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bodily practices to play or to fight, in the music, and in the poetic lyre of composers and writers who have given new meanings to memories and narratives, and in the struggle of disadvantaged popular groups—mostly black people—in establishing the relationship between this history and their situation in the present.
2 Black Territory I am the street The airs, The gesture that concerns the ancestors (Cizinho Afreeka, “África a ficar”, Apud SEMOG, Éle, 2019, p. 53)
Around the Wharf, in the market where there were trading houses where slave people were sold, there were not only Africans recently brought from their native land, but others who had lived longer in the city, as well as some descendants of direct members who took care of functions related to this commercial activity. The Valongo region was a place where, periodically, chances of gaining work arose, loading and unloading goods and delivering them. Therefore, slaves or freedmen circulated there, in a constant coming and going on the streets of Valongo, where Africans of many origins met and mixed, perceiving themselves as diverse and similar. And, looking toward the ocean, they discovered their common history. The pier had been the arrival door, it could also be the return port, it was a window to the sea, and to Africa4 (Karash 2000, 35). Still in this space, among other creations of this population, there were houses of angu, the zungus (Soares 1998), which were places to eat and gather, as well as work corners, where they organized themselves to do different jobs and in which, in conversation and coexistence, identities were constituted. Collective housing was being built to provide shelter for those who circulated in the vicinity and, over time, several houses were built. With the prohibition of the slave trade since 1831, the interprovincial trade in captives continued to feed the entry of Africans, who were no longer new to the land, and in this area of the city, many began to meet and live. The freed Africans also came to around this pier, mainly from Bahia, in voluntary migration movements, especially from the mid-80s. Therefore, and since the nineteenth century, the region has been characterized by being densely populated, and mostly by black people. Such trait persisted in the 4 In
a study already considered classic on the history of African slavery in Rio de Janeiro, Mary Karash wrote, at the opening of her first chapter: “On the street or work corners, Africans gave themselves up to the memories of the past lived on the edges Zaire or Zambezi rivers. They played musical instruments from Africa and revered the ‘old gods’. Even after years of living as slaves in Rio, they dreamed of returning to Africa, like the carpenter who built his house facing the ocean and Africa” (p. 35).
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post-abolition and throughout the twentieth century. In this formerly Afro-Atlantic space, a black stronghold was formed, with cultural and religious practices, which were based on long-term community ties and on the memory of slavery and African ancestry. Several cultural manifestations started to take place in daily life, thus giving rise to various networks of sociability and solidarity, meetings of the first samba dancers, religious houses of African origin, in the midst of celebrations and struggles of the population. Researchers and scholars of the history of culture and the black presence in the city of Rio de Janeiro locate in the region surrounding the Valongo Wharf the records of the first samba circles, the first candomblé terreiro, of the first associations of black workers (Neto 2017; Lopes 2004; Conduru 2010; Rocha 1994; Arantes 2005).
3 Erasure and Resistance “And right at Valongo Wharf Happy dance that jongo A ‘song’ of liberation (…)”5
After the ban on the Atlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans, the activity of buying and selling captives continued, albeit cooled, in the Valongo region (Honorato 2008, 2011). The clandestine landing still fed the commerce of people, who, in the first years after the ban, tried to make the authorities believe that they eventually came to inspect, that the captives who were there had arrived before 1831. As time went by, this justification no longer worked and illegal alternatives became effective. And, little by little, the trade of enslaved Africans was reduced in the region, without, however, ceasing to exist. Several newspapers’ advertisements gave notice of the escapes that occurred in that part of the city that remained a place of black African circulation, and sociability. Port work and related commercial activities in that region—as in practically in the entire city—were carried out by black men and women, captives and freedmen, many of whom were born in Africa. However, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, slavery was becoming an international practice morally condemned by some important partners of the Brazilian imperial government, such as the powerful England. And it was not only frowned upon, but linked to backwardness and obscurantism. The strong black presence in Brazilian territory, directly related to the long history of the slave trade and slavery came to be referred to as a Brazilian social stain that should be erased in order not to corrupt the national identity project that was underway at that time. This project was based on the desire to whiten the population and erase the history of the black 5 Excerpt
from the samba-enredo “Sob um olhar negro: Valongo, a história de um quais”, from GRES Unidos da Vila de Santa Tereza, Rio de Janeiro, Carnaval de 2019. Authors: Amaro Poeta, Anderson Mancuso, Gabriel Chocolate, Milton Carvalho, Rafael Gigante and Vinicius Ferreira. See the lyrics and hear the samba in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjwBi_-IU2A.
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presence in Brazil. Therefore, it was seen as necessary to stop trafficking enslaved Africans and for the country to distance itself from the records of their presence—at least in appearance—and bring in white immigrants. The search for the erasure of this history took place concretely in the Valongo Wharf. Since 1842, refurbishment and beautification of the pier began, which at that time was the scene of intense commercial activity, receiving and exporting various goods, especially coffee from Southeast Brazil. These works sought to remove any memory of the original function of that landing. And, in 1843, in view of the arrival of the future empress Tereza Cristina, for her wedding with the emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro II, the improvements and reforms received special investment so that the pier received the Princess with pomp and grandeur. At the same time, the toponymy was changed: the Valongo Wharf was renamed Empress’s Wharf and the Valongo Street, Empress’s street. Statues of the Greco-Roman deities Minerva, Mercury, Ceres, and Mars, garnished with iron railings, were placed in the place where the enslaved Africans were landed. A year later, the Municipal Chamber ordered a monument commemorating the arrival of the Empress to the Academy of Fine Arts to be placed in the center of the Municipal Square—which covered the old beach of the pier.6 In the urban reforms that happened in the region, at the end of the nineteenth century and the twentieth century, such as the construction of the port in the city of Rio de Janeiro (1904–1910), the pier was successively grounded and, with the remodeling of the port region, made increasingly far from the sea. However, the black population that had much of its origin in the arrival of slaves at that landing site, continued to occupy the area, both in precarious housing and in port work functions. And they continued in their struggles for resistance and affirmation. In 1903, port workers strongly joined the general strike that shook the world of Rio’s work (Soares 2014, 99). In 1904, the Vaccine Revolt, the most intense rebellion in the history of the city, had as its main area of conflict the region around Valongo and among its main leaders was a black longshoreman nicknamed Prata Preta. In 1905, a workers’ strike in the works of the port quay paralyzed the reforms and forced the contractors to negotiate in the face of demands for better working conditions. Added to this story is the performance of the strong union of port workers, the Society of Resistance of Workers in Trapiche and Café, founded in the same year of 1905, mostly black in all its instances—including the board—and that, for this reason received the nickname “Company of the Blacks” (Arantes 2005, 76). The successive works of beautification, ordering, and cleaning of the city produced changes and clashes, as they often translated into the expulsion of residents and the repression of their cultural practices. Different forms of resistance also emerged and expressed themselves there, and Valongo has historically also become the scene of conflicts. New migrants arrived, and mestizos and impoverished whites joined and mingled with them, without the place losing the African heritage marks. On the soil 6 The
history of the planning and construction process of the Empress’s Wharf on the Valongo Wharf is masterfully developed in the still unpublished article, entitled “Cais da Imperatriz and Praça Municipal: considerations about the authorship of a public space of the neoclassical carioca”, by the architect José Pessoa, Full Professor at the Universidade Federal Fluminense—RJ, Brazil, to whom I thank the assignment of the manuscript.
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of the port, the Baianas of today revere their ancestors, washing their steps with holy water, and in the nearby Pedra do Sal, young people sing sambas to abolition and the black presence. And there, even today, in the struggle for rights, a history of resistance is reiterated.
4 Historical Site of Sensitive Memory The “trauma” in question is slavery, not as institution or even experience, but as collective memory, a form of remembrance that grounded the identity-formation of a people. (Eyerman 2001, 01)
The trafficking of enslaved Africans is a long-lasting story that, despite being distant in the present day, carries a meaning of pain and suffering that goes beyond its chronological existence in history and forever marks the life and societies in which it existed. It produced painful transformations in the lives of those who were victims of it and of their descendants, and so many harmful effects that it allowed for the persistence of racism and social inequality, which has marked the black population until today. Talking about this story, and remembering it, can be an extremely difficult experience. However, being silent about it is erasing the trajectory of the formation of black identity in the diaspora. For all these reasons, it can be understood as part of the so-called sensitive topics. These would be themes that awaken the memory of traumatic and painful events and that deal with the history both of more specific episodes and more extensive processes of human rights violations. The Valongo Wharf fits, within this view, as a historical site of a sensitive character. The references that may be made to this material heritage on the visits of tourism of memory that can be carried out on the spot must necessarily consider this aspect that is central to its definition. As much as one can celebrate the survival of those who completed the crossing and managed to transform their lives and that of Brazilian society, and still produced “miracles of faith in the Far West”,7 See the lyrics and listen to the song at: https://www.ouvirmusica.com.br/caetano-veloso/ 44749/. Valongo Wharf is a place that refers to pain and suffering, to the anguish of the arrival of these captive Africans to an unknown place, after being uprooted from their homeland and facing the extremely difficult crossing. Its vital force, the ability to produce wealth, culture, and countless creations constitute the most beautiful Brazilian identity, arrived in Valongo, facing slavery. And racism, built on these references to oppression and inequality, was aimed at their descendants. And Valongo Wharf refers to all of that. When its candidacy for World Heritage was presented, the dossier prepared thereto stated: What makes Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site so compelling is not its historical value as tangible heritage, despite the extant stone steps preserved over the years. Rather, its main 7 Letter
excerpt from Caetano Veloso’s song: Milagres do Povo.
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dimension as world heritage is its symbolic value and power to encapsulate the tragedy that was the trade that brought captive African people to the Americas. For this reason, in this comparative analysis, it is also worth analysing sites that harbour sensitive memories inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, as is the case of Auschwitz-Birkenau German Nazi concentration and extermination camp (1940–1945) in Poland and Robben Island prison in South Africa.8
Just as Auschwitz-Birkenau stands out for its dimension in the history of Nazism (“it was the largest concentration camp complex created by the German Nazi regime”), the Valongo Wharf site constitutes the central core of the largest slave port in the Americas, in Rio de Janeiro. The Valongo Wharf and its surroundings symbolize the gateway to the world of African slavery in the Americas in almost four centuries of oppression and exploitation of the work of millions of people. The history of the resistance of Africans and their descendants in the life built in the harbor region also reveals the “strength of the human spirit in its capacity to resist in adverse conditions”. Both constitute sites of sensitive memory, and keep in their materiality the pain and horror lived by the human beings that passed through them, as well as their ability to survive. They remind humanity of the “consequences of the denial of human dignity”.9 Robben Island resembles its symbolic value with the Valongo Wharf because it consists of a place of memory that translates the “eloquent testimony of a dark history”. These are the places that have become symbols of deprivation of liberty, in which one would arrive with iron chains on one’s arms or feet, under surveillance, and with the sea as a witness. Stepping on the quay stones where so many chained, fearful, exhausted Africans landed after the long journey in the slave ships’ basements, as well as walking through the cells and corridors of the South African prison, refers to a long history of oppression on the continent’s populations in their different modalities and times. Imagining how many failed to survive and arrived dead or nearly dead in Valongo, just as those who did not survive Robben Island prison reveal a long history of death and pain. However, these places also symbolize the resistance and strength of those who, although prisoners and victims of all sorts of injustices and mistreatment, have been able to face extreme adversity while remaining alive. And alive they built their paths to freedom. Slavery and the slave trade are now considered crimes against humanity. The condemnation of these activities has been present in religious and legal documents since at least the eighteenth century, and in 1814, at the Vienna Congress, a multilateral commitment was signed expressed in the Declaration of Powers, which was called the Abolition of the Slave Trade of February 8, 1815 (created as ACT, No. XV. At the Vienna Congress) and was based on “principles of humanity and universal morality”. Long before that, in England in the seventeenth century peasant rebellions, groups like the diggers and the levellers morally condemned slavery, based 8 IPHAN (2016), p. 92. See: http://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/ckfinder/arquivos/Dossie_cais_do_v
alongo_patrimonio_mundial_ingles.pdf. Access on July 18, 2020. 9 Idem.
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on religious arguments. The Quakers were also among their most active combatants, even sending missionaries to slave countries, such as Brazil in the nineteenth century, to combat this social practice that they considered anti-Christian. And before all of them, and more dramatically, the enslaved, since their capture in Africa, crossing the Middle Passage, and facing the situation of captivity, they expressed their negative understanding of what they had been subjected to several times and in different ways. As Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua, an African who was freed, simply and directly said, in his biography: “slavery is bad, slavery is wrong” (Baquaqua 2017, 63). In the case of crimes against humanity, there is no international treaty that defines them legally, but rather an understanding based on the rules of international law about their existence. This understanding is based on moral and ethical values, such as the expressed below: Crimes against humanity are not simply random acts of carnage. Rather, they are directed at particular groups of people, who have been so degraded and dehumanized that they no longer appear to be fully human or to merit the basic respect and concern that other humans command. Such crimes attack that very idea of humanity – the conviction that all human beings partake a common nature and possess an irreducible moral value. By implication, all human beings have a right, indeed an obligation, to respond – to try to prevent such horrors from occurring and to redress their effects when they do occur.10
The legal concept of crime against humanity emerged after 1945, due to what was revealed about the atrocities committed by Nazi-fascism and the consequent interest in the development of a legal instrument to prosecute, judge, and punish those responsible for them. However, the idea of a crime against humanity comes from beforehand, and it has been present at least since the end of the First World War (Rushdy 2015). The history of slavery is a subject that carries content whose central characteristics bring violence and dehumanizing treatment as defining elements. And more: in the case of the enslavement of Africans and their descendants, racism is also added as an ideology, which is perceptible in the descriptions and considerations present in the sources of the time, as well as guiding the justifications used to lower the black populations. Images referring to scenes of torture, landmarks in the space of cities with reference to the practices of the past of slavery—such as pillories and slave warehouses—are visible and material expressions of this history. Viewing memory as symbolic discourse in other words tends to downplay or ignore the impact of material culture on memory and identity-formation. From the point of view of discourse analysis, objects gain meaning only when they are talked about (Eyerman 2000, 8).
If slavery as a work relationship based on the submission of Africans and their direct descendants in the Americas is already far past in time—although unfortunately work akin to slavery persists to this day—the consequences derived from this oppressive system remain. The different forms of racial discrimination and inferiorization of black people are elements present in our societies, and the memory of 10 Slavery
and Justice. Report of the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. Brown University (USA), p. 41.
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the pain of captivity is permanently reiterated by marks of this history in the urban landscape and, in the school experience, in the teaching of history, through resources with their images and texts. In the period of the greatest intensity of landing in that cove, the number of enslaved children brought in the boats grew. The increasingly intense international campaigns to end the slave trade, the abolition of this activity by European nations, and the inspection by the British Navy, especially in the third decade of the nineteenth century, caused traffickers to place people of increasingly young age enchanted in the holds of the ships. On the one hand, it allowed them to be brought in greater numbers, in smaller and lighter vessels—which escaped more quickly from pursuers on the high seas. On the other hand, captives between 10 and 14 years of age could serve longer for those who acquired them, in the perspective that the ban on the infamous trade would also reach Brazil. In the account of the traveler Charles Brand, this harsh reality of the time is confirmed: “The first meat shop we entered contained about three hundred children, of both sexes; the oldest could be twelve or thirteen and the youngest not more than seven. The poor people were all crouched in a huge warehouse, girls on one side, boys on the other, for better inspection by buyers (…) ” (BRAND, Apud Karash 2000, 76)
Image: Public Domain
All these stories are present in the Valongo Wharf, impregnated in the landscape, printed on the stone steps, and the meaning of this monument is understood only when they are included. The understanding of this site recognized as a World Heritage
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Site involves immersing itself into the feelings to which its existence and creation were linked. And, as the slavery of Africans and their descendants left deep marks in the history of the city, in the country, and in the world, which still reverberate and mobilize sensitivities today, it is possible to learn that dealing with this type of heritage is touching aspects that, in the present, evoke that past. “Even though the traumatic past has been silenced and concealed, lasting recent years it has been reinterpreted and recycled, gradually reemerging in the public sphere in the form of physical markers, like monuments, memorials, museums, and heritage sites, which are intended to be permanent.” (Araújo 2014, 8)
And, looking at it from another point of view, it can be said: only by knowing these stories and memories can we face them. The memories of slavery, in their most diverse forms, remain alive. And care must be taken with narratives that tend to reduce their importance or minimize their weight in the formation of Brazilian identity. Brazil was the largest slave country in the West, in temporal and demographic dimensions. The trauma produced by this long history is very much present and alive, and racism is one of its strongest long-term effects. And these are not just individual stories. Values, beliefs, affinities and aversions are processes of collective subjectification that produce and reproduce ways of being and feeling, in which values such as racism, are embedded in our most intimate and secret affections. But the transmission is not reduced to the individual experiences bequeathed by an individual to his descendants, but to that of a repetitive perpetuation of certain modes of subjectivation that constitute the character of a people. (Reis 2019, 60)
Ira Berlin, in the presentation of the book Remembering Slavery, stated: “The struggle over slavery’s memory has been almost as intense as the struggle over slavery itself.” Memory disputes involve the field of heritage, insofar as its recognition results directly from the action based on a type of past that one wants to illuminate. Which memories to bring, to signify, to incorporate into the collective memory are issues directly linked to the choices for monuments, places, and cultural manifestations to be patrimonialized. The painful memories of slavery, the construction of exclusion, oppression, and racism are activated; they emerge when one knows and approaches a sensitive historical site like Valongo Wharf. And that pain can contain “the shadows, the voids, the absences, the silenced speech” as Vilma Piedade says (Piedade 2017, 16). To illuminate, value, problematize, and (re) discover historical sites of sensitive memory related to the history of slavery, as there are so many in Brazil and the Americas, is to break this silence with the productive hubbub of the encounter with a past that also refers to survival, the resistance to oppression, and the vital strength of our African ancestors. And the very existence of this heritage can only be understood in the fight against racism. Therefore, it allows us to go beyond pain.
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Afro-Brazilian Religions and Protected Urban Areas: The Cases of Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, Sergipe Raul Amaro de Oliveira Lanari and Hugo Mateus Gonçalves Rocha
Abstract This paper means to point and discuss how Afrobrazilian cultural and religious manifestations from Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão—both cities in the federal state of Sergipe, Brazil—are misrepresented by cultural heritage policies, in the Brazilian federal sphere. The main issue worked upon in this article is: How representative is the Afrobrazilian religions’ cultural heritage among the protected sites in Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão? The key statement is built around the fact that both areas have significant number of terreiros (Umbanda and Candomblé’s sacred meeting places), as well as the presence of many Afrobrazilian cultural and religious manifestations, nevertheless low—almost none—participation from those communities and practices in cultural goods’ protection policies. This situation happens regardless of federal protection in the Laranjeiras Historical Center and the recognition of the São Cristóvão’s landscape and architectural ensemble as a UNESCO World Heritage. Socioeconomic, territorial and cultural aspects will be analyzed, in order to demonstrate how these Afrobrazilian communities demand historical recognition and right to memory, along with their belief that cultural heritage protection policies and instruments can help them achieve other social rights. This discussion becomes even more relevant, considering today’s political situation in the country, where the clear alignment and closeness between the federal government and New Raul Amaro de Oliveira Lanari—PhD (2016) in History at Federal University of Minas Gerais. Professor in the Architecture and Urbanism Department at Pontificial Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas). UNESCO consultant for projects in the areas of Cultural Heritage and Landscape Analysis (2019–2020). Hugo Mateus Gonçalves Rocha—PhD student in History at the Federal University of Ouro Preto. Managing Partner of Peixe Vivo Histórias: Memória e Patrimônio, responsible for technical studies focused on the field of Cultural Heritage. R. A. de Oliveira Lanari (B) Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] Architecture and Urbanism Department, Pontificial Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas), Belo Horizonte, Brazil H. M. G. Rocha Federal University of Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_6
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Pentecostal church reflects on restricted political will towards Afrobrazilian cultural and religious manifestations preservation, that are consequently put at risk.
This article was inspired by the authors’ professional experiences in religions of African origin. On two occasions, they worked as technicians in projects under the 8th Superintendence of IPHAN in the state of Sergipe for identification and mapping of Terreiros.1 In view of the perceptions and discomforts arising from field researches, consisting of interviews, data collection and production of audiovisual material, we seek to reflect on the representativeness of policies aimed at terreiro communities by the main Brazilian institution dedicated to safeguarding cultural heritage. In this regard, the objective of this text is to address the preservation of Cultural Heritage in the towns of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, in the state of Sergipe, comparing actions aimed at Afro-Brazilian religions with the policies undertaken around the protection of architectural and immaterial examples associated with Catholic religiosities in both municipalities. Patrimonial policies in the two locations, implemented by municipal, state, federal and international bodies, such as UNESCO, have enabled the rise to of overturning processes at the federal and state levels, in addition to the recognition of celebrations as of interest of the local Cultural Heritage. In Laranjeiras, this process can be seen in the so-called “Quarteirão do Trapiche”, restored by the Monumenta Program in the 2000s, while in São Cristóvão a similar process occurred with the recognition of São Francisco de Assis Square as World Heritage in 2010. In both cases, as we will show, a the “framing of memory” took place, a selective cut based on the “battles for memory” that existed at decisive moments during the shaping of heritage policies in the municipalities. Although such frameworks are commonly associated with phenomena of political domination, that is, with state coercive action, above all and with greater force it is possible to observe them in the gap between socially legitimized memory and “underground memories” that emerge from the silences produced by civil society in the process of affirming identities (Pollak 1989, pp. 4–8). São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras were the first two towns founded between the final years of the 16th century and the first few years of the 17th century in the territory currently occupied by the state of Sergipe. The two villages had an important role in the consolidation of the Portuguese territorial conquest, especially in the expulsion of the Dutch in the 1640s, and in the establishment of the slave market in the Portuguese colony in America. Built in the vicinity of important water courses—the Cotinguiba, Poxim and Vaza barrels rivers—the villages soon became commercial centers aimed at receiving and distributing Africans slaves in Brazilian lands. The commercial exploitation of the region by Europeans, from the 16th century, presented solid bases in the exploitation of the slave labor applied in agropastoral activities, with emphasis on the cultivation of sugarcane (Shimada and Conceição 2009, pp. 3–4) which, as is well known, sustained the first of the economic cycles of the Portuguese 1 Terreiro
is the name given to the places of worship of Afro-Brazilian religions, especially Candomblé. Strands like Umbanda also use the term "House" to refer to their temples.
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colonial system in America. While Laranjeiras was consolidated, in the 17th and 18th centuries, as the main commercial and slave center in the region, São Cristóvão acquired features delimited by the presence of the colonial administration and the port that received slave ships from Africa. Thus, historically speaking, the two cities have their trajectories associated with the African contribution and that of their descendants and cultural backgrounds, which should be valued by the heritage policies of the present. However, the analysis of heritage actions aimed at local Afro-Brazilian communities does not allow us to affirm, as we will show, that this appreciation acquired the status of a structuring policy for the preservation agencies in various spheres of activity. This downgrading of Afro-Brazilian religions and the cultural manifestations associated with them is not a phenomenon that has emerged recently, having a long tradition in the history of Brazilian social thought and visible echoes in the hierarchy that is observed between the forms of artistic and religious expression today. As we will see, not even the reemergence of some of these practices, from a folkloric perspective, from the 1970s on, guaranteed the improvement of the material conditions of existence of these communities, which are increasingly pushed to the fringes of cities due to the process of urban growth and real estate speculation. This scenario supports, in Brazil, a historic persecution of Afro-Brazilian religions that has not diminished even in progressive governments, such as those observed between 2003 and 2016. Therefore, from the 2000s onwards, these communities sought instruments associated with cultural heritage policies—notably inventories, mappings and records—to pave the way to guarantee other historically denied social rights, such as land ownership and effective freedom of worship, without persecutions legitimized by social and police forces and especially a diffuse right under the legal eye, but extremely palpable for communities anchored in ancestry. In this context, permeated by formative conditions that encompass aspects of material culture—such as colonial architecture and the urban layout that characterizes the historic centers of Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão—and immaterial culture—religious practices of African, indigenous and European origins we intend to analyze aspects of the development of measures to protect and enhance cultural heritage in both municipalities. In order to better organize the presentation of our argument, our journey throughout this text will comprise, firstly, a brief historical contextualization of the region in which the municipalities of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras are included, with emphasis on the participation of the slaves in the construction of material and cultural local dynamics. Then, we will approach the processes of patrimonialization of the historic centers of both cities, pointing out the particularities that allow the association between them to “frameworks of memory” that give greater visibility to the Catholic religious matrix and a position of inferiority to the Afro-Brazilian religious manifestations. Finally, we will present the upcoming demands for the recognition of terreiro communities among heritage policies and their strategic aspect to face a scenario marked by the advance of religious intolerance in Brazil and its legitimation by the emergence of conservative thinking of a religious matrix, clearly expressed by the election of Jair Bolsonaro for the Presidency of the Republic and his subsequent
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actions, which include the dismantling of IPHAN and the reinforcement of people against the protection of Afro-Brazilian religions for the Palmares Foundation, the main government agency responsible for affirmative actions aimed at and for the Black people of Brazil.
1 São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras: From Emergence to Stagnation, Always with the Contribution of Afro-Brazilians The Portuguese colonization of the region in which the cities of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras are located began with the donation of the hereditary captaincy of Todos os Santos Bay by Dom João III to Francisco Pereira Coutinho on April 5, 1534. According to Felisberto Freire (1891, p. 1), the lands “extended, at a distance of fifty leagues, from the bar of the St. Francisco river to the tip of the Todos os Santos Bay”. Until the 19th century, the region currently occupied by the state of Sergipe was incorporated into the Captaincy of Todos os Santos, later called Bahia Province, having acquired its autonomy in the 1820s. The coast and the strip of the rugged Sergipe were occupied when the Europeans arrived, by the then Tupinambás, Tupis, Caetés and Xocós ethnic groups resisted the Portuguese occupation in the region until the end of the 16th century. Upon the death of the first grantee, his son Manuel Pereira Coutinho took over the land government. In 1548, Pereira Coutinho gave up on continuing the administration of the lands, returning them to the Portuguese Crown (Ferreira 2011). In the first decades of the Portuguese occupation, despite the importance of the region as a warehouse between Salvador and the coast of Pernambuco, attempts at colonization were unsuccessful due to the resistance of the natives and the diseases that decimated Europeans (Freire 1891, p. 3). The exploration of lands on the banks of the Cotinguiba River, for example, occurred only in the mid-1570s from expeditions aimed at establishing settlement points along the coastal strip. The first camp was founded, but it was completely devastated by the action of indigenous peoples who inhabited the region. The settlement was only definitively settled, with the name Laranjeiras, in 1606, after the conquest against the indigenous people. From 1589 the troops under the command of Cristóvão de Barros fought a series of battles against the Tupinambás tribes and, on January 1, 1590, indigenous peoples were defeated in the floodplain region of the Vaza-barrels river. The conquest, which culminated in the foundation of the city of São Cristóvão, is a milestone in the history of the State of Sergipe, since São Cristóvão was the first settlement in the region and even one of the oldest cities founded in Brazil. The foundation of São Cristóvão, like Laranjeiras, involved comings and goings, with the establishment and destruction of villages. There were many hardships in during the period to escape the attacks of the natives and the invasions carried out by Dutch and French vessels, which sought to establish points of support for the seizure
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of the territory occupied by the Portuguese. European action in the region where the State of Sergipe is currently located was intensified in the second half of the 16th century, when ships of French origin began to circulate along the coast in search of assets for exploration, especially wood, with special attention to brazilwood in addition to cotton and pepper (Freire 1891, p. 9). Thus, the first change in the location of the city of São Cristóvão occurred between the years 1595 and 1596 due to the threat of the French invasions. The second change from the original location of the city, in the first decade of the 17th century, took place in a nearby area that had an elevation on the banks of the Poxim River. This second location, according to Freire (1891, pp. 2–5), was also abandoned due to conflicts with the indigenous peoples of the region. Only after the submission of the natives and the period of instability was overcome, the settlement was established into its final location. A similar process occurred with Laranjeiras, which was first founded in the 1570s, re-founded in 1594 and definitively established in 1606. The following decades were relatively calm in the region, considering the past of struggles between the Portuguese and the Tupinambás. The structures of Praça São Francisco and Quarteirão do Trapiche, the urban centers of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, were formed. The first one, in a rectangular shape similar to that used in Spanish cities, began to congregate churches and convents over time. The set of the Franciscan Convent, the Church and Santa Casa de Misericórdia stand out in the square. The second, in turn, was more focused on commercial activities, especially of enslaved people and foodstuffs, which led to the construction of warehouses for exhibition and negotiation. However, in 1637 the Dutch invaded Brazil. Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, the main population centers of the region, were stages of conflicts between residents and invaders. Between 1637 and 1645 the two cities were dominated by the Dutch, who used their structures plundered and destroyed much of the existing infrastructure when confronting the Portuguese, which had to be rebuilt by survivors. In this reconstruction, indigenous catechists and enslaved blacks who served their masters in colonial lands participated in the reconstruction. At the end of the period of disputes between the Dutch and the Portuguese for the domination of the city, and also between the local elites and the administrators of the Captaincy of Todos os Santos, the establishment of sugarcane activity in the region based on slave labor was observed. Sugarcane activity, already profitable in Bahia, was incorporated late by Sergipe’s grantees and their first efforts were incipient when compared to those in other nearby regions. This particularity, however, was compensated by the flourishing commercial activity in the port of São Cristóvão, the main local administrative center, and the existence of an important river port on the banks of the Cotinguiba River a few leagues from Laranjeiras, which made the small town an important point of passage and supply for the vessels that entered the colonial territory. Thus, while São Cristóvão benefited from the existence of administrative bodies and its coastal location, Laranjeiras was characterized, in its early days, as a place of passage and supply, providing a landing for travelers and receiving populations and resources that flowed down the Cotinguiba river and supplying the local
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market for enslaved blacks who came in increasing numbers to work in the fields (Azevedo 1975). In the second half of the 17th century and throughout the 18th century, there were urban and economic growth in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, based on commercial and administrative activities in the vicinity of the coast of Vaza-Barris river and the existence of the port at the banks of the Cotinguiba River. The advance of colonization and the establishment of slave farms brought a large flow of vessels to São Cristóvão, the region’s gateway to the sea, and to the Cotinguiba River, making Laranjeiras an important trade point. According to Lícia Leão (2011, pp. 34–35), during this period, the region’s economic progress was achieved based on monoculture, latifundium and sugarcane plantation, and the region became a center of colonization and evangelization. The main religious constructions that marked the local landscape and the daily life of the people date from this period. It was also the golden period of operation for the local sugar mills, which became the breeding grounds for numerous enslaved people. With the establishment of slavery-producing sugarcane activity and the religious influence of the Jesuits, the incorporation of indigenous and black converts into everyday manifestations was observed, in a process of cultural syncretism that brought the incorporation of Afro-indigenous elements into local religious and social practices. Throughout the 18th century, a series of religious temples were built at São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras by indigenous and African arms, according to orders from the Jesuits. They were built near São Francisco Square, in São Cristóvão. In Laranjeiras, they were concentrated near the central warehouses and also in the Comandaroba region, an important place of activity for indigenous and enslaved blacks. Until the end of the 18th century, repression in relation to any form of religious manifestation of African origin was recurrent in the colony. Historical and sociological records and research on the subject indicate that, until this period, the religious manifestations of the enslaved were known as calundus, batuques or batucajés. To these terms, “all types of collective dance with songs accompanied by percussion instruments, invocation of spirits, session of possession, divination and magic healing” were associated. On the occasion of the celebrations, rituals were used in which cultural and religious elements of African origin were used, such as atabaques, trance for possession, divination by the use of conches, ritual costumes, animal sacrifices, herbal baths, stone idols, Catholic symbols such as crucifixes, and images of Catholic saints and sacraments, such as marriage and baptism (Nascimento 2010, p. 930). Thus, in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, between the 17th and 19th centuries, sugarcane and commercial activities, with wide participation of enslaved people, and religious dynamics marked by the syncretism between Iberian Catholicism and the permanence of syncretized African cults in Brazil were decisive for the consolidation of ways of life in both locations. At the beginning of the 19th century, São Cristóvão had an estimated population of 6,400 inhabitants, with an estimated production of 123 thousand cruzados per year. There were about ten sugar mills in the region, which collaborated with the local economic movement (Freire 1891, p. 205). Laranjeiras, on the other hand, was already considered the most important commercial warehouse in the region. In 1808, the town’s headquarters and its surroundings held a total of
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600 dwellings (Ferreira 1958, p. 349). In turn, in 1824, Laranjeiras had about 850 residences (Azevedo 1975, p. 16). Santos and França, in a study on the economic activities developed in Laranjeiras in the 19th and 20th centuries, point out that the village had 144 sugar mills in 1832, having dropped to 49 a decade later (Santos and França 2001, p. 26). Despite the drop in the number of mills, which foreshadowed the decline of sugar activity in the region, Laranjeiras was elevated to Vila status in 1832, having had recognized its economic importance. The Cotinguiba Valley region was, at the beginning of the 19th century, the one that brought together the largest slave herds in the entire Province of Sergipe Del Rey (Oliveira 2015, pp. 81–82). In this period, which involved the arrival of thousands of enslaved Africans to the region due to the economic strength of the local mills, the first Afro-Brazilian religious manifestations known as “terreiros” flourished in the region. They were founded by practitioners of Nagô cults, of Yoruba origin, originating in West Africa where today Nigeria, Benin (ex-Dahome) and Togo are located. They arrived in Brazil mid-17th century and the mid-19th century, concentrating in the sugar regions, above all, Bahia and Pernambuco” (Nascimento 2010, p. 927). Sharyse Piroupo do Amaral starts from the crossing of wills, inventories and testimonies granted to researchers like Beatriz Góis Dantas to identify the process of constitution of the Nagô cult in Laranjeiras in the 1860s (Amaral 2011). The formation of terreiros by Nagô cults points to a reconfiguration of Afro-Brazilian forms of worship from the 19th century onwards, with the arrival of new waves of enslaved blacks despite the restrictions imposed by imperial legislation and, also, the increase of the villages, towns and cities, which contributed to the increase in sociability among black communities. The Nagô cult was established from the action of four black leaders in the city: Henrique Luís Dantas, Herculano Barbosa Madureira, José Carlos da Costa (aka Sapucahy) and Lázaro Barbosa Madureira. The first one was responsible, in the mid1860s, for the foundation of the oldest terreiro established in the city of Laranjeiras: the Nagô terreiro of Santa Barbara Virgem. It was installed at the back of the “Ti Henrique” residence, located on Rua do Calangaleixo, the former residential center of the black community in Laranjeiras. The change of the government headquarters of the Province of Sergipe transformed the local situation in 1854, since the attention and investments previously focused on the development of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras were directed toward the construction and improvement of the new capital. This process began at a time when both cities were experiencing great economic strength, with the emergence of new commercial houses and factories. Between 1845 and 1863, 53 sugar mills, brandy and cigar factories were registered in Laranjeiras. Because of economic growth, roads were requested for connecting the population centers, and the lighting was gas-based lamps (Leão 2011, p. 43). This scenario provided not only an increase in religious sociability around AfroBrazilian cults but also forms of resistance that went beyond the sociocultural aspect, and started to face more directly the dynamics of slavery, especially the quilombos. The Cotinguiba valley was a region sought by slaves who escaped from the mills due to the abundance of forests and its proximity to the shopping centers, which allowed, even though far from the manorial domain, the possibility to obtain food,
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information and to establish exchanges for the purpose of guaranteeing the survival of the formed communities. Thus, the social scene in the Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão region had an information network structured from the communication channels of Afro-Brazilian communities, which, in turn, should certainly have members from the terreiro communities (Oliveira 2015). Therefore, it is possible to observe the arrangement of black solidarity networks that constituted the social fabric of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, which are part of the history of Afro-Brazilian resistance in the region. Terreiros, cultural practices, dialects and other forms of communication were free from the slaveholders’ control. In this sense, these were important strategies for survival and autonomy in a scenario marked by invisibility and exploitation. In addition to the change of capital, the abolition of forced labor contributed to the stagnation of the local economy, which, according to Amaral (2012, pp. 44–48), began to be felt in Sergipe from the 1870s with the scarcity of slaves to supply domestic demand. According to the author’s argument, Sergipe was a province that was characterized by the large import of slaves, having experienced many difficulties in production when the number of captives available for sale decreased. In addition to these factors, several authors highlight the role played by the “bladder” and Spanish flu epidemics, which occurred in 1911 and 1918, when many local families left in search of safe regions. With the eviction of properties and the fear that they would become the focus of the spread of diseases, several licenses were granted for the demolition of old buildings, changing the appearance of colonial cities. Although the cities were going through a serious economic and demographic crisis, it was in the first half of the twentieth century that they witnessed the growth in the number of terreiros of Afro-Brazilian religions. It occurred as a result of the branching of Nagô worship places, which led to with the foundation of new terreiros, and of the dialogue with others located in other regions, especially Salvador, from where the first terreiros of the Keto nation came to Sergipe. In Laranjeiras, the foundation of the terreiro “Filhos de Obá” was enabled, while in São Cristóvão the first Nagôs terreiros were founded in the 1920s. In that same decade, the first terreiros of the Keto nation were installed in Sergipe, while in Laranjeiras the Calangeixo region was predominant. It was historically inhabited by Black people and their descendants. The first Nagô terreiro in the city was founded, in Alto do Bernardo, São Cristóvão, in the vicinity of historic center where the Nagô tradition left its first branches in the city.
2 The Monumentalization of Historic Centers and the Framing of Memory in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras After at least three decades of abandonment and demolition of a large part of their old buildings, São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras showed great changes in their material aspects, leading to a first attempt to preserve their architecture. The first action aimed
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at preserving the built heritage in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras occurred in the 1940s when the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN, now IPHAN) listed isolated buildings in both cities, all of them religious (Leão 2011, p. 51). As much as human interventions have changed many architectural aspects of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, their headquarters kept a certain architectural and urbanistic unity, which is observed in the remaining buildings, in the street’ shapes and squares of the so-called “historic centers”. At the end of the 1960s, IPHAN toppled the architectural and urban complex of São Cristóvão City Center. In the 1970s, another important measure of safeguarding its colonial architectural complex was observed: the elevation of the historic center of Laranjeiras to the status of Historical Monument of the State of Sergipe through Government Decree No. 2048, of March 12, 1971 (Campos and Santos, 2010, p. 100). Also worth mentioning is the importance of creating, in the early 1970s, the Program for the Restoration of Historic Cities, aimed at preserving the built collection of northeastern colonial cities (Leão 2011, p. 52).This preservationist action was in line with the objectives of cultural policy in the area of cultural heritage consolidated from the creation of the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN), in the 1930s, which established the standard in force in Brazil until, at least, the 1970s. It was characterized by the appreciation of a modern and Portuguese Brazil, celebrating the successes of colonization manifested by the architectural examples adapted from European styles. Thus, this “stone-and-lime” heritage consolidated the image of a country led to modernity by the colonizing process, with no space for the contributions of other peoples and cultural matrixes to the formation of a Brazilian identity (Fonseca 2005). This policy, the result of intense debates about the scope of its action, ended up focusing on the remaining built assets from the colonial period, mostly religious and Catholic, excluding any and all possibilities of protection of the Afro-Brazilian heritage present in the preserved sites that, like Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, had the inevitable mark of the action of the enslaved blacks who built cities with their work. The configuration of this preservationist action, as already analyzed in several studies (Chuva 2009; Gonçalves 2004; Lanari 2018), was the result of “combats” about history and memory fought by different groups that participated in the formation of the field of cultural heritage in Brazil, with the prevalence of what could be used as the exceptional character of “being Brazilian” from exemplary of European styles to the colonial environment. This interpretation of the Brazilian culture, emerging in the midst of an authoritarian political culture such as that promoted by the Estado Novo, sought to consolidate a pedagogy of nationality and to remove social participation, guiding the choices of assets to be protected based on the definitions of technicians and intellectuals (Santos 1996). Between the 1960s and the 1980s, with the installation of the CivilMilitary Dictatorship in Brazil, cultural policy acquired a new proud and elitist aspect, maintaining its focus on the celebration of Portuguese heritage in the tropics and neglecting Afro-Brazilians and Indians, who constituted the great silence of this conservationist aspect that, in its “heroic phase”, carried out the protection of a certain cultural heritage built in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras. Their religious and
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cultural manifestations were classified as “folklore”, a term that points to a tradition of hierarchy between the so-called “erudite” cultures, notably identified with European matrices, and a certain “minor culture”, characterized by popular forms of expression (Silva 2002; Oliveira and Matos 2016). Thus, the “folklorization” of Afro-Brazilian religions and cultural manifestations was observed and their exclusion from the list of assets to be protected by official state policies throughout much of the 20th century. In socioeconomic terms, throughout the first half of the twentieth century, São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras underwent a sharp process of substituting productive activities, which stopped focusing on the sugarcane sector and began to dedicate themselves more to cattle raising, with the suppression of green areas for the establishment of pastures. There was also a gradual process of dividing old properties, which, fragmented, did not have the same productive potential as observed in times past. Thus, local economies started to depend on the relationship that the two cities had with Aracajú, the capital of Sergipe, since its foundation. The growth of Aracajú, in turn, was decisive for the resumption of economic activities in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras in the following decades, making the two municipalities important suppliers of labor and attractive centers of industrial enterprises. Since the 1970s, economic activities have resumed in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, mainly with the arrival of mineral exploration of limestone and potassium, and the installation of Petrobras subsidiaries. With the installation of new industries, part of its population, formerly employed in the decaying mills that remained from the mill cycle at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and in cattle farms, began to work as workers. The new factories also attracted people from other neighboring municipalities, such as Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, contributing to urban growth in new locations. The opening of BR 101, linking Aracajú and São Cristóvão to the municipalities of the interior of the country, contributed to the increase in the flow of people, vehicles and assets, moving the economy and local society. In urban terms, there was an increase in urban occupation on the fringes of the old population centers, generally in regions close to Aracajú or with roads to the Capital. In Laranjeiras this happened with the expansion toward route BR 101. In São Cristóvão, on the other hand, the urbanization of the region known as “Rosa Elze” was observed, in an area of turmoil with Aracajú. The new fronts of urban expansion, usually structured around housing estates and areas of disorderly growth of buildings, started to receive a contingent of low-income workers whose jobs were located in the Capital. Many of these residents, blacks and mixed, belonging to the communities of terreiros, sought the new fronts of occupation to install their terreiros in them, which, multiplied over the years, started to form networks of collaboration and assistance. Thus, the new areas of population expansion represented a distancing factor for many of the Afro-Brazilian communities from the historic centers that they had occupied for so long. In the last three decades of the 20th century, throughout the process of opening and re-democratizing Brazilian politics, Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão benefited from the continuity of policies aimed at maintaining their built heritage and the enhancement of their intangible cultural heritage, especially celebrations, cultural practices
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and typical ways of doing things. In this sense, the work of the National Folklore Commission stands out, which, since the 1960s, stimulated studies on manifestations of popular culture in the country, especially in the Northeast (Cruz 2012). The initiatives of researchers and folklorists in recovering local popular traditions resulted in the organization of the First Laranjeiras Cultural Meeting in 1976 (in a partnership between the Municipality of Laranjeiras and the State Council of Culture, with the support of the Ministry of Culture, and the Federal University of Sergipe) and the 1st São Cristóvão Art Festival in 1983. Such events, which received the contribution and encouragement of anthropologists and folklorists, began to be characterized by the participation of several local traditional groups and other municipalities in the region, such as Lagarto, Itabaiana, Riachuelo, Japaratuba and Siriri. Some cultural manifestations that became part of the event’s program are the guards of sailors, the caboclinhos, the Lambe-Sujo, the Taieiras, the Dance of São Gonçalo, the Chegança, the maracatus, kings, battalions, sambas of wheel, coconut, among others (Dantas 2015, p. 13). Throughout the process of political openness experienced in Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s, these events began to increasingly address Afro-Brazilian practices in a gradual process of incorporating their agendas by different agents, folklorists, university students, among others. However, the constitution of these forums for presentation and debate regarding traditional practices changed the scenario a little in regard to policies for the preservation of cultural heritage, which continued to center on the built heritage associated with the European heritage resulting from the colonial period. Despite the dissemination of the cultural events listed above—none of them arising from the religious practices of the terreiros—and their contribution to the social recognition of these practices, little was done in terms of actions aimed at improving the material conditions of the holders of this knowledge and forms of expression. Not even the emergence of the notion of “Intangible Heritage” from the 1990s, stablished in Brazil with Decree 3551/2000, led to the official recognition of the practices of AfroBrazilian religions, which could have contributed to the improvement of the material conditions of these people and, consequently, to the effective safeguarding of these cultural assets. Throughout the process of democratic consolidation in Brazil in the 1990s and 2000s, and especially from the emergence of progressive guidelines and affirmative actions in the area of culture with the rise of Gilberto Gil to the Ministry of Culture, the problematization of issues involving Afro-Brazilian memories and heritage, however, in general terms, discussions held outside technical and academic bodies did not keep up with effective action through identification and safeguarding of instruments. In the case of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras, this finding is even more important since the two cities have been, since the 1970s, the main references in the preservation of the Cultural Heritage of the State of Sergipe, being frequently the stage of events dedicated to the theme. This centrality can be seen in the action of IPHAN aimed at qualifying these sites within the preservationist perspective of “stone-and-lime”. The Historic Center of Laranjeiras was recognized as a National Cultural Heritage by IPHAN in 1996. Since then, a series of conservation and restoration interventions have contributed to the revitalization of its urban infrastructure. In addition to the
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restoration of several mansions, it is worth mentioning the work, within the scope of the Monumenta Program by the Ministry of Culture, of restoration of the “Trapiche Block”, a place where the warehouses used for port activities existed. Therefore, there is an appreciation of the commercial vocation of the city and the absence of manifestations of culture—material and immaterial—of Afro-Brazilian heritage. São Cristóvão, on the other hand, underwent transformations during the second half of the 20th century, with an expansion of the urban fabric toward Aracajú, culminating in the turmoil of the two municipalities in the Rosa Elze region. The urban growth process and the local real estate dynamics, influenced by the heritage of the historic center, took an expressive part of the old traditional communities, to areas with cheaper land and rents, located in the Rosa Elze region. Even though the AfroBrazilian population core were disjointed, the region known as “Alto do Bernardo” remains as an important area of concentration of traditional Afro-Brazilian religious, productive and cultural practices. Nonetheless, cultural heritage policies were concentrated in the most prominent area of the city, São Francisco Square surrounded by buildings of colonial architectural style. The location site, already recognized as an Architectural Complex by IPHAN, was registered to be included in the World Heritage List, created by UNESCO to bring together places of outstanding cultural importance for the world’s populations. The document, entitled Proposition for the inclusion of São Francisco Square in São Cristóvão—SE in the World Heritage list, prepared by the Superintendence of IPHAN in Sergipe, in 2010, indicates that among many aspects that could make São Francisco Square significant, its characteristics associated with the style of the squares founded by the Spanish colonial administrations in the American continent would stand out. The texts of the document argue that the period of the Iberian Union2 was decisive for the urban shaping of the square, since it was during this period that the city of São Cristóvão was founded, even considering the two changes in location and the changes that occurred over the centuries. The application document for São Francisco Square sent to UNESCO argues that its construction followed the common patterns of public spaces and central squares in some important Spanish colonial cities founded between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century: The traditional historiography on the Peninsular Union has recently been revised through the documentary interpretation of records, mainly in the sections of the provincial and state secretariats of the General Archives of Simancas. Scarce works do not clarify the decisions taken for Brazil as an integral part of the Spanish Empire. There is still no clear recognition if there was, for sixty years, an interruption of Portugal’s preponderance over Brazil. One of the factors that hinder, until today, a careful examination of this period is the belief in the oath of Felipe II, before the courts gathered in Tomar, on the Portuguese supremacy. Add to this, there is the fact that governors of Portuguese origin were assigned to Brazil, which according to historian Roseli Santaella Stella (2000), “erroneously reinforces the concept of the apparent absence of Spanish norms in the Brazilian government of this time”. And yet, “In the Portuguese institutional reform, with the creation of the council of hacienda in 1591, and of the council of Indias in 1604, in which the influence of the Spanish experience 2 Period
Crown.
between 1580 and 1640, when the Kingdom of Portugal was administered by the Spanish
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in the imperial administration is clearly seen, although such reform had purpose of serving primarily Spanish interests.” Documents, as those presented below, concerning the governance of Sergipe del Rey, prove that the kings of Spain, in the exercise of power over Portugal and Brazil, were integrated in the deliberation of colonial themes (IPHAN 2010).
Thus, the defense of the inclusion of São Francisco Square focused on the argument that the space, formed from the Iberian influence, would have constituted the most important public space in the city, symbolizing São Cristóvão and its main postcard. It is worth highlighting to the group formed by the Franciscan Convent, the Church and Santa Casa de Misericórdia, the building that housed the Provincial Palace, which was the seat of the province’s government in the 19th century and today houses the Historical Museum of the State of Sergipe, in addition to the single-story buildings where cultural structures operate, such as the Municipal Library Senador Lourival Batista. Thus, a bet was made on linking the city’s identity as “postcard” of to the colonial Catholic religious universe, operating a selective cut of the dynamics observed in the period, as seen, marked by the wide black presence in the society of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras. The inclusion of the Landscape Set of the Historic Center of São Cristóvão in the World Heritage list enshrined this framework of memory and endowed it with legitimacy through the seal of an international institution such as UNESCO. In the case of Laranjeiras, in which the appreciation of the commercial vocation hid the fact that a large part of this trade involved enslaved blacks, the affirmation of the Catholic colonial identity in São Cristóvão left aside the black effort spent on the construction of the temples currently listed and, above all, made widespread black participation in local society invisible.
3 Demands of Terreiro Communities in São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras: From the Right to Memory to Other Historically Neglected Social Rights After the exposition above, the question is: who are we talking about when we mention the terreiro communities of São Cristóvão and Laranjeiras? How many terreiros exist in the two municipalities? Where are they located? What are their peculiarities? Although it is not the goal of this article to deepen the forms of worship and aspects of ritual practices, some general information about these communities can be presented so that we can then go on to expose their demands and the strategies envisioned in claiming the approximation with instances for promoting cultural heritage. Throughout fieldwork carried out between 2016 and 2019, 26 terreiros in Laranjeiras and 59 terreiros in São Cristóvão were identified. In Laranjeiras, there was a concentration of terreiros in some locations close to downtown, such as Calangaleixo and Comandaroba, in the vicinity of the Historic Center, with a marked presence of practitioners of the Nagô cult. These, due to
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their greater visibility because of the “folkloric” recovery of their practices closer to the popular Catholicism, enjoy better material conditions for carrying out their daily activities and greater traffic among local cultural agents, including IPHAN’s regional superintendence, which supports events held at the Historic Center. Thus, these communities are directly or indirectly affected by the impacts of policies aimed at safeguarding the Trapiche Quarter, which involves the existence of basic urban infrastructure such as paving, water supply, sanitation, even if inefficient, and public street lighting. These terreiros generally own the properties they occupy, in some cases transmitted over generations, and, a specific terreiro—the Filhos de Obá Cult Association—is recognized at the state level as being of cultural interest, which sustained its listing. When close to the Historic Center, the houses and terraces of Afro-Brazilian religions in Laranjeiras benefit from the safeguard guidelines indirectly, since they integrate the surroundings of the listed property. In addition, the proximity to the Trapiche Block guarantees the possibility of being present at events held on site, a certain flow of visitors and greater media attention and researchers. It is worth mentioning that the affirmation of the Nagô identity, as Beatriz Góis Dantas asserts, integrates an important social affirmation strategy of practitioners of local Afro-Brazilian cults, with the defense of an alleged “Nagô purity” that, to a certain extent, remains associated with Laranjeiras’ image. Thus, the construction of the Nagô identity, associated with the affirmation of the patrimonial discourse around the Trapiche Block, were fundamental elements for obtaining improvements in the material conditions of survival of the terreiro communities located in the center of Laranjeiras. Even so, they participate as assistants in the speech affirmed by the safeguarded cultural asset, which focuses on the commercial aspect of the Trapiche Block region. However, most of the terreiros are located in regions far from the Historic Center, facing a very different scenario. In these cases, what was observed was the lack of basic urban infrastructure and the precariousness of the constructions, some of them unfinished and, even so, in operation. In addition, most of the terreiros located in regions far from the center are practitioners of the Keto, Angola and Umbanda cults, not participating in the narrative related to Nagô religiosity. Thus, they are not benefited by the reflections of local patrimonial policies and are even more invisible than those that, in a way, fit into the consolidated narrative about Laranjeiras and its Historic Center. In addition to being far away, they are not Nagô. There are more recent terreiros, generally founded by Pais de Santo fom terreiros of nearby municipalities, such as Estância and Nossa Senhora do Socorro, that sought areas far from the urban center to establish gardens, escape religious intolerance or due to the price of land and rents. Many of these terreiro communities resent not having basic conditions of existence, such as land titles (whereas the furniture is their own) and housing, sanitation and security policies, as well as their inadequacy to socially recognized Afro-Brazilian religiosity, although in a lower position in the face of Catholicism, by the local population. Away from the spotlight, these communities are the most vulnerable to religious intolerance from neo-Pentecostal strands, ranging from the installation of evangelical temples with loudspeakers playing religious hymns at high volume throughout the day to the depredation or closure by the Military Police under
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Image 1 Map of Terreiros of Laranjeiras. Source Temporis Consultoria/IPHAN (2016)
the allegation of disturbance of public order. The map of the Laranjeiras terreiros, presented as follows, shows the distribution of communities in the municipal territory (Image 1). Also, in relation to São Cristóvão, it can be observed that, despite the important black presence in the formation of culture and local identity, this was placed at a lower level by religious prejudice based on the Catholic Christian tradition, strengthened in recent decades by intolerant speeches coming from religious segments of the Neocharismatic movement, which currently has a great influence on Brazilian religiosity and also on national political life. It was also possible to observe a scenario marked by different origins and times of existence of the terreiros, presenting singularities demarcated by the historical process of the population of the municipality during the second half of the 20th century. The oldest terreiros, many of them with more than 40 years of existence, are located in the regions closest to the headquarters district of São Cristóvão, composed of rural settlements and neighborhoods around the historic center of the city. In these terreiros it was also possible to identify the greatest occurrence of practitioners of the Nagô cult, brought from Laranjeiras in the middle of the 20th century. In the surveys done at the terreiros located in the region of Rosa Elze and other locations that are under interference from the socio-urban dynamics of Aracaju, a reality marked by a process of expansion was observed, especially developed from the mid-1970s to the 1980s, when regions close to the municipal limits of the state capital and São Cristóvão began to be populated as an area for subdivisions and construction of
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popular housing estates. The terreiros located in these areas are more recent, having been founded or transferred to the region since the 1980s, with a special increase in the 2000s and, above all, in the last decade. They are terreiros that arose from the branches of the Keto and Angola nations that arrived from contacts with Bahian terreiros in the 1970s and 1980s and that, today, are spreading through the most recent urbanization regions in search of cheaper land and rents. In them, there is a lack of urban infrastructure, such as pavement and drainage system for rain and river water since the level of the Poxim River constantly rises, flooding streets and houses. In addition, the lack of urban planning in the expansion process led to the lack of security caused both by constant traffic without traffic signs and by the lack of adequate lighting and coverage of security maintenance services, which lead these areas to the highest rates of crime. The presence of Nagô cults is markedly less in São Cristóvão and is concentrated in the region known as Alto do Bernardo, far from the Historical Center formed by São Francisco Square. However, Alto do Bernardo—by itself—constitutes a historic region in São Cristóvão, either due to the massive presence of Afro-Brazilian communities, or because of the connection with traditional fishing and the extraction of shellfish from surrounding areas. Thus, the process of patrimonialization of the Historic Center has brought even less benefits and more invisibility to the AfroBrazilian communities in São Cristóvão than in Laranjeiras, since there is neither positive effect of being in the surroundings of the listed property nor association with the patrimonial narrative. The case of São Cristóvão, therefore, constitutes an even clearer example of the invisibility of Afro-Brazilian communities and of terreiros in the face of heritage narratives affirmed by the protection of historic centers. The map below shows this division between the terreiros closest to the center and those located surrounding Aracajú. Faced with rising religious intolerance against Sergipe’s terreiros, notably those from Aracajú, Laranjeiras and São Cristóvão, representatives of these religions sought the Regional Superintendence of IPHAN in Sergipe to request actions aimed at the recognition of these communities so that, with this, they would stop suffering prejudice and threats of invasion and depredation of their assets. The fieldwork that resulted in this paper began with this demand. Thus, the local terreiro communities have sought, in recent years, to enforce the idea of a “right to memory” (Ricouer 2007) as a strategy for reversing invisibility and persecution that result in unfavorable material conditions for the continuity of their practices. Symptomatically, the first municipality chosen by the Regional Superintendence of IPHAN to carry out the mapping of the terreiros was Laranjeiras, whose identity was already associated with the Nagô discourse. Through the surveys at the terreiros, in addition to the multiplicity of religious aspects that contradicted the traditional narrative, we could assess that there was a demand in the most recent terreiros for the recognition of their stories that are not associated with the Nagôs and a series of other demands that pervaded basic social rights, such as food security, compliance with family health policies and the existence of adequate transport to the central region of the municipality. Therefore, this was not just an equity issue. Cultural heritage, in this case, was used as a gateway for manifestation of historically repressed
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demands in these historically segregated communities who were made invisible by the patrimonial and folklorist discourse in force since half of the 20th century. The news of the actions in Laranjeiras spread quickly among practitioners of AfroBrazilian religions across Sergipe and there were several calls for a second stage to take place in municipalities where the Afro-Brazilian heritage is alive: Desterro, Nossa Senhora do Socorro, Japaratuba and São Cristóvão. The latter was chosen for several reasons: the presence of the technical office in the Historic Center, the centrality of the city in the policies of the Regional Superintendence of IPHAN and, not less important, the articulation of priests and representatives of the communities of terreiros so that the city could be contemplated with the second stage of activities. So, between August 2018 and July 2019, visits were made to the city to map the terreiros, which could be really useful for the demands of the interested local terreiros that they mobilized to pressure IPHAN to contemplate the municipality. Thus, it is possible to observe the articulation of the local community agents to draw IPHAN’s attention and, with that, increase the visibility of their communities before the scenario presented here as of the affirmation of a patrimonial discourse that did not contemplate them and, above all, neglected the fulfillment of basic rights. The scenario observed in São Cristóvão, as already mentioned, pointed to an even greater silence regarding the Afro-Brazilian communities and their cultural heritage, which became clear from the contact with these communities. The existence of terreiros with greater legitimacy and social visibility was not observed, such as the case of the Nagôs of de Laranjeiras. The greater distance from the Historic Center— so, by default, from the focus of IPHAN’s actions and the local cultural movement— deprives local terreiros of minimal openness to heritage policies, which is why their representatives so emphatically insisted on mapping them in the municipality. In addition, São Cristóvão presents peculiar urban dilemmas associated with the development of the region known as Rosa Elze, which concentrates, as observed in the map in Image 2, a significant number of terreiro communities. Thus, by challenging to the official body for the preservation of cultural heritage and in a context favorable to actions aimed at Afro-Brazilian communities, the terreiros of São Cristóvão knocked on the “door” of cultural heritage to present their demands that, as presented, are much broader than just the right to memory.
4 Conclusion As a conclusion, we present some questions: Is it possible to advance the agenda of protecting Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage in the face of the current dismantling of Brazil’s cultural policies and the rise of religious intolerance? If not even the emergence of affirmative policies aimed at Afro-Brazilian communities during the 2000s was sufficient to consolidate the Afro-Brazilian heritage to preservationist practice, what to project from the current political shift observed in the country? We witness with astonishment both the emergence of a radical religious thought coming from neo-Pentecostal strands and the emergence of political currents that see
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Image 2 Map of terreiros of São Cristóvão. Source Peixe Vivo Histórias/IPHAN (2019)
affirmative politics as part of an alleged “ideological war” for the control of hearts and minds, which led, with the rise of Jair Bolsonaro to the Presidency of the Republic, from Roberto Alvim to becoming the Special Secretary of Culture and to the advance of the attack on Brazilian cultural institutions, including IPHAN. The president, when referring to the remaining communities of Quilombos, stated that “quilombolas are not even useful for procreation” (CONGRESSO EM FOCO 2017). The second politician, after appointing a person averse to the Afro-Brazilian communities to the Palmares Foundation,3 was dismissed from his post after delivering a speech inspired by the Nazi Joseph Goebbels (NEXO JORNAL 2020). IPHAN, the main institution dedicated to the preservation of the Brazilian cultural heritage, suffers a process of asphyxiation that starts from two focuses: the cut of funds that guarantee its functioning and the replacement of its management staff by people aligned with the radical conservative thinking defended by the current Brazilian government. In many cases, this process has led to the lack of definition of command posts and paralysis of structural actions carried out over the past few years, notably those aimed at Afro-Brazilian heritage. Thus, actions to map terreiros such as those that boosted this work are paralyzed, interrupting an important channel for presenting demands for social rights built through the demands of Afro-Brazilian communities. 3 Main
governmental body for the defense of Afro-Brazilian communities and religious practices.
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Along with the paralysis of government agencies involved with the agendas of Afro-Brazilian communities, which is being observed, there is the advance of the attack on their religious and cultural practices by practitioners of radical neoPentecostal religions and other groups averse to racial equality policies, resuming the process of making invisible their memories and current actions. Terreiros such as those visited during the field research that resulted in this paper are at constant risk of violent actions coming from the civil society, often with the support of police forces. Thus, an energetic response by the international community is necessary, considering the current position of the Brazilian government that reflexes in the actions of a civil society still very marked by religious prejudice against Afro-Brazilian practices. If that answer does not come or is not up to the challenge, a little encouraging scenario is projected for the protection of Afro-Brazilian cultural heritage and the promotion of the right to memory among these communities.
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The Pampulha Modern Ensemble: Reflections on the Complexities and Contradictions for the Management of a World Heritage Cultural Landscape Luciana Rocha Féres and Leonardo Barci Castriota
Abstract The article presents a reflection on the complexities and contradictions of world heritage sites management processes, specifically in the Brazilian case of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, which was inscribed in the cultural landscape typology in July 2016, on the World Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—UNESCO. The case study aims to demonstrate that the inscription of cultural landscapes located in urban areas on the World Heritage List is a recent phenomenon, and as such, requires a review of the concepts and methodologies previously in force in the field of urban cultural heritage management and conservation. In the midst of contemporary discussions about the management of cultural landscapes, the value-based approach and the concept of cultural significance stand out, as both deal with the “management of change” inherent in the field of cultural landscape conservation and management. In light of this background, the article aims to reflect on the following issues: (1) What are the developments and effects of the inscription of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Luciana Rocha Féres—Member of the Brazilian Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS / BRAZIL), Professor, Consultant and PhD. Candidate of the Doctoral Program in Built Environment and Sustainable Heritage of the Federal University of Minas Gerais, School of Architecture at UFMG - Rua Paraíba 697, sala 201. Cep: 30130-140, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Leonardo Barci Castriota—President of the Brazilian Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS / BRAZIL), Full Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. Federal University of Minas Gerais. Doctoral Program in Built Environment and Sustainable Heritage, School of Architecture at UFMG - Rua Paraíba 697, sala 201. Cep: 30130-140, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. L. R. Féres (B) · L. B. Castriota ICOMOS/BRAZIL, Belo Horizonte, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] L. B. Castriota e-mail: [email protected] L. B. Castriota Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_7
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as a Cultural Landscape on the World Heritage List? (2) What are the contemporary methodological approaches for the conservation/management of a Cultural (Urban) Landscape? (3) What would be the limit of acceptable transformations in a world heritage cultural landscape without losing its O.U.V.—Outstanding Universal Value? The article intends to problematize and promote reflection on such questions, aiming to elucidate the transformations that have occurred both in the symbolic and conceptual dimensions, as well as in the policies and instruments of preservation of cultural heritage over time, and to discuss the concepts, theories and practices of conservation and management of cultural heritage, especially of world heritage cultural landscapes. Keywords Management of world cultural heritage sites · World heritage cultural landscapes preservation · Pampulha Modern Ensemble This article presents an excerpt from the ongoing doctoral research entitled: “Trajectories of the preservation of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble—Heritage and Cultural Landscape of a World Heritage Site: the Management of Cultural Landscapes in question”. The article intends to reflect on the complexities and contradictions of the management processes of world heritage sites, specifically in the Brazilian case of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, a site located in the city of Belo Horizonte, in the state of Minas Gerais, which was inscribed in the cultural landscape typology in July 2016, on the World Cultural Heritage List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The case study aims to demonstrate that the inclusion of cultural landscapes located in urban areas in the World Heritage List is a recent phenomenon, and as such, it requires a review of the concepts and methodologies previously used in the field of heritage management and preservation. This process of critical analysis and reflection on the concepts, methodologies and management practices is essential at this time so that we can find ways to deal with this new typology so that it does not become a new “packaging” for the old practices of cultural heritage preservation. In the midst of contemporary discussions about the management of cultural landscapes, the value-based approach and the concept of cultural significance stand out, as both deal with the “management of change” inherent in the field of cultural landscapes preservation and management. In this context, the article aims to reflect on the following issues: (1) What are the consequences and effects of the inscription of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble as a Cultural Landscape on the World Heritage List? (2) What are the contemporary methodological approaches to the conservation/management of a Cultural (Urban) Landscape? (3) What would be the limit of acceptable transformations in a world heritage cultural landscape without it losing its O.U.V.—Outstanding Universal Value?
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The article intends to problematize and promote reflection on such issues, aiming to elucidate the transformations that have occurred both in the symbolic and conceptual dimensions, as well as in policies and instruments for the preservation of cultural heritage over time, as well as advancing knowledge about concepts, theories and conservation practices and management of cultural heritage, especially cultural landscapes.
1 Brief Contextualization About the Preservation of Cultural Heritage in Urban Centers, the Concept of Cultural Landscape and the Management Issue Over time, the field of management and conservation of cultural heritage in urban centers has become increasingly complex, broad and interdisciplinary since the concept of heritage itself has expanded significantly and the social agents involved have multiplied. The conservation of urban cultural heritage is no longer seen as an isolated discipline and seeks to be incorporated into urban planning, reaching the urban scale, in which the city itself becomes an object of heritage preservation. In this context of transformations in the field of conservation of urban cultural heritage, new concepts, theories and methodologies emerge that have been gradually incorporated into heritage management policies and practices, at global and local levels. The concept of cultural landscape has its genesis in geography (from the 19th century), but its application and diffusion as a typology in the field of heritage begins mainly in the 1990s, through its incorporation into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992. At that time, the institution of the cultural landscape sought to break the dichotomy between cultural and natural heritage, in force since the 1972 UNESCO World Heritage Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. According to the Convention, cultural landscapes “represent the combined works of nature and of man” and “they are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of the physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and of successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal” (UNESCO 2015). The term landscape, on the other hand, carries with it a multiplicity of meanings and interpretations and its appropriation by both common sense and different areas of knowledge generates “a true babel of understandings, definitions and methodologies” as stated by Ribeiro (2017, p. 29). As for the cultural landscape typology, almost 30 years after its incorporation in the World Heritage List and in the field of heritage preservation, its understanding, application and management still generate controversies, mainly in the cases of cultural landscapes located in urban centers. The changing nature of cultural landscapes makes its preservation difficult, as traditional conservation theories and norms are generally focused on historical and artistic heritage values, with a restricted view of cultural significance, seeking to “stop time” and “arresting decay”, as Mason
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(2008) pointed out. For, in the western view, the notion of cultural heritage has long been linked to the ideals of monumentality, exceptionality, antiquity and, mainly, the materiality of cultural heritage (Smith 2006). Therefore, we will try to answer a question that was posed by Mason (2008) and other authors, but which, in view of its complexity, is still the target of investigations: “So how does one preserve something so fluid by its nature as a cultural landscape?”1
2 The Cultural Landscape in the Context of the World Heritage—UNESCO The idea of World Heritage expressed in the UNESCO World Heritage, Cultural and Natural Heritage Convention of 1972 presents the distinction between cultural and natural heritage.2 The Convention’s objective is to ensure the identification, protection, conservation, presentation and transmission of cultural and natural heritage of “outstanding universal value” for future generations. The Convention was ratified by 189 countries (referred to as States Parties) and was implemented with the identification of sites, technically called “properties”, which possess or express qualities of “exceptional universal significance” and “outstanding universal value” (UNESCO 2015). World heritage sites are not “designated” as “exceptionally beautiful”, but are inscribed on a List maintained since 1972 by UNESCO. As a reflection of the thought of that historic moment, which in a short time became anachronistic, the Convention divided World Heritage into two types: cultural and natural. Thus, cultural vs natural, as opposites, almost antagonistic, because at that moment environmentalists argued that for the full preservation of the nature of a region, the less human interference, the better. On the other hand, similarly, in the cultural sphere, the focus was on the built architectural heritage, monuments and structures, buildings and ruins as an isolated phenomenon, mainly in the minds of architects, architectural historians with aesthetic tendencies, with little concern for context and landscape (Fowler 2003, p. 15). However, in view of the diversity of the sites, in a short time it was necessary to incorporate the so-called mixed sites, those that met both the criteria of cultural and natural sites together. As Bandarin reports (UNESCO 2009), 1992 was a crucial year within the World Heritage Committee to break that split view between nature and culture, thanks to the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, also known as Eco-92, held in Rio de Janeiro. This Conference provided the awakening of awareness for the interrelationships between human life and the environment, integrating
1 Mason
2008, p. 182.
2 The evaluation and judgment are carried out by groups of distinct experts, for natural heritage sites,
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN); for cultural heritage sites, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS). (UNESCO 2015).
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culture and nature in a vision of sustainable development.3 This alert at the government, NGO’s and civil society levels has contributed to the inclusion of the cultural landscape category for the inscription of sites on the World Heritage List. This year (1992), a group of experts in Cultural Landscapes met in La Petite Pierre, France, at the invitation of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the World Heritage Committee, to discuss and formulate the inclusion of cultural landscapes in the World Heritage List, with the objective of integrating and valuing the relationships between humankind and the natural environment, between the natural and cultural heritage. In the scope of preservation, the 16th session of the World Heritage Committee held in 1992, can be established as a landmark of the institutionalization of the term, which incorporated the cultural landscape category for the inscription of sites in the World Heritage List. This was the first international legal instrument to recognize and protect cultural landscapes, and presents the following definition: Cultural landscapes represent the “combined works of nature and of man” designated in Article I of the Convention. They are illustrative of the evolution of human society and settlement over time, under the influence of physical constraints and/or opportunities presented by their natural environment and the successive social, economic and cultural forces, both external and internal. They should be selected on the basis of both of their outstanding universal value and their representativity in terms of a clearly defined geocultural region, and their ability to illustrate the essential and distinct cultural elements of those regions. (UNESCO 2015, pp. 86).
It is perceived that the definition of cultural landscape presents a Sauerian matrix, as it defines it as a result of the interaction between humanity and the natural environment. The Convention demonstrates the breadth of the concept of “cultural landscape” and affirms that it encompasses a diversity of manifestations; it also highlights that cultural landscapes can reflect specific sustainable techniques of land use, considering the characteristics and limits of the natural environment in which it is established, as well as specific spiritual relationships with nature. The Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 2015) classify cultural landscapes into three main categories, namely: (1) Clearly defined Landscape, designed and intentionally created by man. It is the easiest to identify; it includes gardens and parklands built for aesthetic reasons that are usually (but not always) associated with religious monumental buildings or other ensembles. (2) Organically evolved landscape. Resulting from a social, economic, administrative and/or religious process that implied in its present form by association and in response to its natural environment. It has two subcategories: 3 “Sustainable development (…) strictly speaking, the adjective should be divided into socially inclu-
sive, environmentally sustainable and economically sustained over time. SACHS, I. in VEIGA, J.E., 2005, p. 10. “Development that seeks to satisfy the needs of the current generation, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. What is sustainable development. Environmental Dictionary. ((o)) echo, Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 2014. Available at: https://www.oeco. org.br/dicionario-ambiental/28588-o-que-e-desenvolvimento-sustentavel/. Accessed: 20 July 2019.
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(a) relict (or fossil) landscape—in which the process of evolution ended at some point in the past, either abruptly or for a period. But the significant characteristics that distinguish it still remain visible in its material form. (b) continuing landscape is one that still retains an active social role in contemporary society, is associated with a traditional way of life, and in which the process of evolution is in progress. At the same time, it expresses significant material evidence of its evolution over time. (3) Associative cultural landscape. It has powerful religious, artistic or cultural associations of the natural element rather than material cultural evidence, which may be insignificant or even absent (UNESCO 2015, pp. 85–86). The subdivision of cultural landscapes in these categories demonstrates three clearly determined visions: one that values aesthetics, planning and landscape design; the second that highlights the way of life of a given (traditional) society and its relationship with the natural environment that has been transformed; and the third that refers to the association of symbolic (intangible) values with the landscape. Ribeiro (2017) points out that the way in which the cultural landscape is approached within the scope of the UNESCO World Heritage Center presents what he calls “the double tradition of landscape: the geographical, or vidalina, and the landscape” (Ribeiro 2017, p. 30). The author highlights the influence of the landscape conceptions of the French School of Geography, from the beginning of the 20th century, by Paul Vidal de la Blache, in the cultural landscape category. Thus, according to Ribeiro, the applications and inscriptions of cultural landscapes on the World Heritage List oscillate between these two traditions, sometimes favoring landscapes with traditional populations and sometimes contemplating those that have aesthetic qualities and landscape projects. Ribeiro (2017) concludes that: The absence of inscriptions from large urban centers as cultural landscapes has, until now, been exactly derived from the choices and traditions incorporated into the capture of the category by the World Heritage Center and its advisory bodies. Rio de Janeiro’s recent inscription on the World Heritage List calls part of these traditions into question and forces us to reflect on the idea of urban cultural landscape. (Ribeiro 2017, p. 31).
It is clear that the concept of the city as a cultural landscape is not yet accepted within the scope of World Heritage. Ribeiro points to the possibility of using the “urban cultural landscape” typology4 ; however, the World Heritage Center has emphasized the recommendation of historic urban landscape approach (HUL). In the case of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, the decision of the World Heritage Committee recommends the adoption of this approach. The Operational Guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention (UNESCO 2015) also set out general criteria for the protection and management of cultural landscapes and emphasize the importance of the wide range of values represented in landscapes, both cultural and natural. The Guidelines also highlight the importance of collaboration and approval by local communities for nominations for the World Heritage List. The cultural landscape concept seeks the integration between natural and cultural values, 4 Available
at: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. Accessed: August 2019.
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once the division between nature and culture became unbearable in the preservation field. But, as O’Donnel (2004) highlighted the effective implementation of the cultural landscape concept require its protection as cultural heritage in all levels of governance: local, regional and global, in order to preserve it and pass on to future generations. It is important to note that most of the cultural landscapes inscribed on the World Heritage List are located in rural areas, generally away from cities, related to traditional agricultural systems, historical gardens and other places of symbolic, religious and affective nature. In the Brazilian case, both are in the metropolises. This fact implies the complexity of managing the cultural landscapes inserted in the urban fabric of the large metropolitan areas. There are countless challenges that arise, among them, the understanding of the concept of cultural landscape that in itself generates controversies in the field of urban conservation. In addition, the need for shared and integrated heritage preservation management between the spheres of public administration power (federal, state and municipal) and between the various responsible bodies, as well as the implementation of a management plan and a management committee. Cultural landscapes are dynamic and constantly changing, so they require a heritage preservation management approach to deal with change. As Castriota (2009) points out, it is clear that the concept of cultural landscape is quite comprehensive and its application is complex, which meant that its incorporation in preservation policies took time. The cases of the two Brazilian cultural landscapes inscribed on the World Heritage List represent great challenges for the management and conservation of heritage, but they also represent an opportunity for the development of new approaches and methodologies that are capable of dealing with this complexity.
3 The Nomination Process of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble—2012 to 2016 The Pampulha Modern Ensemble was included in the Tentative List since 1996 and its nomination for the World Heritage List was resumed by the City of Belo Horizonte in December 2012. The Pampulha Modern Ensemble is an architectural, artistic and landscape complex conceived and built in the decade of 1940, commissioned by the then Mayor Juscelino Kubitschek to the young architect Oscar Niemeyer. It was conceived as a Leisure and Tourism Complex, whose original architectural program presented: the Casino (current Pampulha Art Museum), the Ballroom, “Casa do Baile” (now the Reference Center of Urbanism, Architecture and Design), the Yacht Golfe Clube (now Yacht Tennis Club), the Church of São Francisco de Assis, a Hotel (which was not built), in addition to the residence of Juscelino Kubitschek (now the Kubitschek House Museum), and the Pampulha dam built in 1938. The complex features a landscape design by Roberto Burle Marx, and works of art by
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great artists of the modern period, such as Portinari, Paulo Werneck, Ceschiati and Zamoisky, among others. For the nomination of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble for World Heritage, a perimeter proposal was made for the area to be inscribed (core zone), the area presenting the buildings originally designed by Oscar Niemeyer and the gardens of Burle Marx was defined, and a part of Pampulha Lake, considering only the water mirror and the edge of the Lake in the stretch that articulates and gives unity to the Complex (Figs. 3 and 4). As a buffer zone, the proposal encompasses the region surrounding the Complex, composed of several neighborhoods, with different features (Figs. 1 and 2). The nomination process counted on the participation of several actors and had as premise the establishment of a shared management between the agencies and sectors involved. Under the general coordination of IPHAN—National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage and the City of Belo Horizonte, through the Municipal Culture Foundation, this process was developed over four years. Several working committees were formed, among them the Executive Committee of the Candidacy Program of The Pampulha Modern Ensemble, which brought together representatives of the three spheres of power (federal, state and municipal), in addition to representatives of civil society and other entities. The first version of the Nomination Dossier of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble was sent to UNESCO at
Fig. 1 Dossier proposal 2015—Aerial view of the Pampulha Region—Delimitation proposal of the Core Zone Perimeter (perimeter in red—with Kubitschek House) and the Buffer Zone perimeter (illuminated area of the map). Source PRAXIS, Aerial view of the Pampulha Region Map, Nomination Dossier of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, 2015
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Fig. 2 New proposal Dossier 2016—Aerial view of the Pampulha Region—New delimitation of the Core Zone Perimeter (perimeter in red—inclusion of squares and exclusion of Kubitschek House) and the Buffer zone perimeter (illuminated area of the map). Source PRAXIS, Aerial view of the Pampulha Region Map, Nomination Dossier of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, 2016
the beginning of 2015, and in September the Evaluation Mission took place, which will be detailed below. The Steering Committee was established in September 2015 with the objective of implementing the shared management of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, proposing and discussing guidelines for the Management and Monitoring Plan, as well as promoting the articulation of municipal, state and federal policies. In the same period, the Board of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble was created at the Municipal Culture Foundation, to promote coordination with the Management Committee and to carry out the management of the area.
3.1 The ICOMOS Technical Evaluation Mission in 2015 In 2015, from September 27 to October 2, the Technical Evaluation Mission carried out by the International Council on Monuments and Sites—ICOMOS took place. The evaluator assigned to the mission was Venezuelan architect Maria Eugenia Bacci, a specialist in the preservation of modern heritage and cultural tourism. The architect has a long professional career in the field of preservation, having been executive manager of the Venezuelan Cultural Heritage Institute. A team was appointed among the executive committee professionals to accompany the evaluator. Technical visits to the Pampulha Modern Ensemble were carried out at different times, at the request of the evaluator. In this way, visits to cultural assets and day and night walks were made in the region, mainly around the Modern Ensemble site and on the edge of the
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Fig. 3 Perimeter delimitation of the Core Zone of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble (includes Kubitschek House)—Proposal 2015. Source PRAXIS, Aerial view of the Pampulha Region, Nomination Dossier of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, 2015
Pampulha Lake. During the walks, visits and stops at the viewpoints to observe the landscape, the evaluator inquired and the team clarified the questions presented. The mission had an intense schedule and sought to meet all the evaluator’s requests. She had previously requested an agenda of meetings and meetings with various sectors of society and class entities, in addition to meetings with the integrated management commissions of the City of Belo Horizonte and with the management committee of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble. The meeting with the various sectors took place at the headquarters of the City of Belo Horizonte, and was attended by representatives of the following bodies and entities: ACMinas (Commercial and Business Association of Minas Gerais), CDL (Chamber of Store managers of Belo Horizonte), Belo Horizonte Convention & Visitors Bureau, Institute of Architects of Brazil—Minas Gerais section—IAB/MG, Minas Gerais, Architecture and Urbanism
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Fig. 4 Perimeter delimitation of the Core Zone of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble—inclusion of Dino Barbieri and Alberto Dalva Simão squares and exclusion of Kubitschek House. Proposal 2016. Source PRAXIS, Aerial view of the Pampulha Region, Nomination Dossier of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, 2016
Council of the State of Minas Gerais—CAU/MG, Pro-Civitas Organization (São Luís and São Jose Neighborhood Association), Yacht Club and Archdiocese of Belo Horizonte. At this meeting, the evaluator asked each representative to talk about their relationship with the Pampulha Modern Ensemble and what they thought about the candidacy for world cultural heritage. For some people she asked specific questions, for example to the leaders of the Yacht Club she asked if they were willing to invest in the necessary works for their adaptation and restoration. The Club officials said that despite finding the title important to the city, and supporting the proposal, they stated that they would not have the financial resources to carry out the works and that the City Hall and the heritage preservation bodies should contribute to provide
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resources. This sincerity of the agents who participated in the meeting was seen with good eyes by the appraiser, who said that the cultural heritage management is a field marked by conflicts and it would be strange if everyone agreed all the time and defended the same interests. Some speeches were ignited against public management and the historical environmental problems suffered in the region with the pollution of the Pampulha Lake, while others were exciting and highlighted the love of the place and its meaning for the population of the city of Belo Horizonte. The fact that this meeting was real and not a rehearsed theater between the parties contributed to the evaluator’s positive view of the application process. She realized that some agents and their interests were in conflict, and considered it natural. The legitimacy of the participation of the various sectors of civil society and the contribution of these agents during the process was a key factor for the success of the evaluation mission. In relation to the management of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, several meetings were held, among which the following stand out: (1) Meeting with the management committee of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble— in which the members were introduced and a presentation was made on the proposed management plan. She asked several questions and sought clarification about the buffer zone and the core zone, as well as the urban legislation in force in the area and its various neighborhoods. (2) Meeting of the Integrated Management Commission of the Belo Horizonte City Hall with the participation of all the secretariats and municipal bodies involved in the management of the Modern Complex. In this meeting, tourist and cultural plans and projects for the region were presented. The depollution process, de-silting, treatment and cleaning of the water at Pampulha Lake were also presented. (3) Meeting at COPASA—Sanitation Company of the state of Minas Gerais— during a visit to this body, the evaluator raised doubts regarding environmental issues about the Pampulha Basin and the Lake. All sewage connections that were being made and that were necessary were explained spatially on the maps, due to the existence of clandestine sewers not only in the municipality of Belo Horizonte but also in Contagem. (4) Meeting with the institutes and bodies of Cultural Heritage preservation, in the instances of federal power (Institute of National Historic and Artistic Heritage—IPHAN), state (State Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage of Minas Gerais—IEPHA-MG) and municipal (Cultural Heritage Board—DIPC and Board of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble—DICMP of the Belo Horizonte Municipal Culture Foundation). During these meetings, the evaluator sought to clarify doubts about the management of the cultural heritage of the nomination region (both the core zone and the proposed buffer zone). And she sought to know the methodology, processes and workflows between the preservation agencies involved. (5) Closing meeting of the evaluation mission with the presence of all those involved in the nomination process. A unique moment in which everyone was touched
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and highlighted how the construction of the process was successful, thanks to the respect between the participants and the collaboration between the various bodies and sectors of the public and private powers, entities and organized civil society.
3.2 The Result of the Technical Evaluation Mission and ICOMOS Reports After the evaluation mission, the commission received an evaluation report from ICOMOS in December 2015. This report requested changes and additions to the Nomination Dossier so that it could be forwarded. Among the questions asked, the main points were: (1) Review of the core zone perimeter: proposal to exclude Kubitschek House from the perimeter of the area to be declared, including the squares Dino Barbieri and Alberto Dalva Simão (both authored by Roberto Burle Marx); inclusion of the sidewalk on the other side of Otacílio Negrão de Lima Avenue, along the shore of the Pampulha Lake; (2) Extension of the buffer zone; (3) Complementing the Dossier on the landscape design aspects of the Complex with more references to the work of Roberto Burle Marx; (4) Clarifications on the restoration processes of buildings and gardens; (5) Official document proving the commitment to demolish the Yacht Tennis Club annex building which was not designed by Niemeyer and represented a threat to the site’s integrity and authenticity; (6) Sending documents from state and municipal agencies responsible for the process of depolluting, cleaning and treatment of water in the Pampulha Lake, in addition to the necessary sewage connections. All questions were answered, despite much discussion about the request to remove Kubitschek House from the proposed perimeter to UNESCO. According to the world heritage experts, this cultural asset had no outstanding universal value, and because it was not represented in the sketches of Niemeyer’s design for the Modern Ensemble and it was not implanted on the edge of the Lake like the others, it should not be inserted in the core zone, in the declared area, but be part of the buffer zone. As a result, the requested changes were made and the document was sent back to UNESCO in February 2016. Therefore, there were two different versions of the Nomination Dossier for the Pampulha Modern Ensemble: the first in 2015, and the other revised according to ICOMOS requests, dated 2016. After analyzing this final document, the final report of ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) recommended the inscription of the Modern Ensemble as a Cultural Landscape on the World Heritage List. As highlighted in the following excerpt: ICOMOS recommends that the Pampulha Modern Ensemble, Brazil, be inscribed as a cultural landscape on the World Heritage List (…)” (ICOMOS 2016, p. 262).
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3.3 The 40th World Heritage Committee Session in Istanbul, Turkey The meeting began on July 10, 2016, in Istanbul, Turkey. The Brazilian delegation was composed of representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Itamaraty, the Ministry of Culture, the National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage— IPHAN, and the Municipal Culture Foundation of the City of Belo Horizonte. The vote for The Pampulha Modern Ensemble would be on the agenda on Saturday, July 16. However, on Friday, July 15, the delegation was surprised by the attempted coup d’état in Turkey, which generated insecurity with the occurrence of numerous conflicts on the streets of Istanbul. In view of this situation, UNESCO suspended the meeting on Saturday. On Sunday, July 17, the meeting was resumed and the candidacy of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble was voted on and its nomination was unanimously accepted by the World Heritage Committee. It is important to highlight that in this same meeting, the candidacy of Le Corbusier’s work was voted on and inscribed on the World Heritage List, being, therefore, a landmark for the valorization of modern world architecture (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5 General view of the 40th World Heritage Committee session held on July 17th., the voting date for the inscription of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble. Author of the picture: Onur Onat, 07/17/2016. Source http://whc.UNESCO.org/uploads/thumbs/collection_0019_0023-500-333-201 60717152534.jpg
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3.4 The Consequences of the Inscription of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble as a Cultural Landscape on the UNESCO World Heritage List The decision of the World Heritage Committee (WHC/16/40.COM/8B.33, 2016) to inscribe the Pampulha Modern Ensemble as a world heritage cultural landscape, brought with it a series of recommendations, among which we highlight: (1) Implement what was proposed in the Intervention Plan to: (i) restore the Yacht Club building and its landscape design; (ii) present a new landscape project for Dino Barbieri Square that reflects Burle Marx’s landscape project and submit the proposal to the World Heritage Center for review by the Advisory Bodies; (iii) after approval, implement the Dino Barbieri Square project; (iv) restore the original entrance to the Ballroom; (v) improve the quality of water in the Lake for recreational use, according to the presented timescale. (2) Expand the Management Plan to: (i) (ii)
(iii) (iv) (v) (vi)
include strategic guidelines that enable management and decision making as formal commitments for key areas; incorporate more clearly the challenges of protecting not only the key buildings in their landscape setting but also the essential characteristics of the traditional neighborhoods that complement the ensemble; adopt the historic urban landscape (HUL) approach to maintain/sustain traditional neighborhoods; include a tourism strategy; include detailed monitoring indicators that are related to the outstanding universal value attributes; strengthen the engagement of local communities in the management processes.
(3) Strengthen: (i) control, protection and planning instruments for the residential strip on Otacílio Negrão de Lima Avenue and facing the lake to provide an appropriate context for the Ensemble; (ii) protection in the buffer zone so that the land facing the lake and surrounding areas provides a green backdrop for the water. In addition to these listed recommendations, the decision reinforced the need to expand and detail the management and monitoring plan, which strategically addresses the challenges of preservation not only within the perimeter of the core zone, of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble (its buildings and landscaping), but also considers the essential characteristics of the traditional neighborhoods of the buffer
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zone that complements the landscape, forming it into a “complex historic urban landscape”. The plan should also be able to offer a range of more focused indicators that relate to the attributes of outstanding universal value in the cultural landscape (WHC/16/40.COM/8B.33, 2016). In view of the above, it is clear that the requirements of the World Heritage Committee for the management of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble presupposes the development of a new management and monitoring plan that can cover the complexity of managing the cultural landscape typology.
4 The Historic Urban Landscape—HUL Recommendation The term “historic urban landscape” was adopted from the international conference called World Heritage and Contemporary Architecture—Managing the Historic Urban Landscape, which resulted in the “Vienna Memorandum” that was presented and approved at the 29th Session of the World Heritage Committee held in Durban, in 2005. The document highlights as a major challenge for the conservation of the historic urban landscape, the need for socioeconomic development of historical complexes, with respect to the identity and the historical character of the landscape (UNESCO 2005). In the Vienna Memorandum of 2005, the search for new approaches and methodologies for urban conservation and development in an expanded territorial context that presents the notion of historic urban landscape can be seen (UNESCO 2005, p. 19). The proposal seeks to integrate the conservation of urban heritage with social and economic development, aiming to establish a balanced relationship between the urban and natural environment, between present needs and the legacy of the past. The “Recommendation on the historic urban landscape” was proposed and adopted in 2011, at the 36th UNESCO World Heritage General Conference Session. In view of the urbanization and globalization scenario of cities, the strong pressure for the development of historical areas inserted in urban spaces, as an approach that aims to integrate the conservation, management and planning strategies of the historic urban area in the local development and urban planning processes. The approach recognizes the expansion and transformation of the field of heritage preservation, with a shift from the emphasis on architectural heritage to a recognition of the importance of social, cultural and economic processes in the conservation of values. And it states that this change requires an adaptation of policies and the creation of new management tools. The scheme in Fig. 6 summarizes the development of the concept of the Historic Urban Landscape (HUL) from 2005 to 2011. There were several important meetings regarding the theme until the Recommendation was finally adopted by the World Heritage Committee. It is considered as a “soft law” which the State Parties should adopt. Although it has been approved by the WHC since 2011, so far its implementation in practice has developed slowly. It proposes a flexible management approach that should be adapted to the reality of each world heritage site.
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Fig. 6 Development of the concept of the historic urban landscape. Source WHITRAP (2016), p. 9
As humanity’s future depends on effective resource planning and management, conservation has become a strategy for achieving a balance between urban growth and quality of life on a sustainable basis (UNESCO 2011, p. 2). The recommendation seeks to fill a gap in relation to the management of urban landscape and heritage. It presents the following definition of the historic urban landscape: The historic urban landscape is the urban area understood as the result of a historical layering of cultural and natural values and attributes, extending beyond the notion of “historic centre” or “ensemble” to include the broader urban context and its geographical setting. This wider context includes notably: the site’s topography, geomorphology, hydrology and natural features; its built environment, both historic and contemporary; its infrastructures above and below ground, its open spaces and gardens, its land use patterns and spatial organization, perceptions and visual relationships, as well as all other elements of the urban structure. It also includes social and cultural practices and values, economic processes and the intangible dimensions of heritage as related to diversity and identity. (UNESCO 2011, p. 3).
This is not another category or typology, but a comprehensive and integrated approach to the identification, assessment, conservation and management of historic urban landscapes within a global framework of sustainable development. The approach to the historic urban landscape aims to preserve the quality of the human environment, improving the productive and sustainable use of urban spaces, recognizing its dynamic character and promoting social and functional diversity. It integrates the objectives of conservation of urban heritage and those of social and economic development. It is rooted in the search for a balanced and sustainable relationship between the urban and natural environment, between the needs of present and future generations and the legacy of the past.
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5 How to Preserve Cultural Landscapes in the Contemporary Urban Context? Cultural landscapes present a diversity of values and meanings, bring together the tangible and intangible aspects, and encompass the physical/geographical characteristics of their natural environment and the specific social, cultural, economic forces, and people’s relations with the place. Castriota (2017, p. 23) points out that: “conserving cultural landscapes is one of the most complex challenges facing the heritage preservation field today”. As previously mentioned, Brazil has two sites inscribed as cultural landscapes on the World Heritage List, which are emblematic cases to demonstrate the complexity of managing this typology in large cities: “Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea”, inscribed in 2012, and Belo Horizonte with the “Pampulha Modern Ensemble”, inscribed in 2016. In our view, understanding, analyzing and managing cultural landscapes in urban centers requires adaptation of conservation policies, concepts and instruments, presupposing an integrated multisectoral management, with the effective participation of the actors involved (stakeholders).5 This typology requires a broad vision of cultural heritage integrated with urban planning, and requires a new role to be played by social actors, professionals, organizations and bodies for the preservation of cultural heritage. The heritage field is marked by the subjectivity of social and cultural processes of attributing values and meanings that change over time. As summarized by Viñas (2003): “Heritage is what groups and people understand as such, and their values are not inherent, indisputable or objective, but something that people project on them”.6 The challenges imposed by the management of cultural landscapes have been discussed at international level by specialists from different countries, because how is it possible to conserve cultural landscapes in constant transformation? Such questions are in line with recent theories that seek to adopt more flexible and adaptable models for the conservation and management of cultural landscapes. According to Mason (2008), the “value-based theory”, also called the “value-based approach”, is a proposal that considers and recognizes the different values (social, cultural, spiritual, economic, historical, touristic, etc.) assigned to a place by its own community, and all those involved, and not just those values generally determined and recognized by the specialists of the “official discourse”. The genesis of the heritage-based approach is found in the early 20th century with Alois Riegl (2006), in his seminal work written in 1903 “The Modern Cult of
5 The term stakeholder is used in most documents, letters, recommendations and plans for managing
cultural landscapes and places of interest for preservation. It means actors or agents involved and incorporates all interested parties in the process of conservation and management of a given cultural site. 6 El patrimonio es aquello en lo que los grupos o las personas convienen en entender como tal, y sus valores no son ya algo inherente, indiscutible u objetivo, sino algo que las personas proyectan sobre ellos. Viñas (2003), p. 152.
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Monuments: essence and genesis”. But it was mainly from the 1999 Burra Charter7 of ICOMOS Australia (2013) that the value-based approach was incorporated into the proposal for the conservation and management of places8 of cultural significance. The Charter defines cultural significance: Cultural significance means aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations. Cultural significance is embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and related objects. Places may have a range of values for different individuals or groups.9 (ICOMOS Australia 2013, p. 2).
The Burra Charter represents a milestone that seeks to break with the Western Eurocentric vision of heritage contained in the Venice Charter (1964) and other international Charters and recommendations in the field of cultural heritage conservation (Jerome 2014). In the face of different cultural contexts (mainly Asia, Africa, South America and Oceania) that presented places with meanings and intangible values for indigenous groups, those criteria made no sense. As Jerome (2014) pointed out in the case of Australia, where the heritage of Aboriginal peoples presents places and landscapes with associative spiritual values, another type of approach was necessary. The dissemination and debate on the applicability of the Burra Charter in other countries has been taking place in the academic and professional spheres, being pointed out as a new paradigm for the preservation and management of cultural heritage (Jerome 2014). But it is necessary to point out that the methodological proposal proposed in the Burra Charter highlights the participation and involvement of the community and stakeholders in all stages of the process in a collaborative way (ICOMOS Australia 2013). Cultural significance is used here to mean the importance of a site as determined by the aggregate of values attributed to it. The values considered in this process should include those held by experts - the art historians, archaeologists, architects and others - as well as other values brought forth by new stakeholders or constituents, such as social and economic values. (DE LA TORRE, Mason 2002, p. 3).
Mason (2002) states that there is still a methodological lapse in assessing heritage values due to inherent difficulties, such as the diversity of the nature of values: social, historical, aesthetic, spiritual, cultural, economic, political and others. Heritage values are not static; they change over time due to political forces and 7 The
“Burra Charter” is the popular name given to The Australia ICOMOS Charter for the conservation of Places of Cultural Significance, which was adopted by ICOMOS Australia from a meeting held in the city of Burra, Australia in 1979. It went through several revisions, and the last version was updated in 2013. 8 The Charter defines the meaning of place: “Place means a geographically defined area. It may include elements, objects, spaces and views. Place may have tangible and intangible dimensions.” (ICOMOS Australia 2013, p. 2). 9 Cultural significance means aesthetic, historic, scientific, social or spiritual value for past, present or future generations. Cultural significance is embodied in the place itself, its fabric, setting, use, associations, meanings, records, related places and related objects. Places may have a range of values for different individuals or groups (ICOMOS Australia 2013, p. 2).
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cultural changes. In addition to these challenges, the agents involved usually have different and conflicting interests in cultural heritage, and their management requires different methodological tools to access values and minimize conflicts. As a premise the approach intends to preserve the cultural significance of places, Mason defines the value-based management as: Value-based management is the coordinated and structured operation of a heritage site with the primary purpose of protecting the significance of the place as defined by government authorities or other owners, experts, and other citizens or groups with a legitimate interest in the place. (Mason 2002, p. 27).
6 Final Considerations The pragmatic question for those interested in landscape preservation, therefore, is how one can take advantage of the holistic, dynamic perspective offered by cultural landscape studies and use it to manage and interpret change on the ground. (Mason 2008, p. 180)
In the Brazilian context, the discussion on value-based heritage management, has started in the academic sphere and in the heritage preservation bodies, but it is configured as an incipient approach that requires practical experiences that provide implementation. It is also necessary to analyze and deepen the knowledge about the Historic Urban Landscape approach (HUL - Historic Urban Landscape), which, as already mentioned, is an approach designed for the management of historic urban landscapes, which seeks to incorporate the management of change (UNESCO 2011). It is “envisaged as a tool to integrate policies and practices of conservation of the built environment” according to Bandarin and Van Oers (WHITRAP 2016, p. 16). The Historic Urban Landscape approach is considered by the World Heritage Committee to be the result of an accumulation of knowledge and experience, in the conceptual and methodological field of conservation policies, with the purpose of promoting a more holistic, integrated and value-based approach to urban heritage preservation. For our case study, we should consider the hypothesis of applying this approach as one of the ways to manage the cultural landscape, as the final decision of the World Heritage Committee points out that the management plan for the Pampulha Modern Ensemble should adopt it and incorporate the management strategies and tools present in this Recommendation (WHC/16/40.COM/8B.33, 2016). Thus, given the complexities and contradictions inherent in the processes of attributing values and meanings to cultural heritage, as well as the challenges and dilemmas imposed by the management and conservation of cultural landscapes in the contemporary urban context, it is necessary to persist in the investigation of the proposed issues, in search of possible paths for a preservation policy that is capable of embracing the dynamism of cultural landscapes.
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References AUSTRALIA ICOMOS (2013) The Burra Charter: The Australia ICOMOS Charter for Places of Cultural Significance. https://australia.icomos.org/wp-content/uploads/The-Burra-Charter-2013Adopted-31.10.2013.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2019 Castriota LB (2017) Cultural landscape and heritage: challenges and perspectives. In: 1st IberoAmerican Colloquium Cultural Landscape, Heritage and Project. 2010, Belo Horizonte. Proceedings of the 1st Ibero-American Colloquium Cultural Landscape, Heritage and Project. Brasília, DF: IPHAN; Belo Horizonte, MG: IEDS, pp 17–28 Castriota LB (org.) (2009) Cultural heritage: concepts, policies, instruments. São Paulo: Annablume; Belo Horizonte: IEDS Fowler PJ (2003) World heritage cultural landscapes 1992–2002. UNESCO, Paris, 133 p. (Word heritage papers, n. 6). http://whc.UNESCO.org/en/series/6/. Accessed 6 Nov 2016 ICOMOS, IUCN, WHC (2009) World heritage nominations for cultural properties: components for a resource manual for practitioners. ICOMOS and UNESCO, Paris ICOMOS, International Council on Monuments and Sites (2016) Evaluation report of the nomination “Pampulha Modern Ensemble”. Brazil IPHAN (2004) National historical and artistic heritage institute (Brazil). Heritage letters. 3rd ed. rev. and aum. IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro IPHAN, Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage. http://portal.iphan.gov. br/pagina/detalhes/218. http://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/ckfinder/arquivos/Carta%20de%20V eneza%201964.pdf. Accessed 2 June 2016 Jerome P (2014) The values-based approach to cultural-heritage preservation. APT BULLETIN, vol 45, Nº2/3 Special Issue on Values-Based Preservation. (APT) Association for Preservation Technology International, pp 3–8. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23799521. Accessed 21 September 2016 Mason R (2002) Assessing values in conservation planning: methodological issues and choices. In: De la Torre M (ed) Assessing the values of cultural heritage - Research Report. The Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles, pp 5–30 Mason R (2008) Management for cultural landscape preservation: insights from Australia. In: Longstreth R (ed) Cultural landscapes: balancing nature and heritage in preservation practice. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis/London, pp 180–196 O’Donnell PM (2004) Learning from world heritage: lessons from international preservation & stewardship of cultural & ecological landscapes of global significance, the 7th. US/ ICOMOS International Symposium. The George Wright Forum 21(3):41–61 Ribeiro RW (2007) Cultural landscape and heritage. IPHAN/COPEDOC, Rio de Janeiro Ribeiro RW (2017) One concept, several visions: cultural landscape and UNESCO. In: Proceedings of the 1st Ibero-American colloquium cultural landscape, heritage and project, 2010. Vol. 1. Brasília: IPHAN; Belo Horizonte: IEDS, pp 29–49 Riegl A (2006) The modern cult of monuments: their essence and their genesis. Goiânia: Ed. Of UCG Smith (2006) Laurajane. Uses of heritage. New York, Routledge UNESCO (2009) World Heritage Center. World Heritage Cultural Landscapes. A handbook for conservation and Management. Nora Mitchell, Mechtild Rössler. P-M. Tricaud. (dirs). Unesco (Centre du Patrimoine Mondial), Paris, 2009, World Heritage Papers n° 26, 133p. https://une sdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000187044 UNESCO (2011) Recommendation on the historic urban landscape adopted by the general conference at its 36th session. Paris, 10 November 2011 UNESCO (2015) Operational guidelines fot the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. https://whc.unesco.org./en/guidelines/ UNESCO, WHC (2005) Vienna memorandum on world heritage and contemporary architecture – managing the historic urban landscape. Paris, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, 20 May, 2005. Disponível em: http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2005/whc05-15ga-inf7e.pdf
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Viñas (2003) Salvador Muñoz. Teoria contemporánea de la Restauración. Madrid: Editora Sintesis WHITRAP (2016) World Heritage Institute of Training and Research for the Asia and Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO. The HUL Guidebook: managing heritage in a dynamic and constantly changing urban environment, A practical guide to the UNESCO Recommendation on the Historic Urban Landscape. https://unesdoc.unesco.org
Reflections on Tourism in Jesuitic-Guarani Missions Ana Lúcia Goelzer Meira and Luisa Durán
Abstract The thirty Jesuit-Guarani missions, established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, formed a rich territorial system that left a significant cultural legacy for the platinum region, shared by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. From the point of view of the built heritage, several of the settlements were destroyed and under some of them new settlements were formed; there are ruins recognized and protected as world, national or local heritage, consolidated and presented as archaeological sites; and also in other settlements there was continuity in the settlement, maintaining the cultural tradition. Because of their universal significance, the remnants of the six villages with the highest degree of integrity (three in Argentina, one in Brazil and two in Paraguay) have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In 2015, together with the Misiones de Moxos and Chiquitos, in Bolivia, also inscribed on the World Heritage List, they were recognized as MERCOSUR’s Cultural Heritage. An important topic is the insertion of indigenous populations. In Brazil, the institutional relationship with the M’Byá Guarani has intensified as a result of the Inventory of Cultural References conducted by the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage, as a result of the proposal to present new narratives on the Missions and, in particular, to understand the relationship of the Guarani with the remaining missionaries. Cultural tourism presents itself as a viable alternative to increase the value and use of the cultural heritage of the Missions in all its dimensions (natural, material, and immaterial) and also as an instrument for the reconfiguration of the system, with the possibility of new redefinitions and to structure circuits in a perspective of sustainable development. The aim of this communication is to collaborate with the comparative reading of the sites, with the discussion about the missionary system today and also to suggest lines for the integrated and shared management of heritage and cultural tourism. Keywords Jesuit-Guaranimissions · Jesuit-Guarani reductions · Cultural tourism A. L. G. Meira (B) Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), São Leopoldo-RS 93022-750, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] L. Durán Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre-RS 90040-060, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_8
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Fig. 1 The Thirty Peoples of the missions
The experience of the Jesuit-Guarani Missions bequeathed significant cultural references to South America, present in territory common to four countries, and which contributed substantially to the construction of regional identities. The missionary catechesis project of the Companhia de Jesus, embodied in the Jesuit Province of Paraguay, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, aims to reconcile Hispanic dominance and promote the socioeconomic development of border regions through the formation of a network of fixed settlements (reductions) to concentrate the Guarani population. In its definitive configuration, the system became known as the Thirty Peoples of the Missions (Fig. 1), which were distributed in a territory now shared by four Mercosur countries. According to the current national divisions, of these villages: fifteen were in Argentina (Provinces of Misiones and Corrientes); eight in Paraguay (departments of Misiones and Itapuá); and seven in Brazil (State of Rio Grande do Sul), the latter known since the Treaty of Madrid (1750) as the Seven Peoples of the Missions. Also there were rural properties—estancias—n Uruguay. The purpose of this communication is to collaborate with the discussion on missionary heritage, its preservation and enjoyment, suggesting guiding principles for integrated and shared management. Cultural tourism is considered to be a viable opportunity to expand the valuation and enjoyment of the Missions’ cultural heritage
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in all of its dimensions (natural, material, and immaterial) and also as an instrument for the reconstruction, even if partial, of the system, with the possibility of structuring circuits, avoiding the emptying of places, reframing values and including new narratives in a perspective of sustainable development. To achieve people’s purpose, it begins with a review of the relationships between heritage, cultural tourism, and sustainability. Then there is a brief description of the missionary legacy—highlighting new contributions—and the current situation of the system, pointing out potential difficulties. To conclude, both parts are related and the guiding principles are briefly suggested.
1 Heritage Relations with Cultural Tourism and Sustainability Due to its polysemic character, its multifaceted manifestations and representations and its diversity, cultural heritage is both an interdisciplinary intellectual field and a socioeconomic resource. Since the beginning of the 1980s, there has been an expansion of the concept of heritage, a process that continues to accelerate. Throughout the twentieth century, there is a gradual shift from valuing and protecting isolated monuments to recognizing landscapes and territories; to integrate with neighboring countries by erasing borders and delimiting transnational assets. Significantly, one begins to recognize the “other” protagonists who participated in the constitution and preservation of heritage, now non-hegemonic subjects which were summarily made invisible by traditional historiographies. Also, as Meneses (2012) puts it, there is an unfortunate separation between the material and the immaterial and the convenience of integrated management of both dimensions. The heritage of the Jesuit-Guarani missions has been following this dynamic. From the initial punctual topping of the ruins and monumental complexes in the 1930s and 1940s,1 the value of the landscape is recognized. In 2009, the National Historical Park of the Missions (PHNM) was created with the idea of recomposing the full reading of the system at least on the Brazilian side. At the regional level, in 2015, the Missions territory was declared a Mercosur Cultural Heritage, that is, as a common cultural heritage of the countries to the south of the continent. The inscription as a world heritage site of the Ruins of San Miguel Arcanjo (Photo 1) and four other sites in Argentina (Santa Ana, Loreto, San Ignacio Mini, and Santa María la Mayor), in 1983, on the one hand gave value and publicity on an international scale proposing the recomposition of the system for a shared interpretation and management and, on the other, it promoted and continues to support the exchange and technical cooperation for the realization of several projects for the specific sites. 1 In
Brazil, in 1938, the site of the former reduction of São Miguel Arcanjo, better known as São Miguel ruins, was listed at the national level, followed by the listed sites of São João Batista, São Lourenço Mártir, and São Nicolau in 1970. In Argentina, between 1942 and 1943, 14 of the 15 missionary sites were declared a national monument.
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Photo 1 The ruins of the church of the ancient people of São Miguel Arcanjo. Source Central Archive of IPHAN—Rio de Janeiro Section
The recognition of the indigenous contribution and use value for local communities was evident ten years later, in 1993, with the inscription on the World Heritage List of the Sites of Jesús de Tavarangué and Santísima Trinidad, both in Paraguay, where there was continuity in the settlement and therefore, missionary structures are part of the daily life of the population. At the Brazilian national level, the recognition of Tava by IPHAN as a reference place for the Guarani (registration as intangible heritage of Brazil), in 2007, added a new meaning to the site of São Miguel, restoring the indissolubility of the material and immaterial dimensions. The relationship between heritage and tourism was enshrined in the Norms of Quito, resulting from the meeting of OAS specialists in 1967 (Cury 2004). The document proposes economic investment in heritage sites to simultaneously achieve the preservation of the legacy and tourism development, favoring the receiving communities. In a few years, what was put as a solution took directions and dimensions that were unthinkable and tourism became the greatest threat to the preservation of the heritage that had motivated it. This complex relationship and, at the same time, the dynamism of the heritage concept itself have been a topic of analysis since the 1970s and 1980s. Proposed in 1976 and updated in 1999, the ICOMOS Cultural Tourism Charter, among others, recognizes the importance of cultural assets for education and defines instruments for the dimensioning and monitoring of physical, ecological, social, and tourist load capacities in heritage sites and with potential for tourist use (Martínez Yáñez 2019). In the 1990s, there was the introduction of interventions by architects widely renowned in heritage sites as a mechanism to increase advertising and the tourist potential of
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heritage sites. This practice, known as the spectacularization of cities (Jacques 2005) or the attraction city (Sant’anna 2019), has the consequence of making places elitist to the detriment of the permanence of local communities. It also introduces a third element: “according to Sant’anna (2019, p. 60) the binomial heritage and tourism (…) has been replaced by the trinity heritage, tourism and leisure”. And to these is added the consecration of the sustainability paradigm. Culture, including heritage, places itself as capital in a way, reaffirming the concept of cultural capital proposed by Boudieu (1997). The Hangzhou Declaration (UNESCO 2013) recognizes heritage as an asset and also considers culture and social participation as factors for sustainable development. In the sequence, the United Nations Organization Agenda 2030 (2015) also refers to the theme. In this context, ICOMOS is preparing a new revision and update of the Cultural Tourism Charter in which indicators will be established for sustainable development objectives related to tourism and the protection of heritage (Martinez Yáñes 2019).
2 The Missionary Legacy Today Territorial planning, economic organization and the urban and architectural design of the settlements revealed an alternative model to that of the Spanish city. The network of thirty villages was integrated with support and production structures scattered throughout the region, including Uruguay, formed, in addition to villages, by paths, estancias, pens, inns, chapels, forests, plantations, checkpoints, weirs, fonts, etc. “The territoriality of the missions was a strategic construction, perhaps unique in the Hispanic colonial world, with a tendency to full territorial dominance and productive self-sufficiency” (Snihur 2017, p. 49). The generic layout and the specific adaptations in each village enshrine the square as a structuring element, enhanced by the Baroque foundations. The architectural ensemble made up of the temple, the college, and the cemetery confirm the background of the central space where collective activities and manifestations took place. One of the particularities of the missionary layout regarding the Hispanic city is the lack of blocks with privately owned plots. The domestic space was made up of collective houses and subdivided for the family units, with perimeter bars. The reference to the old indigenous community house is implicit here and probably has to do with the transition from the polygamous to the monogamous system (Gutiérrez 2013). The villages functioned within a system in which all parts, with specific functions, were fundamental to the functioning of the group. Some dedicated themselves to livestock, others to agricultural production, especially of yerba mate, and others, to artisanal production—from artistic artifacts (altarpieces, paintings, statues) to utilitarian objects (bells, hardware, carpentry, etc.). Cultural activities included orchestras, which included American musical instruments with Europeans, choirs and literature, among others. In the village libraries, the number of books approached 18,000, including classic texts and architectural treatises such as those by Alberti, Palladio, and Serlio.
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Gutiérrez (1987; 2019) also highlights the translations of some of these books into the Guarani language, as well as original Guarani editions, which were printed in local printers. In addition, books published in Europe were soon distributed in villages. Viñuales (2019), registers that ingenious inventions were implemented, such as a respected astronomical observatory located in the village of San Cosme e y Damian (Paraguay) and an unusual weave based on spider threads, using tiny manual disks. Gutiérrez (1987, p. 15), when making a synthesis of the missionary experience, stated that it is considered to be a complex and integral experience: […] because it includes forms of social organization, division of labor, control of the means of production, planning of land use and the very structure of urban and territorial settlements. At the same time, it starts from a vision of man in community, of an individual who is personalized in the social group and tends to foster the notions of common good and solidarity among the indigenous biases themselves and in the group of thirty peoples.
The decline of the reductive system by the subsequent historical events after the Guarani War (1754–1756) and the expulsion of the Companhia de Jesus, compromised the group and dispersed a good part of the indigenous population (Meira and Durán 2018). The specific destinations of each of the reductions were very different and currently present in different situations, from the point of view of accessibility, demography, political and administrative organization, heritage management and the relationship with tourism. From the point of view of the built heritage, in the old missionary territory, some settlements were totally destroyed and under which new clusters were formed (11); there are consolidated ruins presented as adjacent archaeological sites (8); or within the current clusters (4), some are in rural areas (2) and there are also some where there was no disruption in the settlement, as is seen in some cases in Paraguay (5). As for their location on current communications networks, some of the old sites are close to cities of regional importance and others are in the area of influence of smaller cities. Some places are far from regional capitals and require more travel time. Others are more easily connected with cities (Table 1). Over time, different forms of recognition have been attributed to the remaining missionaries—local, national, regional, or world heritage. In some cases, overlapping protection bodies legislate with different criteria. Due to its universal significance, six sites that present a higher degree of integrity, representing a fifth part of the group, were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, as previously mentioned. In 2015, the entire system of the territory of the Jesuit-Guarani Missions together with the system of the Missions of Moxos and Chiquitos, in Bolivia, was recognized as a Mercosur Cultural Heritage. In this region, there are cities that grew over the villages, such as Encarnación, today with a population close to 130,000 inhabitants and Santo Ângelo, with more than 70,000 inhabitants. However, most sites are located in municipalities with less than 30,000 inhabitants, which requires plans for territorial and urban planning articulated with economic development programs and cultural policies according to this characteristic (Table 2). In the southern part of Brazil, the influence of the missionary experience is still felt today. Indigenous knowledge such as that related to the use of plants, including yerba
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Table 1 Thirty peoples today: relationship of reductions with the current urban area and distances Reduction
Country
Relation of the reduction to the current urban area
Candelaria
Argentina Adjacent
Capital Province, Department or State
Distance between the municipality and the regional capital (km)
Land travel time between the municipality and the regional capital
Posadas
27
28 min
Concepción de la Sierra
Destroyed and under the current city
Posadas
97
1 h 27 min
Corpus Christi
Destroyed and under the current city
Posadas
82
1 h 13 min
La Cruz
Destroyed and under the current city
Corrientes
431
5 h 01 min
Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana
Adjacent
Posadas
49
47 min
Nuestra Señora de Loreto
Adjacent
Posadas
27
28 min
San Carlos
Destroyed and under the current city
Corrientes
San Ignacaio Miní
Within the current city
Posadas
63
San Javier
Destroyed and under the current city
Posadas
127
San José
Adjacent
Posadas
53
Santa María Mayor
Adjacent
Posadas
113
1 h 41 min
Santo Tomé
Destroyed and under the current city
Corrientes
391
4 h 34 min
Santos Apóstoles San Pedro y S an Paulo
Destroyed and under the current city
Posadas
69
1 h 05 min
Santos Mártires de Japonan
Adjacent
Posadas
71
1 h 03 min
Yapeyú
Within the current city
Corrientes
400
4 h 39 min
353
4 h 03 min
56 min 1 h 45 min
52 min
(continued)
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Table 1 (continued) Reduction
Country
Relation of the reduction to the current urban area
Capital Province, Department or State
Distance between the municipality and the regional capital (km)
Land travel time between the municipality and the regional capital
Santo Ângelo Custódio
Brazil
Destroyed and under the current city
Porto Alegre
437
5 h 40 min
São Francisco de Borja
Destroyed and under the current city
Porto Alegre
584
7 h 27 min
São João Batista
Rural area
Porto Alegre
428
5 h 29 min
São Lourenço Mártir
Rural area
Porto Alegre
498
6 h 21 min
São Luiz Gonzaga
Destroyed and under the current city
Porto Alegre
498
6 h 21 min
São Miguel Arcanjo
Adjacent
Porto Alegre
475
6 h 05 min
São Nicolau
Within the current city
Porto Alegre
554
7 h 01 min
Destroyed and under the current city
Encarnación
0
2 h 27 min
Jesús de Tavarangué
Adjacent
Encarnación
56,7
1 h 11 min
Santísima Trindade de Paraná
Within the current city
Encarnación
45,4
56 min
San Cosme y Damián
Continuity of occupation
Encarnación
83,2
1 h 26 min
Santo Ignacio Guaçú
Continuity of occupation
San Juan Bautista
31,1
29 min
Santa María de Fé
Continuity of occupation
San Juan Bautista
29,7
38 min
Santa Rosa de Lima
Continuity of occupation
San Juan Bautista
51,4
49 min
Santiago
Continuity of occupation
San Juan Bautista
80
Encarnación de Itapua
Paraguay
Source Gutiérrez et al (2018) Modified by the authors, 2019
1 h 08 min
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Table 2 Population in the municipalities where the seven missionary reductions were located in RS—Brazil Old reduction
Actual city
2010 IBGE Census 2019 IBGE (inhab.) Estimate
Change hab.
Santo Ângelo
Santo Ângelo
76.275
77.593
+1.69%
São Borja
São Borja
61.671
60.282
−2.25%
São Luiz Gonzaga
São Luiz Gonzaga
34.556
33.468
−3.13%
São Lourenço Mártir São Miguel Arcanjo
São Miguel das Missões
7.421
7.673
+3.39
São João Batista
Entre-Ijuís
8.938
8.475
−5.09%
São Nicolau
São Nicolau
5.727
5.265
−8.06%
194.588
192.756
−0.94%
Total Source IBGE (2019)
mate, was systematized, which led to the popularization of mate. The missionary cattle reproduced freely after the Guarani War and became the basis of the livestock culture in Rio Grande do Sul, the starting point for the paths of the troops that came to prey on it. The miscegenation of the Indians with other populations constituted a missionary type that attests to the profound anthropological influences with which the missionary experience marked Gaúcho culture. But these influences were not recognized for a long time. The recognized testimony was always the ruins of São Miguel Arcanjo and, even so, with reservations from historians and patrimonial architects in relation to the Spanish origin of the enterprise. Gaúcho historians traditionally linked to the Lusitanian matrix on Brazilian formation did not recognize the platinum influence on the formation of the south. Architects from Lucio Costa, who made the first report on the situation of the remaining missionaries for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service—SPHAN (now IPHAN), in 1937, to Júlio NB de Curtis, director of the institution’s regional representation in RS, between 1978 and 1987, they recognized the artistic value of the ruins of the old church, but not its historical relevance (Meira 2008). An important theme is related to the insertion of indigenous populations that are treated differently in the three countries. Here, a reference can be made to the well-known cartoon commented on by Meneses (2009), which depicts an old lady praying in the old cathedral of her city, who is scolded by the guide who accompanies a group of tourists for disturbing their visit. This perverse situation can be applied to the relationship between the remaining missionary sites and the indigenous presence. The M’Byá Guarani returned to the region of the ancient Seven Peoples in the 1990s. They were allowed to sell handicrafts at the Missions Museum inside the area surrounded by IPHAN. During the Mayors’ Meeting of Historic Cities and World Heritage Cities
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in Brazil, held in São Miguel das Missões, in 2004, the president of IPHAN—Arch. Maria Elisa Costa, daughter of Lúcio Costa, donated a violin to Chief Floriano, from the Guarani Koenju community. This gesture represented an emblematic moment in the performance of the Ministry of Culture in the State., that is in line with other initiatives to update the narratives exposed on missionary sites and, particularly, at the Missions Museum. In Brazil, the institutional relationship with the M’Byá-Guarani2 intensified based on the Inventory of Cultural References (INRC) carried out by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute, from 2004 to 2008, due to the proposal to present new narratives about the Missions and, particularly, to understand the Guarani’s relationship with the remaining missionaries. The INRC Community Mbyá-Guarani in São Miguel Arcanjo was carried out by a team of researchers from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), based on the experiences of the MbyáGuarani on the São Miguel Arcanjo site and in Aldeia Alvorecer—Tekoa Koenju, which is approximately 30 km away from the city (Souza et al. 2007). From São Miguel das Missões, there was a need to extend the inventory to other communities in RS and even expand it to other states (Freire and Meira 2019). The constant movement is a characteristic of the Guarani way of being, has a ritual sense in its relationship with the territory and is a way of survival (Souza et al. 2007). In the Inventory, […] documented knowledge that, although not fully practiced by all communities, should not be forgotten—hunting and fishing techniques; the planting of traditional foods; constructive techniques, using clay and clay; the collection of honey and wild vegetables, which are food and raw material; knowledge related to basketry; the techniques of making musical instruments, among others. Children’s choir songs have also been documented; certain practices of reciprocity, such as the exchange of seeds and seedlings between families in different villages; rites like the poraei, the collective night prayers, sung and danced at the opy, the prayer house that every village must have, and the Nhemongaraí ceremony, when the children who started walking are named after them. (Freire and Meira 2019, p. 87).
Some places of reference for the M’Byá were also identified and, mainly, the site and the ruins of São Miguel Arcanjo, which the indigenous people call Tava. This word has the meaning of man-made stone or stone construction, and the registration request was formalized by Mbyá leaders in 2007. According to them, the remnants of missionary villages are a tava, but the Tava in São Miguel is special because it is visible to everyone, including the juruá—the white men, and was built at the request of Nhanderu—their main divinity. He made the stones light to facilitate construction work, according to the indigenous people. “Those who built it were embodied in it, leaving marks of their bodies on the stones. These ancients did not die, as the jurua think. They were enchanted, becoming Nhanderu Mirim, imperishable people […]” (Freire and Meira 2019, p. 90).
2 The
Guaraní are organized in three groups: the Kayová, the Nhandeva, and the M’Byá. The latter live today in Rio Grande do Sul, in Santa Catarina, in Paraná, in São Paulo, in Rio de Janeiro, in Espírito Santo, and also in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay (Souza et al. 2007).
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In addition to the registration, officialized in 2014, several safeguard actions were demanded, such as the training of young Guarani filmmakers to make filming.3 They also requested the edition of a book in Guarani and Portuguese to raise awareness of a wider audience about their culture and, what matters to the topic discussed at that meeting, the formation of Mbyá’cultural guides’ (and not tour guides), to accompany visitors to Tava and tell stories about the Guarani people. Tava in São Miguel Arcanjo was declared a Mercosur cultural asset in 2018. All these efforts have been opportune and, in some way or other, aim to restore the idea of a system and offer us the opportunity to include other and new narratives in the valuation of the Jesuit-Guarani legacy The Guarani War, as a reaction to the Treaty of Madrid and the subsequent expulsion of the Jesuits, caused the Thirty Peoples to collapse. According to Gutiérrez (1987, p. 30): The ideas of solidarity, participation, and the common good were so integrated in the Jesuit settlements that, when the religious were expelled, the chiefs of São Luis wrote in Guarani to the king asking him for the Jesuit priests to return, claiming not to be’of we like the way of life of Spaniards who look at each other only for themselves, without helping themselves, without doing favors to each other’.
The cultural integration process that took place in the missions, based on the ideals of solidarity, collective property, respect for differences and participation, constitutes, today, the greatest value that this legacy has for today’s societies. “The relative autonomy of the Jesuit proposal in a colonial context has always been seen as an attack on the verticality of state power or the ecclesiastical apparatus and, therefore, the idea of ’power within power’ has germinated, which ended up destroying this valuable social and American cultural heritage” (Gutiérrez 1987, p. 16). In the 1920s, the preservation policy was dedicated to stabilizing the so-called stone and lime, preserving the material records of the missionary experience. In the twenty-first century, the return of the Guarani Indians bluntly inserted the question of the cultural processes experienced by their ancestors and the ways in which today the influences suffered both in their imagination and in their way of life being reworked.
3 Proposal for Guiding Principles in Relation to Cultural Tourism As final suggestions, guiding principles that could support a cultural tourism proposal anchored to sustainable development are listed: 1. tourism in the region of the missions can be an instrument of inclusion and articulation with indigenous groups. It is not yet known how, but the objective 3 The
training was carried out through workshops, by the NGO Vídeo nas Aldeias, with resources from IPHAN. The first film made by the young people was “Duas Aldeias, uma Caminhada”, which IPHAN edited and distributed. Then, they continued to produce films of interest to them and to travel, including abroad, to publicize them.
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of the work is to wake up to a new look, that would be more conceptual and inclusive and less administrative; participatory methods, both in safeguarding and in intervention, since identification, maintenance, and monitoring are fundamental in the shared construction of programs for the identification and enjoyment of missionary heritage on a regional scale; due to the great extension of the area of interest, the different contexts and distances between the old villages and regional capitals, the idea of short and thematic circuits turns out to be viable; it is necessary to recover the concept of “Paracuaria” territory and the functioning of urban structures as a system to articulate local circuits and minimize the effects of national and regional borders that throughout history have been responsible for the unstructured reading of the system; likewise, the construction of an integrated reading of the natural, cultural, material, and immaterial heritage can be the starting point for the inclusion of reading by indigenous groups.
References Boudieu P (1997) Capital Cultural, escuela y espacio social. Siglo Veinteuno, México Cury I (org.) (2004) Cartas patrimoniais. Editora IPHAN, Brasília Freire BM, Meira ALG (2019) A Tava e o reconhecimento do Guarani em seu território tradicional. In: Viñuales GM (dir.) Território, poblamiento y ciencia en las Misiones Jesuíticas de Guaraníes. CEDODAL, Buenos Aires, pp 83–90 Gutiérrez R (1987) As missões jesuíticas dos Guaranis. UNESCO, IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro Gutiérrez R (2013) Tipologías urbanas de las misiones guaranies del Paraguay. In: Viñuales GM (ed) Las misiones jesuíticas de la región guaranítica: uma experiencia cultural y social americana. CEDODAL, Buenos Aires, pp 31–48 Gutiérrez R, Meira ALG, Durán Rocca L (2018) Acciones institucionales referentes a la puesta en valor y al turismo cultural en las Misiones Jesuítico-Guaraní. Texto apresentado no Seminário Estudos Interdisciplinares em Patrimônio Jesuítico-Guarani, UFPel Instituto De Brasileiro De Geografia E Estatística (IBGE) (2019) Municípios. IBGE, Rio de Janeiro. https://cidades.ibge.gov.br. Acesso em: 31 ago 2019 Jacques PB (2005) Errâncias urbanas, a arte de andar pela cidade. Arqtexto, Porto Alegre 7:16–25 Martinez Yáñes C (2019) Carta Internacional de Turismo Cultural de ICOMOS de 1999: primeira aproximação para sua revisão e atualização. Revista do Patrimônio, Brasília, n. 39, pp 71–87. Gestão Turística em Sítios Patrimoniais: boas práticas internacionais Meira ALG (2008) O patrimônio histórico e artístico nacional no Rio Grande do Sul no século XX: atribuição de valores e critérios de intervenção. Tese (Doutorado em Planejamento Urbano e Regional)–Programa de Pós Graduação em Planejamento Urbano e Regional, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre Meira ALG, Durán LR (2018) Missões Jesuítico-Guarani no Rio Grande do Sul: ações institucionais, reconhecimentos e invisibilidades. In: Fleck ECD, Rogge JH (2018) Ação Global da Companhia de Jesus: embaixada política e mediação cultural. São Leopoldo, Ed. Oikos, pp 786–827. E-book Meneses UTB (2009) O campo do patrimônio cultural: uma revisão de premissas. In: Sutti W (coord.) (2019) I Fórum Nacional do Patrimônio Cultural. IPHAN, Brasília. http://portal.iphan. gov.br/uploads/ckfinder/arquivos/4%20-%20MENESES.pdf. Accessed 10 Sept 2019
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Sant’anna M (2019) A cidade atração: o patrimônio como insumo para o turismo. Revista do Patrimônio, Brasília, n. 40, pp 57–71. Dimensão turística no Brasil e Região Sul: oportunidade e desafios para a gestão patrimonial Snihur EÁ (2017) Las misiones jesuíticas: la construcción de una territorialidad. In: Gutiérrez R (ed.) El território de las misiones jesuíticas de guaraníes: una nueva visión sobre el patrimonio cultural. CEDODAL, Buenos Aires, pp 43–52 de Souza JOC et al (2007) Tava Miri São Miguel Arcanjo, Sagrada Aldeia de Pedra: os M’ByáGuarani nas Missões. IPHAN-RS, Porto Alegre Viñuales GM (2019) La ciencia em las Misiones. Investigación, aplicación e intercambio. In: Viñuales GM (dir.) Território, poblamiento y ciencia en las Misiones Jesuíticas de Guaraníes. CEDODAL, Buenos Aires, pp 113–120 ONU (2019) Transformando Nosso Mundo: a Agenda 2030 para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável. https://nacoesunidas.org/pos2015/agenda2030/. Accessed 20 Dec 2019 UNESCO (2013) The Hangzhou declaration: placing culture at the heart of sustainable development policies adopted in Hangzhou. UNESCO.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/final_ hangzhou_declaration_english.pdf. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
International Preservation Experiences of World Heritage
“Which Egypt Will Answer”? Some Genealogical Notes on World Heritage Marcos Olender
I’m at rock bottom My scream Sands the dry sky Time stretches but I hear The echo Which Egypt will answer And hides in the future? (Veloso 1987)
Abstract In this article, I discuss several situations that historically influenced the formation of the notion of world heritage, beginning with the French Revolution, passing through the institutionalization sketches of the international preservation of heritage and its dissemination throughout the nineteenth century universal and international exhibitions, culminating in the elaboration and implementation of the 1972 World Heritage Convention by UNESCO. For the construction and consolidation of this notion of world heritage, it was fundamental to increase concerns about preservation beyond European and, by extension, Western borders. Accordingly, the Western creation of Orientalism as a field of knowledge and the inclusion of cultural property belonging to other nations outside its borders has proven to be paramount. Among these, those referring to Egypt stand out, both in the eighteenth century, when the process effectively begins, until the last quarter of the twentieth century, when the aforementioned notion of world heritage was implemented. Keywords Athens charter · Orientalism · World heritage convention
Marcos Olender—Full professor at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora—UFJF. He runs the LAPA—Cultural Heritage Laboratory at UFJF. He has experience in the areas of History and Architecture and Urbanism, with an emphasis on Regional History of Brazil and on Historical and Cultural Heritage. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Brazilian Committee of the International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS-BRASIL). M. Olender (B) Federal University of Juiz de Fora—UFJF, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_9
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1 1 A text of mine written in 2017 pointed out that “as of the second half of the 19th century, a new sensitivity was formed regarding the need to implement and promote international mechanisms with the aim of preserving cultural heritage” (Olender 2017, p 190). I exemplified this statement with the article published by John Ruskin in 1854 about the reopening of the English Crystal Palace that same year, but then rebuilt at another address: Sydenham Hill. In this article, as I pointed out at the time, Ruskin, in addition to the “harsh criticisms of the architecture of the Crystal Palace” and, also, to the “losses perpetrated by the restoration works that, in a coordinated manner, were carried out in France […] in the French cathedrals”, expressed a huge concern with the “old domestic architecture”, with the “memorial marbles”, in short, with the “great works of the most ancient times” (Olender 2017, p. 192). He cried out: If every one of us, who knows what food for the human heart there is in the great works of elder time, could indeed see with his own eyes their progressive ruin; if every earnest antiquarian, happy in his well-ordered library, and in the sense of having been useful in preserving an old stone or two out of his parish church, and an old coin or two out of a furrow in the next ploughed field, could indeed behold, each morning as he awaked, the mightiest works of departed nations mouldering to the ground in disregarded heaps; if he could always have in clear phantasm before his eyes the ignorant monk trampling on the manuscript, the village mason striking down the monument, the court painter daubing the despised and priceless masterpiece into freshness of fatuity, he would not always smile so complacently in the thoughts of the little learnings and petty preservations of his own immediate sphere. And if every man, who has the interest of Art and of History at heart, would at once devote himself earnestly—not to enrich his own collection—not even to enlighten his own neighbours or investigate his own parish-territory—but to far-sighted and fore-sighted endeavour in the great field of Europe, there is yet time to do much. (Ruskin 1854, pp. 244–245 Apud Olender 2017, pp. 191–192, emphasis mine).
To meet this need for preservation that went beyond national borders, Ruskin proposed the organization of an international association. This proposal by Ruskin would be made possible by his disciple William Morris, more than two decades later, when he founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), in 1877. But what interests me at this moment is, precisely, in Ruskin’s viewpoint, the perception of the existence of assets that should be considered heritage not only of the nation where they were located, but of a much larger territory. If not world heritage, as they would have relevance specifically within the European continent, at least internationally. Some authors point out manifestations prior to this as demarcating the beginnings of a sensitivity and concern with the preservation of a world heritage. Jukka Jokilehto, for example, understands that the Swiss lawyer Vattel, in his text “The Law of the People”, from 1758, “touched on the question of works of art being the common heritage of mankind and the consequences of this concept in warfare”. To exemplify his statement, he transcribes an excerpt from the work cited:
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For whatever cause a country is ravaged, we ought to spare those edifices, which do honour to human Society, and do not contribute to increase the enemy’s strength—such as temples, tombs, public buildings, and all Works of remarkable beauty (Apud Jokilehto 1986, p. 397).
Vattel even concludes this reasoning with the following question “What advantage is obtained by destroying them? It is declaring one’s self an enemy to mankind, thus wantonly to deprive them of these monuments of art and models of taste” (Vattel 2008, p. 571). Vattel’s text raises an important concern that is the protection of those constructions that, for him, most represent our human condition in times of war, where the possibilities of destruction are more significant and effective. The pioneering nature of the aforementioned document with regard to the concern with the destruction of these buildings in wars cannot be ignored. This same concern and the presentation of proposals for the defense of threatened works will be resumed practically a century later, as informed by Jokilehto himself, first in the so-called Lieber Code, from 1863, which was basically restricted to the United States and the ongoing threats of the development of the Civil War (1861–1865) but, mainly […] from the initiative of the Russian government and based on a project by the founder (in 1863) of the Red Cross, Henri Dunant (Laidler 2011, p. 1) of the 1874 Brussels Intergovernmental Conference on the proposal for an international war convention (Olender 2017, p. 206)
Of that last document, from 1874, I highlight the eighth section. It explains that: The assets of the communes, those of establishments devoted to cults, charity and instruction, the arts and sciences, even belonging to the State, will be treated as private property. Any intentional seizure, destruction or degradation of similar establishments, historical monuments, works of art or science must be pursued by the competent authorities (Conference Intergouvernementale 1874, p. 61, emphasis mine)
If the protection of some types of buildings also present here were already predicted in Vattel’s text (such as those related to religion, charity and the arts) and if the type of treatment given to them (as private property) already appeared in section 34 of the Lieber Code, a concept is made explicit in the Brussels document that precludes the possibility of understanding Vattel’s text as a pioneer in terms of the protection of heritage in times of war and, more specifically, as a precursor to the construction of the concept of heritage itself world, or humanity: the concept of historical monument. Formulated only at the end of the eighteenth century, in the midst of the French Revolution, as Choay points out, this is the constituent/structuring concept of the very notion of historical heritage. If, therefore, it is impossible (or at least unlikely), in my view, to speak of the notion of world heritage before the middle of the nineteenth century, on the other hand, the French revolutionary period made a decisive contribution to think about. As Poulot points out, when choosing revolutionary assets to constitute the French historical heritage, they were concerned that they would manifest/symbolize universal principles valued by the process itself. Poulot goes so far as to state that:
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The revolutionary heritage, therefore, comes down to the memory of the principles and of Nature, within the scope of a policy of remembrance that elects Antiquity as a collective imagination and, in parallel, some privileged “historical” moments […] Because the works to be restored don’t reveal themselves as prefigurations of the current state of the spirits and the arts are not revealed just because they have already witnessed, in their time, universal principles that remained unapplied or prohibited by circumstances (Poulot 1992, pp. 33 and 37).
For Poulot (1992, p. 37), what mattered in the preservation of these works, at least in this first post-revolutionary moment, was, therefore, the “restitution of the universal meaning” present in them. This perspective finds support in Starobinsky, for whom the French Revolution is based on principles that are intended to be universal. These principles, of an Enlightenment matrix, serve to legitimize and, why not say, naturalize the whole process. This is quite evident if we dwell on the debate about the architectural and urban dimensions/manifestations of the revolutionary process. In the projects of the socalled “revolutionary architects”, such as Boullée, Ledoux and Poyet: […] pure forms triumphed, treated with economy, but with eloquence: cube, cylinder, sphere, cone, pyramid. With them, architecture wants to return to the first truths of its function, to its constituent elements. […] In this conversion, which brings architecture back to its elementary figures, and materials to their true nature, an option is perceived that is not only of an aesthetic order, but also of a moral order. In the same way that the stone must return to being stone, and that the wall must return to a flat and almost bare surface, the man must recover the fullness and simplicity of his nature. The ideal of the restored truth jointly counts for the human heart and for buildings designed by the architect’s spirit (Starobinski 1988, p. 54 and 55).
This aesthetic and also moral option revealed by Starobinski highlights the greatness of the mission assumed by this architecture. This “moral greatness” is highlighted by Quatremère de Quincy: […] it receives another synonym under the penalty of the same author: it is an ideal magnitude. We can find it in a small building, if it is of perfect proportion. It is so linked to the perfection of the relationship that dimension (“linear or dimensional greatness”) is not necessary for it. However, nothing prevents dimensional greatness and moral greatness from merging. It is then the occasion for a feeling of exaltation for human consciousness. When the principles— that is, the harmony of elementary forces—and material greatness are united, we touch on that supreme point that appeared to us, in the revolutionary destiny, as the desired fusion between the principles of universal law and the power of the effective will (Starobinski 1988, p. 57).
With regard to the historical models adopted, both as moral and/or project inspiration, as well as the target of attention, care, affection, and interests, the Antiquity appeared as one of the periods most valued by revolutionaries, as Poulot points out. But this Antiquity would not be reduced to that Roman one, whose empire and republic alternately dressed, according to Marx, the Revolution of 1789–1814 (Marx 2010, p. 5), present in the pictures of David (as in The Oath of the Horatii and in The Lictors Bringing Brutus the Bodies of His Sons), or in the “arches of triumph” existing in the Ledoux architectures or the more famous one, the Champs-Élysées,
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built to revere Napoleon’s military campaigns. It was also an Egyptian antiquity, of the Pharaonic empires, to which, in some way, the “great nations” of that time (Great Britain and France) also joined and where the monumental architecture of the pyramids stands out. Here, monumental is understood as both “what concerns or is proper to the monument” and also as something grand, imposing, a meaning that is attributed to the term mainly from the French revolutionary process itself. If archeology finds the aesthetic-political project of the time in a mythical imaginary of the monument that affects both everyday life and public prosperity, the glory of the arts and individual morality, it is that the meaning of the monuments to be erected for posterity is always more or less identical, from the origins to the present day. “Enlightened” architects adopt, for example, the pyramid, the most complete image of ancient monuments, as the most suitable to last and record knowledge. But, above all, the message itself— which is worth transmitting at all times to its descendants—is similar, as it is universal and ahistorical: the principles are invariable. The “patrimonial” investment, then, is translated by a profusion of monumental programs, pseudo-historical investigations on the primitive language of monuments, in short in all forms of transmission and by nearly-silence about what is transmitted. the issue is being resolved from the start. (Poulot 1992, p. 32, emphasis mine)
The pyramid, therefore, appeared as the most appropriate monument to symbolize the eternity of universal principles and to ensure the transmission of the message of its invariability. And yet, in the very transmission of that message, as Poulot points out, Ancient Egypt would be present, also, through a privileged language: its hieroglyphs. Condorcet, therefore, imagines a way of transmitting current knowledge to future survivors of a natural catastrophe, recording it in eternal steles, in symbolic form. At the end of a possible disaster, future philosophers could decipher its meaning, even without knowing any of the current languages, and humanity could save a new beginning. The influence of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, supposedly with original wisdom, is evident, like that of Nicolas Boulanger’s hypotheses about successive floods that would have engulfed entire civilizations. The heritage of humanity, identified with the universal sum of knowledge, is thus represented in order to respond to the purpose of transmitting the content of civilization to posterity. (Poulot 1992, p. 32, emphasis mine)
2 2 But this Egyptian antiquity would not only serve as a model and/or inspiration for French revolutionaries. It would be, as I said above, the target of their care and interests. The first major contemporary event that marks this importance would be the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798. Said affirms that this military expedition effectively marks the construction of modern Orientalism, a field of knowledge that, as shown in the title of his book, has as object of studies an East invented by the West itself. This Orient who “has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience” (Said 1977, p. 2). And that, therefore, as an Other built and consolidated by this western world, “is an integral part of European material civilization and culture” (Said 1977, p. 28). For him:
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To speak of Orientalism therefore is to speak mainly, although not exclusively, of a British and French cultural enterprise […]. My point is that Orientalism derives from a particular closeness experienced between Britain and France and the Orient, which until the early nineteenth century had really meant only India and the Bible lands. (Said 1977, p. 4)
This cultural enterprise, also of political domination, as I already informed above, in a particular way was inaugurated with the presence of Napoleonic troops in Egypt. Said says: […] the keynote of the relationship was set for the Near East and Europe by the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798, an invasion which was in many ways the very model of a truly scientific appropriation of one culture by another. apparently stronger one. For with Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt processes were set in motion between East and West that still dominate our contemporary cultural and political perspectives. And the Napoleonic expedition, with its great collective monument of erudition, the Description de I’Egypte, provided a scene or setting for Orientalism, since Egypt and subsequently the other Islamic lands were viewed as the live province, the laboratory, the theater of effective Western knowledge about the Orient. (Said 1977, p. 42 and 43, emphasis added)
Faced with the conquest project and, first of all, the necessary knowledge for that, among the Others built and demarcated by the West (in the nineteenth century, under the leadership of Great Britain and France), the so-called Orient, for its very old relationship with the West itself and due to its geopolitical and economic importance, appeared with priority among its concerns. And in this Orient, Egypt stood out, where the imperial past that was represented by the time of the pharaohs appeared as the ancestral affiliation of the so-called new western empires. It can be said that dominating Egypt was for the European powers of the time to resume ties with a distant past of glories and to “reaffirm” their “destiny”, as “heir” of this ancient and powerful civilization. As Said says, “the European Orientalist found it his duty to rescue some portion of a lost, past classical Oriental grandeur in order to ‘facilitate ameliorations’ in the present Orient” (Said 1977, p. 79). This “grandeur” that, according to these Orientalists, had moved to the West, leaving the modern East abandoned, relegated to “the obvious decrepitude and political impotence” (Said 1977, p. 79). Egypt’s importance was reflected in the creation of a specific field of scientific production: Egyptology; and it also appeared prominently in the fulfillment of an important political role, as “the focal point of the relationships between Africa and Asia, between Europe and the East, between memory and actuality” (Said 1977, p. 84). As Said points out: Because Egypt was saturated with meaning for the arts, sciences, and government, its role was to be the stage on which actions of a world-historical importance would take place. By taking Egypt, then, a modern power would naturally demonstrate its strength and justify history […]. (Said 1977, p. 84 and 85)
Despite the fact that the Napoleonic invasion achieved rapid military failure, “the occupation gave birth to the entire modern experience of the Orient as interpreted from within the universe of discourse founded by Napoleon in Egypt, whose agencies of domination and. dissemination included the Institut [Institut d’Égypte] and the Description” (Said 1977, p. 87).
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As pointed out at the beginning of this text, we can find in Ruskin, in the middle of the nineteenth century, this concern for an international preservation of heritage that would be made possible by what would be the first European institution to be concerned with taking care of historical monuments beyond their own. borders: the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), created in 1877 by William Morris, Ruskin’s disciple, based on the proposal of this present in the 1854 article, as previously mentioned. We will also find in this institution, in this last quarter of the nineteenth century, this concern with the East, with regard to its heritage. As I already pointed out in my 2017 text, this association: […] as Cristina Meneguello informs […] [had as] first concern […] to save the English heritage itself, having as her first campaign thirty churches designed by Christopher Wren (17th century English architect), [but] very early on the institution’s, the attention also turned to the outside (Meneghello 2008, p. 245). In its first annual report, of 1878, the case of a tower of the sixteenth century on the Acropolis of Athens, which had been demolished three years earlier, was addressed” (Olender 2017, p. 193)
Following, in an attempt to preserve “ancient buildings of the rest of Europe; in many parts of which there has both been more to destroy and more ignorant and reckless destruction than in England”(Morris 1878), Morris’s campaign against the restoration project of the Basilica de San Marcos, in Venice, in addition to “enquiries […] respecting the state of ancient buildings in India, as also in Spain, where restoration is commencing” (Morris 1879), in addition to the implementation of a communications network with Archaeological Societies from several European countries (such as France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, among others) to assist the SBAP Foreign Affairs Committee (created in the year following its founding) in its mission to learn about the “the state of buildings in foreign countries” (Morris 1879). It draws attention, here, in an organization that would have as one of its explicit objectives the safeguarding of European heritage, as recommended by Ruskin in his 1854 article, the presence of actions related to Indian heritage. It would also be added to these, as explained in the 5th Annual SPAB Report, written by Morris in 1882, concerns with the preservation of ancient Egyptian buildings. As the mentioned document informs: Letters have been sent to the Khedive and to the Coptic Patriarch - the latter in Arabic - appealing to them to protect the remains of medieval Arab art and the interesting early Coptic churches. Favourable answers to both these have been received. (Morris 1882)
This situation is reinforced in the report of the following year: In spite of the many difficulties that an English Society meets with in trying to preserve buildings in foreign countries, a considerable portion of their work in the past year has been devoted to the monuments in Arab art in Egypt, and various Italian buildings, such as the Monastery of Ara Coeli, Rome, the Mercato Vecchio and the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, with other buildings. In Egypt, matters are more hopeful; the interest which once was limited to the monuments of ancient Egypt is being extended to the perhaps equally valuable remains of Moslem art in its greatest perfection, in which Egypt, and especially Cairo, is so rich Morris 1883, emphasis mine).
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This expansion outside Europe would be justified, however, in the case of a British organization, on the basis of the very relationship that Great Britain had over these two countries, which were then under its domination.
3 3 Returning to my 2017 text, I underlined the enormous importance of universal and international exhibitions of the nineteenth century in relation to what I called “internationalization of preservationist thinking” (Olender 2017, p. 195). What I did not emphasize, then, was that these international competitions had, complementarily, a fundamental importance in the construction of the very idea of world heritage, when they participated in the elaboration of the “cultural identities” that made the nations that exhibited in these events singular (with emphasis, mainly but not exclusively, in its architectural dimension), legitimizing them as important pieces in the composition of the historical heritage of humanity, represented there. “Cultural identities” that were constructive components and ratifiers of the very universality of the concept of historical heritage, that is, that indicated that all nations had their historical heritage and were represented by it. Firstly, it should be noted that the concern with the affirmation of universal principles and values, so dear to the French revolutionary process, was at the heart of these exhibitions that are known, until today, as “universal and international exhibitions”. The presence of the term “universal” in the denomination of several of them— being that, in the nineteenth century it was made explicit in all French ones (1855, 1867, 1878, 1889, and 1900) and in Brussels (1897)—would highlight, according to Werner Plum, the “universality of changes in technique and science, culture and art, social policy and international relations” (Plum 1979, p. 60). For Schroeder-Gudehus and Rasmussen (1992, p. 9), […] the secondary literature readily distinguishes the terms “universal”, indicating that the entire thematic field is covered by the exhibition (the set of human activity, most often related to agriculture, industry and plastic arts) and “international” referring to the national plurality of participants.
Beginning at the universal exhibition in Paris in 1855, “historical monuments” from different nations were presented in photographs, models, surveys, and restoration projects shown in the section dedicated to architecture. In these exhibits, the almost exclusive presence of European buildings was noted and Viollet-le-Duc’s restoration projects stood out, as highlighted by Swenson (2013, p. 160). But in addition to these displays of drawings, photos, and models and, probably, with a much more significant influence on the formation of the sensibilities and tastes of the immense public that attended these events, we have, since 1867, in Paris, the presence of representative pavilions from several of the nations attending these events.
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The importance of this novelty can be seen in the publication written by the architect and photographer Alfred-Nicolas Normand entitled “L’Architecture des nations étrangères, étude sur les principales constructions du parc à l’Exposition universelle de Paris (1867)”. Normand begins his book by reaffirming the importance of universal exhibitions as a measure of the degree of civilization and progress of each of the nations present there. Notions of progress and civilization, as it should be noted here, that were also intended as universal and, therefore, universally valid as instruments for measuring peoples. For, as I say in another text: To progress was to become civilized and vice versa. The press commonly referred to universal exhibitions as parties or rendezvous of civilization or progress. These, as a “thermometer of general progress”, of the March or “natural movement” of civilization, were like the spatialization of the evolutionary line that temporarily located the different nations, which measured their “level” of civilization or progress (Olender 2014, pp. 165–166)
This stance, as I said, is clearly explained at the very beginning of the introduction of Normand’s work: […] Because the arts and industry always find great lessons in exhibitions, especially those called universals. They allow an exchange of ideas and procedures between all peoples; they allow them to appreciate, as accurately as possible, the general state of artistic and industrial progress, inspiring improvements and putting them on the path of progress. (Normand 1867, p. 1, emphasis mine)
Right afterwards, Normand precisely informs about the presence of these national pavilions in an “immense park that surrounded the central building”. The theme park that distinguished the 1867 exhibition in relation to the previous ones, which was “the great distinctive character of the international struggle of 1867 over previous exhibitions, the necessary complement of the set, the unique spectacle, which, according to all probabilities, the generations will never have the opportunity to see” (Normand 1867, p. 1). And he concludes: Until then, architecture had never been found in the exhibitions, except for the drawings; and sometimes, but rarely, for small models. For the first time, it appeared in 1867 with buildings, real examples of temples, palaces, houses, schools, farms, from each of the countries from which they originated. This was one of the happiest innovations, as it gave expression to all known forms of construction (Normand 1867, p. 1).
Next, Normand identifies the presence of three groups of buildings in this “theme park”. One that brings together various types of wooden constructions, another formed by buildings representative of Great Britain, Spain, and Prussia and a group, explained by him in the first place, that: “comprised the eastern nations that, for the first time leaving their isolation, they now sought our admiration, after having despised our judgment for a long time” (NORMAND, 1867, p. 2). Normand’s account of this new “theme park” opened at the 1867 exhibition begins, precisely, by the group of Eastern nations. In it, the first to be approached, and with wide prominence, was Egypt. It should be noted that in addition to Egypt, the only Eastern representations that are dealt with in the book are those of Tunisia
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and Morocco. Pavilions representing China and Japan, for example, are not even mentioned. And in relation to the relief assumed by the set of Egyptian pavilions, Normand (1867, p. 3) says: The exceptional importance of the buildings that Egypt had built in the Champ-de-Mars park, the taste that presided over its composition, the artistic or archaeological riches that they contained guaranteed this nation, without a doubt, one of the most distinctive positions and the first place among the eastern nations. […] Nothing in the world is more apt to make a grand 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 finally produces a unique impression in the senses, that the monuments of Greece, with their admirable purity, are the only ones capable of counterbalancing. (emphasis mine)
The preponderance of Egyptian antiquity over that Greco-Roman one, in turn, is highlighted by the French-born Polish journalist and writer Charles-Edmond Chojecki in his work “L’Égypte à l’Exposition universelle of 1867”, published in the same year of the realization of the event. He says: EGYPT is represented at the 1867 Universal Exhibition, not only for its present, but also for 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, p. 10, emphasis mine)
Chojecki’s statement reinforced the narrative constructed by Westerners (mainly French and English), starting at least from the end of the eighteenth century, from the perception of ancient Egyptian civilization as a noble origin (at least symbolically) of the most “developed” modern civilizations. The Egyptian participation in the 1867 universal and international exhibition pointed to and even crowned this perception. Within that space that I rightly called the “theme park of nations”, the Egyptian exhibition was constituted in an autonomous subset and was even officially recognized as “Parc Égyptien”. It was idealized by the Quediva (viceroy of Egypt) Ismail Pacha, “a modern prince, formed in the western style [formé ‘à l’occidentale’]” in the words of Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère, “who wants to introduce European civilization into Egypt”. Its conception was developed by the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette and had part of his project and all the coordination of the execution of the works carried out by the French architect Jacques Drévet. If the architect Jacques Drévet, at that time still “ignores everything in Egypt”, as Mercedes Volait informs, the same was not the case with Auguste Mariette, who since 1842 had Egypt as his privileged object of study and since 1850 traveled constantly to that country, where he carried out excavations and promoted, in his own way, the preservation of his archaeological testimonies. About this character, and placing him in the context of the 1867 Parisian exhibition, Said says: In the catalogue he wrote for the 1867 exhibition, Mariette rather strenuously stressed the reconstructive aspects, leaving little doubt in anyone’s mind that he, Mariette, had brought Egypt to Europe for the first time, as it were. He could do so because of his spectacular
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archeological successes at some thirty-five sites, including those at Giza, Sakkarah, Edfu and Thebes where, in Brian Fagan’s apt words, he “excavated with complete abandon”. In addition, Msariette was engaged regularly in both excavating and emptying sites, so that as the European museums (especially the Louvre) grew in Egyptian treasure, Mariette rather cynically displayed the actual tombs in Egypt empty, keeping a bland coposure in his explanations to “disappointed Egyptian officials”. (Said 1993, p. 120)
Mariette was also the creator and founder of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities (1858), which gave rise to the current (since 2011) Ministry of State for Antiquities, being its first director (1858–1880) and, also, in 1858, from the Boulaq Museum (located in the district of the same name, in Cairo), an organ linked to the Department and the first public museum of Egyptian archeology and which, as its own creator says: […] it is a museum organized to serve practically Egyptology, and if the indifferent ones blamed the introduction of some apparently very mutilated wreckage, I would reply that he is not an archaeologist and that, for me, I would never like to see him anymore.
The “Parc Égyptien” of the “Exposition Universelle of 1867” consisted of four buildings: 1. a Temple (“both a museum and an example of the art of the pharaohs” (Mariette 1867, p. V) 2. a Selamlik (“a pavilion separated from the main building where the owner of the house comes to receive visitors that he does not want to let into his house” (Mariette, 1867, p. 87) and that in the exhibition functioned as a quarry accommodation and where he received his guests in addition to an exhibition gallery. 3. an Okel (landing of caravans in Egypt and where functioned, in the exhibition, the café, shops and spaces where the artisans themselves produced their goods, such as carpets, jewelry and costume jewelry to sell); and 4. a stable (“Okel dependency, where two donkeys and two dromedaries are shown to the public” (Mariette 1867, p. VI). The Temple, Selamlik and Okel, respectively, represent “an era in Egyptian history: Antiquity, Middle Ages, modern era” (Volait 2018, p. 4) This temporal distribution was reinforced by the publication by Charles-Edmond Chojecki who, when presenting the Egyptian pavilions, structured the chapters pertinent to each of them in one of the periods in the history of Egypt. And, just like in the exhibition itself, where the Temple appeared as the main attraction of the ensemble, in the book it was the Egyptian Antiquity (represented by the Temple) that was privileged, as analyzed by Zeynep Çelik, Edmond’s L’Egypte à l’Exposition universelle de 1867 (Paris, 1867) is structured according to the display, with each section representing a chronological period (antiquity, Middle Ages, and modern times), and includes historical information together with a description of the particular pavilion. Although the three-part historical division seems balanced, the greater amount of information on Egyptian antiquity meant that this period overshadowed the others. (ÇELIK, 1992, p. 37 e 38)
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Fig. 1 Island of Philae: plan, elevations, sections and details of the Temple of the West. Source Description de l’Égypte: Or, Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont et faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française. In: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e00f3d-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99
It was precisely Mariette who developed the project that interests me the most specifically inside of this “Parc Égyptien”; exactly the one that was the main attraction of the architectural complex: the Temple (Fig. 5). This one had as fundamental inspiration, in the words of Mariette himself, the Temple of the West, of the island of Philae (Figs. 1 and 2), dedicated to the goddess Isis and whose ruins, in the 1970s, were transplanted to the island of Aguilkia due to the flooding of the region through the Assuan dam. A few years later, Mariette would be responsible for the original script for the opera Aida by Verdi as well as for its first sets and costumes. He would again use the Temple of Philae, according to Said, as inspiration for the setting of the first act in the first performance of the aforementioned opera, in December 1871 at the Cairo Opera House. This opera house had been inaugurated about two years earlier, on November 1, 1869, as “a brilliant event during celebrations for the opening of the Suez Canal” (Said 1993, p. 115). This canal, in turn, had its construction started in 1859 and also featured a specific pavilion at the 1867 universal exposition in Paris, next to the “Parc Égyptien”. This proximity to the “pavilion of the Suez Isthmus Company [as Demeulenaere-Douyère points out] reinforces the exhibition of Egypt’s ‘modernity’”. (Demeulenaere-Douyère 2014, p. 40) But, with regard to the Temple presented in 1867, in Paris, other Egyptian temples, besides the one dedicated to Isis in Philae, were used as inspiration/foundation for
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Fig. 2 Temple de l’Ouest (Temple of Isis), Author: Rémih, 10 Jun 2009. Source https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Isis_temple_Philae2.JP
its realization, like the Dendera Temple, dedicated to the goddess Hathor (Fig. 3) the Temple of 1867 and the Karnak Temple, dedicated to the god Amon-Ra, from which the idea of the avenue of sphinxes was derived (Figs. 4 and 5). About the temple exhibited in 1867 the artist Manoel de Araújo Porto-Alegre says in his official report on the situation of the Fine Arts in the aforementioned exhibition, presented to the Brazilian government: We are in Ancient Egypt! A door with an Athenian architectural model without side pylons, opens us to the majestic prospect of two rows of sphinxes, which end at the entrance of an amphiprostyle temple, all decorated with symbolic and historical paintings and carvings, which transport us to the times of the Pharaohs. Here are in the cornice and capitals the winged disk of the sun, and the masks of Isis, and that variety of panels in which, alongside the mysteries of death, the works of life are seen, the Egyptian geometries, and the man in the temple, in war, and in the fertilizing Nile. All of Egypt wanted to be summed up in this admirable artifact, whose interior represents the oldest style (Porto-alegre 1868, p. 408, 413 and 453)
Inside the Temple, archaeological relics of Ancient Egypt from the Boulaq Museum were on display. Porto-Alegre’s description of the Temple, Egypt’s main attraction in the exhibition, stating that it is a summary of all Egypt does not correspond to the truth, nor to the very purpose of Egyptian participation in the exhibition, which was to synthesize
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Fig. 3 Hathor Temple in Dendera, author: Ijanderson977, July 2008. Source https://commons.wik imedia.org/wiki/File:Dendera_7_977.PNG
“all Egypt” not only in the Temple but in all four buildings present, as already seen here. But it affirms the centripetal strength of Egyptian Antiquity, of the Pharaonic period, which was even intentionally reinforced by the creators and promoters of the exhibition. As Charles-Edmond Chojecki states: The Temple is for the remote past of Memphis, Thebes, Alexandria; Selamlik for the intermediate splendors of Arab domination; Okel is for the present and for the magnificent hopes of the future, not to mention, in the circular galleries of the Palace itself [in this case the Central Exhibition Pavilion], a beautiful collection of agricultural and industrial products.
As Chojecki states, the pavilion that represents Okel, in addition to being a demonstration, indeed “anthropological” of contemporary Egypt aims to present a possible Egypt of the future, full of “magnificent hopes”. These hopes were placed on a government, that of Ismail Pacha, which was concerned with “modernizing” Egypt while following the Western booklet, thus fulfilling that mission outlined by the then Western powers (in the case of Egypt since the Napoleonic invasion of 1798) to bring the peoples of the East back to the March of civilization, a civilization that would have started right there, in Egypt, and whose most advanced stage was, then, in the West. “To rescue some portion of a lost, past classical Oriental grandeur in order to ‘facilitate ameliorations’ in the present Orient “ as the text of Said (1977, p. 79) already mentioned here says.
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Fig. 4 Avenue of the Sphinxes. Author: Daniel Csörföly, Jan–Feb 2007. Source https://com mons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KarnakTemple@LuxorEgypt_rams_2007feb9-08_byDanielCsor foly.JPG
This is very clear in other parts of Chojecki’s book, as when he points out, even in the introduction, a certain manifested destiny of Egypt itself: But if Egypt clings to the West for the interests of its future, it also clings to the East through the bonds of its entire past. It has its feet in two worlds at the same time; it is the point at which two great currents of humanity converge. (Edmond, p. 3)
And no one is more suited, according to the author, to head this “modernizing and westernizing mission” than the Viceroy himself, for his European background and his admiration for Western culture. To exalt him and exalt his mission, it is even worth comparing him to the Nile River itself, thus justifying the western modernization of Egypt: Ismael-Pacha son of Ibrahim-Pacha, the winner of Koniah and Nézib, and grandson of Méhémet-Aly, the founder of the dynasty. He spent the most beautiful years of his youth in Europe. In 1844, he began brilliant studies in Vienna, which he completed in 1846 at the School of the Egyptian Mission in Paris. In 1850 he was back in his homeland. Precious years, that were well done in order to prepare the prince to fulfill the mission that destiny had in store for him; and as the Nile carries fertile principles from afar to bring them and deposit them in the land of Egypt, so he returned among his people. (Edmon, p. 1 and 2)
As Demeulenaere-Douyère very well summarizes, the «Parc égyptien» must show that Egypt is a decidedly modern nation, but it does not deny anything of its glorious
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Fig. 5 Exposition universelle from 1867. The Alley of the Sphinxes and the Temple of Hathor. Author: Pierre Petit. (Arch. Nat., F / 12/11872/2. Cliché Service photographique des Archives nationales). Source Christiane Demeulenaere-Douyère, «L’Égypte, la modernité et les expositions universelles», Bulletin de la Sabix [En ligne], 54| 2014, mis en ligne le 13 novembre 2014, consult le 01 mai 2020. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/sabix/1108
past, in which it finds its legitimation (Demeulenaere-Douyère 2014, p. 38). In addition to merely “modernizing” by resuming the “path of civilization”, as a point of convergence between “two great currents of humanity”, Egypt would have the task, almost a “manifested destiny”, of leading “modern civilization” (Western) to the rest of the East. One fact, however, is certain, that Egypt was visibly chosen to initiate the rest of the East into modern civilization. It was the first to receive the shock that would gradually awaken the whole of Asia to new destinations. Its geographical location naturally gave it the privilege. But the best part: it already met great men, it had gone through great events on the banks of the Nile that prepared the way, started the work of regeneration and even guaranteed success. It is not enough that a country is well placed on the world map to accomplish a mission, it still needs the happiness of the facts and the cooperation of the geniuses (p. 200)
Valuing Egypt and its heritage (especially the one left by the pharaohs) was, therefore, on the one hand to restore and reinforce the universal evolutionary line of civilization in its March toward the future, starting from its “cradle” in Egyptian antiquity; on the other hand, to rescue peoples who lost their way in this process and also to bring to it the other peoples who did not know it, even if forcefully.
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4 4 But in addition to the exhibitions of the architecture section and national pavilions, the feeling of heritage preservation was also disseminated in some of the meetings promoted during these international exhibitions. Taking advantage of the own structure of the event, several organizations scheduled their meetings and congresses for the period and location of these events. From the 1878 exhibition in Paris, the French government itself started to insert several of these events in the official program of the exhibitions, thus, as RASMUSSEN points out, that “The purpose of the congresses is clearly linked by the minister [of Agriculture and Trade] to the exhibition, for a didactic purpose: the Exhibition shows, the congresses demonstrate, explain, clarify” (Rasmussen 1989, pp. 25–26). In some of these international congresses, at least since the 1867 universal exposition in Paris, it is possible to map the presence, although still somewhat timid, of the theme of preserving historical heritage. It was present, for example, at the International Conference of Architects, promoted by the Société Impériale et Centrale des Architects, during the aforementioned 1867 exhibition, and it would appear again at the International Congress of Architects, promoted by the Societé Centrale des Architectes with the support of the Committee Congress and Conference Center at the 1878 Exhibition, also in Paris. But it was at the 1889 French Universal Exhibition that the preservation of historical heritage took on a prominent role. The International Congress for the Protection of Works of Art and Monuments took place, promoted by the Societè des Amis des Monuments in partnership with the Organizing Committee of the Universal Exhibition. The 1889 exhibition was also one of the main attractions of a new Egyptian enterprise: Cairo Street, proposed by Baron Delord de Gléon, “‘representative of the French nation in Cairo’ and a great collector of Islamic art” (Demeulenaere-Douyère 2014, p. 41) If the universal exhibitions are pedagogical spectacles for humanity, their educational character was, as Margarida de Souza Neves already pointed out, channeled to the leisure of its visitors, but “leisure that is eminently didactic […] [whose] function will be to amuse and discipline the crowd, but in addition to these functions it will have a primarily educational purpose”. The education of bodies and spirits was present in their odes to machines and industrial capitalism and, consequently, in the comparative process between the different nations and their place in the March toward civilization and progress. Civilization that had, in turn, the great Western powers as a model. The development and even radicalization of this process of pedagogical leisure regarding the “civilizing stages”, during the course of the nineteenth century exhibitions, has increasingly reinforced the popularization of the new scientific narrative of ethnology, because, as says Demeulenaere-Douyère, referring more specifically to 1889 Cairo Street: “At the end of the 19th century, ethnology began to be better known by public opinion and Cairo Street developed an ethnology within popular
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reach, in a way an ‘ethnology of the poor’” (Demeulenaere-Douyère 2014, p. 6). This popularization of ethnology through universal exhibitions explicitly presents all prejudices and stereotypes that were consolidated during the second half of the nineteenth century. As Demeulenaere-Douyère (2014, p. 5) says: In 1889, the public’s taste evolved. The exhibition is still a place of education and admiration for him it, but when it comes to shows, he it is always looking for a change of atmosphere, for more fun; For this reason, it welcomes the attractions of an ethnic character that enact exotic populations in their daily lives, or as they are supposed to be, under the pretext of making them better known and that tend to become more numerous in Paris since the early 1880s. Egypt will fall victim to the traditional “folk” image it has acquired in the minds of the European public. If it still appears at the 1889 Universal Exhibition, it is stuck in its own caricature and reduced to attraction status.
And this image of Egypt would be conceived once again, now without the incentive of the Kedive Ismail Pasha (deposed with the support of the English in 1879), by a French mind (despite the British domination in which the country found itself since 1882). And what did the Baron of Gléon propose? His proposal is pedagogical; at a time when the city of Cairo is in the midst of an urban turnaround, he proposes a reconstruction of an old Cairo district, with its traditional architecture. Instead of an exact reproduction, it is an evocation, carried out with the help of authentic architectural elements (mashrabiyas doors, joinery elements, wooden balconies, majolica…) recovered from demolition sites in ancient Cairo and reassembled in Paris. Creating a contrast with the Galerie des Machines, a “temple of progress” to which it is a neighbor (Demeulenaere-Douyère 2014, p. 5).
And it was in this universal exhibition, with a stretch of the banks of the Seine occupied by several buildings representing the various stages of the history of architecture in the world (in the section entitled History of the Habitation of Man), next to the gigantic monument to engineering and construction technology of the iron, which was the Eiffel Tower, with a Cairo Street, where you could “see artisans, goldsmiths, weavers, ceramists, sculptors, confectioners, silk merchants and knick-knacks at work”, and where “keepers, coming from Cairo with their little white donkeys, propose the walk”, lived alongside the imposing Machine Gallery and its imposing metallic structure, where happened, as previously informed, the International Congress for the Protection of Works of Art and Monuments. The opening of the Congress took place on June 24, 1889, with a brief speech by its president, the French architect Charles Garnier, who, for health reasons, passes the presidency of the duties related to the event to the French archeologist Félix Ravaisson. Among the foreign presence, the following stood out, representing their countries: General Tcheng-Ki-Tong (military attaché of the Chinese Embassy in France), the painter Pedro Américo de Figueiredo (professor at the Brazilian Academy of Fine Arts), Mexican painter José Maria Velasco Gómez, Portuguese architect Joaquim Possidónio Narciso da Silva (founder and president of the Royal Association of Civil Architects and Portuguese Archaeologists), Vice Admiral Likhatch of (delegate of the Moscow Archaeological Society), and Swiss engineer and architectural historian Heinrich Adolf von Geymüller (baron of Geymüller). Egypt was represented by the French Egyptologist Arthur-Ali Rhoné
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(correspondent of the Cairo Arab Art Conservation Committee) who had his communication for the Congress read by the French architect Augé de Lassus. Entitled “Reflections on the progressive embedding of the cities we embellish” (“Réflexions sur l’Enlaidissement Progressif des Villes Qu’On Embellit”), it is presented in the proceedings of the congress as a “memory […] about vandalism in Paris and in Cairo” but, in fact, it constitutes a libel against the demolitions that took place in Paris after Haussman. It contains only two very brief mentions of Cairo, the first of which is quite interesting, as it is inserted in a consideration of what can already be considered a result of modernizing globalization and the creation of authentic non-places. Rhoné (1889, p. 97) says: This is what the human race applauds for fashion, ignorance or indifference while experiencing instinctual boredom. Through our example, this taste invades the whole world with giant steps, and when, escaping to the spleen, politics, business, we want to take advantage of the low cost and speed of the means of transportation to go far, to rejuvenate ourselves in contact with the memories and the novelty of unknown aspects, we will not be able to do it: in Paris as in Rouen, in Athens, in Jerusalem, in Seville, in India and in Cairo, in everywhere we will find the same boulevard known as of the Republic, of the Nation, Garibaldi, Gambetta, Victor-Emmanuel, Victor Hugo, or Station […] So that the citizens of American cities or Oceania will be the only ones who will not be aware and will not suffer.
In a Congress in which, as we shall see, something like a “worldwide heritage listing” of historic assets would be proposed for the first time, which would consist of the application of a universal notion of heritage, besides related universal principles and values in the choice of those historic assets. These assets could be considered due to their unique contribution as a belonging to all humanity, also for not ceasing to surprise for the presence of the criticism of to another possible homogenizing universalization, of the universal application of the same architectural and urban solutions throughout the world, an authentic universalization of ideal places that are properly non-places because they do not belong to any specific territory. On the development of the event, as well as on the set of proposals withdrawn by it, I have already addressed them in the aforementioned 2017 text, which appears as a counterpoint. These are proposals that aim for the internationalization of heritage preservation, including the creation of an institution suitable for this and the standardization of procedures and criteria. Here, it is worth mentioning one of these proposals: it specifically concerns the concept of the notion of world heritage. Formulated by the general secretary of the event, the French architect Charles Normand, it refers to the “Organization of the Red Cross. Protection of Monuments and Works of Art in Times of War”, and is the sixth of the proposals approved and published at the end of the Congress. As I stated at the beginning of this text, the concern with the conditions of monuments, works of art and/or some buildings with cultural significance in times of war was not new. In a way, it dates back to Vattel’s “The Law of Nations” in 1758 which at the time was concerned with “temples, tombs, public buildings, and all Works of remarkable beauty”, but effectively related, in a more efficient manner to the 1874 Brussels Intergovernmental Conference, where historical monuments were emphasized for the first time, “based on a project by the founder (in 1863) of the Red
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Cross, Henri Dunant (Laidler 2011, p. 1)”. But, for the first time, with the proposal presented by Normand, it was systematized how this protection would be given even with the creation of a specific institution for this purpose, in addition to explaining both how this institution would be structured, as well as the series of criteria and necessary procedures for it. And what matters the most in this text is that, for the first time, the notion of world heritage is addressed, at least officially. It appears, in a very comprehensive way, in the publication of the proposals approved in Congress. Shortly after the explanation of the aforementioned proposal VI, a small description/explanation appears: VI. Organization of the Red Cross. Protection of monuments and works of art in time of war. From the proposition of Mr. Charles Normand, the Congress establishes that monuments of art belong to the totality of humanity, demands that different governments designate representatives responsible for researching and indicating the monuments of each country whose safeguard must be assumed in times of war by an international convention (Ministere Du Commerce … 1889, p. 25)
If here we see a generalization of the notion of world heritage, considering “the monuments of art” as belonging, a priori, to “the totality of humanity”, in defense of his proposal, in the fifth session of the congress, Charles Normand makes explicit its scope and instrumentalization. First, Normand recognizes his originality: “in fact, everything is unusual in solving the problem” (Normand 1889a, b, p. 272 and 273). And he adds, explaining the same: 1st. Let us first ask for a completely Platonic recognition of the principle by governments. It must be easy, it is a little uncomfortable. 2nd. Let us claim an international listing of some buildings which, from the next wars onwards, would be prohibited and subject to certain penalties: at least the State that repeated this crime would be in the situation of a violated country, and international commitments, and the moral law to which you have given additional importance by the solemn way in which you have sanctioned the ideas of civilization. (Normand 1889a, b, p. 274 and 275)1º.
Here, we see, through the explicit explanation of the demand for “platonic recognition of the principle by governments”, the very need to assume the universal character of the principle, in this case the one concerning the preservation of heritage. And this universality translates into the proposal for an international record, that is, in the recognition of an asset as a world heritage to be protected, in this case, in times of war. And the acceptance of this condition, which denotes a certain effort (“it is a little uncomfortable”) concerns the approval, by the nations, of the “ideas of civilization”, another notion that is also intended to be universal and, as already seen here, measuring of peoples. Then, Normand proposes that this situation, however, of “international heritage listing” is ephemeral, lasting only for the moment of the international threat generated by the conflict to the building: 3rd. Let us pursue, through unremitting work, the increase in the number of listed buildings [“classes”] by mutual agreement between States; 4th. but also that the International Committee should immediately demand by all means at its disposal the suppression of this listing (“classement”), because this measure must be completely transitory only to obtain immediate safeguarding of capital works. It is important to know that all monuments are
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worthy of solicitude. Modesty and the need to ensure the immediate triumph of this idea only oblige timid desires (Normand 1889a, b, p. 275).
And thinking about the feasibility of using such an instrument, Normand proposes to try it out, choosing “a single monument”. And what is the monument proposed by him? Precisely the set of pyramids in Egypt: As soon as the Congress ends, negotiations will begin to obtain the international listing of a single monument. We will choose, preferably, a work located in a country outside the area of the next war complications. No government, without a doubt, can fear, then, adhering to this measure, under penalty of bearing in the face of the world and history the stain that contaminates the opponents of progress. Take the building that you want, a stone lost in the legendary desert deserted by armies; let’s take care, if you like, of the pyramids in Egypt. And then, let us recognize by the different States that their safeguard is guaranteed in times of war. Who then can or will, oppose such a modest demand? Who then will experience the slightest difficulty? Who, on the contrary, does not understand the beautiful page that the people who will first recognize this great principle in their history will have written by adopting a measure so platonic, so fair and so little compromising? (Normand 1889a, b, p. 275)
Here is an interesting situation. As much as the original proposal is the choice of monuments to be listed internationally in times of war, Normand suggests choosing a monument that is in a country “outside the area of the next war complications”. The fact is that Egypt itself has been in a tense situation since British intervention and domination in 1882. First, it is worth mentioning, as I already did in 2017, that, despite the aforementioned author making a proposal for times of armed conflict that translates well the bellicose context of the second half of the nineteenth century itself, this conjuncture is not explained in his text, as Swenson (2013, p. 209) points out: […] His reasons for airing these ideas at the congress did not allude to the context of international relations that might have spurred particular concern over buildings in times of war, such as the fate of the Holy Places during the Crimean War. He also did not allude to the FrancoPrussian war, the Russo-Turkish war of 1878, or the British conquest of Egypt in 1882, possibly because international congress etiquette forbade the criticising of an individual nation’s behaviour.
The fact of choosing the pyramids of Egypt also crowns the whole process of first implementing the notion of historical heritage and the preservation actions associated with it and, more specifically, the notion of world heritage. The Egyptian pyramids, on the one hand, as we saw earlier, appeared “as the most suitable monument to symbolize the eternity of universal principles and ensure the transmission of the message of their invariability”. On the other hand, it represented the very origin of civilization that, then, in the second half of the nineteenth century, celebrated the “success” of its March toward the West, in the various celebrations and apologetics that were the universal exhibitions. A few decades later, Normand would begin to have his wishes for an international organization in defense of heritage and for an international regulation with this objective met, first with the creation of the International Museum Office, in the midst of the League of Nations and the elaboration of the 1931 Charter of Athens, which led
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to the creation of UNESCO in 1945. The proposal for a Red Cross of monuments, would have to wait for about half a century, until the Hague Convention, of 1954. In the second half of the twentieth century, in turn, we will have the rescue of an important monumental Egyptian complex of the Abou Simbel temples (1955–1968) that will decisively influence the regulation of world heritage, in 1972, as pointed out by Chloé Maurel: The Nubian campaign, undertaken and successful despite numerous logistical, administrative and political difficulties, was a great success for Unesco. This success helped to improve its brand image. In 1968, at the time of the inauguration of the Abu Simbel temples, Unesco was at the height of its popularity and knew its golden age, under the direction of René Maheu. The rescue of the Nubian temples influenced the later orientation of Unesco’s actions for the protection of heritage. In 1972, the organization adopted the international convention on natural and cultural world heritage and, as of this date, constitutes the list of places classified as UNESCO’s world heritage, a list that today has become one of the most media and most successful activities of the institution. (Maurel 2014, p11)
The continuation of this construction process and the implementation of the notion of world heritage with its foundation in an exceptional universal value, during the twentieth century, will be the subject of an upcoming text.
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The Experience of Managing the City of Porto as a World Heritage Site: How to Teach and How to Learn? Maria Leonor Botelho and Lúcia Maria Cardoso Rosas
Abstract What to teach and what to learn at the postgraduate level? The problem that arises today focuses, firstly, on the question “how to teach” and “how to learn”. But we can go further! How to teach and how to learn about a city that, besides its own particular features, is also a World Heritage site? Considering that the Historic Centre of Porto, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996, can be understood as a learning laboratory, the paper named “the experience of managing the city of Porto as a World Heritage Site: how to teach and how to learn?”, written by Maria Leonor Botelho and Lúcia Maria, aims to address two pedagogical projects developed at the Master’s level, first in the History of Portuguese Art and then, in Art History, Heritage and Visual Culture of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto. Both projects, conducted by the MA students, had the production and the publication of a virtual exhibition on the Google Arts and Culture platform, Porto World Heritage (2015) and Porto de Virtudes (2017) as the main product, although other outputs were created. The first results of these experiments have already been published and discussed in several scientific meetings. With this paper we intend to revisit these projects, thinking about them in an integrated way and as instruments for learning and managing the city and particularly Porto as a World Heritage site. Keywords Porto · World heritage · Education · Virtual exhibitions · Heritage management Maria Leonor Botelho—Teaching associate at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of Oporto (Department of Heritage Studies)/Researcher at CITCEM (Transdisciplinary Culture, Space and Memory Research Centre—FCT I&D unit 4059). Lúcia Maria Cardoso Rosas—Professorial teaching fellow at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of Oporto University (Department of Heritage Studies)/Researcher at CITCEM (Transdisciplinary Culture, Space and Memory Research Centre—FCT I&D unit 4059). M. L. Botelho (B) · L. M. C. Rosas Faculty of Arts and Humanities of University of Oporto (Department of Heritage Studies), Researcher at CITCEM (Transdisciplinary Culture, Space and Memory Research Centre—FCT I&D Unit 4059), Porto, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] L. M. C. Rosas e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_10
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1 Introduction or About the Management Principles The inscription of the Historic Centre of Oporto Luiz I Bridge and Monastery of Serra do Pilar as a World Heritage Site (1996) (UNESCO, [755]), allied to the fact that the city centre of Oporto is a veritable laboratory of urban requalification and revitalisation (PORTO VIVO) and to the fact that the city was the three-time recipient of the European Best Destinations award (2012, 2014 and 2017) (EUROPEAN BEST DESTINATIONS) are but a small number of examples that demonstrate the exponential growth in demand for professionals in the field of Heritage; which, in turn, validates the social and economic pertinence of the projects discussed in this paper. Because Porto World Heritage (FLUP 2015) was an experimental project, therefore markedly exploratory, we chose to address the historic centre of Porto, given its listing as UNESCO World Heritage since 5 December 1996. The reason for our choice was based on the existing scientific knowledge on this centre, both in terms of its natural physical proximity and also because of the working student group’s attachment to it. The basic idea, however, was to give a “different view” of the city. As is known, cities are the result of the accumulation/sedimentation/transformation of several layers of human occupation. If this premise can be applied to almost all European cities, it is worth asking why the city of Porto, and particularly its World Heritage site area, is configured as a privileged teaching/learning laboratory in the context of heritage studies. Despite being the result of a long diachronic occupation, the city of Porto still allows the observation of areas that are not fully sedimented as an urban territory. In its eastern and western ends and in the river valleys of the Douro watershed (e.g. Virtudes, Massarelos), patches of an eminently rural character persist. In fact, as in many other cases, the city of Porto added to its network the suburbs composed of small nuclei of rural habitat interconnected by open roads between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries. However, what is important to emphasize is that part of these nuclei still presents itself autonomously. They are non-urban places (although incorporated in the urban area of Porto) and identifiable as such, since their incorporation in the city has not changed their essence. Streets, farmed terraces, houses that add adjective constructions of agricultural function are still visible and can be characterized as nuclei with its own characteristics. On the other hand, large patches that were occupied by sets of industrial buildings (e.g. Vale de Campanhã) remain in Porto, currently in a state of ruin and neglect.
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From this brief outline, it is concluded that Porto allows a direct observation of the form(s) and how urban spaces are altered and evolved. However, one of the most interesting aspects that enhances learning is, precisely, the permanence of non-urban places in a twenty-first century city. Learning to read these places, mapping their discontinuities with the urban fabric and their continuities with the habitat of yore, sets up a learning exercise whose results are evident in the work developed by the students. Abandoned spaces are now one of the problems of cities. The causes of its existence are very varied: demographic retraction, abandoned urbanization projects, obsolescence of buildings and industrial equipment, among others. The future perspective of these realities and the alternatives for their recovery have been considered by several authors such as Solà Morales (1995) or Gilles Clément (2003). In Portugal, Brito-Henriques, Ana Luísa Soares and Sónia Talhé Azambuja, have dedicated some inspiring articles to this topic. The proposals they present show the enormous potential that ruined and vacant spaces present. Removing these undesirable spaces from marginality, they propose alternatives to conventional models for the recovery of the urban landscape, concluding that abandonment opens possibilities for the advance of biological autochthonous species in the city, with the renaturalization of some spaces, a circumstance that recommends new forms of urban planning (Brito-Henriques et al. 2017). Direct contact with abandoned spaces—we have already referred to the example of the Campanhã Valley—allows students to become aware of their potential and to see them not only as a problem but also as a solution. The solution is certainly for landscape designers and urban planning, but the way students analyze a space carrying it with negativity or, on the contrary, positivity is also a form of learning in heritage. Apart from the academic and pedagogical exercise itself, regarding the construction of the exhibition Porto World Heritage that we will describe lately in this paper, our intention was to use the resulting product to establish the role that the university can have in the social, economic, and territorial development in the Cultural Heritage department and, especially, in the city of Porto. The collaboration of FLUP with the internationally renowned Google Arts and Culture platform arose at a time when the Digital Humanities are a driver for the development and dissemination of knowledge. At the same time, the University of Porto has as Mission, dubbed the “third mission” in the UP’s Strategic Plan (UP, “Plano Estratégico”), the production of scientific, cultural, and artistic fields of knowledge, the qualification in higher education deeply based in research, the social and economic valorisation of knowledge and the active participation on in the improvement and advancement of the communities in which it is inserted. So, the diffusion of knowledge, for its accessibility and its inclusive character, equally serves as an instrument for both the communication and the affirmation of the dubbed “Third Mission” of the University in question, i.e., the University’s ability to exert a meaningful impact in Society itself, enriching knowledge from both social and economic standpoints.
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Both projects were conceived by regarding and understanding heritage as a conjugational effort between the past and the present. Additionally, we have sought to consider the good practices prescribed by the internationally established doctrines on the subject-matter, evidencing the need for both the enforcement and the intersection of these measures at various stages and levels. We have also attempted to assert the social utility of heritage properties and to potentiate the role of Cultural Heritage in the Economy (Platform Evoch 2009), not only by taking active measures to promote and disseminate its knowledge and understanding along with formal and informal education on the subject-matter, but also through activities related to tourism (ICOMOS 1999) and through the environmental quality of the urban space in question (Environmental Impact Assessment, Decree-Law nº 151-B/2013, 31st of October). “Heritage, in order to be accurately defined as such, must be present and alive, in some sense, and must be effectively regarded with prospective values” (Almeida 1998, pp. 10–17). It was precisely throughout the experimental lab and the learning by doing method that students became aware of a heritage site management needs, but also about policies and ways of doing. Despite the fact they were working through the academia, that is to say, protected by the University, they got aware about the importance of the institutional relationships and the need of distributing tasks. They also got sensitive to some fundamental skills that heritage manager should have, starting by the scientific knowledge about the site to the actions it demands and how to promote them between different kinds of publics, that is to say, stakeholders and communities. When designing the Virtudes cultural management program, we wanted to be in accordance with the values and the principles defined by the Cultural Heritage’s international doctrines, also taking into account the heritage value of the object of this project, the Virtudes urban space (Barreira et al. 2017). The international doctrine is rich in the production of documents that touch some aspects related to the valorisation, conservation, interpretation, and presentation of heritage sites that, together, instructed the principles of action and the construction of our projects. Wishing for the project to play an inclusive role with the multitude of communities that visit the aforementioned urban space, we seek to implement the guidelines defined in the Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe 2005). This document is comprised of a set of common references that allow for a clarification of the distribution of public responsibilities in the framework of the democratic process and the individual rights related to cultural heritage in the European space. The Faro Convention recognises the need for placing the individual and the human values at the centre of a broad and interdisciplinary concept of cultural heritage, equally highlighting the value and the potential of a well-managed cultural heritage site, as source of both a sustainable development process and an improvement to of quality of life in an ever-changing social landscape. Furthermore, the Faro Convention grounds itself in the involvement and engagement of all individuals in the continuous process of definition and management of a cultural heritage site and supports the “usage of policy measures related to heritage sites and the pedagogical initiatives that regard all cultural heritage assets in equitable manner, therefore promoting
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dialogue” (Council of Europe 2005). Thus, and by specifically having Article 1, item c of the aforementioned Convention as a starting point, states that “(…) the conservation of cultural heritage and its sustainable use have human development and quality of life as their goal” (Council of Europe 2005). Carlos Alberto Ferreira de Almeida said before that “heritage is everything that possesses quality to the cultural and physical life of man and that has notorious significance in the existence and the affirmation of different communities; communities that range from neighbourhoods and parishes, to municipal, regional and even national and international communities alike. Heritage is quality and is synonymous with a rich, and ideally alive, memory. Without quality, be it intrinsic or circumstantial in nature, there can exist no foundation point. Heritage properties cannot be perceived merely as a reserve and, even less, as mere recollections or nostalgia of the past; it must be regarded as being a part of our present” (Almeida 1998). The International Cultura l Tourism Charter (ICOMOS 1999), despite calling for an urgent update adjusting to new realities, has the communication of the meaning and of the need for preservation of heritage properties as its fundamental goal. Hence, the access to Cultural Heritage site must be made through the host community—and, therefore, contributing to its understanding and the reinforcement of an emotional sense of belonging—and through the visiting community—as means to its promotion and dissemination to tourists. The need to elaborate programs and plans that seek to optimize the comprehension of the most meaningful characteristics of Heritage (or heritage sites) by these two distinct audiences, as well as the pressing necessity of its protection, is becoming progressively more significant; i.e., programs and plans that actively pave the way for the recognition and the potentiation of the authenticity of the urban space in question and its “spiritu loci” (ICOMOS 2008). The ICOMOS Charter for the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites (ICOMOS 2007) presents interpretation and presentation both as crucial elements to the effort of conserving Heritage sites and as elementary tools necessary to the general public in order for them to fully appreciate and understand the Cultural Heritage sites. And, since one cannot fully value that which one does not know, we shall take the act of communicating with the public as a core and primordial part in the ampler process of conservation, that is, of a conservation of the memory but always with prospective values in mind. Thus, it is by having this presuppositions as basis, which are, in part, pedagogical in nature (objectives of learning/acquisition of competences), but also by striving for the implementation of an integrated program of cultural management found on the proper practices prescribed by international doctrines, that the two projects discussed in this paper seem to show how students’ active and collaborative learning experiences can effectively contribute to the management of a World Heritage site.
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2 Pedagogical Framework or About Creating Management Labs Winn (1995) states that “teaching research methods to social science (…) presents a number of dilemmas, including the development of effective means of providing students with practical research experience and the difficulty of engaging the interest of students in a subject which for many is not intrinsically appealing and to which some have a long-standing aversion. One way of addressing these issues is to enable students to participate in a “real” research project” (Winn 1995). Both projects, Porto World Heritage and Porto de Virtudes, aim to fulfil the gap between theoretical knowledge and the real needs that MA students will face when approaching the professional world and its needs. The main goal, is to demonstrate how it is possible to create heritage knowledge and develop its communication products in an academic context, undergoing the projects as a complete research experience. Both teachers involved in these projects were sensitive to the importance of the “learning by doing” method as a way to the acquisition of fundamental competences in the scope of an MA degree. As is known, learning ability has a close relationship with motivation, which is not the same as saying that learning can be performed effortlessly. The research experience that results in a concrete object (beyond the main goal of knowledge) has proved to be a path with many virtualities. In this sense, the use of virtual exhibitions aimed to: stimulate cohesion and cooperation among students, foster entrepreneurship in response to a common goal and the acquisition of knowledge applied to problem solving. In both academic years, the two teachers that signed this paper worked with a group from about twenty students. The anchor element of both projects was, as said, the design of a virtual exhibition in the Google Arts and Culture Platform. The contacts between the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Oporto and the Google Cultural Institute (nowadays known as Google Arts and Culture) started in 2014. As said before, in 2014/2015 the framework was still the Master in History of Portuguese Art1 and in 2016/2017 we were already in the scope of the new Master in History of Art, Heritage and Visual Culture (FLUP, [MA]). Hence, the articulation between two mandatory courses under a common project and by transforming the classroom in a project lab, one that concerns itself with the improvement and renewal of knowledge and its diffusion over a world heritage site or part of, allows for, first and foremost, an unification of different and various fields of study of the MA degree in a single project: History of Art as the main scientific field and which has as goal the study and the valorisation of the Heritage latu sensu. In this manner, we also wanted to teach students how to contribute to its understanding, diffusion and monetization. At the same time, we wanted them to learn, by understanding, how Visual Culture is an interdisciplinary field of study that emerges with diachronic values (as source for the study of the urban space) but also with prospective values, since these projects 1 The
project was designed in two mandatory curricular units: Project Seminar I (1S) and Project Seminar II (2S).
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had as ultimate goal the establishment of a virtual exhibition, being published at Google Arts and Culture platform, in Portuguese and English. In fact, one of the many important aspects behind both MA degrees at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities from University of Porto is precisely the promotion of relationships between academic activity and the world of work, an aspect that markedly improves the image and the external projection of the degree in question, aside from contributing positively to other possible collaborations in future ventures with businesses and institutions alike. Moreover, one of the pivotal objectives of said MA is to train professionals with a solid understanding and knowledge in the field of Heritage and instil in them the ability to intervene in the conservation, maintenance, diffusion, and fruition of heritage sites, as well as promoting awareness and knowledge.
3 Porto World Heritage, Exhibition at Google Arts and Culture The first experience was focused on the historical centre site listed by UNESCO as World Heritage (Botelho et al. 2017).2 The design of the exhibition was defined by teachers and students who, throughout the school year, devoted themselves to fieldwork, research in libraries and archives and work done in the classroom context. So, the acquisition of research and selection skills was assumed as a main key. At the same time, we had to develop the interpretation and communication skills. We knew we were working on a very strong heritage site, very well-known and with a strong brand based on “postcard pictures”. We were facing a hard mission: to teach and to design, with a group of about 20 students, an exhibition to an international well-known virtual platform, with open access to visitors. We wanted to provide other insights into heritage, urban or landscape. So, since the very beginning, the selection of the images was not innocent and sought to construct a narrative based on a thorough investigation. It began with the identification of a previous discourse (motto), that informed the creation of the images and complementary texts. It was concluded with the definition of the main narrative, through the section of text of the virtual exhibition, directing the appreciation on the pictures. The proposal of the narrative/path was the result of this organic, experimental and collective process, and thus starts from the scientific knowledge produced about the object (Fig. 1).
2 We also presented a paper only published in the EAUH 2016 conference site: Botelho, M.L.; Rosas,
L.M.; Barreira, H.—“Porto World Heritage” Exhibition at Google Cultural Institute. In between a pedagogical experience and the creation of a heritage diffusion product. Session: “Imagining the city: virtual heritage in the iberian context”. EAUH Hensinki 2016 (24–27 AUGUST). Available at (restricted access): https://eauh2016.net/.
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Fig. 1 “Porto World Heritage” (2015). Exhibition frontpage at Google Arts and Culture. Available at: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/RQLCEH_-YYXCJg?hl=pt-PT
The Porto World Heritage exhibition aimed to present an “other look” at the Historic Centre of Porto, world heritage site. According to UNESCO [755], The Historic Centre of Oporto, Luiz I Bridge and Monastery of Serra do Pilar with its urban fabric and its many historic buildings bears remarkable testimony to the development over the past thousand years of a European city that looks outward to the sea for its cultural and commercial links (Criterion iv).
It was from this connection with the ocean that we began to build the narrative of the exhibition that was not restricted to the world heritage site area, but rather sought, through the presentation of various points of the city, to realize multiple connections. Through this exercise, students and the public are able to understand what is and what is not World Heritage of Porto and, most of all, to understand why. The Historic Centre of Porto owes its authenticity and undeniable cultural value to the combination of a complex urban fabric, and a peculiar built set, with a particular way of being, which bears witness to the identity and the idea of belonging to a community that it was shaping up over the centuries. World Heritage, here, is not only a monument, nor even a large collection of monuments, with its houses and streets, churches, majestic bridges… and wharves… not to mention the walls and the many stones… besides all the iron and the tiles… Here, World Heritage is the city. (Loza 2008, p. 28)
According to the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO 1972), sites are works of man or the combined works of nature and man, and areas including archaeological sites which are of outstanding universal value from the historical, aesthetic, ethnological, or anthropological point of view (Article 1). Preference was given to the aspects that define the city as “other than monuments”, drawing on the idea expressed in the work called Arquitectura Tradicional
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Portuguesa [Traditional Portuguese Architecture] by Ernesto Veiga de Oliveira and Fernando Galhano, who defined Porto as: Porto is a large city made up of small, irregular houses- with here and there some discrete palaces. And it is precisely this unique sense of contradiction, especially visible in the way most houses are narrow yet of varying sizes, that explains the apparent disorder of Porto’s visual landscape (…). (Oliveira and Galhano 1992, p. 301).
As it is impossible to grasp the city as a whole, it became the basis for the discourse of the exhibition. A build-up of the views of Porto was thus created, extending beyond the series of elements over historical time, enabling visitors to discover the city more in depth, a city based on successive urban developments over the centuries. Each of these views of Porto is a section that contains a text that guides the tour across the images. These images depict the characteristics of Porto, which can be considered good or bad, conversions or ruins. Based on these starting points, and using new photographs, we recover images of the city and deconstruct the narrative, glancing at a particular aspect or building, triggered by various conceptual stimuli. The exhibition is about the city and not the monument, which is relegated to the background. It goes beyond the building, revealing and enhancing various readings that seek to visually capture the environments provided by the merging of buildings in the city. Sometimes, the scale is dramatically changed, because the city is a living organism in which the theoretical and controlled plane clashes against the harsh reality of the buildings. On July 14, 2015, the first results were made known to the world, at a world opening that took place at the Noble Hall of the Rectory of the University of Porto. It was thus presented “Porto World Heritage” at Google Arts and Culture. This project has had an excellent impact in the academia and the media, particularly noteworthy is the involvement of the students, whose work, commitment, effort, and dedication were publicly acclaimed worldwide. To learn about the impact of the pedagogical experience on the students, we prepared a questionnaire to sound out the opinion of the students who participated in the exhibition and how they felt about the associated pedagogical experience. Ten students responded to the questionnaire. To learn about the impact of the pedagogical experience on the students, and about the possibility of creating a product, enabled by the project, we prepared two questions whose choice of answers were scored between 1 and 5, 5 being the highest. The data can be seen in the following charts, showing the average of given answers.
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1 - What do you find most important in learning from the preparation of the collection/construction of the exhibition? e) The of History of Art as a means to enhance heritage and increase its impact
4.7
d) A new view of the artistic object c) The ability to work in a team b) Collaborative work with other institutions and its implications
3.7 3 3.1
a) The stages in the creation of a cultural product with international projection
3.8
2 - What is the impact of creating a product?
d) Collaborative work c) Meeting deadlines b) Publication/visibility of the work done a) The possibility of creating a cultural product with international projection
3.5 3 3.9 4.2
Based on these responses, particularly noteworthy is the impact this experience had on students in raising their awareness of the role of History of Art in society, as an agent in enhancing and promoting heritage, and how it gave them the opportunity to create and publish a high-profile cultural product with international projection and added visibility. In addition, this experience also enabled students to obtain a different view of the heritage site, as their answers clearly show. In order to understand how this view evolved, one of the questions asked the students for their opinion on this aspect. The answers are summarized below. Assuming the students had an emotional relationship with the city of Porto, they highlighted the potential of photography as a means to experience the city and as a tool at the service of the researcher. The development of their critical skills and views
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Fig. 2 “Heritage and Landscape” (2016). Exhibition frontpage at Google Arts and Culture. Available at: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/sabrosa-território-e-património/7QKi4Qlq7 9p_LA
across the course curricula contributed to learning, professionally and academically. The project gave students the opportunity to work with various institutions in very different ways.3 Emphasis was also put on the clear, attractive and rigorous dissemination of knowledge, and the material and immaterial heritage were brought up for discussion. Due to the results of our first experience, in the following academic year (2015/2016) we developed a new project focused on a cultural heritage site, entitled “Sabrosa: Landscape and Heritage”. The Alto Douro Wine Region was inscribed on the UNESCO List (UNESCO [1046]) as an evolving and living cultural landscape (2001). The listing of the ADWR as World Heritage “involves the space and mankind and, consequently, the activity generated through a centuries-long relationship, which is constantly renovated by the soil, the cultivation of wine, wine production and a whole range of associated material and immaterial heritage assets”.4 Based on different starting points, the “Sabrosa: Heritage and Landscape” exhibition (Botelho et al. 2018) extends an invitation to visit the council of Sabrosa, offering a glimpse of a certain aspect of the landscape or heritage element. The exhibition focuses on the landscape, feeling the spirit of a place and its quality (Fig. 2). Despite the different nature of this site, a cultural landscape, this pedagogical experience based on a World Heritage Site was also important for the involved students and particularly for the teachers, as project coordinators. Due to this, in 3 In
this project we have had the institutional support of TVU (https://tv.up.pt/) and the Municipal Historical Archive of Porto (Casa do Infante) that provided us the copyrights, free of charge, of 30 images from the Municipal Historical Archive of Porto (Casa do Infante) to be included in the exhibition, following the cooperation agreement signed between the Porto City Council’s Cultural Office and the Board of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. 4 Centro Nacional de Cultura (2013: 46).
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the academic year of 2016/2017 we have submitted a new project to the University of Porto Pedagogical Innovation Projects’ call. “Porto de Virtudes” was among the 10 projects awarded in the 2017 (UP, Vídeo). We got funding that would allow us to accomplish the program. However, the schedule presented and approved in this call proved to be a real challenge for those involved in the project, managing an ambitious task list, a group of 22 students and an urban area in Porto, Virtudes, as a case study.
4 Porto de Virtudes, a Cultural Management Program The innovative character of the pedagogical project “Virtudes (Oporto): Exhibition at the Google Arts and Culture” resides in allowing an implementation of an integrated cultural management project and its real-world application to a specific object of study, the Virtudes urban space (Botelho and Rosas 2017). The ultimate goal of the aforementioned project is the dissemination of (scientific) knowledge of an urban space (Virtudes) by means of a digital platform intended for a global audience (Google Arts and Culture). The exhibition showed to be the anchor for a real cultural management program that would include a physical exhibition at Cooperativa Árvore, a program of thematic guided visits made up by students and the publication of an e-book (Fig. 3). Once the object of study was defined (i.e., the Virtudes urban space), the class was split into small work groups, in a total of six groups with an average number of four students each (Botelho and Rosas 2017, Table 1). We based our choice on Panitz’s statement (1996), “cooperation is a structure of numerous interactions designed toward facilitating the achievement of an objective or a final product” (Freitas and Freitas 2002, p. 22). Furthermore, it is widely reported that “experience
Fig. 3 “Porto de Virtudes” (2017). Exhibition frontpage at Google Arts and Culture. Available at: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/porto-de-virtudes/MQLSBHG_Fst6Jw
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has proved that more than four members in a single group hinders the work of the group as a whole” (Freitas and Freitas 2002, p. 40). The process of active learning on the part of the students has been progressively performed in two concrete stages, the first of which focused on scientific research (that is, learning what truly means to do scientific research through this project, from its infancy to its conclusion). The project in question was introduced to the students as an integral part of the research methods’ syllabus. Through the “learning by doing” method, the classroom as well as the Project and Research Methodology I course were converted in veritable research labs. The compulsion of unpublished sources coupled with the deep understanding of the important steps that were being taken to the comprehension of the urban space greatly stimulated the students; which, in turn, operated a positive effect on the quality of the presented results. The quality found in the students’ literary output on this matter justifies their publication, conferring a unique opportunity for the students to disseminate the results of their research through the publication of a group paper in the form of an e-book (complete with ISBN) which shall be organized in two distinct parts: (1) scientific papers that deal with the Virtudes urban space; (2) a bilingual catalogue (in English and in Portuguese) of the virtual exhibition (Barreira et al. 2017). The conducted research results were the basis for the construction of the whole project. Hence, the conception of the aforementioned virtual exhibition stems from the construction of a narrative of this heritage site. The motto of this exhibition was chosen; it is as follows: “In all the City, one finds neither a more genial nor a more agreeable place; for, aside from its alluring position framed by even Edifices, in a single glance one’s eyes revel in a sight that encapsulates the City, the Sea, the River, the Ships, the Hills, the Meadows, the Estates and the Palaces” (da Costa 2001, p. 33). The students designed the integrated cultural program themselves by employing their own diverse set of competences, thereby attaining active and pivotal roles in the aforementioned program and testing their own skills and knowledge. In this second phase, the work groups were organized in an optimal manner, a manner that allows for each individual’s own academic background and skills to play a particular and pivotal part in the project while also enabling the acquisition of competences that each student wants to potentiate in the future. Along with the virtual exhibition, the following activities were exclusively designed and implemented by the students, having the Cooperativa Árvore as the implementation basis: (a) the design of a logo which brought an image to the project and standardized all output, creating an image that was branded in t-shirts, tote bags, or other materials used by the students during the program days; (b) the execution of a physical exhibition, with identical contents to those of the virtual exposition and whose layout was totally planned and designed by the students; (c) the design and conduct of guided tours that materialized on the field the thematic approaches of the various sections of the virtual exhibition and the various chapters of the e-book; (d) the communication of the project through and on a myriad of platforms: newsletters (through partnerships to come), social media (Facebook, Instagram, and/or Twitter), flyers, posters, etc. (Porto de Virtudes)
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Fig. 4 “Porto de Virtudes” (2017). Exhibition opening at Cooperativa Árvore on the 29th June 2017. Photo by Laura Esteves
On June 29, 2017, the virtual exhibition “Porto de Virtudes” were made known at Google Arts and Culture platform. The world opening took place at the Cooperativa Árvore. At the same time the vernissage of the physical exhibition designed by the students took place and in the following two days the guided tours program was firstly tested and opened to the public (Figs. 4 and 5). The achieved reception, both by the public and by the institutions involved, led to a new development of the cultural program designed by the students at the 2017 European Heritage Days (22–23 September), adding now other components: conferences, safeguard actions at Virtudes and artistic workshops at Cooperativa Árvore.
5 Conclusion or About the Outcomes Both projects involved a learning method that allowed students to master methodologies and the vocabulary of scientific research, as they directly contacted with a concrete heritage case study which is or is part of a World Heritage Site. As the design of the projects advanced, the students developed skills to draw, construct, and disseminate heritage projects, identifying and cataloguing objects, and to build an expository narrative with a digital format in mind. We can not forget that the
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Fig. 5 “Porto de Virtudes” (2017). Students conducting guided tours at Paredão das Virtudes on the 30th June 2017. Photo by Maria Leonor Botelho
virtual exhibitions were the core of both projects analyzed in this paper, being the Porto World Heritage or the Porto de Virtudes. Cohesion and cooperation among students were encouraged, promoting an entrepreneurial spirit in order to answer a common goal. “Learning by doing” was the method. The creation knowledge acquired through a heritage project was the main goal. The ability to create cultural products in a pedagogical context was these projects’ central motivation. Firsthand, the exhibition’s creation at the Google Arts and Culture platform became an enriching learning experience for students, who produced the images, and wrote the text descriptions, and for teachers, curators, and authors of the section texts. They were also assumed as an exploratory instrument of research methodologies applied to a collective project. Both pedagogical experiences attested the importance of scientific research in the production of contents in the scope of Heritage and Culture, pedagogical context included, involving a varied group of students in a MA course. It also acts as a catalyst, by potentiating the students’ academic backgrounds into a common project. Furthermore, students effectively learn how to properly proceed with a research and, above all, for its operative component—a component that directly stems from active learning. The usage of coaching tools, i.e., the guidance of the students toward success, under a systematic process of learning, geared toward change, where both tools and resources for specific tasks are provided and which boost the performance in the fields that interest them (Bou Pérez 2009,
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p. 27). To these aspects, we must also refer the enhancement made to interpersonal relationships and to the students’ self-esteem as well as the improvement of the capacity for accepting the viewpoints of their peers (Freitas and Freitas 2002, p. 21). These aspects pave the way for a future in a professional position and prepare the potential researchers for tasks that entail not only understanding and assessing but also commissioning or supervising the research done by others (Winn 1995). And, in the end, they saw the results of their work being local and internationally recognized through the publication of the virtual exhibitions and through the implemented actions. Apart from the academic and pedagogical exercise itself, regarding the construction of the exhibitions and the cultural management program, our intention was to use the resulting product to establish the role that the University can have in the social, economic, and territorial development in the Cultural Heritage department and, especially, in the city of Porto. The collaboration of FLUP with the internationally renowned Google Arts and Culture platform arose at a time when the Digital Humanities are a driver for the development and dissemination of knowledge. Besides that, the collaboration with the municipality of Porto, with its Archive and with Cooperativa Árvore created an outstanding experience for students and also for teachers through the institutional relations established then. We also therefore believe that, having the virtual exhibitions as main anchors of the projects, we showed not only to the students, but also to the city community about the importance of scientific research in the production of heritage and cultural contents.
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UNESCO World Heritage List “Alto Douro Wine Region” [1046]. http://whc.UNESCO.org/en/list/ 1046. Accessed 20 Jan 2020 UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO [UP] Projetos de Inovação Pedagógica” [Projetos 2016/2017]. https://inovacaopedagogica.up.pt/42-2/excelencia-pedagogica/projetos-inovacao-pedagogica/. Accessed 20 Jan 2020 UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO [UP] (2017) Projetos de Inovação Pedagógica. U. Porto vídeo. https://tv.up.pt/videos/zupywmct. Accessed 20 Jan 2020 UNIVERSIDADE DO PORTO [UP] (2020) Plano Estratégico. U.Porto. https://sigarra.up.pt/up/pt/ web_gessi_docs.download_file?p_name=F279419777/Plano_Estrategico_U.Porto_2020.pdf. . Accessed 20 Jan 2020 Winn S (1995) Learning by doing: teaching research methods through student participation in a commissioned research project. Stud High Educ 20(2):203–214. https://doi.org/10.1080/030 75079512331381703, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03075079512331381703. . Accessed 20 Dec 2016
World Heritage Sites in Latin America: Conservation and Management Under a Value-Based Approach Mario Ferrada Aguilar
Abstract Since the approval, in 1972, of the World Convention on Cultural and Natural Heritage, until today, the Latin American continent has contributed to decentralizing the excessive primacy that the heritage assets of the regions of the developed world (Europe and the United States) had. Furthermore, it has attracted greater attention to the cultural diversities existing in the peripheral regions of the planet, which has allowed an enrichment of the categories and types of heritage. In a world of constant tension and change, between the pressures of global development, the inclemency of natural and human risks, and regional and local forces, World Heritage Sites are called to become spaces of enrichment of the multiple identities of the communities that give meaning to their places of roots. This type of property allows the resignification of people and communities with their changing natural, territorial, and landscape contexts, with ways of life and with social practices. It is for this reason that an adequate understanding of the role played by World Heritage Sites in the twenty-first century would allow us to face the urgent challenges of sustainable development, integrating the social, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions of the Latin American region. This work reflects on the new paradigm that should guide the conservation and management of these heritage assets, a pending and deficient aspect in the regional reality. That is, under an approach based on the meanings and values that the communities exercise as central actors in the process. Within the framework of this paradigm, the fundamental elements of a system of conservation and management of heritage assets are exposed. Among them, the work of monitoring and evaluating the state of conservation of its Universal and Exceptional Values, and its conditions of integrity and authenticity, stands out. Keywords World heritage sites in latin america · Conservation and management · Significance and values of heritage Mario Ferrada Aguilar—Dr. (C) Architect. Institute of History and Heritage - Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism - University of Chile. Expert Member CIVVIH-ICOMOS Scientific Committee. M. F. Aguilar (B) Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Institute of History and Heritage, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_11
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1 General Context of World Heritage Sites in Latin America On November 16, 1972, in Paris, UNESCO’s General Conference approved the World Convention for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage. The Convention arose from the confirmation that manifestations of cultural and natural heritage “are increasingly threatened by destruction, not only due to the traditional causes of deterioration, but also due to the evolution of social and economic life that worsens them with alteration phenomena or even more fearsome destruction.”1 Furthermore, it adds that in the presence of new dangers that threaten this heritage, “it is incumbent on the entire international community to participate in the protection of the cultural and natural heritage of exceptional universal value, providing collective assistance without replacing the action of the State.” Such situations demonstrate that UNESCO adopted provisions aimed at implementing an effective worldwide protection system, whose action is permanent and in accordance with modern scientific methods of conservation and preservation. The Sites inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List must meet the condition of showing that they have universal and exceptional values. For this, it is necessary that three fundamental pillars concur. Firstly, the property must be registered and meet at least one of the ten criteria for World Heritage (Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention). Secondly, the property must comply with the conditions of authenticity and integrity (defined in the same Guide); and thirdly, the property must demonstrate the existence of protection, management, and administration actions. These universal values mean that those sites have attributes that transcend the local geographic region or the country. In turn, the concept of exceptional values indicates that the properties inscribed on the World Heritage List are considered the most representative examples of a heritage type. The Convention defines and classifies heritage by its type and nature, among them, we find the cultural and natural heritage2 and according to its nature, we have the material and the intangible cultural heritage. However, we must point out that this taxonomy is relative, since at present it is understood that all material or built heritage is always involved with the immaterial aspects of heritage and vice versa. Thus, the most interesting aspect in formally identifying and recognizing the meaning and values of these heritages is that
1 UNESCO
(1972) World Committee of Cultural and Natural Heritage. Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. 17th General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, November 17–21. 2 Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention is a document periodically reviewed by the World Heritage Committee, and is intended to update new concepts and knowledge, as well as to provide guidance on the application procedures for inscriptions of assets, evaluation of their state of conservation and other technical matters. The most recent version of this Guide corresponds to 2019.
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Fig. 1 Statistical table of the World Heritage Sites registered by 2020, distributed by geographical region on the planet. Source own elaboration from data obtained in World Heritage Center, UNESCO
“the deterioration or disappearance of a cultural or natural heritage asset constitutes a fatal impoverishment of the heritage of all the peoples of the world.”3 Currently, 167 State Parties have sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, in accordance with the World Convention on Cultural and Natural Heritage (1972). World Heritage is organized in five cultural regions: Africa, Arab States, Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America and Latin America and the Caribbean (Fig. 1). According to data from the World Heritage Center (UNESCO), by 2020 a total of 1,121 sites have been registered worldwide. Of these, 869 correspond to cultural assets, 213 to natural assets, and 39 in mixed condition (cultural–natural). Two sites have been removed from the list and 59 others constitute the list of heritage in danger. Of the aforementioned universe, in the Latin American and Caribbean region, 28 States Parties have registered assets. The region contributes with 142 sites, of which 96 represent cultural assets, 38 natural assets, and 8 mixed assets (cultural–natural). The primacy of recognized assets is held by the Europe and North America region. The Latin American and Caribbean region is in third place of recognized assets (12.67% of the total), after Asia-Pacific (23.91% of the total). Compared with the situation in the regions of Europe and North America, these figures undoubtedly do not fully reflect the wealth of heritage in Latin America. Of the total assets in danger, the region shows six cases in this condition.4 3 PNUD-UNESCO
(1986), p. 85. UNDP-UNESCO. UNESCO conventions and recommendations on the protection of cultural heritage. Regional Project for Cultural Heritage and Development, UNDP-UNESCO, Lima, 1986, p. 85. 4 City of Potosí (Bolivia), Río Plátano (Honduras), Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California (Mexico), Fortifications of the Caribbean Side of Panama, Portobello-San Lorenzo (Panama), Archaeological Zone of Chan-Chan (Peru) and Choir and its Port (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela).
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Shortly after signing the World Convention on Cultural and Natural Heritage (Paris, 1972), in 1978 the Latin American region entered the World Heritage List, through the inscription of the Historic Center of Quito and the Galapagos Islands, both sites located in Ecuador. This inscription coincides with another one made in the same year, for the historic center of Krakow-Poland. Parallel to the expansion of the concept of heritage and the creation of new criteria approved by the Convention, since that date and up to the present day, other categories have been added, overcoming the initial tendency to recognize colonial expressions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until reaching the worldwide recognition of cultural manifestations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, in recent years we have observed the inscription of heritage from the first nineteenth-century modernity, such as industrial heritage, landscapes, and irreplaceable examples of modern Latin American architecture. It is enough to cite some examples of this recent trend: the Archaeological Landscape of the First Coffee Plantations (Cuba 2000), the Ensemble of Churches of Chiloé (Chile 2000), the Historic Area of the City-Port of Valparaíso (Chile 2003), the Humberstone and Santa Laura Mining Camps (Chile 2005), the Sewell Mining Center (Chile 2006), the Central Campus of the University City of Mexico (Mexico 2007), the Cultural Landscape of Coffee (Colombia 2011), the Andean Road System of the Qhapaq Ñan (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru 2014), the Industrial Heritage of Fray Bentos (Uruguay 2015), the Serial Architectural Works of the Modern Movement (Argentina, Belgium, France, Germany, India, Japan, and Switzerland 2016), and the Modern Ensemble of Pampulha (Brazil, 2016). The sites recognized in the continent are evident signs of a singularity not only on the metropolitan, but also on urban, neighborhood, and architectural scales. Through their rich cultural, social, natural, environmental and territorial diversities, the mentalities and life systems of pre-Hispanic aboriginal cultures are manifested in them, with the incidence and adaptation of colonizing cultures (Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, and French). The material heritage as immaterial involved represents a clear expression of an interculturality in permanent reconfiguration process, not exempt from ethnic, social, political, and economic conflicts (Figs. 2 and 3). Since the Convention, in the last 48 years the world has witnessed a radical deployment of heritage concepts, a phenomenon that until the 1970s used to be linked to specific monuments, buildings, places of worship, and even historical centers.5 One of the most relevant changes at the doctrinal and methodological level—to which the Latin American continent has ostensibly contributed—has been the need to recognize that the ethos of these patrimonies emerges in line with the territorial, social, and economic-productive systems,6 therefore, as “places” they are part of 5 The
conceptual scope of the term “heritage” has expanded from the limited conception of point monuments in the past. Currently, heritage encompasses entire territories and landscapes, urban centers, old industrial plants with their communication networks and housing, or military installations, nature reserves, etc. 6 In this regard, it is worth recalling the principles emanating from the 1967 Quito-Ecuador Colloquium Letter, prepared in the framework of the Meeting on the Conservation and Use of Monuments and Historic Sites, in which American experts in the area of patrimonial preservation participate. The
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Fig. 2 The historic centers of Quito, Ecuador and Krakow, Poland, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978. Sources World Heritage Center, UNESCO. Photographs by Francesco Bandarín and Geoff Steven
Fig. 3 Four properties inscribed on the World Heritage List that have recognized the importance of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century modernity, as well as expressions of the landscape in the Latin American reality. Examples of the Archaeological Landscape of Coffee Plantations in Cuba (2000), the churches of Chiloé, Chile (2000), the Historic Area of the City-Port of Valparaíso, Chile (2003) and the Modern Complex of Pampulha can be appreciated. Brazil (2016). Source Photographs from World Heritage Center, UNESCO
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contemporary life practices, maintained within the framework of the daily life of its inhabitants. It is in the territories and places that they are contained, where the heritage expresses the cultural value and the deep meanings that they carry. Thus, “the goal of conservation is to maintain the cultural value of a place, including measures for its safety, its maintenance and its future”. The current concerns revolving around the potential that Latin American World Heritage Sites imply: do not only focus on opening new types and scales of heritage that are necessary to recognize worldwide. Above all, today there is a growing interest in attending the ways in which cultural assets are produced, valued, and sustained. This fact has led to the monopoly breakdown that the world of experts has had for years, in order to pay more attention to the role that communities play in reinterpretation processes, through which meanings, values and attributes are assigned to their heritage, and consequently, to the crucial role they must play in decisions about their planning and management.7 However, in contemporary Latin American societies, the difficulty to adequately preserve and safeguard the values embodied in the sites is problematic and challenging, due to both endogenous and extrinsic causes that must always be kept in mind when management for preservation is carried out. Along with the recognition and awareness of the value that World Heritage Sites imply in the continent, with equal speed, the problems and challenges that their conservation and management demand have been increasing. Given this fact, as Crespo-Toral points out, currently “the list of World Heritage is becoming more and more extensive and it is necessary to take measures to observe and control the compliance with the Convention.”8 There are four factors that act interrelated giving the profile to this special continental reality of the sites and that have an impact on exposing the vulnerability of their heritage: (a) the social and economic conditions of their societies; (b) the pressures of contemporary global development; (c) the presence of high levels of risks caused by natural disasters and d) insufficient development of government public policies
Quito Colloquium constitutes an inaugural moment in which the objectives of the Venice Charter (1964) are translated into the reality of Latin America. It recognizes that heritage assets can become drivers of development in the Continent, because they represent an economic and social value that must be put at the service of society as a whole. 7 ICOMOS. Charter for the conservation of places of cultural value. Burra-Australia (1979–1982– 1988). In this regard, it is worth recalling the principles emanating from the 1967 Quito-Ecuador Colloquium Letter, prepared in the framework of the Meeting on the Conservation and Use of Monuments and Historic Sites, in which American experts in the area of patrimonial preservation participate. The Quito Colloquium constitutes an inaugural moment in which the objectives of the Venice Charter (1964) are translated into the reality of Latin America. It recognizes that heritage assets can become drivers of development in the Continent, because they represent an economic and social value that must be put at the service of society as a whole. ICOMOS. Charter for the conservation of places of cultural value. Burra-Australia (1979–1982– 1988). 8 Crespo-Toral (2002) The World Heritage Convention and its impact on Latin America, Magazine PH 40-41, Special Monograph: World Heritage (1972–2002), p. 166.
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aimed at incorporating heritage into development agendas. All of them, unless properly foreseen, jeopardize the integrity and authenticity of the sites, as well as the people who inhabit them. It is a fact that, on the continent, World Heritage is bound to cohabit with social, economic, and cultural inequality, which has remained as a historical and structural characteristic of Latin American societies. According to the report “Social Panorama of Latin America. 2018,” prepared by ECLAC (United Nations), Latin America and the Caribbean is the region with the highest inequality worldwide, surpassing Sub-Saharan Africa.9 Faced with a scenario that seems irreplaceable, the difficulty in eradicating poverty prevents access to development for millions of inhabitants, making access and usufruct of the assets that represent culture and heritage almost impossible. In this regard, the “Action Plan for Latin America and the Caribbean. Period 2014–2024,10 points out that the levels of poverty and the unequal distribution of income in broad sectors of society in the Latin American region, constitute a characteristic that cannot be ignored and in view of which the tasks of preserving and maintaining places must be seen as a priority. This has its effects on the dissimilar levels of institutionality of heritage policies in each of the countries of the region. As a result of the intense globalization that stresses local conditions, the search for integrity of the world heritage values of the Continent must be subject to the implications of a world economic order that tends to homogenize the cultural diversities on which traditional life practices are sustained. The visible face of this phenomenon is shown to us through a real difficult-to-control estate development and an invasive tourism that, most of the time, uses heritage as a consumer asset at the service of simulations, shows and virtual scenarios that have nothing to do with the authentic condition of the patrimonial assets. The global repercussions are crudely revealed in worrying replacement processes of traditional inhabitants (gentrification), which leads to the loss of residential uses in historical areas; extreme outsourcing of urban functions; change of economic-productive practices sustained in the cultivation of land in rural areas; increase in unemployment; development of large-scale architectural and urban projects that attack the historical, social and urban fabric and standardize solutions, eliminating local ways of life. To all this, causes related to disasters are added—most of the times of human origin—and increased by climate change—which cyclically affect many countries on the continent: earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, increased tidal levels, drought, and desertification of extensive productive areas, avalanches, and fires. Together with affecting people’s lives, they put the natural and cultural resources, involved in World Heritage properties, in danger of irreversible extinction. The progressive loss of these assets caused by these those disasters has become a great concern for 9 ORGANIZACIÓN
DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS-CEPAL. Panorama Social de América Latina (2018), p. 17. 10 Action Plan for Latin America and the Caribbean. 2014–2024 period. Prepared by the States Parties of the Latin American and Caribbean Region, in cooperation with the consultative organizations, the Category 2. Centers of the Region and the UNESCO World Heritage Center. Ratified at the meeting “Towards an Action Plan for Latin America and the Caribbean,” held in Brasilia, Brazil from April 23 to 25, 2014.
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UNESCO and organizations such as ICOMOS, ICCROM and IUCN,11 because it has been accepted that heritage is a powerful factor in social cohesion and sustainable development, especially in times of tension (UNISDR, 2002). It should be added that the effects of disasters on heritage assets—both cultural and natural—far exceed the damage derived from the normal deterioration produced by the passage of time. So, as has been shown, maintenance and preventive management measures, can contribute positively to disaster risk reduction. To the aforementioned factors, in most of the States that have the responsibility to protect and correctly develop World Heritage properties, there is a long way to go, in terms of establishing long-term sustained public policies, on which the actions of conservation and management of the assets are settled. This is reflected in the insufficient financial resources, the lack of trained technical and professional bodies, an inability to govern part of the communities, and/or a weakness in public policies, to which the State administrations are called. Despite that, there are promising signs in terms of greater self-awareness of communities in decision-making about their identity environments. In this plane of the problem, there is a certain consensus of the experts—not for that verified in reality—that both development pressures, as well as disasters, cannot be left out of public policies nor isolated from the methods of planning and management of land use, community concerns and social, cultural, and economic changes. In the framework of these structural problems, which characterize the nature and reality of the World Heritage properties of the Latin American region, it is necessary to reflect on the most effective ways to achieve the implementation of the World Convention on Cultural and Natural Heritage and thus, how to guide the gradual implementation of the measures agreed in the Global Strategy agreement of 1994 by UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee. The objective of this strategy is to encourage the States Parties to of the Convention to collaborate in broadening the definition of World Heritage and, thus, better reflect the cultural diversity of humanity, achieving the correct representation and balance of the assets that are part of or applied to be included on the list. In relation to the assets representativeness of the continent, the “Action Plan for Latin America and the Caribbean—Period 2014–2024—has identified a set of assets, which despite their exceptional nature and outstanding identity are still not sufficiently represented worldwide. These are urban historical areas, natural sites, landscapes, and archaeological heritage. Obviously, the achievement of greater representativeness forces an increase in the awareness of communities and government institutions, who ultimately fail the responsibility to permanent care and management of assets.
11 The
International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), the International Center for Studies for the Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), correspond to the expert advisory bodies from the UNESCO World Heritage Center.
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2 Conservation and Sustainable Management of World Heritage Sites in Latin America 2.1 Role of Cultural and Natural Heritage in Sustainable Development Since the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the paradigm of sustainable development has also encompassed spaces of cultural and natural heritage, which has allowed the integration of factors such as: (a) the protection of the environment, (b) the benefit of economic growth received by the communities, and (c) the principle of social equity. Sustainable development in the dynamics of the World Heritage properties of the Continent has become one of the most pressing and important paradigms of our time.12 Its importance lies in the challenge of achieving a pattern of rational use of finite resources, represented in the social, economic, cultural, and natural assets behind the Sites. That is to say, the goal is to produce a balance between the conservation of assets and the satisfaction of the current human needs—through a prudent use and usufruct, without jeopardizing the integrity of the heritage and its use by the future generations. In 2015, the United Nations Organization approved the 2030 Agenda, which contains 17 strategic objectives and 169 goals to achieve sustainable development. Objective 11 aims to promote inclusive, safe and resilient cities and human settlements, for whose achievement heritage and culture are established as the axes of sustainable development. Subsequently, at the Hangzhou Conference, held the same year, UNESCO considers that the dimension of the Historic Urban Landscape (in English, HUL, Historic Urban Landcape), recommended by this organization in 2011, can become a key tool for the purposes of the Agenda, since it is broad enough to accommodate heritage processes in their material and immaterial variables (Fig. 4). In Latin American countries, globalization, population growth, international and local migratory processes, the risk of disasters and the pressures of the economic development model have become phenomena that force us to reflect on the possibility of a new relationship between conservation heritage and sustainable development. In view of the problem, the way of formulating the public policies that correspond to the governmental instances in conjunction with the social actors cannot be limited to the task of passive conservation, applied in the past. On the contrary, as ICOMOS
12 Sustainable
development is currently a universally accepted goal and is present in most development policy proposals at the local, regional, national and global levels. Thanks to recent research, the concept of sustainable development has been associated with others such as “well-being,” the “good life” and even “happiness,” allowing them to be incorporated into public policies and their variable evaluation systems, subjective and qualitative in nature, avoiding the limitations of purely quantitative approaches.
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Fig. 4 Development pressures and disaster risks on World Heritage Sites in a global world. As an example, the image shows the effects of the earthquake of February 27, 2010 in central Chile and the continuous fires in the Site of the Historic Area of the City-Port of Valparaíso, Chile. Source Ministry of Housing and Urbanism, Chile (2010) and Mario Ferrada Aguilar (2016)
affirms, new ways of acting must “provide the tools and the framework to help shape, delineate and direct the development of tomorrow’s societies.”13 The relevance that intangible heritage values have taken has been a decisive factor in bringing the concept of sustainable development closer to the conservation objectives of World Heritage properties. Traditions, diverse ways of life, social practices, habits, and cultures of appropriation of the territorial space, institute the inseparable face of the built heritage, injecting it with its unique identity from which arise the universal and exceptional values recognized worldwide. Thus, understanding the legacy of the World Heritage properties of the continent responds to a set of living sites and not to static monuments in space-time, whose function is to give continuity to future human development. The role of World Heritage properties in sustainable development can be visualized from the following two perspectives: (A) Intrinsic perspective: It considers the interest of heritage conservation and development as an end that closes in on itself, and that tends to protect cultural and environmental resources for the use of present and future generations. This perspective is based on the belief that the conservation of the cultural and natural heritage diversities, aims to rescue the past, through inherited records, from what would be feasible to achieve physical and spiritual cohesion and well-being that are the components of society. (B) Instrumental and structural perspective: Considers that the conservation of heritage values and their management, in addition to attending to the intrinsic perspective indicated, can contribute to the achievement of broader goals, that is, increase social, environmental, and economic development. In this view, it is verified that World Heritage properties are part of a broader system of attributes and tend to benefit society as a whole, and therefore should not be 13 ICOMOS
(2011) 17th General Assembly and Scientific Symposium ‘Heritage, the engine of development’. November 27 to December 2. ICOMOS News, Vol. 18, No.1, p. 9. Paris-France, ICOMOS, 2011.
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separated from territorial dynamics, production systems and pressures of the contemporary world. It seems that the second perspective is the one closest to the purposes of the conservation of Latin American heritage; especially if it is considered the urgency required to improve the conditions of exclusion and socioeconomic inequality that the Continent faces. However, the conservation of assets as part of sustainable development cannot be taken as an automatic assumption. In Latin America, this is a task that must face the invasive pressures of the territory, the loss of entrenched economic-productive activities and the environmental risks generated by ongoing climate change. For this development to be truly sustainable from heritage resources, it is necessary that conservation and management policies and instruments transmit the three pillars that underpin sustainable development: social, economic, and environmental dimensions.14 From the aforementioned perspective, it is not feasible to artificially isolate the conservation policies of the Sites from those areas that promote the normal development of a society. If this happens, as Boccardi points out, external factors “will continue to penalize the practice of heritage, just as the isolated adoption of decisions on heritage management would penalize the relationship of heritage with its context.”15 It has been demonstrated, in numerous heritage assets in Latin America, that the losses and degradations experienced in the Sites originated from exogenous causes and from outside the limits of the registered area, in which the managers responsible for conservation lacked effective powers to face threats and reverse damage. As UNESCO points out, because of the broadening of the heritage concept, the relevance of the relationship between heritage assets and their surrounding areas, and the central role given to communities, it is not correct to protect the Sites in isolation “as museum objects, separated from natural or man-made disasters, or isolated from land use planning considerations.”16 They cannot be separated from the development or social changes that operate in the communities. Thus, it is clear that in the formulation of public policies, the wise combination of both intrinsic and structural perspectives, would strengthen the universal and outstanding meanings and values of the Continent Sites, in parallel with the undeniable need to contribute to a better welfare of society. The implementation of this approach would facilitate the deployment of all capacities of the cultural and natural heritage, and positively influence development policies and management instruments in accordance with the global and local scales of the problem.
14 Boccardi
(2007). (2012). Introduction to heritage and sustainable development. Document presented in the special module on sustainable development of the ICCROM course on the conservation of built heritage. 16 UNESCO/ ICOMOS/ ICCROM/ IUCN (2014). Reference Manual for the Management of World Cultural Heritage, Paris, UNESCO, p. 14. 15 Boccardi
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2.2 Conservation and Management of Latin American World Heritage Properties In the field of sustainable heritage development, the concept of management has been used in a general way, a situation that is changing as the factors that shape the problem increase. As the “Reference Manual for the Management of Cultural Heritage” points out, management approaches must adapt to change, be broader in scope and inclusive of in the communities where development is shared, which leads to the proposal of a “participatory approach to management.”17 One of the signs of the effectiveness of this approach is the benefit received by local stakeholders who are not in charge of the Site administration. It is the benefit of interest groups that are not in charge of the day-to-day administration of the site. This becomes more relevant when considering that the territories that are the subject of management often show a diversified ownership of the assets to be conserved and developed, with a multiplicity of interests, such as when it comes to urban areas or landscapes. As heritage is perceived as a common asset of diverse communities, management acquires a dimension not only local, but also regional and even national. It is desirable that the conservation-management binomial of World Heritage properties be included in an effective public policy, since an increasing number of actors, public and private agents and interest groups intervene in the process. Decisions on what to do and how to project development based on heritage values rests with a dynamic field, whose diversity of views, not always convergent, must be articulated to socially legitimize those of technical-administrative acts and actions, assumed by the State bodies. In this case, public administrators are called to interact with stakeholders, mediating the design, planning and application of the agreed conservation and management systems. From this, the definition of the management plans, management, and other normative instruments, placed at service of the World Heritage properties of the Latin American region, represents a crucial stage when it comes to prosecuting a sustainable development of resources. The incidence of sustainable development in the social, environmental, and economic spheres is fundamental for assets that, on the Continent, integrate complex and extensive territorial systems, such as historical urban areas, rural areas, communal systems, economically productive territories, units of landscape and even complete urban and rural systems. In all of these, the subsistence, quality of life and economic-productive activities, exercised by the communities, depend, largely, on the capacity and effectiveness of the Site’s management systems.
17 According
to the UNESCO World Heritage Center, a “governance system” maintains a balance between social and economic objectives and between individual and community goals. Its purpose is to promote the efficient use of resources and to demand responsibilities for the administration of those resources. What is sought aims to align as far as possible the interests of individuals, cultural heritage and society. UNESCO/ICOMOS/ICCROM/IUCN (2014). Reference Manual for the Management of World Cultural Heritage, Paris, UNESCO, p. 78.
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Consequently, conceptual and methodological changes are aimed at making public policies and their conservation and management systems dynamic and flexible over time, and facilitating participatory and democratic decision-making involving all the actors in the process, installing a “governance system.” Precisely, many times these management instruments fail, when in their principles and strategic design they ignore the active role of local counterparts. Even the shared decision-making process is weakened, when these communities are called only to act in a passive and informative role, weakening the sustainability of the process of managing their heritage assets. An approach that fails to attract the active and committed participation of interest groups, especially those most marginalized, may cause a failure of topdown plans, programs, and projects. A participatory-active approach to the sustainable management of World Heritage Sites in the region must be capable of integrating the wide range of social actors in its formulation and implementation, respecting the diversity of their interests and abilities; to public institutional actors and community of experts, who contribute with their experience, techniques, and methodologies; and to private actors or agents with induce economic, social, and cultural dynamics. A management system organized in this way, which always has at its center the heritage values to preserve and develop, will make it easier for each actor to feel co-responsible and recipient of the benefits that the process brings over time. The public policies to which the States Parties of the Continent that have assets inscribed on the World Heritage List are obliged face a set of obstacles and potentialities to overcome and develop. Public policies that are obliged by the States Parties of the Continent that have assets inscribed on the World Heritage List, face a set of obstacles and potentials to overcome and develop. It is essential that public and private actors in society attend to the institutional, administrative and legal frameworks. The definition of the governance system is crucial when making the conservation and development of assets a viable model viable, as well as the incorporation of local knowledge and knowledge, from which the inevitable transformation of meanings and values rapidly change global culture. Due to the fact that public policies are developed within a specific cultural framework, their elaboration and application is more a matter of constant experimentation and improvement, than a prefigured abstract model. In this way, the degrees of relative success or failure of public policies and their conservation and management instruments depend largely on a shared and participatory evaluation and monitoring exercise. It is necessary that through this measurement, the factors of change be incorporated, within a holistic context where assets cannot be treated as isolated elements. Apparently, one of the greatest challenges of World Heritage public policies and instruments is evaluate the changes that must be accepted and reject those that involve risks to the deep values that gave it meaning. Due to the inherent complexity of the Sites, it is currently preferred to use the term “heritage management and conservation systems.” In them, the interrelated crossing of a series of processes is verified, which in time provide a sequenced chain of results, reintroduced into the system in order to promote an upward spiral of improvements
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and corrections. These are related to the instruments for the protection of assets and the tools that link them to the social, economic, and environmental development in which they are inserted and operate. The conservation and management systems of the Sites vary according to the local institutional and social culture, which is why, on some occasions, they are assumed by the public administrations of the State, and on others by duly prepared social organizations, articulated with the former. Notwithstanding conservation and management are an integral part of the same problem that affects the Sites; conceptually their scope and purposes should not be confused. Conservation is defined by all the actions that the State’s institutional framework formulates and implements—at its national, regional, and local levels—in order to protect universal and exceptional values, taking care for the legal protection of its integrity and authenticity conditions. Instead, management is defined as the set of actions carried out by public institutions and organized by social actors, to achieve a sustainable development of assets in social, economic, environmental, and territorial terms, through which progress is oriented in the present and future of society as a whole.
3 Toward the Diversity and Greater Representation of the Sites From 1972 to the 1990s, the properties inscribed and nominated on the World Heritage List had operated due to a reductionist and limiting bias in the planet’s wealth. However, the history of art, architecture, urban planning, and sciences such as archeology, anthropology, and ethnology had discovered a complex and multidimensional reality of cultural and natural heritage. Said reality was not recognized in the List and reflected social aspects, structures, ways of life, beliefs, knowledge systems, and representations of past and present cultures. In the referred period, the assets overrepresentation in the List was given by Europe over other cultural regions; for historical cities and religious architectures over other types of heritage; for manifestations of Christianity over other beliefs; for erudite architectures over vernacular architectures; and prehistory and the twentieth century constituted underrepresented historical periods. In other words, the richness, complexity, and depth of living and traditional cultures, along with their diversity of environmental, social, economic, productive, philosophical, and symbolic connections with nature, were not sufficiently represented in the List. Various studies carried out by ICOMOS agreed that the reasons for the gaps in the World Heritage List fall into two main categories: structural: related to the World Heritage nomination process and for the management and protection of cultural property; and qualitative: related to the way properties are identified and evaluated. This concern was addressed at the 17th Meeting of UNESCO’s World Heritage
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Committee, held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, in 1993,18 where the community of experts had exposed their attention to the need to update the principles derived from the 1972 Convention. From this, at the 18th Meeting of the World Heritage Committee, held in 1994 (Phuket, Thailand) and then at the 24th Meeting of this committee held in 2000 (Cairns, Australia), the diagnosed issues were systematized and the central axes of the so-called ‘Global Strategy’ were formulated, which are in force for World Heritage Sites. At the 1994 meeting, the lack of balance of the properties inscribed on the List, was proven by confirming that out of a total of 410 cases, 304 corresponded to cultural sites, 90 to natural sites and 16 mixed (cultural and natural), Being the highest percentage of assets located in Europe. The Global Strategy aims to ensure that the assets included in the World Heritage List reflect the cultural and natural diversity of the properties, for which it must be representative, balanced, and credible. The document of the 18th Meeting stated that it was necessary to observe “(…) the way in which the different societies looked at themselves - their values, history and the relationships that they maintained or had with other societies.”19 Therefore, each asset should be considered within the material and immaterial context in which it appeared and developed. In relation to the tasks of identification, conservation and sustainable management of Latin American assets, the impacts of the Global Strategy are relevant to consider when implementing the processes of significance, preparation of the Indicative Lists and nominations developed by the States Parties to the Convention. The Global Strategy aims to: (a) improve the application of Section one of the Convention, by expanding criterion V, related to traditional human settlements, representation of a culture and its interaction with the environment; (b) to distribute equitably the representation of properties by region in the world; (c) to establish new categories of properties in response to the proposals elaborated by the advisory bodies of the World Heritage Center; (d) to limit to a maximum of 30 new sites registered annually (decision adopted since 2003); (e) to guarantee the adequate management of the properties inscribed on the List and (f) to prepare periodic reports on the state of conservation, integrity and authenticity of universal and exceptional values.
4 Paradigm Shift in the Management of World Heritage Sites From the conventional approach to the value-based approach Following Marina Waisman’s thinking, the construction of a definition of what we understand by cultural and natural heritage, from which we are able to sketch a 18 UNESCO
(1993) 17th Meeting of the World Heritage Committee. Convention for the Protection of Cultural and Natural Heritage. Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, December 6–11. 19 UNESCO (1994) 18th World Heritage Committee Meeting. Phuket, Thailand, November 12–17.
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conservation paradigm of the Sites, “could not be attempted if it was not determined beforehand what it would be the cultural project, from which the set of objects to be considered relevant will be valued. For no object can be assigned or recognized value -or meaning- (…) if it is not in relation to a human group.” Within the cultural projects that translate the Latin American reality, two types of approaches coexist aimed at managing World Heritage properties. We refer to the “Conventional Approach and the Value-based Approach.”20 The studies and methodologies elaborated for a long time by ICOMOS, ICCROM, and IUCN—expert advisory organizations of UNESCO— reveal the historical transition between these approaches, whose conceptual turn is necessary to know and differentiate when projecting public policies and systems of conservation and management of the Sites. Conventional approach: This way of conceiving the management has its origin in the first European practices of urban and architectural conservation of the Modern Movement in the decades of 1950–60, whose main objective was the recovery and reintegration of the constructed historical fabric, especially in its material dimension, remitted to monuments and sites that should be preserved for future generations. In 1964, this approach gained its doctrinal acceptance status in the Venice Charter and the input of world experts organized at ICOMOS. This approach translated into four correlative steps. The starting point was to define the patrimonial objects to be treated, whose meaning was taken as implicit. Then we proceeded to the documentation phase of the assets inserted in the historical fabric. The third step was to generate a diagnosis to assess the state of conservation of the property. And finally, the planning of conservation interventional actions was prepared. Value-based approach: This approach responds to the increasing complexity that heritage management is becoming, and originated from experiences implemented in Canada and the United States, and then, spread doctrinally through the Burra-Australia Charter in 1979 and its subsequent updates. The approach innovates while respecting what is conventionally applied, and has the evaluation of a place’s significance based on the values attributed by the social groups involved, and not only on the values defined by the experts and technicians of the heritage.21 The concepts and methodological guidelines derived from a management based on values became a requirement when preparing a “Declaration of Meaning,” as support for applications to the World Heritage List, as well as for the formulation of strategies and conservation and management plans for declared assets. Later, in 1982, the precepts of the new gaze were systematized by James Kerr, who translated them into instruments for the conservation, planning and management of World Heritage properties. From this moment, the cultural significance that a specific society assigns to a place becomes 20 Waisman (1990) The interior of the story. Architectural historiography for use by Latin Americans.
Bogotá-Colombia, Editorial Escala, p. 127. Hernández (1996) The value of historical heritage. Complutum Extra Magazine, No. 6, Vol. II, pp. 215–224.
21 Ballart
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the basis of the various heritage values that it identifies and intends to preserve and develop. Unlike the traditional one, in the value-based approach the sequence of actions is altered. The first phase is defined by the gathering and organization of the information that affects the asset. The second step consists of the identification and evaluation of the systems of meaning, valuation, and attributes of the asset by the communities. In addition, the third step evaluates the conservation state of the property and its meanings, to finally arrive at the planning phase of the management actions. In this approach, assessment is an act that tries to converge the specialized knowledge of the experts with the life experience of the communities. A very common mistake— committed even by public institutions and heritage professionals—is to believe that the assessment is the simple description of the typological, formal, spatial, constructive, or stylistic qualities of an architectural ensemble or an urban historical area. Contrary to this belief, valuation is a technical and at the same time a social act, which requires moving from a simple description to the qualification of the property: in the case of the Sites, their exceptional, unique, and outstanding characteristics that must be preserved. The key in this approach lies in the fact that the meaning and valuation of the asset is not an implicit knowledge or pre-schematized by experts or government actors, but, on the contrary, it is the final product of an established communication process with the people who inhabit the asset. Thus, the importance of the approach consists in being able to reveal from the beginning each one of the value judgments that the communities make about the historical, ecological, cultural, landscape, aesthetic, social, and technological meanings of the asset. From this identification of values, we proceed to define the level of vulnerability to which the asset is exposed, or that could affect it in the future, such as its physical condition, uses, damage from disasters, damage from anthropic actions, or threats infringed by weakness or absence of conservation or management actions. The ethos of a heritage asset is defined by its values, those that do not inhabit things in themselves, but in the anthropological, aesthetic and cultural relationship that is established between people and those things. As Ballart points out, “Value is not always inherent in things. It is a relative concept subject to the fluctuations of human perception and behavior (…) and value is dependent on a framework of intellectual, historical, cultural and psychological references that varies with the people and groups that attribute this value.” The role played by the allocation of values in the entire process of conservation and management of an asset can be explained by demonstrating that they are an essential component of the appreciation, emotionality and closeness that people build toward certain material and immaterial elements of their context of life with its deepest cultural manifestations. For the simple intrinsic merit that they treasure, for their usefulness in daily life, for the degree of symbolization of identities, for being satisfying material and spiritual needs or for the simple fact that they bring us enjoyment and well-being. Due to the fact that value-based approach is useful for managing heritage assets, adjusting to the permanent changes in culture allows the decision-making process adjust to social reality. From this, it is explained why conservation and management
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Fig. 5 The values-based approach focuses its attention on the protagonism of the communities and on the acceptance of change as an inherent factor in the production of new meanings, values and heritage. The image shows the march “The heritage is the communities”, on May 24, 2014. Source Sebastián Medina, Radio Cooperativa, Chile, 2020
instruments should not be static either, but adaptable as new interests and meanings of those who inhabit a place appear, as well as natural or anthropogenic risks not foreseen or non-existent in the past. Similarly, the principles, criteria and legal norms of action on heritage should be updated, in response to the emergence of new interests, mentalities, and tastes of those who inhabit the city, as well as those who locally, regionally and nationally administer the place. Consequently, the meanings, values and attributes of World Heritage properties are directly related to the sustainability of development, because through them we can preserve ties of roots and belonging in a rapidly changing world. This new perspective explains why in recent years we have experienced a significant increase in new categories of World Heritage related to the environment, social processes and economic production practices in the territory (Fig. 5).
4.1 Structure of a Conservational and Management Model The management of World Heritage Sites can be understood as the set of actions programmed to aim achieving optimal conservation of heritage assets and their use appropriate use to contemporary social demands. According to Cabezas Capetillo, a cultural heritage management model is “the description of the administrative process that exists or will be implemented within an organization in order to organize the
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resources that will contribute to the sustainability of immovable cultural heritage.”22 A conservational and management model are two important challenges to consider. The first is to clearly identify the components of the management mechanism with subsequent acceptance by the bodies responsible for implementing it. And the second is given by the execution of a permanent review process or monitoring, respecting the various results produced by the components of the heritage management plan or program. For Cabezas Capetillo, the achievement of these two challenges is conditioned to previously having a “common vision” of the process to be developed. This means reaching a political consensus, through a form of “governance,” between the social and institutional actors involved—aa global and shared strategic vision of heritage development that is to be achieved in the long term.23 For its part, the Reference Manual for the Management of World Cultural Heritage prepared by UNESCO through the contribution of ICOMOS, ICCROM, and IUCN maintains a model or system of conservation and management of assets, consisting of three related frames. The first is a legal framework, which constitutes the mandate that empowers social actors and public and private organizations—they define what constitutes heritage, as well as the criteria for its preservation and management, generally through legal and regulatory instruments. The second is an institutional framework in which decisions are organized, channeled, and legitimized, based on an organizational scheme that determines an operational structure and work methods intended for the implementation of actions. The third is a framework of human, financial, and technical-professional resources, through which the capacity is generated to operate and facilitate the conservation and management processes. Thanks to these three frameworks of action, it is possible to induce the activation of three substantial processes. These are planning, concrete execution of intervention actions and monitoring and evaluation of processes. Monitoring and evaluating the management of World Heritage properties in Latin America As previously stated, currently the properties inscribed on the World Heritage List face increasing natural and human risks as a result of climate change and often without the corresponding conservation and management systems. Within the framework of conservation instruments, there is the task of monitoring these assets, since the care of heritage requires measuring the behavior of its universal and exceptional values over time, according to the changes in culture, societies, and contemporary development processes. As Teixeira Coelho and Rodrigues de Carvalho have pointed out, from the concept of preventive conservation, a series of tools have been defined for the identification, monitoring, and evaluation of cultural assets. From this perspective, monitoring can be effectively understood as a task of “conservation assessment,24 ” 22 Ballart
Hernández and Juan I Tresseras (2008), p. 189. Capetillo (2018), p. 30. 24 Mendes Zancheti and Ferreira Hidaka (2012) An indicator to measure the state of conservation of urban heritage sites. Mendes Zancheti, Silvio and Simila, Katriina (Editors). Measuring heritage. Conservation perfomance. 6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation, Recife-Brazil, ICCROM-CECI, p. 121. 23 Cabezas
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whose methodology proposes an integrated analysis of different factors, such as climate, microclimate, building, public spaces, social practices, and organizational aspects related to asset management.25 Monitoring is a dynamic multidimensional and multi-institutional information system, sequenced over time, which is part of a conservation and management model that must be applied periodically and requires to be endowed with qualitative and quantitative indicators and their respective descriptors. All are intended to evaluate three fundamental aspects: a) the state of the universal and exceptional values of the property; b) the response levels of the property to external pressures, and c) the response levels of the property to management. A monitoring system is a highly technical task, whose main responsibility is the State Party in charge of the property, coordinating the action of public bodies, groups of society and private agents, and whose work is intended to facilitate the making of decisions in the conservation and management of the Sites, under objective knowledge. Evaluating the intrinsic and extrinsic behavior of assets over time, in the long run, allows the establishment of a control method over the tasks of preserving the conditions of integrity and authenticity of the elements and relationships that make up the heritage essence of each site. In this regard, measuring the level of maintenance of both factors collaborates in the development of cultural diversities and the maintenance of the specific social contexts in which each type of heritage arises. The authenticity that is expected to be safeguarded through monitoring is framed in what the Nara-Japan Charter (1994) has pointed out, when it establishes that “The diversity of cultural heritage exists in time and space, and demands respect for other cultures and all aspects of their belief systems.” The formulation of periodic monitoring requires considering the confluence of at least four fundamental systems that are interrelated: a) the natural and environmental system, b) the cultural system, c) the social system, and d) the economic system, in order to give sustainability to the active cultural dynamics that the communities experience regarding a territory in permanent transformation. As can be seen, it is an activity that requires high coordination and an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional perspective, attended by the communities that inhabit the asset. The requirements for monitoring the state of conservation of the Sites are determined in the Cultural and Natural Heritage Convention (Act. 29) and in the Operational Guide for its implementation. In addition, the advisory bodies of the World Heritage Center prepare reference manuals, aimed at providing methodological support and experiences in these matters. One of them is the Paper 10 of World Heritage Monitoring, Venice-Italy (2002). Based on the monitoring systems that each State Party is obliged to apply to its local reality, the World Heritage Center, through its technical advisory bodies, produces regional periodic reports on the conservation state of conservation of each 25 Teixeira
Coelho and Rodrigues de Carvalho (2012) The valuation of conservation as a tool for the identification of cultural heritage, its monitoring and evaluation. Mendes Zancheti, Silvio and Simila, Katriina (Editors). Measuring heritage. Conservation perfomance. 6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation, Recife-Brazil, ICCROM-CECI, p. 30.
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of the Sites inscribed on the List. Furthermore, these reports provide information on changes in the social, political and economic context, on the implementation state of the World Heritage Convention and management practices in the region. The collected information is used by UNESCO to establish recommendations to each State, regarding improvements to the conservation and/or management systems, and may, in extreme cases, decide on the incorporation of the property on the List of Heritages in Danger or, definitively, eliminate it from the World Heritage List. When a property is threatened by actions, plans, projects or other circumstances that violate its values, authenticity, and integrity, the World Heritage Center can decide, with the consent of the State party, the application of the so-called Reactive Monitoring. However, despite the importance that Periodic Reports may have, what is required is to have systems and instruments for monitoring and following up the Sites, with which it is possible to identify changes in their conservation status, as well as the transformations of each environment (be it its buffer area or even beyond its limits), “in a period of time short enough to activate control measures to prevent, correct or mitigate problems and address conservation.” In the context of the Periodic Reports, presented in Session N° 28 of the World Heritage Committee (Suzhou-China, 2004) a list of the 14 factors that most frequently affect the state of conservation of World Heritage properties was exposed.26 Of these, the following should be highlighted: real estate development, infrastructure and transportation, environmental pollution, modification of biological–environmental balances, activities that affect the social uses of heritage, severe climate change and events, natural disasters and institutional management factors. In relation to the conservation state of properties inserted in Latin America and the Caribbean, the indicated report establishes that, in general, the concepts of universal and exceptional values, integrity and authenticity, as well as the requirements for the conservation and management of the Sites, are little known or barely understood by those who in practice have responsibility for the assets. The report added, affirming that “Even so, there is a relatively high number of Reports where changes in the authenticity or integrity of the assets are foreseen and the mechanisms for their management are considered insufficient. In a large number of cases, there are no management plans, programs for public use, emergency and risk preparedness schemes, or monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.”27 Having commented on this report, Alfredo Conti (2006) affirms that the most relevant data is that, out of a total of 18 surveyed properties, only 16.66% report the existence of a formal follow-up or monitoring system. Additionally, he points out that only some cases have a monitoring system, but that they do not have indicators; or on the contrary, that with indicators, there is no monitoring system, which is an alarming situation because a large number of assets correspond to historic cities. From the Report on the status of assets in the Continent, the conclusion arises that 26 The list was established after a two-year consultation process with experts in both fields of natural and cultural heritage. It consists of a series of 14 primary factors, each encompassing a series of secondary factors. 27 UNESCO (2004), p. 8.
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“there is no complete understanding about the importance of monitoring registered assets, as it is necessary to go into depth in methods and in the use of reliable and verifiable indicators, and finally, a sort of divorce between conceptual and theoretical advances and practices (…).”28 Based on the conclusions of the report, it was proposed that at the regional and subregional level in Latin America, programs and plans should be developed to facilitate a better understanding of the Convention meaning. Specifically, it was recommended that management plans include evaluation and monitoring mechanisms, along with preventive actions for emergencies and risks. The urgent promotion of local technical capacities was required to establish these monitoring mechanisms, which must include the “definition of indicators to measure the state of conservation and the effectiveness of management, especially for complex management situations such as ecosystems and World Heritage cities.”29 Everything indicated is reflected in the normal practice that is evident in the assets of the Continent. Here, when exists, the activity of monitoring, in general, is only limited to the preparation of registers and records of the conservational state—be it of buildings, public spaces, or specific topics—which is insufficient and inoperative when it comes to visualizing processes and assets’ impact factors that are eminently dynamic and changeable in a relatively short time. On the contrary, a monitoring system, in order to be really effective in measuring the natural and human pressures that affect universal and exceptional values, and their conditions of integrity and authenticity, should have indicators and descriptions that help measure trends in damage or improvement over time, the effects of management and the levels of vulnerability to which the Sites are exposed. Although there is an important series of observatories in the context of cultural heritage worldwide, within the scope of Latin American Sites there is a notable lack of a body in charge of carrying out these monitoring capacities, from whose results it is derived the greatest utility of conservation and management systems. One of the tasks to be carried out, and which would allow progress in this need for effective monitoring, is to be able to translate the statements of universal and exceptional values defined at the time of registration of each of the Sites, to a level of greater specificity in the attributes derived from those values. That is, to determine the particular features of the material and immaterial attributes of each asset, its morphological, spatial, typological, functional, material, and constructive characteristics. With this definition, greater clarity would be achieved on the type of indicators to be determined and applied in each of the dimensions that affect the asset, knowing its causes, levels of incidence, recurrence and effects. The final product of the knowledge provided by this periodic information would result in sound decision-making by government bodies—the rational use of the always scarce financial resources and the definition of conservation and management systems adjusted to the unique characteristics of the property.
28 Ibid. 29 UNESCO
(2004), p. 119.
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However, regarding the indicators, they form the very heart of a monitoring system. As Mendes Zancheti and Ferreira Hidaka affirm, they are considered “a valuable instrument to be included by UNESCO in the system of monitoring the conservation state of urban centers included in the World Heritage List.”30 The document itself on Authenticity of Cultural Heritage (Nara-Japan, 1994), establishes that knowledge and understanding of the information sources that each community elaborates regarding its heritage values, constitutes a basic requirement to evaluate all aspects of its authenticity, which is a situation that depends on the degree of credibility and veracity of the available information sources. These authors consider that in the case of the conservation of World Heritage Sites, the use of indicators is relatively new. For this reason, it is necessary to assess an exploratory exercise, adapting international theory to the conditions of the local reality of the Sites, in this case, the Latin Americans. In 2007, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee established a systematized set of four goals that the indicators must meet within a monitoring and evaluation system. These include: a) maintaining the significance and preserving the universal and exceptional values of the Sites, b) preserving the integrity and authenticity of the assets and their components, c) identifying and measuring the risk factors that impact on the assets, and d) evaluate the performance of the conservation and management systems in the Sites. The cultural heritage monitoring indicators are mainly intended to show the trends of change presented by the assets, allow the comparison of the same asset with respect to the changes it experiences over time, allowing assets to be compared with each other, and finally allow the performance of an asset to be compared to international conservation criteria and standards (UNESCO— ICOMOS—ICCROM—IUCN). According to the intrinsic or extrinsic behavior that World Heritage properties demonstrate, the indicators can be classified into the following three fundamental groups: (a) Development pressure indicators: allow detecting and measuring the threats caused by pressure factors of contemporary development. Among them, for example, the effects of climate change, pollution, real estate development, global migration processes, invasive tourism, and infrastructure. (b) State of the asset indicators: capable of detecting and measuring the types and levels of aggressions suffered by assets in their universal and exceptional values, and in their conditions of authenticity and integrity. They consider historical, social, cultural, territorial, productive, landscaping, urban and architectural values, with all the elements that give it its attributes. (c) Response indicators: facilitate the detection and measurement of the types and degrees of response that the assets present to conservation, management and intervention plans, programs, or projects. These include, for example, legal and regulatory instruments, master plans, master plans, management plans, etc.
30 Mendes
Zancheti and Ferreira Hidaka (2012), p. 121.
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5 Final Balance and Conclusions Under the current context of accelerated change experienced by concepts related to cultural and natural heritage, and the constant pressures of change taking place in a global and local scenarios, it is clear that the World Heritage Sites of Latin America are exposed to a set of threats, challenges and great potential. Facing all these circumstances is obviously a complex task that’s not easily resolved, so it requires the greatest efforts of the States Parties, communities, experts and private agents, aimed at achieving a correct understanding and implementation of the World Convention on Cultural and Natural Heritage. The assets of the Continent not only need to be better represented in the context of world heritage, but also collaborate in this way to achieve the balance and representativeness for which UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee works. Above all, they need to express their rich social, cultural and identity diversity, inserting heritage—as the Quito Colloquium (1978) proposed forty-three years ago—within the framework of long-term sustainable development, which are capable of concretely provide solutions to the expected social, economic and cultural progress of their communities. Greater involvement and attention of government bodies, within a highly participatory framework of decisions, made the conservation and management of their assets something not only desirable, but also enforceable at the present time, especially if we consider that they are the States Parties, the participants of the Convention to the international community, through UNESCO. The conservation and management of the meanings, the universal and exceptional values and the conditions of integrity and authenticity of the Latin American Sites would be greatly benefited if a value-based model is were chosen. That is, to support the care of the cultural and natural heritage, accepting that its values are relative to the social and cultural change that the communities experience. This is not an easy task either if we consider the enormous pressure exerted by various interest groups at the global level, gradually diluting local sociocultural practices rooted in their territories, customs, and modes of economic production. It will be enough strive to achieve a fair balance between the need for contemporary development and the lawful demand regarding living traditions. In the operational dimension of these problems, there is no doubt that Latin America needs to overcome serious shortcomings in the formulation, design and application of systems for the conservation and management of its assets, which allows it to give effective sustainability to social, economic and environmental development of its cultural and natural heritage. This enables the creative safeguarding of the intrinsic universal and exceptional values of the Sites, without, therefore, neglecting their integration with the broader dynamics of development, which allows experiencing assets as essential resources in daily life of people and related actors. Latin American countries are obliged to formulate their own cultural projects in which they need to incorporate the management of natural and anthropogenic risk as a central factor in the definition of actions for the conservation and management of assets.
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Such action will help to properly understand the variety of threats, as well as to control, as far as technically possible, the vulnerability factors of the cultural and natural heritage involved. It has been exposed the importance to have monitoring and follow-up systems, equipped with adequate indicators for the conservation and management of the Sites. By implementing a culture of measuring the factors that affect assets, it will be possible to have updated knowledge of their conservation state and guide the corresponding correction or improvement actions. The relevance of monitoring assets is expressed in a simple relationship: what cannot be measured cannot be controlled; what cannot be controlled cannot be properly preserved and managed; and finally, what cannot be managed cannot be improved. Seen in this way, the sustainability of the World Heritage Sites that make up the Latin American region lies not so much in what organizations such as UNESCO can do, but fundamentally in the self-awareness and self-responsibility that all social and institutional linked actors are capable of displaying, starting with the representatives of the States Parties. In addition to what was discussed above, this comprehension represents a task of deep cultural significance, for which it is necessary to stop considering heritage as an object of unreasonable worship, subject to a static and unconditional assessment, simply dead past relics, or objects at the service of a fatuous spectacle of consumption. On the contrary, for the World Heritage properties of Latin America, the twenty-first century represents an opportunity to rebuild the ability to build new meanings, values, and attributes, under the concrete existential conditions of the present. Following this path, we agree with Françoise Choay, when affirming that the resignified cultural and natural heritage can “become the invaluable terrain of a memory of ourselves in the future.”31
References Ballart Hernández, Josep y otros. (1996) El valor del patrimonio histórico. Revista Complutum Extra, N° 6, Vol. II Ballart Hernández, Josep y Juan I Tresseras, Jordi. (2008) Gestión del Patrimonio Cultural. Barcelona, Editorial Ariel Patrimonio BoccardiI G (2007) World heritage and sustainability; Concern for social, economic and environmental aspects within the policies and processes of the World Heritage Convention. London-UK, MSc. Dissertation, UCL Bartlett School of the Built Environment Boccardi G (2012) Introducción al patrimonio y el desarrollo sostenible. Documento presentado en el módulo especial sobre el desarrollo sostenible del curso del ICCROM sobre la conservación del patrimonio construido Cabezas Capetillo C (2018) Guía Metodológica para la Elaboración de Modelos de Gestión para el Patrimonio Cultural Inmueble. Santiago de Chile, Subsecretaría de Desarrollo Regional y Administrativo, Gobierno de Chile CENTRO DE PATRIMONIO MUNDIAL (UNESCO). https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/. Accessed 28 Jan 2020 Choay F (2007) Alegoría del patrimonio. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 31 Choay
(2007) Allegory of heritage. Barcelona, Gustavo Gili, p. 236.
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Conti A (2006) Hacia la definición de indicadores para el seguimiento de ciudades históricas. ICOMOS Chile ICOMOS: 40 años de reflexión y acción en el patrimonio. Valparaíso, ICOMOS Chile Crespo-Toral H (2002) La Convención del Patrimonio Mundial y su impacto en América Latina, Revista PH 40–41, Especial Monográfico: Patrimonio mundial (1972-2002) ICOMOS. Carta para la conservación de lugares de valor cultural. Burra-Australia (1979–19821988) ICOMOS (2011) 17° Asamblea General y Simposio Científico ‘El patrimonio, motor del desarrollo’. 27 de no¬viembre a 2 de diciembre de 2011. ICOMOS News, Vol. 18, No.1, p. 9. París-Francia, ICOMOS Mendes Zanchetti S, Ferreria Hidaka LT (2012) Un indicador para medir el estado de conservación de sitios patrimonio urbano. Mendes Zancheti, Silvio y Simila, Katriina (Editores). Measuring heritage. Conservation perfomance. 6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation, RecifeBrazil, ICCROM-CECI ORGANIZACIÓN DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS, ONU. Message for the international day for disaster reduction. Disaster reduction for sustainable mountain development, october, 9, 2002 ORGANIZACIÓN DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS. Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible Resolución aprobada en Asamblea General el 21 de octubre de 2015 ORGANIZACIÓN DE LAS NACIONES UNIDAS-CEPAL. Panorama Social de América Latina. 2018. Santiago de Chile, CEPAL, 2019. Disponible en http://www.unisdr.org/2002/campaign/pacamp02-sg-eng.htm (Consultado 02/03/2019) PNUD-UNESCO. Convenciones y recomendaciones de la UNESCO sobre la protección del patrimonio cultural. Proyecto Regional de Patrimonio Cultural y Desarrollo, PNUD-UNESCO, Lima, 1986 Teixeira Coelho CM, Rodrigues de Carvalho CS (2012) La valoración de la conservación como herramienta para la identificación del patrimonio cultural, su monitoreo y evaluación. Mendes Zancheti, Silvio y Simila, Katriina (Editores). Measuring heritage. Conservation perfomance. 6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation, Recife-Brazil, ICCROM-CECI UNESCO (1972) Comité Mundial de Patrimonio Cultural y Natural. Convención sobre la protección del patrimonio mundial, cultural y natural. 17° Conferencia General de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura, París, pp 17–21 noviembre UNESCO (1993) 17° Reunión Comité de Patrimonio Mundial. Convención para la Protección del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural. Cartagena de Indias-Colombia, 6–11 diciembre UNESCO (1994) 18° Reunión Comité de Patrimonio Mundial. Phunket, Thailandia, 12–17 noviembre UNESCO (2004) Informe Periódico: El Estado del Patrimonio Mundial en América Latina y el Caribe. Sesión N° 28 del Comité del Patrimonio Mundial. Suzhou-China. 28 de junio al 7 de julio UNESCO/ICOMOS/ICCROM/IUCN (2014) Manual de Referencia para la Gestión del Patrimonio Mundial Cultural, París, UNESCO Waisman M (1990) El interior de la historia. Historiografía arquitectónica para uso de latinoamericanos. Bogotá-Colombia, Editorial Escala
Immaterial Heritage and The Risk of “Forgetting”: A Case Study of the Hidden Christian Sites in Nagasaki, Japan Joanes da Silva Rocha
Abstract Listed as a World Heritage Site because of its cultural syncretism between East and West, the nomination of the “Sites of the Hidden Christians in the Nagasaki Region”, Japan, has revealed old and new paradigms for the safeguard of the Intangible Heritage, as some of the oral tradition and local rites are at risk of disappearance due to demographic and socio-economic changes in the region. Thus, based on a broad theoretical framework and field research in Nagasaki, this study will address the main historical aspects that supported its nomination; challenges in preserving the intangible heritage among minority groups; and, finally, some strategies found by the local community and the Japanese government, through the Agency for Cultural Affairs, to preserve local history and traditions. In short, a battle against oblivion itself. Keywords World Heritage Sites · Risk to intangible heritage · Nagasaki After the Second World War, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proposed the rewriting of world history based on peace and the approximation of diplomatic relations at different social levels. One of these mechanisms was the creation of World Heritage Sites in 1972. However, although the central objective of the World Heritage List was not to create a “ global travel guide”, these places have become the leading destinations for national and international tourism, whose impact was approximately $8.8 trillion for global GDP in the last This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Joanes da Silva Rocha—Currently an International Graduate Research Student at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and an associate researcher at the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Brasilia (NEASIA-UnB). His main research deals with the Portuguese presence in East Asia (Japan and Macau) between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries and its heritage safeguard. He is also an architectural historian at ICOMOS-Brazil. J. da Silva Rocha (B) University of Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_12
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year through the creation of 319 million jobs in the accommodation, transportation, and entertainment sectors. Consequently, in order to take advantage of tourism and expand their local economy, some nations have been pleading for the highest possible number of inscriptions to world heritage sites. However, when the listing is not accompanied by sustainable management practices, the effects may go in the opposite direction, resulting in the misallocation of resources, environmental degradation and direct danger to heritage and local traditions. Furthermore, as highlighted by Guzman et al. (2008), an important issue for heritage management today is precisely this balance between the preservation of historic urban areas and their response to new economic, social, and environmental demands. And this is particularly true in the case of cultural assets related to sacred places. According to the International Scientific Committee for Places of Religion and Ritual (ICOMOS-PRERICO), approximately twenty percent of properties inscribed on the World Heritage List have some religious or spiritual connection and represent the largest single category on the list. However, what makes this category so challenging is the complex relationship between the tangible and the intangible heritage that can be learned from architectural spaces, moving objects, festivities and oral traditions. In addition, the difficulty of harmonizing schedules and places for both tourism and local events—such as wedding ceremonies, funerals, etc. Moreover, to manage the often conflicting relationship between the local faithful and visitors regarding clothing, photographs, and their behavior within the sacred space. However, in the case of Nagasaki and Amakusa’s religious heritage, there is another aggravating factor directly related to the essence of the listing: the nongenerational transmission of the oral tradition and, with it, its oblivion. This phenomenon is the direct result of socioeconomic changes and demographic reduction due to low birth rates, elderly mortality, migration of young people to urban centers searching for new job opportunities, or the simple disinterest in perpetuating such rites. Therefore, due to such a dilemma —which is certainly not restricted to Japan alone—the ICOMOS-PRERICO has developed a global thematic research centered on religious heritage called “Properties of Religious Interest – Sustainable Management” (PRI-SM). According to the project’s creators, the initiative aims to assist in the vertical management of heritage at the local, national, and international levels by accumulating sustainable experiences and practices in an agenda available on the internet. The protection of artistic and cultural expressions in the immaterial sphere has been a recurring theme within UNESCO since 1952, when the first mechanisms for the protection of elements related to ‘folklore’ were established. However, due to the various theoretical and conceptual issues related to the social Darwinism of the time, today it is commonly preferred the concepts of immaterial or intangible heritage that are directly based on five pillars: oral traditions; performing arts; social practices, rituals and festive events; knowledge and practices related to nature; and, finally, the knowledge and ability to produce handicrafts, the savoir-faire.1 Although relatively 1 Since
2003, when UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage was established.
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fragile, intangible heritage is an essential factor in constructing a particular group’s social identity and perhaps establishing our own identity as individuals belonging to a specific culture, as approached by Smith and Akagawa (2009). Moreover, such a group identity serves to maintain cultural diversity in the face of growing globalization and the pasteurization of social practices. Besides, understanding the intangible cultural heritage from different communities and backgrounds contribute to intercultural dialogue and encourages respect for others’ lifeways, even inside the same country or region. Then, motivated by the understanding that ‘time’ is an essential factor in comprehending a tradition’s internal transformations, this study will begin with a contextualization of the history of Christianity in Japan from the formation of the first Catholic communities from 1549 onwards. Followed by the second and third parts which seek to delimit the problematic and investigate the mechanisms proposed by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA) in the first and second proposals for World Heritage nomination, submitted to UNESCO in 2015 and 2017, respectively.
1 Historical Contextualization and Aspects of Nomination 1.1 Arrival of the Portuguese and the First Christians (1549–1614) As far as we can determine, the first real contact between Japan and Europe occurred when two Portuguese traders arrived in Tanegashima, in the south of the archipelago, on a Chinese ship in September 1543. However, it was with the arrival of Francisco Xavier in Kagoshima, in 1549, that religious propagation and commercial relations actually started (Olof 2004). Initially, missionaries from the company of Jesus sought to convert local lords called daimy¯o to Catholicism in an attempt to produce a ripple effect of conversions in their respective territories. In fact, they were successful in some places and, because of the precarious resources coming from Europe, these local lords, also called kirishitan daimy¯os, or Christian lords, became the main patrons for the spread of the Gospel in their domains,2 offering land, materials, and labor for the construction of churches and seminars (Rie 2014). As missionary work progressed in Ky¯ush¯u, Yamaguchi and Kinai regions, Toyotomi Hideyoshi followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, Oda Nobunaga, and became Japan’s great military leader. Aiming to take complete control of Nagasaki, the main Lusitanian port for trade with China and another source of revenue for his military campaign in present-day Korea, Hideyoshi issued a decree called Bateren tsuih¯orei on July 24, 1587 (Tensh¯o 15, 6/19) in which he expelled priests and limited 2 Among them we can highlight Amakusa Hisatane, Hasekura Tsunenaga, Omura ¯ Sumitada (Dom ¯ Bartolomeu), Arima Harunobu (Don Protasio), Takayama Ukon (Takayama Justus) and Otomo S¯orin (Elisonas 2006; Ellis 2012).
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the activities of European traders. As a result of this decree, several churches were destroyed and persecutions against Christian communities began. After Hideyoshi’s death, Tokugawa Ieyasu secured his military dominance with the victory of the battle of Sekigahara in 1600 and established Tokugawa shogunate three years later. At first, he was receptive to trade with Portugal and Spain3 and allowed Catholic missionaries to remain in the archipelago. However, in 1614, imbued with promoting social and ideological unification across Japan, the bakufu issued the national ban on Christianity and all Christian ritual practice in an even stricter way than Hideyoshi (Murai 2002).
1.2 Period of Persecution and Formation of hidden Christian communities (1614–1873) In 1614, strict inquisitions and persecutions were carried out across Japan; churches were demolished, local communities were forced to dissolve, missionaries and Christians were expelled to Manila and Macao through the Kirishitan kokugai tsuih¯orei decree. However, forty-seven missionaries, including twenty-seven Jesuits, refused to leave and tried to stay hidden. At first, they received protection from the local population and moved from house to house in the dead of night. In response, Tokugawa Hidetada, son of Tokugawa Ieyasu and second sh¯ogun of Tokugawa bakufu, began offering rewards for information that would lead to the capture of clandestine missionaries. When captured, missionaries and those who helped them were tortured and even sentenced to death. This was the historical background of the novel Chinmoku, or Silence, written by Sh¯usaku End¯o and published in 1966. During the regime of the third sh¯ogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu, the bakufu’s antiChristian system intensified further through two policies: (1) closing the country to prevent new priests from entering; (2) find and punish Christians in Japan through the fumi-e ceremony.4 According to Japanese historiography, seventy-five missionaries were publicly executed and more than a thousand Christians died during the persecutions between 1617 and 1644 (Bit¯o 2006). In the middle of the seventeenth century, the shogunate established two demographic census policies. The gonin gumi system, which can be translated as “group of five families”, and the temple guarantee system, or terauke seido. While the gonin gumi stipulated that communities should organize themselves into small groups of five families, in which each family would be 3 In 1604, the bakufu created the itowappu nakama, a guild of Japanese traders selected from Sakai,
¯ Ky¯oto and Nagasaki and, later, Edo and Osaka. This guild was responsible for buying assets imported by the Portuguese at a fixed and favorable rate to the Japanese. This started to be described in the Portuguese documentation as “A pancata”, or the blow (Souza 2004). 4 The fumi-e (踏み絵) ceremony, or e-fumi, can be translated as “stepping (fumi) on the figure (e)”. It was an annual event in which a person accused of being a Christian was forced to step on the image of Christ or the Virgin Mary, on the assumption that Christians, or at least Catholics, would not perform such sacrilege. If he did not, he would be sentenced to death and if he were a “known Christian” the event would be proof of his apostasy before the Japanese authorities.
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responsible for “watching” and helping each other. The temple guarantee system, on the other hand, required all community members to belong to a Buddhist temple and have their data recorded in an official book. Therefore, the Buddhist ecclesiastical establishment became responsible for verifying whether a person was a Christian or not, and producing certificates of affiliation and apostasy. However, even in the midst of intense repression, some Christian communities have managed to hide and keep their religion alive in secret. The members of these communities are so-called “hidden Christians”, or senpuku kirishitan. These small family organizations, some of them with roots in the sixteenth century confrarias established after the performance of the first European priests, had local religious leaders who conducted the rituals and instructed the others. The person in charge of maintaining the liturgical calendar was called ch¯okata and those responsible for baptisms, which they themselves performed in the absence of missionaries, were called mizukata. In the late eighteenth century, due to international and domestic issues, the Edo bakufu decided to reopen some of the ports to Western countries. One of them was the ¯ ¯ Nagasaki port, where the missionaries erected the Oura Tenshud¯o. The Oura Cathedral made history as the stage for the event called Shinto hakken, or the Discovery of hidden Christians. According to reports at the time, just after a ceremony in March 1865, a group of Japanese from the village of Urakami came to the cathedral and revealed their secret faith to Father Petitjean, saying: “We have the same feeling in our hearts as you”. After that, other communities began to seek guidance from the priests and publicly declare their faith. Although the Vatican was aware of missionary activities in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the presence of these communities in remote locations in Japan was received with great surprise by the international community. Nevertheless, Christian practice was still prohibited for the Japanese and the repressions remained severe. More than three thousand Japanese Christians in the twenty domains were tortured until the ban on Christianity was lifted and the Meiji government introduced religious freedom in 1873.
1.3 End of Prohibition and Religious Freedom (1873–Current) Exiles from the Holy See for more than two and a half centuries, the faith practiced by the hidden Christians was marked by cultural miscegenation with local traditions, such as Buddhism and Shintoism, which is why, when freedom of religious expression was restored, those communities divided into different groups, such as those who accepted Catholicism under the guidance of the missionaries and joined the Catholic Church, leaving behind aspects of Buddhism and Shinto; those who have
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defined themselves entirely as Shinto and/or Buddhist; and those who continued with their own practices, known today as kakure kirishitan.5 Those who returned to the bosom of the Holy See began to build their own churches in neo-Gothic style around 1880, under the tutelage of the missionaries from the Société des Missions étrangères de Paris and, according to the World Heritage inscription document, the Japanese government states that “these churches were symbols of rebirth of the Catholic faith and could also be seen as a visible demonstration of the end of the hidden Christians’ hiding after the ban that lasted more than 250 years” (ACA 2017a, p. 199). These new churches were located in the centers of the villages or places associated with historical events. For example, the current church in Sakitsu village, in Amakusa, was built through donations and voluntary work from the local Catholic community and built on the former home of the village chief, a place chosen by Father Halbout because it was where the aforementioned e-fumi occurred during the prohibition period. Therefore, residents are now praying in the same places where their ancestors were persecuted and killed because of their faith, demonstrating a historical reinterpretation of space along the lines of Pierre Nora’s concept of Sites of memory.6 Today, the nomination is called “hidden Christians” and is directly linked the persecution period’s immaterial traditions between 1614 and 1873. However, the campaign to designate Nagasaki’s religious heritage as a world heritage began with a group of volunteers focused on churches self-styled “To Declare a New World Heritage: The Nagasaki Church Group”. The group started its activities in 2001 and was made up of members of the local Catholic community, priests, teachers, and city officials. Their campaign was successful and, in January 2007, the Catholic churches of Nagasaki were registered on the UNESCO Indicative List.
2 The First Nomination Proposal In November 2007, the Nagasaki prefecture government incorporated the project and created a working group called the Nagasaki World Heritage Scholarly Conference (NWHSC). This working group directly linked to the Secretariat of Culture was responsible for discussing the preservation strategy and proceeding with the registration process. An important step for the designation, as the international nomination requires a series of governmental mechanisms, such as legal protection and tax incentives. Thus, eventually, all responsibility shifted from the volunteer group to the NWHSC, which delimited fourteen Catholic heritage sites that would be part of 5 By
way of distinction, senpuku kirishitan (潜伏キリシタン) is the name attributed to those who suffered the persecution of bakufu between 1614 and 1854, called in this text “hidden Christians”, while kakure kirishitan (隠れキリシタン) refers to the formed communities after 1854 they decided to keep the tradition of the senpuku kirishitan and still inhabit Japan. 6 NORA, Pierre (org.), Les lieux de mémoire. Vol. I. Paris: Gallimard, 1997.
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the “Churches and Christian Sites in Nagasaki” project, and presented to the World Heritage Committee in 2015. Table 1 shows the components sent for registration according to the chronological division proposed by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. As presented in Table 1, the first proposal for world heritage was composed of churches, villages and archaeological remains of ancient castles, demonstrating the three phases of Christianity in Japan (Matsui 2013). Moreover, according to the documentation submitted by the Japanese government, the “Churches and Christian Sites in Nagasaki” project could be registered as a serial world heritage sites under the selection criteria (II) (III) and (IV) of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV), which are: Criterion (II) demonstrates an important exchange of human values, during a given time or in a cultural area of the world, in the development of architecture or technology, monumental arts, urban planning or landscape design; Criterion (III) demonstrates a unique, or at least exceptional, testimony of a cultural tradition or a civilization that is alive or has disappeared; Criterion (IV) is to be an example of a type of building, architectural, technological or landscape set that illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history. Table 1 Churches and Christian Sites in Nagasaki’s registration component. Divided according to the chronology and narrative presented by the ACA in 2015.
“Churches and Christian Sites in Nagasak” proposal component The expansion of Christianity (1549–1614) キリスト教の伝播と普及 Hinoe Castle 日野江城跡
Hara Castle 原城跡
Christian heritage under the ban (1614–1873) 禁教下の継承 Sacred sites and Hirado village 平戸島の聖地と集落
Shitsu Church and sacred sites (*) 出津教会堂と関連施設
Sakitsu village in Amakusa 天草の崎津集落
Nobuki’s Old Church and Sacred Sites 旧野首教会堂と関連遺跡
Return after the ban (1873–2018) 禁教後の復帰 ¯ Ono Church Oura Cathedral 大野教会堂 大浦天主堂 Gorin’s Old Church 旧五輪教会堂
Tabira Church 田平天主堂
Kuroshima Church 黒島天主堂
Egami Church 江上天主堂
Kashiragashima Church 頭ヶ島天主堂 Source Table prepared by the author (*)This item has two components: (1) Shitsu church and (2) sacred sites. Thus, there are a total of fourteen properties.
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Regarding criterion (III), the Japanese government claimed to be an exceptional testimony of a religious and cultural tradition that emerged from European Christianity’s encounter with Japan for over than 450 years. Apparently, this part of the text appealed to ICOMOS technicians, as it focused on the cultural syncretism of the nomination. And, in fact, it was the only criterion that remained in the second project, as we will see below. However, the central issue for the refusal of the first proposal was the unsatisfactory defense of the two other criteria. According to the Japanese government, through the Agency for Cultural Affairs, the project could be approved by criterion (II) because it demonstrated the legacy of an exchange of aesthetic and typological values between Japan and the West materialized in the churches built after the ban. For the reason that the churches had a unique architectural style resulting from the adaptation of the French neo-Gothic to the techniques and materials available in Japan. For example, the church in the village of Egami, on the island of Naru, was built with wooden flying buttresses on stilts for better adaptation to the climate and topography, thus avoiding damage caused by humidity and protecting against strong winds (Matsui 2007). Furthermore, the project could also be registered under criterion (IV) as the churches in question were directly linked to extraordinary universal significance events. Including the expansion of international trade and cultural exchange during the Age of Navigation in the sixteenth century; national protectionist politics and the suppression of Christianity in the seventeenth century; and Japan’s reopening as part of a broader wave of globalization in the nineteenth century. Well, in January 2015, the Japanese government submitted this proposal to the World Heritage Committee for analysis, seeking to be approved as a World Heritage Site by celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Discovery of the Hidden Chris¯ tians mentioned above, which took place at the Oura Cathedral in 1865 (Munsi 2014). However, UNESCO’s advisory panel (ICOMOS Interim Report) replied that the proposal would not reach the formal screening stage because of its “insufficient explanation”. The project sent by the State Party of Japan was based on three different moments in the same story. However, the advisory committee questioned the fundamentals and exceptional universal value of the chronology’s first and third parts. According to ICOMOS, the contact between Europeans and Japanese in the sixteenth century and the internationalization process after the suspension of the ban in 1873—used to justify criteria (II) and (IV)—could be seen as a global reaction and not as an exceptional case of Japan. In such a way, there was a questioning of the temporal scope and appropriate use of the criteria. In sum, according to experts body, unlike the hidden Christians’ culture during the period of persecution, the churches built from the 1880s represented much more an adaptation of European architecture to Japan than syncretism or acculturation itself. Thus, the Japanese government accepted ICOMOS’s comments and decided to withdraw the nomination on February 9, 2016.
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3 The Second Nomination Proposal To restructure the proposal for a new attempt, Japan welcomed the consultative visit of ICOMOS between April 25 and May 3, 2016. The mission reaffirmed the previous suggestion to exclude elements that were not directly related to the ban on Christianity, and, according to Japanese documentation, they were also the ones who suggested including the term “hidden Christians” in the title of the patrimonial prop¯ erty. Consequently, except for the Oura Cathedral, the other churches were removed from the new project entitled “Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region”.7 Based on the observations made in the ICOMOS reports, the State Party of Japan reconfigured the indication, focusing on the historical aspect of the second phase through criterion (III) and shifting the emphasis from churches to the villages. Thus, the project once guided by the churches’ architectural materiality came to be based on the immateriality, syncretism, and suffering of Christians during the persecution. For Satoshi and Ji-Hyun (2018), this last aspect of the nomination follows a strand of heritage thought known as dark tourism. In this “category”, humanity’s suffering and tragic moments are remembered as moments that should no be repeated. In this same group, we could also list the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, inscribed in 1996, which reminds us of the atomic bomb, and the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz, inscribed in 1979, as a latent Holocaust memorial. Therefore, while emphasizing the universal value of religiosity, this second proposal encourages us to empathize with its suffering. After consulting with ICOMOS members and reviewing the project, the Japanese government submitted a new list to the World Heritage Committee on February 1, 2017, which presented the following text: The nominated property bears unique testimony to the history of people and their communities who secretly transmitted their faith in Christianity during the time of prohibition spanning more than two centuries in Japan, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries (ACA 2017a, p. 209). Hidden Christians gave rise to a distinctive religious tradition that was seemingly vernacular, yet which maintained the essence of Christianity, and they survived continuing their faith over the ensuing two centuries (ibidem, p. 241).
During the first section of the Committee in Paris in 1977, criterion (III) was defined as “It presents a unique or at least exceptional testimony of a missing civilization”. The original text focused on the archaeological sites of missing civilizations such as the Mesa Verde (Spanish for “green table”), in the USA, inscribed in 1978, and the Rockhewn churches of Lalibela in Ethiopia, inscribed in 1978. However, the text gradually expanded until the Global Strategy Experts Meeting, in 1998, and again in the Operational Guidelines, published in 2005, where first appears the current definition of the exceptional testimony that includes both disappeared civilization and living tradition (also vide ICOMOS 2018). Therefore, criterion (III), also called the “witness criterion”, whether used alone or along with other criteria, is the one that best synthesizes the immaterial aspects present in intangible assets. 7 Hidden
Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region (長崎と天草地方の潜伏キリシタン関連遺産).
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In other words, for ICOMOS, the restructuring of the proposal presented by Japan in the first project was intrinsically linked to an initial failure not only in the narrative, but mainly in the delimitation and justification of the criteria. That is because, if, on the one hand, the extremely comprehensive character of the criteria’s definition allows covering the most diverse cultural expressions possible, it can also hinder the work of technicians who need to delimit and present their registration projects (Honda 2016; ICOMOS 2011). Consequently, it is up to the property managers to develop a proposal based not only on the manuals made available by the international bodies, such as ICOMOS, ICCROM and IUCN, but also to study the already approved inscription projects,8 because, as stated by Françoise Choay and Camillo Boito, the very sense of heritage is a constructed and temporal concept. In August 2017, the Japanese government sent the Supplementary Material on the Nomination of Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region (ACA 2017c) to the World Committee, providing more information on the nomination. A technical mission was at the proposed sites between September 3 and 14, 2017, to verify the conditions of integrity and authenticity. After a new round of questions and answers between December 2017 and February 2018, the Nagasaki and Amakusa sites were approved as World Heritage Number 1495 on March 14, 2018.
3.1 Project Description and Evaluation by the International Committee Located in the prefectures of Nagasaki and Kumamoto, in the northwestern part of Ky¯ush¯u island, the heritage consists of twelve components that, according to ICOMOS, still offer good coverage of the three stages of the history of Christianity in Japan—composed of an archaeological site (ancient Hara Castle), ten villages and 9 ¯ The following Table 2 shows the components sent one building (Catedral Oura). for registration according to the chronological division proposed by the Agency for Cultural Affairs. In its final report, ICOMOS found that the ten named villages maintain a high degree of visual integrity, both by themselves and within their physical and visual limits. However, the same report expresses that the Castle of Hara’s archaeological ¯ site and the Oura Cathedral were affected by the surrounding development. In the 8 In
fact, there is a subchapter in the nomination document called “Comparative analysis” in which it seeks to present the exceptionality of the proposal based on comparative studies with other world heritage sites. In the case of Nagasaki, they are: early christian Necropolis of Pecs, Ouadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley), Forest of the Cedars of God (Horsh Arz el-Rab), Goreme National Park and the rock sites of Cappadocia (Turkey), Masada (Israel), Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940–1945) (Poland), among others (ACA 2017a, pp. 223–248). 9 This heritage was registered in series and the properties are spread over different islands of the archipelago and occupy an area of approximately 5.569 ha, with buffer zones of over 12 thousand hectares.
Immaterial Heritage and The Risk of “Forgetting”… Table 2 “Hidden Christian sites in Nagasaki” inscription component, divided according to the chronology and narrative presented by the ACA in 2017
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“Hidden Christian Sites in Nagasak” inscription component Beginning of the absence of missionaries and concealment of Christians 宣教師不在とキリシタン「潜伏」のきっかけ Hara Castle 原城跡 The effort of hidden Christians to continue their religious faith 潜伏キリシタンが信仰を実践するための試み Kasuga village and sacred sites in Hirado (*) 平戸島の聖地と集落
Shitsu village in Sotome 外海の出津集
Sakitsu village in Amakusa 天草の崎津集落
Ono Village in Sotome 外海の大野集落
The effort of hidden Christians to maintain their religious communities in other locations 潜伏キリシタンが共同体を維持するための試み Kuroshima Island Villages 黒島の集落
Villages on Kashiragashima Island 頭ヶ島の集落
Traces of the villages on the island of Nozaki 野崎島の集落跡
Hisaka Island Villages 久賀島の集落
Transition phase through contact with missionaries, end of hiding place for hidden Christians 宣教師との接触による転機と「潜伏」の終わり ¯ Oura Cathedral Egami village on Naru island 大浦天主堂 奈留島の江上集落 Source Table prepared by the author (*) This item has two components: (1) Kasuga village and (2) sacred sites in Hirado. Thus, there are a total of twelve properties.
case of the Castle of Hara, some inappropriate and intrusive elements are noted at the southwest end of the proposed limit, including industrial buildings and a large secondary school that jeopardized the component’s integrity.10 The impact on the ¯ Oura Cathedral is even more notorious for the construction of a new Catholic church on the adjacent land in the 1970s and for the renovation carried out throughout the city after the Second World War. However, ICOMOS notes that the cathedral building itself is located within a forest where the trees visually protect its integrity. Furthermore, on the villages, ICOMOS notes that the houses in the villages vary considerably. In some places, such as Sakitsu village in Amakusa and villages on
10 In the additional report sent to ICOMOS on February 28, 2018, the Japanese government redefined
the limits of the area in the southwest corner, removing them from the indicated main area, but keeping them within the buffer zone. In other words, he it did not move the buildings or the real landscape, he just removed them from the polygonal defined for the inscription project.
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the island of Kuroshima, the original houses remain built, but have been substantially altered over time. In a later reply, Japan’s government informed that there are government financing programs and technical support to revitalize the houses and, thus, provide greater visual harmony for the villages. However, both ICOMOS and Japanese documents are categorical in stating that there are probably few original elements of the urban fabric and buildings from the period of hidden Christians. In certain places, such as the village of Kasuga and also at the villages of Nokubi and Funamori, on the island of Nozaki, only the foundations of the houses previously inhabited by community leaders during the ban remain. Concerning authenticity, each property component maintains a high degree of authenticity based on the attributes selected according to its nature of “use and function”, “traditions, techniques and management systems”. Only the archaeological site of the Castle of Hara has lost its authenticity related to “use and function”, since ¯ it has changed from military architecture to an archaeological site. The Oura Cathedral, in Nagasaki, and the Egami Church, on the island of Naru, have a high degree of authenticity in terms of “materials and substances”, in addition to other attributes related to their architecture and aesthetics. Thus, through the reports produced by ICOMOS, we note how the property maintains a high degree of integrity and authenticity in tangible and intangible attributes. However, like any other family tradition passed down from generation to generation, we also observed that several artifacts are on private properties among the kakure kirishitan communities and are kept in environments unsuitable for preservation, causing irreversible degradation.
3.2 Intangible Cultural Heritage and the Risk of Forgetfulness This section will use SWOT as an analysis tool, which stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats” (Gürel and Tat 2017; Tanguay et al. 2010). Currently used to assess and manage world heritage sites, SWOT aims to identify internal factors such as strengths and weaknesses and external factors such as opportunities and threats. In other words, through this analysis tool, this study seeks to understand which internal and external factors placed Nagasaki’s Religious Intangible Heritage at risk and how the Japanese authorities responded to this demand. When we talk about external risks to the Japanese heritage, we are soon led to think about natural disasters. The Japanese archipelago is over the Pacific Circle of Fire, making it susceptible to earthquakes and tsunamis, which is why the Japanese government established the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act in 1961 and since then the Central Disaster Management Council has conducted a series of preventive measures.11 In parallel to this, local administrations are encouraged to develop an 11 Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Disasters and Disaster Prevention. (Accessed June 15, 2019).
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exhaustive list of material and immaterial cultural heritage in their territories for emergency cases. However, there are still challenges facing the system to preserve historical records on private properties that are particularly vulnerable, as is the case with artifacts from Nagasaki’s hidden Christians. In addition to natural disasters, another external threat to Nagasaki’s heritage is tourism in private areas. From the first initiatives in 2001 to the first proposed project in 2015, the focus was on the churches,introducing the villages only as part of the historical context, not as a tourism destination. Consequently, it was a project whose tourism would be entirely concentrated in public areas around the churches. However, by making the villages and their intangible heritage the second project’s nodal point, we noticed how tourism routes were drastically redirected toward private property areas. Moreover, because these places still function as homes, sacred areas, and workplaces—including typical agricultural production, fishing, traditional events, and religious services—over-the-top tourism could harm local dynamics. In fact, many of the cemeteries remain in use and the few remaining objects from the country’s closing period are in the homes of kakure kirishitan, such as in the villages of Sakitsu and Kasuga (Kawashima 2017). The third major problem with naming, being the main internal risk, is forgetting traditions. Again, here we note a problem that arose in the transition from the first project to the second. As previously stated, the project “Church and sites of Christians in Nagasaki” was focused on the churches’ materiality and therefore required the preventive maintenance characteristic of this type of heritage, carried out by professionals periodically. However, with the centralization of local traditions and orality in a country that has been experiencing a demographic reduction for decades, especially in the countryside, we wonder how much longer this tradition can be considered alive despite the efforts of the stakeholders involved to protect it. The Japanese age pyramid shows that the nation is gradually older due to increased life expectancy and low birth rates. This phenomenon, called in Japanese as sh¯oshi k¯orei-ka, is even more intense in rural areas where—coupled with the aging and death of knowledge-bearing elders—also present a demographic reduction due to the evasion of young people toward urban centers in search of new job opportunities. ¯ A phenomenon also observed in peripheral areas of Nagasaki, such as Omura and 12 Got¯o. The Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region official document is explicit that the principal subject is the senpuku kirishitan—the term applied to all the Japanese Christians who were persecuted under the Tokugawa shogunate from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Moreover, it also clear that at the time of formulating the second proposal, these three problems were not unknown by the Japanese authorities or ICOMOS specialists. That leads us to the following question: how did the Japanese authorities decide to “soften” the process of forgetting these traditions? Our on-site visits and documentary research, including official pamphlets and tour guides, have shown that when transforming the heritage project approved in 2018 12 Hidden Christians migrated to these islands from 1797 on the run from persecution, and today we see the reverse movement of young people retsurning to the central areas.
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into reality, the Agency for Cultural Affairs favored the patrimonial mechanisms described in the first project rejected in 2016, and not exactly the approved one. In the document “Comprehensive preservation and management plan” for the second proposal (ACA 2017b) it is perceptible how the Agency for Cultural Affairs understood that the increase in visitors and tourist facilities could negatively affect the surrounding environment and the local communities’ daily lives. Therefore, to harmonize the relationship between travelers and residents, the government established the “church keepers”, which would be appropriately trained local teams located in churches and other attached support centers (ACA 2017b). These spaces were equipped with tourism centers, museums, souvenir shops, and restrooms to provide comfort and accessibility to visitors without profound interference or “touristization” of small communities. It was meant to moderate tourism’s impact on local communities and redirected the leisure industry by setting pre-established pilgrimage routes that do not contemplate the residential areas. In other words, we suggest that there are two ways to approach religious tourism in Nagasaki and Amakusa regions. One is the formal document adjusted according to the observations of ICOMOS between 2016 and 2017 in order to be accepted “without the churches”; and another one, which was actually applied by the national agency and Nagasaki prefecture, “with the churches” and adjusted to local needs. Thus, the implementation was very similar to the first project “Church and sites of Christians in Nagasaki” proposals with pre-established pilgrimage routes connecting those churches. However, unlike pilgrimage routes such as Santiago de Compostela, in Spain, the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, or the Potala Palace, in Tibet, whose religious migrations over the centuries have favored the gradual emergence of commercial structure support, Nagasaki’s pilgrimage routes were idealized from the beginning as a commercial mechanism for the economic revitalization of the region in parallel with the Catholic Church’s interests in Japan.13 It is intriguing to note that, like Hiroshima, Nagasaki was also devastated by the atomic bomb in August 1945; however, instead of valuing this part of its history, the region opted for reintegration into national tourism through the Christian context that is unique in the archipelago, proposing itself as a small Europe in Japan. In fact, Nagasaki is called “little Rome” in some documents and tourism promotion contents due to its Churches’ quantitate and atmosphere. Consequently, the proposed pilgrimage routes attract not only the Christian community, but also a variety of tourists who seek to appreciate Western architecture, art, and cuisine without having to leave the country. Valuing its cosmopolitan aspect as internal strength and making the most of external opportunities.
13 In 2005, Nagasaki Prefecture launched the Discovery and transmission of history in Nagasaki project, in which it published books and pamphlets on the history of the region. In the same year, the Archdiocese of Nagasaki published the Guide to pilgrimage sites and churches in Nagasaki. These two documents, like so many other current guides, are based on pilgrimage routes to historic sites for the Christian community, such as churches and places of martyrdom.
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4 Conclusions Since its reform in 2005, criterion (III) has encompassed both cultural traditions that have disappeared and those still alive. However, as we seek to present, the patrimony advocated by the second project entitled “Sites of hidden Christians in the Nagasaki Region”, presented to UNESCO in 2017, was created within an atypical process of intense disappearance due to internal and external issues related to the immaterial nature of the own project. This is because the appointment has become essentially anthropological and ethnographic, which is difficult for ordinary tourists to access.14 This inversion in the narrative and temporal scope triggered a series of new preservationist dilemmas, as it began to value mobile objects, such as pendants, crucifixes, and tablets, as well as oral traditions such as the orasho prayer and the Omizutori ceremony (holy water ceremony). However, even in the face of these new challenges, this study highlighted how the Agency for Cultural Affairs chose to maintain the strategy previously conceived for the first project called “Church and Christian Nagasaki Sites”, in which churches would be the main tourist destinations in the region. Thus, we advocate that, despite being excluded from UNESCO’s official nomination, churches remain the main element within the Japanese heritage management strategy in Nagasaki and Amakusa by encouraging religious tourism in the form of pilgrimage. This is because, since pilgrims transit through previously defined routes and areas, it is possible to safeguard the privacy of kakure kirishitan while offering comfort and accessibility to visitors through the public transport system and support facilities. Moreover, although large-scale natural disasters are often unavoidable, it is believed that the musealization of objects, cataloging and maintenance provided by technicians may contribute to the protection of moving parts. Finally, even though the process of musealization removes the artifacts from their original context —the houses, the consolidation of these “public” and profitable spaces such as churches, tourism centers, museums, souvenir shops, etc. seems to be better suited to the needs and viability of tourism in Nagasaki. As the monetary collection of churches, museums, and stores will contribute to local income and possibly reduce youth dropout without interfering with their religious rituals. In conclusion, it is noted that the protection of intangible heritage in Nagasaki and Amakusa requires much more than attention to artifacts, it is also essential to safeguard the lifestyle of residents in parallel with logistical support for visitors; and, ultimately, contributing to social cohesion and maintaining the sense of identity among the descendants of the senpuku kirishitan who still inhabit the region. Including both those that reconciled with the Catholic Church (katorikku) and those that continued their religious practices (kakure kirishitan).
14 Even though I was a member of ICOMOS, a researcher at a Japanese university with the support of my advisor and with the necessary fluency to conduct the interviews in Japanese, I found it difficult to access certain places and niches during the research.
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References Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA) (2017a) Main document: hidden christian sites in the Nagasaki region. ACA, Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA) (2017b) Comprehensive Preservation and Management Plan: Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki Region. Japan: ACA Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA) (2017c) Supplementary material on the nomination of hidden christian sites in the Nagasaki Region. ACA, Japan Bit¯o M (2006) Thought and religion, 1550–1700.” In: Hall JW (org.) The Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 4. Early modern Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Elisonas J (2006) Christianity and the daimy¯o. In: Hall JW (org.) The Cambridge history of Japan, vol. 4. Early modern Japan. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Ellis RR (2012) They need nothing: Hispanic-Asia encounters of the colonial period. University of Toronto Press, Toronto Fukami S 深見 聡; Sin JH (2018) World heritage and dark tourism: A case study of “Hidden Christian Sites in the Nagasaki region. Academia J Environ Sci 6(1):11–19 Gürel E, Tat M (2017) Swot analysis: a theoretical review. J Int Social Res 10(51) Guzman PI et al (2018) Impacts of common urban development factors on cultural conservation in world heritage cities: an indicators-based analysis. Sustainability 10(3):1–18 Honda Y (2016) Naze “Nagasaki no ky¯okai-gun” wa seikaiisan he no suisen torisage ni naru no ka? (なぜ「長崎の教会群」は世界遺産への推薦取り下げになるのか) https://news.mynavi.jp/ article/20160205-heritage/. Acessado em 07 setembro de 2018 ICOMOS (2018) Evaluations of nominations of cultural and mixed properties. Report for the World Heritage Committee. 42nd ordinary session. UNESCO World, Paris ICOMOS (2011) Preparing World Heritage nominations, 2nd edn. UNESCO World, Paris Kawashima TD (2017) Landscape in Hirado revealing the secrets of Hidden Christians’ lifeworld: National and global policies in cultural heritage protection. Anthropol Notebooks 23(3):87–107 Kimura K 木村 勝彦 (2007) Nagasaki ni okeru Katorikku ky¯okai junrei to ts¯urizumu (長崎にお けるカトリック教会巡礼とツーリズム). Nagasaki kokusaidaigaku rons¯o. (長崎国際大学論 叢) vol. 7 Matsui K (2007) 松井 圭介. Seikaiisan und¯o ni miru sh¯uky¯o-teki chiiki bunka e no manazashi– Nagasaki no ky¯okai-gun o megutte (世界遺産運動にみる宗教的地域文化へのまなざし–長 崎の教会群をめぐって). Tsukubadaigaku jinmonchiri-gaku kenky¯u (筑波大学人文地理学研 究), (31):133–158 Matsui K 松井 圭介 (2013) Kank¯osenryaku toshite no sh¯uky¯o—Nagasaki no ky¯okai-gun to basho no sh¯ohinka (観光戦略としての宗教—長崎の教会群と場所の商品化). University of Tsukuba Press, Tsukuba Munsi RV (2014) Kirishitan jinja—nihondokuji no sh¯uky¯o shisetsu (キリシタン神社—日本独自 の宗教施設). Nanzandaigaku toshokan Katorikku bunko ts¯ushin (南山大学図書館カトリック 文庫通信):29 Murai S 村井 早苗 (2002) Kirishitan kinsei to minsh¯u no sh¯uky¯o (キリシタン禁制と民衆の宗 教). Yamakawa shuppan-sha, T¯oky¯o Olof G (2004) Lidin, Tanegashima: The arrival of Europe in Japan. NIAS Press, Copenhagen Rie A 有村 理恵 (2014)The catholic architecture of early modern Japan: between adaptation and christian identity. Japan Rev (27):53–76 Rocha JS (2018) The triumph of perseverance: Kakure kirishitan in Japan and its inscription on the world heritage list. Hist Yearb XV:161–173 Saitsu Y 才津 祐美子 (2006) Seikaiisan no hozen to j¯umin seikatsu “Shirakawag¯o” wo jirei toshite (世界遺産の保全と住民生活「白川郷」を事例として). Kanky¯o shakai-gaku kenky¯u (環境 社会学研究) (12):23–40 Satoshi F, Ji-Hyun S (2018) World heritage and dark tourism: a case study of “hidden Christian sites in the Nagasaki region” Japan. Acad J Environ Sci 6(1):11–19
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Environmental History and Cultural Landscape in Israel (2003–2020) Paulo Henrique Martinez
Abstract Research developed from methods of environmental history and the study of the cultural landscape in Israel. Study of two World Heritage sites in Israel in the twenty-first century: that of the architectural complex of the White City of Tel Aviv and that of the Incense Route which centuries ago articulated cities in the Negev desert and other parts of Asia. The prospects for management, preservation, technical cooperation, tourism and sustainable development are confronted with the disputes and directions of national politics and Israeli geopolitics. Will Israel’s departure from UNESCO in 2019 lead to changes in national World Heritage policies? Keywords Environmental history · Cultural landscape · Israel Public policies and institutional strategies for research, preservation, and dissemination of natural and cultural heritage, increasingly articulated, since 1992, converge, in many aspects, for the notion of Cultural Landscape. The practices of cooperation and sustainability, compose strategic axes recommended in the United Nations Conference on Environment (Rio-92), and reiterated in the Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio + 20), among other forums regarding international debates. The knowledge of public policies, institutional strategies, and innovative practices of cooperation and sustainability in Israel is enlightening (elucidative) in the comprehension of the State action in the environmental and cultural management, of the public sector participation in the economy, of the constant need of promotion of integration and social cooperation, of the role of cultural diversity and heritage institutions facing accelerated social changes in this century. Equally dynamic are the processes of agro-ecological transformation of territories and industrialization, This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Paulo Henrique Martinez—Professor at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Department of History, Assis. Support: FAPESP (Processes 16/16018-4 and 17/17617-5). P. H. Martinez (B) Department of History, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), São Paulo, Brazil e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_13
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supported by technological modernization. In Israel, the production of economic space and social memory construction acquire challenging investigative dimensions in order to understand similarities and differences in social changes taking place in the twenty-first century. Environmental History and Cultural Landscape run through formulation, research, and systematic evaluation of public policies. These became recurrent goals in the twenty-first century, both in international organizations scale and in national, regional, and local scales. These social practices aim to attend and ensure processes’ efficiency on promoting integration and social cooperation. The forms of social exclusion and their reproduction, densely addressed by the social sciences and political thought, mainly, from the 1960s onwards, acquired new dimensions. In last quarter of this century, this social phenomenon has become more extensive, socially and spatially, intense and dramatic, imposing to the international community, to the governments and civil society of all nations, the need to promote social cooperation. Government and institutions have been oriented to behave according to a sustainable development perspective, mobilizing the community of nations, cultural practices, sciences, market, and means of communication. In Worldwide, two spheres of international performance are emblematic of this search,: the one regarding the environment and the one regarding education, culture, science, and technology. Documents promulgated in the United Nations scope, such as Agenda 21 (1992), Our Creative Diversity (1995) and The future we want (2012), for example, indicate institutional strategies, program actions, and social subjects able to play a leading role in social governance e and policy in an era marked by social and technological changes driven by the globalization of the economy. The universities and human sciences, in particular, have tried to reflect and analyze these ongoing processes of transformation in natural and cultural heritage management. The aforementioned efforts, arising from the imperatives of safeguarding the heritage, promoting biological and cultural diversity, and individual and collective existing social identities on the planet, reach, intertwining, the purposes of Sustainable Development. It is in their formulation, promotion, and assessment that the environment and culture achieve notoriety and social centrality in the search, for example, for the quality of life and well-being of communities and countries, accessibility and inclusion of vulnerable populations, education, creative economy, and tourism. The study of public policies and institutional strategies for research, preservation, and dissemination of natural and cultural heritage have been increasingly articulated, especially since 1992. According to sociologist Nestor Canclini, these approaches are part of the definition process of cultural trends in a globalized world, creators of a new symbolic universe, and new cultural policies. The notion of Cultural Landscape aims to apprehend the relationship between landscapes, natural and built, and heritage. Since the Chapter of Rio (1992) the dichotomy between natural and cultural heritage, is being debanked by the increasing appreciation of the relationships between societies and environment. The constituents of the Cultural Landscape originates from the comprehension of the territories as vitals to link identity and social belonging to space, to nature and to the cultural assets of their localities. Within the notion
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of Cultural Landscape, multiple cultural heritages are contemplated in their diverse typology, such as those related to history, art, science, techniques, oral, and corporal expression, culinary, urban and country landscapes. The study of Cultural Landscapes in Israel, given its complexities and challenges for its protection and preservation, uncontrollably involves the management of public policies and its own society. The local communities are also means and part of the preservation process of the collective memory and related identities. Which strategies of human development, citizenship practices, economic activities, and cultural life can be conceived and exercised in order to protect the Cultural Landscapes in conjunctions with accelerated social, economic, and technological changes? To identify, record data and experiences, study responses given to these inquiries are the contributions of this study on Israel. Aiming to obtain adequate intellectual performance it was addressed, primarily, the practices of cooperation and sustainability of the Israeli proposals for the World Heritage. This perspective allows, on the one hand, for a large and deep demonstration of two objects of study, and on the other hand, opens possibilities for comparative examinations with practices disseminated in institutions from other countries.
1 Israel, State and National Identity The constitution of Israel as a national State dates from 1948. Benedict Anderson highlighted the relevance of studies on the national history and nationalism of small countries, particularly, from the construction of their nationalistic mythologies and the consolidation of their “imagined communities.” The institutions dedicated to measurement and to state control of territories, culture, and demographic contingents assume strategic and operational roles in the conception and political support of national identities (Anderson 2008, 286, 307). The national life of Israel has also suffered changes in its historical reality, such as the end of the Cold War and the first decade of globalization. Since 1948, the strategic orientation of the State of Israel has been guided by an effort to assure the national political cooperation. The continuous absorption of Jewish migrants, from Europe and America, from survivors of the Holocaust, and war threats with Arab-Palestinian leaders, resulted in the abdication of land claims for the maintenance of peace. This political orientation was perceptible until 1967, when the military offensive inaugurated a new moment in the management of territories, populations and Arab-Palestinian cultural practices, which emerged with the occupation of the Gaza Strip, in the hills of Golan, in the eastern part of the city of Jerusalem and in the Sinai peninsula by Israeli troops. In 1982, the occupation of the south region of the Lebanon represented the time and space extension of defense practices and national affirmation of the State of Israel followed from 1967 onwards. A new historical reality made it possible, in 1993, due to the Oslo Accords, to reverse the equation and the State of Israel intended to grant peace to six ArabPalestinian adversaries for the maintenance, and programmed and controlled return of territories occupied since 1967. Peace, now would be reached by the maintenance of
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the land. A new political equation was set as the route for establishing a “New Middle East,” book’s title and proposition of Israeli labor party leader, Shimon Peres. The political separation should be accompanied by the prospect of obtaining an economic integration, out of the integrative peace of Israelis, Arabs, and Palestinians. Peres proposal was anchored on the idea that the yield of a territory is more important than its extension, reason why, he argued: With science, technology and information much more can be done than with land, natural resources, and numbers (Peres 1998, 83). Israel, Palestine and Jordan could, then, compose a new economic and demilitarized area, based on the principle of international cooperation to confront shared issues, such as water, trade, and agriculture in arid lands, among others. The political formula historically provided innumerable benefits to Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, when the associates formed a community and economic space, sheltered under the acronym Benelux. Like Japan, Israel does not have abundant reserves of water, oil, and natural resources, in addition to occupying a very small national territory. The area of the country is about 24 thousand km2 , which is slightly more than the Brazilian state of Sergipe (22 thousand km2 ) and the national territory of El Salvador (21 thousand km2 ), and less than Haiti’s (28 thousand km2 ). There is a rich and intense symbolic mobilization, in the Judaic nationalism that grounds the “imagined community” of the State of Israel. An important axis is the educational system, entry point for the continuous and systematic intake of migrants from various continents, such as Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. Another axis is provided by the search and organization of an industrial and technological society, attractive and promoter of talents, businesses and salaries, aimed at exporting highvalue goods and services. The claim of an ancestral Judaic heritage provides another pillar in the search for homogeneity of the Israeli institutions. Religion, Hebrew language, schools of different theological and philosophical orientations, armed forces, culture and Judaic history, compose the list of active and powerful state and private institutions promoters of the national identity of the State of Israel. The New Middle East utopia, however, failed. In the assessment of Shimon Peres himself, there was not enough time to consolidate a mutual trust between the various political segments involved in the construction of a peace process. The process of global social change brought new challenging elements for the formation of a national identity and unity, on a global scale. One of them was pointed out by the French historian Jacques Le Goff, when he emphasized that the globalization of culture and the western decentralization were the blossoming newcomers in the historical reality of the twenty-first century. Mindful the Israeli national identity context outlined above, longed knowledge consists of understanding institutional practices for the implementation of public policies in the environmental and cultural areas in Israel, the city of Tel Aviv and the desert region of Negev. The historical-social phenomenon to be studied resides in institutional practices regarding the execution of propositions from documents recently formulated within the scope of the United Nations and destined to natural and cultural heritage, as the Sustainable Development Goals (2015) and UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections, their Diversity and their Role in Society (2015).
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The universe of analysis of these practices is composed by public policies and actions from cultural institutions of Israel in its national territory. This passage of the world and general formulations for national and sectoral practices—environment and culture—involves the change and articulation of scales in the observation of the studied phenomena. On the other hand, the national and regional scales enable studying specific, such as those aimed at cooperation and sustainability. The nucleus of information and questions lies in the UNESCO World Heritage list inscription proposals, referring to the Bauhaus style architectural ensemble, the White City, Tel Aviv (2003), and the Incense Route—Cities of the Negev Desert (2005), available online on the UNESCO website. The temporal and spatial delimitation of the study resulted from an effort to overcome this challenge, an articulation of theoretical-conceptual formulations, of institutional practices of cooperation and sustainability on a national and regional scale, in Israel. So it was chosen the notion of Cultural Landscape regarding its operability in relation to natural and cultural heritage associated with time and space in national society. The knowledge of public policies, institutional strategies, and innovative practices of cooperation and sustainability in Israel has become illuminating in the understanding of the State’s action in environmental and cultural management, participation of the public sector in the economy, the constant need to promote integration and social cooperation, increased in tourism, cultural diversity, and heritage institutions role, in face of the accelerated social changes in this century. Israel is a country with national interests and challenges that display a need for social integration and cooperation and which role of education, culture, science, and technology can play in overcoming these obstacles and promoting sustainable development. The production of the economic space and the construction of social memory in Israel take exciting investigative dimensions to understand similarities and differences in the social changes taking place in the twenty-first century. In Israel, territorial occupation, transformation of natural landscapes in the cities, expansion of industrialization and agricultural activities, creation of infrastructure for power generation, mining, communication and transportation, intensively and rapidly occurs, from the 1930s onwards and take momentum after 1945. The role of education and culture in institutional practices of cooperation and sustainability in promoting sustainable development was examined based on the formulation of international documents and bibliography. The notion of Cultural Landscape plays a catalytic role in the social construction of heritage, citizenship and right to difference, territorial management, and public policies related to environment and culture. This study contemplates the city of Tel Aviv, on the shores of the Mediterranean, and the cities of the desert region of Negev, south of Israel. The urban areas of Tel Aviv, part of the so-called White City, compose a synthesis of the aesthetic, social, and artistic meanings of distinctive elements of modern architecture, in the broad sense, of the Bauhaus style, in particular, in Israel. The ideal of planned city and city-garden envisioned an integration of local cultural and natural traits, composing a unique stylistic and architectural ensemble in Tel Aviv. It is the valorization and preservation of these characteristics that sustain the World Heritage status of the city, as of 2003. In the Negev region, the ruins of ancient cities of the
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Nabataean Empire—Haluza, Minshit, Avdat, Shivta, that nowadays integrates the Incense Route, constitutes a landscape characterized by the sophisticated practices of irrigated agriculture, settlement, urbanization, and mercantile circulation of the Hellenistic and Roman world in the Middle East. The aforementioned cities were articulated in a wide and extensive commerce chain of incense and spice caravans, subdivided in countless subsidiary and complementary routes that linked the Mediterranean east coast, from Gaza, to the Arabian peninsula and India, among other destinations, between 300 BC and 200 AD. Its inscription in World Heritage, in 2005, retains strong political symbolism of sustainability based on the regional integration through commercial trade, science and technology in overcoming hostilities to human life in extreme aridity environments.
2 The White City of Tel Aviv In the national territory of Israel and in the areas of political and military administration, after international conflicts, such as Samária and Judéia (Cisjordania), a mosaic of the urban life history is found. Thousands of cities, such as Jericó, and others recently constructed are located in these spaces. The urban population is absolutely predominant. Tel Aviv is, next to Haifa and Jerusalem, one of the great cities of Israel. It is also very different from them. It is new and modern, industrial, Mediterranean, and touristic. Autonomous of biblical and immemorial past, there are no secular monuments or valuable archaeological sites in the city. The dynamic and diversified cultural pole made the city an emblematic composition of art and nature. In 1909, an association of seventy people acquired land and started the construction of their own residences, located between Port of Jafa, one of the oldest in the world and the entry point for different places in Holly Land, on the left bank of the Yarkon River, toward the north. It was a vast area dominated by sandy terrains, coastal dunes, and irregular topography, between the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea, to the west, and the ridges of Sumail-Massudia, an Arab village, located to the east. It appeared there, rapidly expanding, the neighborhood habited by Jewish families working in port business activities in Jafa. The expectation of its residents and the successive works of intervention on the land would lend the new urbanized space the name Tel Aviv, title of a book by the famous creator of Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In the Hebrew language, the expression designates the ordered space for a new life. Poetically, Tel Aviv is the “hill of spring,” a place of life that is reborn. The ideal of a new home in Palestine was enlivened by the growing Jewish nationalism that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, defended the establishment of a national territory for Jews who lived scattered throughout the world. It is estimated that about 70% of this Jewish population was, at that time, living in Eastern Europe. After World War I ended, Britain took over political control of Palestine. Under the British Mandate, Palestine was divided into two territories, one to the east and one to the west of the Jordan River. There, there was a systematic settlement of Jews
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who, since the 1880s, arrived in that region in constant migratory waves. In 1921, Tel Aviv gained administrative autonomy. In the following years he received inumerous, jewish families, coming from different countries, but mainly from Europe. There was an expansion of the occupied area and the resident population jumped from 3,600 to almost thirty-five thousand inhabitants in 1925. Urban occupation grew rapidly and disorderly. The difficulties of circulation and transportation became evident and more inconvenient each day. The city experienced the first planning effort in the use and occupation of urban space, projecting its expansion in the future. The pilot plan was drawn up in 1926, by Scottish urban planner Patrick Geddes. He had designed the Hebrew University, located on Mount Scopus, in Jerusalem, and had visited Tel Aviv in previous years. The urban project envisaged a garden city, with tree-lined streets, squares and parks. The green areas separating houses and streets, relieving the hot and humid climate of the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. It also opened wide routes in the north-south direction, destined to transport, a new port area, at the mouth of the Yarkon River, and the installation of an industrial park. The construction of schools and artistic and cultural spaces, such as concert halls and museums, was included. The Plan contemplated the unity of the city, integrating it with the urban area of Jafa. Today, both form an administrative unit, Tel Aviv-Yafo. It should be the harbinger of the new era, of cultural and national unity, of harmonious construction of a new society. The presence of the sea increased contact with nature, feeding its metaphors and symbolism. On the beaches, the point of departure and arrival, meeting the waters, boats and fishing nets, and people. Spaces and paths that open, free, protection and leisure, in the immensity of the horizon before the eyes of residents and visitors of the city. The life cycle, rejuvenating and waning, was stamped at sunset in the waters of a historic sea. Seen daily from the windows and streets of the city, the sea heralded the continued revival of security and happiness in Tel Aviv, a combination of exile and Zionism. In the 1930s, new migratory waves brought about changes in the original project. The demand for land and buildings has advanced over public areas and parks. After the Second World War, the city surpassed 200 thousand inhabitants and the garden city no longer held that population. The city widened toward the north and east. The continued arrival of new residents and, therefore, the demand for more buildings, had an impact on the city’s architectural history. European professionals and local needs converged in the dissemination of ideas, styles, shapes, materials, and construction techniques characteristic of the machine’s aesthetics, especially that of the Bauhaus school. Modern architecture found many possibilities for creation and experimentation in Tel Aviv, assuming unique regional features, derived from the climate, the light, the Mediterranean and cultural environment in which the city was born and grew. In the 1930s to 1950s, new neighborhoods emerged, shaped by these architectural values and which distinguish the urban landscape to the present day. The simplicity, functionality, uniformity, and low cost of building materials, offered by the new architecture, predominated in residential and commercial areas. The white color, pastel tones, straight lines, aerodynamic facades, columns, awnings and balconies,
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highlighted about four thousand buildings, making up the White City of Tel Aviv. In 2003, UNESCO declared this architectural ensemble a World Heritage Site, unique and universal. In 2018, the City Hall, in partnership with the German Ministry of the Environment, was working to create the White City Heritage Center, dedicated to its study, preservation, and cultural promotion. The initiative suggests thinking about the sense of appreciation and the programmed destination for this urban structure. First, the current urban framework is the historical result of just over a century of systematic human occupation and organization of space. Its directives over time were those of the urban and industrial architecture of the twentieth century. Second, the social and economic conditions that gave rise to it on the sands of the Mediterranean coast lead to an understanding of the specificities and singularities that distance it from the mere transposition of architectural elements from Europe to Tel Aviv. Bauhaus was a school of art and architecture established and consecrated in Germany in the interwar period. The experience was interrupted and dispersed, after 1933, with the rise of Nazism, finding itself welcomed in several countries outside Europe, especially in the United States. It was in this country that Walter Gropius (1883–1969), founder, professor, idealizer, and diffuser of the principles of this new architecture, continued his work in formulating solutions suited to the needs and technical possibilities of the nascent industrial world and its urban structures. It is not uncommon to confuse Bauhaus as a synonym for modern architecture itself. The third wave of Jewish migration toward Palestine, from the 1920s until World War II, brought countless qualified professionals and technicians, among them educators, scientists, artists, architects, designers, and engineers. These new inhabitants would account for Tel Aviv’s modern and cosmopolitan appearance. They gave expression to desires and feelings of universalism which, although transcending Jewish nationalism, offered it cultural, technical, and economic identity of sovereignty and modernity, anchored earlier in the present than in the past. This feeling of universalism touched other national imaginary, as captured by the Brazilian writer Pedro Nava who, in view of that city, recorded in his travel diary: Utilitarian and tasteless architecture, modern synthetic not for simplicity but for economy. It vaguely resembles a Juiz de Fora - four times bigger. Greater not in quality but in quantity. An imaginary Juiz de Fora, with three Rio Branco avenues, four Halfeld streets and five Espírito Santo streets. February 6, 1958 (Nava 1998, 57)
In the 1960s, cultural secularization spread throughout the city. The emergence of new urban structures has broken the horizontality of the landscape with high commercial and residential buildings. In the following years, eclecticism of architectural styles took over the city with the dissemination of formal and material elements from different eras and countries. The valorization and promotion of the White City of Tel Aviv with the initiative of the referred local and international partnership and in the constitution of the Heritage Center of the White City, acquire meanings when we examine symbols and myths enclosed in the materiality of this urban ensemble. Firstly, as a collection and document of an architectural style so striking and present in the beginning of the construction of the city. Second, the reaffirmation of national
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identity, accelerated after 1948, with the creation of the State of Israel, one of the fragile experiences of reconstructing the world and social life after the Second World War. Finally, the possibilities of integration and social, cultural, and economic cohesion contained in this unique heritage of art and technique for the development of cultural and tourism programs. Bauhaus architecture in Israel, and in Tel Aviv, in particular, represented a search for reintegration into European culture, resorting to ideas banned by Nazism. The constructive units that make up the White City were built in a kind of praise for rationalism and modernity, being directly opposed to the brutality of Nazi fascism and war. This range of meanings provides ways and alternatives to face the risks of urban and social breakdown by boosting heritage institutions and the labor market in the production of cultural goods and services. The heterogeneity that distinguishes the demographic composition of Israeli society, to which, in recent times, a large contingent of people from Russia has been added, is at the base of cultural and artistic life today. The materiality and aesthetics of the White City reflect the desire to drive its own destiny. The pursuit of new goals to be achieved, once again, by perseverance and hope, individual and collective, in sync with the present time. The White City emerges as an emblem of concentration and grandeur of the first Jewish city built under the ideal of Zionism. This heritage fuels the construction of new representations of the city in the transition from industrial and national society to the nascent global and knowledge society. Information technologies provide new forms of integration and cultural communication, accelerating social understanding, economic insertion, and political projection in the contemporary world and in the uncertain international order of the twenty-first century.
3 Incense Route In 1932, the historian and archaeologist Mikhail Ivanovitch Rostovtzeff (1870–1952) highlighted the cities and routes of ancient caravans that crossed Asia and reached Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean. A set of linked nuclei, composing routes of circulation in Antiquity and assuming articulating roles and of economic, power, and cultural networks. It was as a scholarly researcher of Greek and Scythian monuments in southern Russia, of travels in the Mediterranean, of searches in libraries and museums, that Rostovtzeff became famous as an investigator of contacts between cultures. In his historiographical work he distinguished himself by the meaning attributed to urban and commercial life in the diversity and circulation of artistic and cultural works that populated cities and temples, markets and palaces, empires, kings, and merchants. The historical studies of Rostovtzeff contained in the book Caravan Cities, in particular, reveal a historical geography of the Ancient World. The articulations between different and distant regions—Egypt, Italy, India, Arabia, Asia Minor— are also accompanied by a vocabulary related to water: rivers, rain, sea breeze,
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irrigation, wet and dry areas, wells, channels, dikes, oases, are characters present in descriptions and analyses of the book. References to absence and scarcity are more constant than access and availability of water. Museums in the Middle East and Asia are full of objects and records of obtaining, consuming, storing, and distributing water. The availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation is part of the Sustainable Development Goals, established by the United Nations (UN) in 2015, aiming at universal, equitable and quality access. Previously, in 2001, water and sanitation had been highlighted among the Millennium Goals as a strategic requirement to reduce child mortality worldwide. The resonances between the ideals of cooperation and sustainability in the last three decades highlight the promotion of heritage in Israel, focused on the new economic moment under globalization. The caravan cities are material testimonies, inscribed in time and on the ground, of an extensive and refined exchange system that united seas and deserts, east and west, north and south, which separated and approached, which fed contacts, circulation, and migration between the edges of the path and route network. Boats and caravans are central to understanding the formation of the Ancient World. In Israel, the Incense Route was inscribed on the World Heritage List as a “Fossilized Cultural Landscape” of an active and dynamic system powered by animal traction of camels, called “ships of the desert”, but also dromedaries, mules, and horses. A technical landscape from the past, that of urbanization and irrigated agriculture in the Negev desert. There is an ecology of the merchant routes and the caravan cities, which people and goods, exotic and valuable products— perfumes, stones, spices, metals, ivories, weapons, glasses, pearls, from different parts of the Mediterranean, central Africa, and India. The establishment of trade routes also implied the organization of rules, laws and codes, accounting, currencies, credit, contracts, merchants, scribes, autonomous and centralized power. One cannot understand the inscription of the Incense Route without the social organization of desert peoples, as are the Bedouins, the target of adventure and ecological tourism in Israel, although dissociated from that World Heritage. The Incense Route was part of this current of rising global society themes, marked by environmental issues, such as water, sustainable cities and biodiversity, intercultural dialogue, expansion and promotion of world trade. Its nomination as a World Heritage site has a temporal proximity to the UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity, in 2005, and with the creation of the Branly Museum, in Paris, dedicated to the protection and dissemination of cultural expressions from different continents, in 2006. A process of gradual construction and consolidation of the caravan trade, started around 3,000 BC, and its spread throughout the known world, Asia, Europe, and Africa with the successive appearance of caravan cities, as Amman was in its origins, Palmira and Petra, among others. The traits associated with the integration of people and their environment.
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4 Politics and Culture, Antipodes of Heritage? The following lines propose the delimitation of interpretive beacons congruent with the social and political fluctuations observed in the national and cultural life of Israel in the last two decades. It deals with the possibilities of elucidating the multiplicity of work strategies in the promotion of World Heritage under globalization. In Israel, the highlight is the period between 1999 and 2019, the twenty years in which it was joined to UNESCO. The relations between the political and cultural management of memory and heritage, the new technological instruments in the organization and sharing of data and information in the context of culture, and the efforts for reform and social adjustment in Israel have made evident some of the linked intellectual horizons directly and indirectly to the structural challenges faced by the global society and to the contents of that national society. The continuous and simultaneous interference of social, economic, geopolitical interests, and ideological options has been exacerbated by latent tensions and conflicts both within Israeli society and in the Arab-Palestinian territories under military occupation since 1967, and under the responsibility of the Palestinian National Authority, since the 1990s. The categories of thought mobilized here—Environmental History, Cultural Landscape, World Heritage, Cooperation, Sustainable Development, Sustainability—in understanding this issue ensured knowledge of the historical-social and cultural transition process in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The empirical evidence studied, the White City, of Tel Aviv, and the Incense Route, in the Negev desert, made evident the worldviews, idealistic and pragmatic aspirations and institutional conditions in contrast to the worldviews, the idealistic aspirations. and pragmatic and psychosocial conditions present in Israeli society in this century. They made it evident, above all, how the former are, after all, swallowed up by the latter. The elaboration of Table 1—Cultural Landscape in Israel, sought to identify, gather, and compare the main constituent elements of the evidence examined in both examples of World Heritage studied here. It is necessary to present, immediately, the reading that suggests the coexistence of two regimes of historicity in the information and historical interpretation contained in the indication and nomination of both World Heritage Sites in Israel. The White City of Tel Aviv stands out as a novelty and singularity of unique value, that of the presence of the European artistic vanguard brought by Jewish migration. According to François Hartog, the nomination for World Heritage follows the historicity regime that characterizes it as presentism. It is the one that guides continuity and the expectation of extending the present time in the future. It is particularly used to specific social segments, such as nationality and ethnic and cultural identities. The Incense Route, in turn, evokes tradition and ancestry of millenary value, opaque to and without political connection, lost with the collapse of the peace process between Israel, Arab and Palestinian countries. The nomination for World Heritage follows the regime of historicity that Hartog characterizes as modern. It is the one that guides collective destinations, with universalist content and aspirations.
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Table 1 Cultural Landscape in Israel: Tel Aviv and the Incense Route Nº
Tel Aviv (White City)
Incense Route
1
Neozionism: symbolic value
Zionism: symbolic value
2
Identity with the West
Identity with the Orient
3
Presentism: present/future/present
Modern historicity regime: past present Future
4
Typology: architectural ensemble
Typology: archaeological ensemble
5
Cosmopolitan: links the city to the modern world
Regional: links the Negev to the Ancient World and the globalized world Regional:
6
Urban heritage (2005)
Landscape heritage (2005)
7
Technique and aesthetics: artistic vanguard
Equity/intrinsic value Technique and economy: brand value
8
Vigorous art: brand value
Ruins of the past, missing art Equity/intrinsic value
9
Technology and start-ups
Trade, tourism
10
Insertion in the social fabric: digital culture
Exceptional monument: water, desert, geology, city on the rock (Petra)
The difficulties faced in describing and understanding the issue lie in the challenges and impasses that have arisen in the social process of replacing a traditional heritage, referring to the composition of the national ideology of the State of Israel, but also in its reaffirmation, symbolized, for example, in the White City and the establishment of another inheritance, referring to the composition of the regional community’s ideas—The New Middle East, by Shimon Peres, for example— finally, unsuccessful. In both cases, the tension and conflicts between worldviews, national aspirations, and institutional and psychosocial conditions, are manifested in the Israeli policy sphere by the fracture and polarization that have been increasingly accentuated since 1995, with the interruption of the Agreements peace, established in Oslo, the permanent tensions in the occupied territories and the impasses in Israeli national politics. The change and succession of nationalist Zionism, which is at the origin of the State of Israel, in 1948, by conceptions of the world and aspirations that authors would identify as post-Zionists, in search of socio-cultural adjustments to the globalized world, have been undermined by change and the succession of that operated, notably from 2009, by conceptions of the world and aspirations identified as neozionists. Social and political resistance to programmed change has deepened and, to date, it has achieved successive political-electoral triumphs. In 2019, the holding of two elections was not enough to change this situation and break the impasse, leaving the expectations for the redefinition of the ongoing process for the third electoral round held in January 2020, which remained unchanged. The success of the conceptions of the world and the aspirations identified as neozionists, everything indicates, stems, to a large extent, from the strength and the roots achieved by the Jewish nationalism of 1948 and the reaffirmation of its success premises such as: conscience, autonomy, and perseverance national ideals, on an
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individual and collective scale; the growing intolerance toward all forms of nonconformism, whether in the diplomatic, ideological, political and military fields, or within the social groups directly involved, both Palestinians and Jews; the progressive devaluation and consequent loss of political effectiveness of the induced change as a constructive social factor and of continuity of the sociocultural system in Israel. There is a mismatch in Israeli society today between the secularization of society and culture and the administrative rationality of World Heritage. The patrimonial phenomena studied emerge as illustrative cases of trends of our era, of the relations of the globalized society with the natural and cultural heritage under the tutelage of UNESCO, in general, and of national patrimonial policies, in particular. Overcoming this gap will require, in the short and medium term, actions directed in at least three directions. The first suggests a greater adjustment between heritage thinking and action, nationally and internationally, after Israel’s unilateral departure from UNESCO in January 2019, within the scope of different classes, ethnic and social groups regarding the purposes and values of World Heritage. The second direction points to a greater perception and adherence to collective and universal collective values by the legal and administrative order, today in dispute and even in open confrontation with theological pressures. Finally, it is necessary to understand the distinctions that reign today between large urban centers and small and medium-sized cities as to the meanings of World Heritage, both on a world scale and on a national scale. Israel’s case proved to be a fruitful observation post for this debate. In the nearly twenty consecutive years that Israel joined UNESCO between 1999 and January 2019, that country’s political history has been less fascinating than its rich and diverse cultural history. The worsening of the world cultural crisis and the expansion of totalitarian appeals in the international and national political sphere have ensured the social hegemony of Neozionism in Israel in the last ten years, called by analysts and the media as the Netanyahu Era. The international cultural scene has seen a growing role for UNESCO in the twenty-first century. A new moment has opened in the dynamics of the technical, scientific, cultural, and pedagogical network of heritage, on a world scale, which can be known in its trajectory through successive UNESCO actions promoted in seminars, publications, technical and institutional guidelines, evaluation and case studies, practical and conceptual propositions. In an accelerated process of cultural innovations contained in the report Our creative diversity (1996), including the adoption and dissemination of the operational concept of Cultural Landscape, the conventions of Intangible Heritage (2003) and cultural diversity (2005), UNESCO pursued its original objectives promoting and protecting cultural assets of different societies, social groups, and ethnic groups. The international political landscape has undergone equally profound changes. The legacy of the second half of the twentieth century, when Human Rights, a community of nations, criticism of colonialism, diffusion of culture and peaceful coexistence, was added to the UN’s attempts to adapt public policies of government and society to the rhythms of militant culture and cultural management at the international and national scales. According to Norberto Bobbio, the rights of culture and the rights of politics feed antitheses that color differences and friction between intellectuals and
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political leaders. The Italian philosopher uses the examples of two pairs of antitheses: civilization and barbarism and civilization and decay. Observing both antitheses, he says, is effective in understanding the total exclusion of otherness. In the first, civilization as a possession of values and, in the second, civilization as a conquest, nullify the other. These antitheses affect the way of thinking of the average individual, today, as in 1956, when strife and not dialogue, the devouring fire, impose the rejection and exclusion of difference. It is here, when the dialogue is interrupted, that the duty of criticism begins, that begins to question history (Bobbio 72). In 1948, Israel assumed the political, economic, ideological, and psychological burden of a new national state. He also assumed the management possibilities of the imagined communities established by nationalism. The open possibilities, realized or not, due to the international and national political dynamics, resorted to ideas fed by the biblical past, national identity and Zionism, technological and scientific modernization, humanism. Architecture and cities, ancient and modern, appeared as sources of legitimacy and recognition in the international community and in the field of World Heritage (Errázuriz: 294). Israel joined, between 1999 and 2019, the fraction of hegemonic cultural production under globalization, contained, for example, in the incorporation of the notion of UNESCO’s Cultural Landscape modality. He devoted the cooperation and sustainability strategies to the agenda of the new millennium place and attention in its public policies in the management of the Israeli and world natural and cultural heritage.
References Anderson B (2008) In: Bottman D (Trad) Comunidades imaginadas. Companhia das Letras, São Paulo Bobbio N (2015) Política e cultura. In: Clasen JA (Trad) UNESP, São Paulo Canclini NG (1994) O Patrimônio cultural e a construção imaginária do nacional. In: Dias MS (Trad) Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional. Rio de Janeiro, Arquivo Nacional, 23: 94–115 CONFERÊNCIA das Nações Unidas sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentável. O futuro que queremos. Comitê Facilitador da Sociedade Civil Catarinense, s/l, 2012 CONFERÊNCIA das Nações Unidas sobre Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento. Agenda 21. 3º edição. Brasília: Senado Federal, 2003 Cuéller JP (Org) (1997) Nossa diversidade criadora. In: Candeas AW (Trad) UNESCO, Campinas, Papirus; Brasília Delores J et al (2004) Educação, um tesouro a descobrir. 9º edição. Ministério da Educação/UNESCO, São Paulo, Cortez, Brasília Errazúriz EC (2018) Valor de arquitectura: entre el canon eterno y el patrimonio futuro. In: de Nordenflycht Concha J (Ed) Estudios Patrimoniales. Universidad Catolica, Santiago, pp 285–297 Hartog F (2003) Régimes d’historicité: présentisme et expériences du temps. Seuil, Paris ICOM Conseil International des Musées (2015) Museés et paysages culturels. Nouvelles de l’ICOM, vol. 68. ICOM, Paris, pp 3–40 ICOM/CECA (1992) The museum and the needs of people. ICOM/Israel, Haifa Nava P (1998) Viagem ao Egito, Jordânia e Israel. Giordano; Cotia, Ateliê, São Paulo
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Peres S (1998) Israel, 50 anos: Entrevista a Robert Littell. In: Garschagen DM (Trad). RelumeDumará, Rio de Janeiro Peres S (1994) O novo Oriente Médio. In: Garschagen DM (Trad) Relume-Dumará, Rio de Janeiro Rostovtzeff M (1932) Caravan cities. Clarendon Press, Oxford UNESCO (2015) From ideas to actions: 70 years of UNESCO. Santos: Editora Brasileira de Arte e Cultura; Paris: UNESCO. (Edição trilíngue: inglês/francês/português) UNESCO (2015) Recommendation concerning the protection and promotion of museums and collections, their diversity and their role in society. UNESCO, Paris
World Heritage Risks and Threats
Brazil on the Circuit of International Cultural Relations: Return and Devolution of Ethnographic Goods Rodrigo Christofoletti and Vitória dos Santos Acerbi
The return of a work of art or record. to the country that created it enables. that a people recover part of their memory and identity, and proves that the long dialogue between civilizations. that shapes the history of the world continues. in an atmosphere of mutual respect between nations. Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, Director-General of UNESCO, 1978.
Abstract After years of requests from CRAN, the Representative Council of France’s Black Associations, the French president publicly announced the intention to restitute the African tangible cultural heritage present in French Soil and has asked two great experts to make a report, moving towards a concrete plan. Dutch museums make movements in the direction of restitution and reparation and the German civil society mobilizes to demand the same of the country’s museums. The Colombian and Peruvian governments have formally asked Spain and American institutions to give back cultural objects of their pre-hispanic pasts. In this scenario of an increasing number of initiatives of devolution and demands of restitution of objects taken from colonial or analogous to colonial circumstances, from indigenous communities… How does Brazil figure? Does this country of continental proportions, rich and varied past, including approximately 2 million of original native population before the Portuguese arrival and 300 hundred years of colonial history have disputes or dialogues in course with foreign countries and institutions on this This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity / 1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Rodrigo Christofoletti Professor of Cultural Heritage at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora - UFJF. Coordinator of the Research Group on Heritage and International Relations - CNPq. Vitória dos Santos Acerbi Master in International Relations from the Universidad de Salamanca. R. Christofoletti (B) Federal University of Juiz de Fora – UFJF, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] V. dos Santos Acerbi Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_14
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matter? Has Brazil been searching for, claiming back and repatriating its colonial or indigenous cultural objects abroad? Yes, it has. But why do we not hear about these cases? Who are the parties involved - the demanding ones and those to whom the demands are addressed? Can we outline their social, historical, institutional profile? How have the claims been made? Which political, ethical, historical, legal arguments have they used? How have the foreign parties in the discussion reacted? Have the demands been successful? Which were the consequences of the process for the party returning and the party receiving the cultural objects in question? This text aims to answer these questions, reassembling and analyzing the thus far known cases, thus making a panorama of the situation of the return of ethnological cultural objects in Brazil. Keywords Return of cultural objects · Ethnological heritage · Brazilian indigenous objects Forty years have passed since the appeal of UNESCO’s Director-General at the end of the 1970s, and since then discourses like this have been echoed several times. However, of all the gears that bind the multibillion-dollar machine of illicit trafficking in cultural goods, the return, repatriation or restitution of archaeological, artistic, or cultural pieces are certainly the least studied stages of this vicious trafficking circle, and therefore the least known. This is due primarily to the fact that this is an extremely selective activity, and, above all, because only in the last two decades states, museums and actors have linked to the heritage preservation sector and intensified their actions toward the return. It is clear that the return (final stage of the aforementioned cycle), involves a series of elements intrinsic to the orbit of the goods guard (security of space, political harmony of the depository space of the piece, capacity and knowledge for the maintenance of the hosting spaces of the works etc.), but to transform the vicious circle into a virtuous one, the actors of the preservation have been committed to increasingly promote the actions of return in the last decades, taking them out of invisibility. It is worth saying, however, that despite having gained importance in recent years, this subject is absolutely not new. The discussion on the legitimacy of the attack on and, above all, of the destruction and plundering of civil assets of the group with whom conflict is being fought, which is being subjugated and dominated, has been held by thinkers and legislators since ancient times. More specifically about wars and colonial domains, from which ethnographic cultural assets emerge, after the Second World War, the international community began to experience a historical phenomenon that reconfigured the political-territorial borders of the world and culminated, among other changes and ruptures, in important legal, cultural, and ethical manifestations: the independence of African and Asian states. These newly independent states needed to assert themselves, in all spheres, internally and before the globe. To this end, more specifically in the field of their identity conformation and appropriation of their own past, recovering their material cultural heritage maintained as colonial legacy in the European countries that “administered” their territories since the Berlin conference
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(1885) was of paramount importance. From then on, they articulated the approval of conventions in the international legal order that would promote the return of this heritage back to their countries and initiated demands in this direction (Prott 2009, 12). This highlights the complex and rich subject regarding the return of cultural heritage within the international relations arena. Plunging into the theme, we consider that contends involving repatriation and restitution can come from three main settings (Prott 2008, 103). The most contemporary is the illegal plundering and trafficking of cultural goods, which today constitutes the third in financial volume in the world (Christofoletti 2017, 114), and whose resolution is based on international treaties since 1970. The one of more prolonged occurrence through the centuries, of misappropriation during wars, and hostilities and occupations, which has been under discussion since antiquity (Robichez 2015, 112), and is still pressing in the current debate, for conflicts in countries of very rich heritage, such as Iraq and Syria. And, finally, the one that we aim to study here, the one of which the most variable asks for examination and arouses the most controversy, cultural objects removed in colonial circumstances, or analogous to colonial ones, from indigenous peoples, in which the dispossessed communities had no voice or power to prevent their material heritage from being taken from them. It may be argued that this third circumstance is nothing more than a special category of the second. However, because of the problematic application of national and international legislation—more delicate in the colonial case, since the domination or relations engendered in its context are not widely considered illegal and thus are not being contemplated by the right of war, and since its location in time prevents the application of existing legislation, which rarely is born contemplating a retroactive possibility—as well as due to sensitive issues of historical wounds and debts, hierarchies, and categorizations of cultural matrixes and places of speech still far from being overcome, we maintain this setting as a distinct from the previous one. The right to knowledge (Santos 2006), an invaluable and unavoidable component of any project to overcome the colonialities of power that are still in force, necessarily passes through the affirmation, claim and appropriation of one’s own past, of access to its materiality, of its social circulation with a renewed meaning, at a national and international level. These delicate questions are thus a particular component of this modality or conjuncture of taking cultural goods, which make their return complex and difficult to achieve. According to Gerstenblith (apud Costa 2018, 257), there are three orders of cultural goods involved in return processes: works of art belonging to public or private collections; archaeological objects; and ethnographic objects, claimed by the heirs of ancient peoples. This work discusses disputes over objects of the latter order not by our deliberation, but by the set of cases themselves. In Brazil, as Trindade (2018) indicates, the cases of claims of goods removed in a colonial context revolve around such goods. Therefore, also, the main theoretical influential of this survey are Anthropology, Ethnology, and Museology. We historians are still very shy about walking these paths, and this proposal is just like a cartographic incursion from our domain, which has much to listen and learn, but also to contribute to the discussions on the subject.
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1 Brazil at the Center of the Debate: The Return of Cultural Goods as a Political Action “…we don’t know much about a lot of things. that was recorded about our people. This material has always served to enrich. the white man’s knowledge. We want to know our history better.” Felix Rondon Adugo Enawu, 2003.
The return and devolution of ethnographic objects in Brazil is an incipient and so far little studied movement. For this reason, we will present a comparative examination of known restitution and repatriation cases of cultural goods in this profile, taken from the Brazilian colonial context. Realizing the scarce production on such subject and its relevance, this proposal aims at analyzing the parties involved in the processes and their socio-institutional profile; the objects in dispute, their place and meaning for both parties over time; how the initial takeover of the mentioned goods took place; how the request for repatriation or the return initiative was made and which arguments were mobilized by each state, seeking with this information to understand the outcome and the effects chained by the process for both parties. Since the 2000s, the legitimacy of the continued presence of heritage taken under colonial domination, and/or of important identity value to non-European groups, in European institutions has been increasingly questioned, with a growing demand for repatriation and quite a few restitution initiatives.1 This can be explained by the advances in postcolonial studies, the empowerment and visibility of marginalized communities, the greater geopolitical power of southern countries, and the erosion of discourses regarding material impossibilities of North–South transfers due to the increasingly tangible possibilities of cooperation to create or improve them. When it comes to Brazil, the room for research is still vast and largely unexplored. There was not one study that explains how Brazil is seeking, demanding and eventually bringing back its colonial heritage that is kept elsewhere. The purpose of this paper is precisely to fill this gap. We shall take the following as a starting point: a considerable set of historical, cultural, archaeological, artistic, and even architectural collections existing in Brazil has evaded or drained into the action of trafficking in the last century. The actors of this nefarious dramaturgy are plural, as are their actions. In order to demonstrate how dramatic this statement is, we will now proceed with the mapping of cases, which
1 To
name a few, Macron’s 2013 speech announcing the intention to restore African countries to their cultural heritage present on French soil, and the report published as the first development of this process; the Colombian request to Spain for the return of 122 pieces of the Quimbaya treasure, begun in 2006; the Peruvian government’s request to Yale University to return 46,332 objects from Machu Picchu, which finished in a memorandum of understanding and cooperation in 2011; the Greek demand to the British Museum for the restitution of Parthenon marbles.
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constitutes the core of this work. We will restrict ourselves to some cases of ethnographic objects return. The cases of archaeological pieces, statuary, ceramics, lithics, portable works of art, paintings of various natures, goldsmithery, silverware, sculptures, etc., will be left for another study. We will base ourselves on indications from Júlia Trindade (2018), who, flanking her object, the repatriations in Portugal, shed light on other examples in the Portuguese speaking community and mentioned the Brazilian cases of which there is news, the ones we will present a more detailed analysis. We will also include cases where there has been movement toward repatriation and restitution, and not only those where they were actually carried out. Likewise, we have included cases in which the item was taken after the colonial period (which officially ended in 1822) because all of them occurred against indigenous communities. This is not without reason, for even after independence, throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth, they were not fully included in the state building project. Not in practice, in institutions and in laws; nor in the imagination and narratives, where they belonged with glory and honor only to the past, and would inevitably disappear in the near future, which would account for, with a priori acquittal of the agents, the plunder of their heritage and their extermination, for the sake of progress. In other words, their status as others, as a primitive native community was not extinguished or changed in the formation of the Brazilian state. In the end, they continued to be minority communities, isolated from each other and from the centers of power, visited by Brazilian and foreign expeditions to map and collect elements of zoological, botanical, mineralogical, artistic, decorative, and ethnographic value. The communities thus studied, documented, and looted had insufficient knowledge and strength to speak out against or avoid its occurrence. It should be noted that such expeditions and looting did not take to the explicitly violent traits of the colonial moment, but rather sought for cordial approaches through conversation and exchanges. Nevertheless, the circumstances of the taking of such cultural heritage are too similar to those of colonial relations, given the social fragility of the indigenous communities, for the analysis not to consider it in this conceptual framework.
2 The Sacred Ax Kaàjré, the Krahô Indigenous People, and the Paulista Museum, 1986 The first case to be considered chronologically took place within the Brazilian borders, between the Krahô community and the Paulista Museum, in 1986, around a ceremonial ax made of stone, the object of a master’s dissertation (Melo 2010). The Krahô speak the Timbira language, of the Jê linguistic branch. They are about 2000 people living on the bank of the Tocantins River, in Tocantins, on lands given by the State in 1990. They went through conflicts and tensions until they received this fixed arrangement. In addition, they went through depopulation, involvement
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with messianic movements that sought to make them less indigenous, tearing their traditions, and intensifying miscegenation (Borges and Botelho 2010, p. 10). The Paulista Museum—founded on September 7, 1895, to be a Natural History Museum and a representative landmark of Brazilian independence and history from a regional view—housed collections so varied that it was gradually extended to other spaces, such as the Itu Republican Museum, in the countryside, and had part of its collections transferred to other institutions, as in 1989 to the USP Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, which took part in another case that will be analyzed here. In conversations with anthropologists who visited them, the Krahô found out that the master version of a sacred ax that is important in various rituals and festivities was in São Paulo. From then on, they organized themselves to get it back. The issue was resolved—after facing some resistance and ups and downs—with a concession, in which the ownership of the ax remains with the Paulista Museum, until its status as National Heritage is taken by IPHAN (Institute for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage) (which has not yet been done), but it is kept under the custody of the Indians, who can take it with them to Tocantins. The restitution was made in a solemn ceremony, with the presence of authorities from the São Paulo State and, similarly to the whole case, with great public notoriety (Melo 2010, 65). The subject generated debates and news in the press throughout its process, dividing the intelligentsia, journalists, and universities, which makes it an exception in this aspect among the cases analyzed here. It was often said that the Indians made too much ado about nothing, and if the ax was truly so important as they claimed, they would not have left it far away for forty years. However, if the Indians did not know the whereabouts of this ax, how could they claim it back? Moreover, the context in which this repatriation took place is not of little relevance to the understanding of it: the 1980s witnessed a gradual process of political opening in Brazil that unfolded with the rise of various social movements, from the most diverse groups. Among them, Indigenous peoples entered the social scene in the 1980s, not only asserting their presence in contemporary Brazil, but demanding respect and recognition of their rights. Alliances made with social sectors sensitive to their causes helped to achieve the social legitimacy they needed to positively affirm their culture, territories and ways of life. The educational actions of the Indians and their supporters became paramount in the struggle for historical rights. The Indians began to occupy institutional spaces and efficiently use to their advantage the technical mechanisms of audiovisual communication. (Albuquerque 2013, 9). (free translation).
Therefore, we may ask whether it would be reasonable to expect such a movement of claim and self-assertion in a different setting prior to this moment. Another issue raised by this case is the importance of contacts with anthropologists. They were the ones, after all, who made the Indians aware of where the ax was, which is the first step for the possibility of its return. In Brazil, contacts of these groups with the outside world occurred throughout history, with different discourses, approaches and purposes. For example, the extinct SPI (Indian Protection Service, which functioned between 1910 and 1967, succeeded by FUNAI—the current organism of Indian
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Fig. 1 Ceremony in which José Goldemberg, Rector of USP returns the ax that was preserved in the Paulista Museum. Photo: Alfredo Rizzuti, 1986
protection, National Indian Institute) aimed to protect Indians within a framework of their indelible natural extinction in the near future, which justified the collection of their objects by museums to be there custodied and exhibited. On the other hand, when the contact happens as it was in this case, informing the Indians about their musealized artifacts, promoting approximations, can be positively fruitful. This is a successful restitution, since the object has returned to its group of origin and its living function and meaning, having been reintroduced in its religious and social rituals. It promoted identity reaffirmation and cohesion among the Krahô, who had almost gone through cultural dissolution. In the mobilization to claim it back, they came together, exercised their social voice, and were recognized among society through the press. The legal status of the object, which officially remained the property of the Paulista Museum, becomes a detail in the situation, largely favorable to the Krahô, to the return of the Kàjré (the ax) with extremely positive resonances for the group (Fig. 1).
3 The Jurupixuna Masks, the Tukuna Indigenous People, and the Coimbra Science Museum, 1997 The second case is even more surprising. One could expect that the previous case, quickly resolved, very much in the limelight, would trigger or inspire others, in the cascade effect feared by authorities in cultural centers and museums, which, according to them, would be completely empty if repatriation came into fashion.
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However, this did not happen. Each group emerges in its movements of affirmation of Indianity and reappropriation of its past, each cultural piece “emerges” in its own time, in an unforeseen and unpredictable way, sometimes from a conjunction of factors at a certain given moment. Thus, the second case of repatriation in Brazilian history came eleven years after the first one, and was only a claim, since the restitution was denied. In 1997, a masks exhibition was held in Manaus, at the Rio Negro Palace Cultural Center, as the fourth and last part of the exhibition Memory of the Amazon (held in 1991 in Coimbra; in; 1992 in Lisbon; in 1994 in Porto). The masks were originally of ritualistic importance to an extinct Brazilian indigenous group, the Jurupixuna. They had been taken from Brazil to Portugal in the eighteenth century by the Portuguese naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira, who was on Brazilian soil between 1783 and 1793, with the initial goal to search, list and describe Brazil’s natural resources, but who also ended up taking a lot of it—among other items—with him. After belonging for years to the Royal Museum of Ajuda, where Ferreira worked after his return, today they are part of the collection (13) of the Science Museum of the University of Coimbra and the Maynense Museum of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences (14) (Gomes 2014, p. 29).2 This exhibition in Manaus was the first time some of these masks returned to their country of origin and to indigenous populations. At the time, the Tikuna Indians— who have represented themselves in the Maguta Museum in the Amazon region since 1990 and have lived in the same region where the Jurupixuna once lived recognized the exposed masks as being the same as their own, used for the same purposes— important rituals of passage, exclusively male, forbidden to the eyes of women and children, which engendered care from the curators to present them in a dark room with time-spaced lighting, respecting the ceremony of which they were once/are part. The members of the group thus recognized themselves as heirs of the missing Jurupixuna and made a request to José António Fernandes Dias, anthropologist responsible for the exhibition, for the restitution of such artifacts, which, they argued, rightfully belonged to them. The request was declined and we know little more about this matter. This case tells us a lot about the importance of the circulation of the collections. Such masks, which for conservation reasons rarely circulate, remain somewhat fossilized, inert, enclosed within themselves, far from a wider audience to discover the history of Ferreira’s trip and of the Jurupixuna through them, and far from indigenous people who might connect with them. Were it not for this exhibition, the Tikuna would probably not know anything about them, and would not be able to claim them back, and through them identify and relate to ancestors they did not know they had have. Here we see an undisputed evidence of how access——we do not even say ownership or return—of cultural heritage is a clear enabler of knowledge of one’s own history (Fig. 2). 2 In addition to these, there is also a single other collection of such masks, which can be found at the
Munich Museum of Ethnology, resulting from the collection made by Spix and Martius, traveling through Brazil between 1817 and 1820. (note 37).
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Fig. 2 Jurupixuna Masks. Anthropology section reserves of the Museum of Science, in Coimbra (Gomes 2014, p. 111)
4 Cloak Tupinambá, the Tupinambá De Olivença, and the National Museum of Denmark, 2000 The next case will be discussed in slight chronological deviation in order to analyze the two subsequent cases together since both involve the same Brazilian museum, as well as to textually approach these two requested returns that never happened and show the importance of the circulation of the collections. In 2000, during the exhibition “Rediscovery: 500 years and more” in São Paulo, part of a series of events related to the celebration of the 500 years of Portuguese discovery of the country, representatives of the Tupinambá de Olivença, established in the municipality of Ilhéus, Bahia, who claim the extinct Tupinambá as their ancestors, claimed the return to Brazil of a red feathered cloak, a piece that belongs to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. The Tupinambá are no longer present to speak for themselves. Until mid-eighteenth century, when they became extinct, they occupied the Brazilian coast, from Pará to São Paulo, and left undeniable legacies to the Brazilian culture, in literary and historical, linguistic terms, to the extent that the various names by which they were regionally known (Tupi, Tupiniquim, Tupinambá, Tamoio, Caeté, Potigua, and Tobajara) are more familiar to Brazilians than any of the other ethnic groups mentioned in this paper. Although they formed a linguistic and cultural unity, estimated to have consisted of one million people scattered throughout the territory upon the arrival of the Portuguese, and therefore numerous enough to earn the name of “indigenous nation”
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(Borges and Botelho 2010), the Tupinambá lived in conflict between themselves, and thus ended up dispersing in small, separated and differentiated groups, spatially and socially. This would mean, in practice, that if a repatriation process came about, several possible disputes would arise about the legitimacy of the Tupinambá de Olivença to claim the cloak and keep it with themselves, since there are several other groups, descendants of the Tupinambás, spread throughout Brazil, who would be equally entitled to have it. Would it be better, in this case, for the Brazilian State to present itself as a guardian, keeping the cloak in one of its museums, and being, among the various descendant groups of the Tupinambá, a “neutral” space? Or would this intervention be an endogenous imperialism, a further detachment of the cloak from its origins/meaning, given the sterile way in which museums hold their collections, distant from indigenous life? Such an issue did not need to be resolved, because the return did not take place. As for the National Museum of Denmark, home to the red cloak of Guará and Parrot feathers, formerly used exclusively by religious leaders in rituals, it was established in 1819, and contains a vast collection of world cultural history. There is no information on how the cloak came in its possession, but it is estimated to have belonged to Mauricio de Nassau (1604–1679), seventeenth-century governor of Dutch Brazil, head of the Dutch West India Company in Brazilian territory, who probably received it or took it from the Caeté Indians on the coast of Pernambuco, returned to Europe, taking it with him, and donated it to the museum or to someone who eventually gave it to the museum (Borges and Botelho 2010). The institution stated that it has not received an official request from the Brazilian government or indigenous leaders for the return of the cloak. Such wish that was, therefore, only publicly expressed, but not directed and formalized, making conversations impossible for its realization (Figs. 3, 4).
5 Bororo Objects, Don Bosco Museum of Cultures and Colle Don Bosco Museum The following case began only a year before the last one, and, unlike all the previous ones, which began with a claim, was driven by an initiative of the museum that made the return—in this case, virtual. The Colle Don Bosco Missionary Museum, located near Turin, Italy, is a Salesian space designed to house items collected from 1875 on missionary expeditions sent by the congregation throughout South America, between Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Venezuela and of course Brazil, from which comes the largest part of the collection, with a significant number of pieces from the Bororo, Xavante, Carajá, and other peoples of the Negro River, in the Amazon Rainforest. From 1997 onwards, the museum was remodeled from new perspectives, guiding the organization of the cultures on display according to aesthetic and technical criteria, and not merely quantitative, making texts that better communicate with
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Fig. 3 Tupinambá Feather Cloak. Photo: Niels Erik Jehrbo/ National Museum of Denmark
Fig. 4 Watercolor in parchment shows Brazilian Indians, one of them with a tupinambá cloak. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-42405892
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the pieces in order to let them give a glimpse of the culture from which they came (Carvalho et al. 2014, 281). The process generated, among those responsible for it, a desire to reverberate these more complex and rich explanations to the descendants of the original producers of the objects exhibited. Thus, the photographs of the 600 objects, taken for their restoration and subsequent reorganization, were duplicated and sent to the Meruri village, next to the Don Bosco Museum of Cultures in Brazil, another Salesian institution. There, they first visited the families’ homes, activating memories, causing amazement, surprise and recognition. Then, it went to the community’s schools, in a process of building knowledge about the pieces, learning about Bororo history and identity, as well as producing similar artifacts, from the enlarged high-resolution photographs. These recreations were exhibited in a center that the community built especially for this purpose, in a project praised by the anthropologists involved in which “the Center was the fundamental part of the itinerary designed to make a path that would lead to the rediscovery of a weakened identity.” (Carvalho et al. 2014, p. 283). They chose its name, Father Rodolfo Lunkenbein Culture Center, deliberating as much on the first part, the name, which honors a person who was murdered defending them, as the second one “Culture Center,” in spite of other possibilities such as “Museum” and “Exhibition Hall”, which in their view emphasized the dead character of the objects, exposed without context, a sign of white supremacy. In addition, since everyone wanted to contribute, the center promoted a cooperative spirit in the group, recently shaken by clashes with loggers in the region. The objects brought through the photographs in the framework of this endeavor were part of Bororo’s no longer practiced complex naming ritual, an important moment when the newborn actually entered the community, involving more than a full day of ceremonies, with the whole group. One of the most significant consequences of this restitution was the revival of this ritual, by two families who wished to name their children in it, proving the ability of contact with objects to again embody traditions that had become memory, reconnecting the group in the present with its past. Thus, we realize very vividly the power of linking different times/ages of the return of the same object made different. Of objects that, with time and the changes it entails, do not return exactly as they once were, nor to exactly the community from which they were taken, but are capable of producing links within the community and between its members and the meaning of the object, its present and past. In addition, we have a distinct example of the power of “virtual repatriation” (Carlton 2010). Although it may be argued that nothing is being effectively, or materially returned, through these photos, information such as the visual traits of the artifacts become accessible to the home community. The memory and meaning of its use, techniques, and the materials used to make it, promoted their historical and cultural contextualization and communication, generating knowledge and reflections for both parties involved in the restitution process. Its potential should not be underestimated, especially in times when virtual museum visits are already possible, many
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of them invest in the digital availability of their collections, and the appropriation and digital relationship with objects and representations are increasingly relevant. Finally, one last initiative that the restitution promoted was a conservation workshop, involving the museum’s own Anthropological Research Laboratory, the preventive conservation and restoration specialist at the University of São Paulo, Gedley Braga, and the Indians themselves. A learning moment about cleaning techniques, preventive care, restoration, and conversations about hierarchization and choice of objects to be preserved, and how much knowledge can indeed be stored—and put into circulation—in preserved material culture. In the end, the indigenous group gave the specialist—according to their tradition of retribution—pieces of feather art, that he donated to the USP Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, highlighting the group’s gratitude for the workshop (6, 288). In this case, due to the academic writing by the involved anthropologist, we know a lot about the effects that this virtual restitution has had on the whole group, effects that leave no room for doubt about the potential benefits of restitution—not only to the institutions that house the pieces and the reflection promoted by the contact with the community of origin, but also, and most importantly, to the part that received them (Fig. 5).
Fig. 5 Conservation Workshop in the Don Bosco Museum, 2003 (Carvalho et al. 2014, p. 282)
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6 Bororo Objects, the Don Bosco Museum of Cultures and the Vienna Ethnology Museum, 2008 The next case is a direct descendant of the last one—which points to the importance of precedents. It involves this same Don Bosco Museum of Cultures (DBMC), which this time was not contemplated with a restitution, but the agent who sought it in 2008 through dialogue with a European museum containing objects of this same group—then Vienna Museum of Ethnology (VME), now Museum of Vienna World Cultures. This museum holds the Natterer Collection, formed between 1817 and 1835, mainly by the naturalist and explorer Johann Natterer (1787–1843) who came with the Austrian Mission in to Brazil (group accompanying the entourage of Leopoldina, the Habsburg Princess who was getting married to D. Pedro I) and brought with him people such as Johann von Spix (1781–1826) and Carl Friedrich von Martius (1794– 1868). The collection formed over the eighteen-year-stay was so large (approximately 2400 artifacts from at least 70 ethnic groups living or lived in the Brazilian territory (Thompson 2013, 7), that it was initially, together with collections formed by others explorers, at the Brazilian Museum in Vienna, open between 1821 and 1836, when the ethnographic section of such a collection was transferred to VME. This number indicates the demand for such objects, in the context of these explorations, which had collections filling universal museums and providing material for studies. On the other hand, the almost complete inertia of this collection over the 175 years of belonging to the VME, object of a single other exhibition (Beyond Brazil—Johann Natterer and the ethnographic collection of the Austrian expedition to Brazil, 1817 to 1835, between 2012 and 2013, at the 54th Congress of Americanists) points to its under-use, dissemination, communication—and, thus, research and appropriation. In 2008, the “Virtual Repatriation Project” was signed. It aimed to create a database as a kind of virtual collection of Bororo artifacts, as well as other ethnic groups, so that indigenous people could have access to them, in an interactive digital platform. This partnership was solidified by the visit of Christian Feest, then director of the VME, to the DBMC—a meeting promoted with the support of IPHAN which, besides to this, got no longer involved. Unlike the previous one, which was executed and generated so much resonance, this project remained just as an idea. Its only developments, museum-sponsored research between 2009 and 2010 in some European institutions regarding Bororo artifacts, did not have its results available to the Brazilian museum. Feest’s departure from the VME board froze the agreement, terminating contact between the two institutions and the continuity of the work. This case has two points to be highlighted: first, the limits of the State intervention—in its institute specialized in national heritage. Its punctual involvement here as a mediator between the two institutions had no effect whatsoever, beyond of course validating with the seal of official legitimacy the demand of the DBMC.
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Fig. 6 Munduruku headdress. ca 1830. Collection Natterer. Vienna Ethnology Museum. https:// www.weltmuseumwien.at/ en/object/460457/?offset= 13&lv=list
Second, if, on the one hand, the State presence was not a guarantee of the execution of the repatriation envisaged, on the other hand, the absence of an individual (the director of the VME) was enough to provoke its complete abortion. That is, such is the importance of the executive will of individual agents in these processes, that a change of the board can redirect the entire orientation of an institution, reformulate its lines of work, and broaden or shorten its public and international exchanges (Fig. 6).
7 Ka’apor Objects, the Emílio Goeldi Museum, and the Leiden National Museum of Ethnology We now return to the northern region of Brazil to analyze a fruitful exchange between the Emilio Goeldi Museum (MPEG) in the state Pará and the Leiden National Museum of Ethnology in the Netherlands between 2010 and 2013, with a vision to connect objects of the Ka’apor indigenous group present in both institutions with the community of origin, culminating in an exhibition that showed their lifestyle and culture. This project, called “Sharing collections and connecting stories,” was funded by the call Conversaciones II of Ibermuseus, and resulted in a temporary loan of the pieces, which at the end of the organized exhibition returned to the Netherlands. The MPEG, located in the capital of Pará, was founded in 1871, heir to the previous Philomatic Association of 1866, and established itself as a space for study of natural systems and cultural and social dynamics in the Amazon, as well as forming and housing diverse collections, including of natural history and indigenous ethnology.
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This ethnography collection has fourteen thousand objects, mainly from Brazilian, Peruvian, and Colombian ethnic groups, including 350 Ka’apor ethnic pieces. The NME, was founded in 1837 from two previous collections, the Japanese one of the German physician Philipp Franz von Siebold, who had worked for the Dutch East India Company and collected artifacts and plants there (1796–1866), and the Dutch one from the former Royal Cabinet of Curiosities, instituted in 1816 in The Hague by Willem I, which contained several pieces taken from colonial Brazil in the seventeenth century. In total, the NME has approximately 2000 Brazilian pieces of different origins, including acquisitions of Viscountess Cavalcanti, and 340 Ka’apor ethnic artifacts purchased from Borys Malkin, a Polish emigrant zoologist and anthropologist who traveled the globe to collect ethnographic collections and sell them to museums (Françozo and Broekhoven 2020, 715). The initiative that connected the two collections around Ka’apor objects came about through a partnership between Mariana Françozo, professor at the University of Leiden and then research assistant at the NME South American collection; Laura van Brokhoven, head of its curated section, and Claudia Lopez, head of the Goeldi Museum’s ethnographic collection, to work together on these collections. At first, those more versed in artisanal knowledge and material culture were recruited among the Ka’apor of the Alto Turiaçú Indigenous Lands, between Pará and Maranhão, so that they could study the collections of both museums, together with their teams, share knowledge about them—techniques of making, meanings, legends—and select which ones they would like to talk about. These workshops were held in Belém and Leiden, between August and September 2013. Afterwards, in 2014, the exhibition took place, with the objects selected by the Indians, and the theme also defined by them, the Cauim ceremony, “the main ceremony of the Ka’apor people, in which various rituals take place, such as the naming of children, the initiation of girls and boys, marriages, possession of new chiefs” (Françozo and Broekhoven 2020, 720) that allowed to talk about various aspects of their culture: daily life, aesthetic and linguistic tradition, identity formation, cosmology. All this happened as the group fought—without any assistance of FUNAI, the Federal Police or responsible agencies—against loggers from the region who sought to invade their lands and expand their extractive enterprise. This struggle was present throughout the research and dialogue, altering planned schedules due to invasions, fires and violence, influencing the choice of objects to be exposed, giving conversations a tone of concern and helplessness, and finally culminating in the elaboration of the “Manifesto of the Ka’apor Indigenous People” and the “Letter of Support to the Ka’apor,” signed by all parties attending the Workshop “Tropical Lowlands Indigenous Heritage in European Collections,” which ended its planned activities in the Netherlands. Both were made public in Brazil and the Netherlands, increasing the visibility of the demonstrations, which would otherwise probably be restricted to the geographical surroundings of the village and those interested in the Pará and Maranhão border region. Such a tense moment reached its peak on the eve of the exhibition, to the point that the Goeldi Museum considered postponing or canceling it, an offer the Ka’apor promptly denied. It was very important, especially at that moment, to make their
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culture public, to show their traditions, knowledge, material, and immaterial culture. As the professionals promoting this exchange summarized: The dialogues about ethnographic objects and co-creation of the exhibition in the midst of a social context of interethnic conflicts, together with the Ka’apor people’s desire to be heard, supported in struggle and respected in their rights, made us understand that the work in the museum, exhibition, curatorship, besides being knowledge generation processes, are […] also political acts (Françozo and Broekhoven 2020, 731).
This case highlights some relevant aspects. There was no material or virtual restitution or repatriation of any of the objects, which did not legally change hands. Instead, collections were brought closer between themselves and to the community of origin, an alternative that has very similar effects to those that a restitution potentially has. There was a process in which indigenous representatives came into contact with artifacts produced by their ancestors, conveyed to scholars what they knew about them, and heard from them what they knew as well. They selected the ones to display in an exhibition, following their criteria and guidelines, with the text they elaborated. At the opening, the group was proudly present, in a moment of conflict over the land. We restate that the fact that curatorship was shared in no way diminished the importance that the contact with these objects and the organization of this exhibition had. After all, exhibiting is an act of power. Showing your culture, challenges, and anxieties to the world; producing a narrative and discourse about a set of objects and what they represent, evoke, mean; promoting an event in a public space… All of it is an act of power, which was made possible by this zone of contact established between the museums and the community, that even without changing the legal status of the pieces, promoted an exchange of knowledge, unity and self-affirmation of the group. And in a period in which the Ka’apor went through territorial vicissitudes, only possible in a State that, not unlike at the moment of the removal of this cultural heritage from their villages, is still absent, insufficient, not be counted upon (Fig. 7, 8). Fig. 7 Workshop in the NME, Leiden, 09/2013. Valdemar Ka’apor. Photo: Laura Van Broekhoven, 2013
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Fig. 8 Ka’apor Ritual clothing. Exhibition “The Cauim ceremony”, MPEG, 2014. Photo: Claudia López, 2014
8 By Way of Conclusions Some aspects of the Brazilian repatriations and restitutions observed together are very representative and deserve commenting. Firstly, the search for and successful arrival at alternative options to the direct return of cultural heritage. This indicates the awareness of the institutions and communities involved in claiming and reception about the concrete difficulties of the process that are their undeniable limitations. For instance, a significant budget would be necessary to undertake the return—payments of transport, insurance, and accompanying professionals that this would entail—as well as the reception, preservation, and conservation infrastructure of which they, in all truth, did not have then and still do not have. Moreover, it indicates the success of these indirect solutions and less conflicting approaches. The communities that indirectly received the objects were visibly benefited by it, with their empowerment in the making of public exhibition and in participating in the decision-making processes about the activities undertaken with the cultural heritage, conquering a place of important speech. Likewise, the agents called upon to virtually give or physically lend collections for dialogue were taken from their comfortable place of safeguard perpetuated by the passing of the centuries to the acceptance of the people who were brought to a place of listening (by the passing of the centuries and brought to a place of acceptance of, and listening to, the people), learning from the heirs of that heritage and from the contact between the collection and the community, reinventing their sociocultural, geographical, political role as museums, museologists, curators. Secondly, we see the predominance of autonomous or semi-autonomous demands, arising spontaneously, without state mediation, from Brazilian institutions in dialogue with indigenous communities, or directly from indigenous communities.
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Hence, the absence of the state and the tangible cultural reappropriation of the repatriated artifacts by those who, in fact, know, understand, and value their functions, their symbolic meanings, the techniques and materials, and the knowledge involved in their making. In other words, on the one hand we see that the requests and the processes resulting from them do not gain political support from the population of the country, from public opinion, and from the relevant branch of the State apparatus, which may indicate the marginal position of these claims to the nation. However, on the other hand, we can celebrate that Brazilian repatriations are not the result of a biased and hypocritical political eagerness that seeks to assert its place internationally by an endogenous republican colonialism, which continues cultural domination rather than breaks it, that isolates local communities from the cultural heritage brought back, making the repatriation act impracticable as a guideline for reparation for the symbolic damage caused by the absence of memory and material history, and for a revitalization of these communities, as it is criticized to be the case of some repatriations, in Peru, for instance (Diaz 2011). Finally, all the objects claimed had spiritual or ritualistic significance, which was an essential motivation for the Indians to recover them and part of the revitalizing and memorialistic benefit that their return brought about. Similarly, in all cases, this character is emphasized in the claiming back argument, and indeed holds tremendous power to legitimize the demand. Of course, even if they were not of that nature, they could be claimed back, but since the claim starts from the present and will be executed in the present, since the cultural heritage only survives and has its reason to exist as long as it makes sense—historically, artistically, religiously, naturally—at the present moment, every claim will always have greater force in emphasizing living and present importance to the group that will receive it, as it was in all Brazilian cases examined here. The ritualistic meaning of objects claimed in the communities of origin cannot be activated, perceived, and lived while in the dome of museums, in which they have contact only with Western observers who grew up in such a different cultural background to the one where they originate from. In periods and spaces of social upheaval, museums, archaeological sites, religious institutions, private actors, and suchlike are plundered for their marketable content—to fuel the international demand for “cultural objects.” These are the socalled peaks of looting and theft, which we are used to reading about, and they are totally predictable despite the uncertainty of geopolitics. They should be treated as a global problem. Experts are unanimous: we need to stop buying and selling illicitly negotiated material and we urgently need to review our conduct with respect to illegally acquired assets, considering at all costs the action of returning them to their origins (Christofoletti 2017, 345). The plurality of cultures must be respected, as must be the right to preserve them. For this reason, the currency of exchange for the return, restitution, and repatriation of a multitude of cultural objects of inestimable value must be international cooperation. In the specific case of this demand, one swallow does not make a summer. Cooperation is fundamental to preservation, as much as ancestry is fundamental to peoples whose roots have been plundered in centuries of plundering. The discussion
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is complex, but it needs magnifying glasses under the effect of a collective action that will enable stolen memories to be restored, materialities to be restored and the universal value of these goods to be the seal that guarantees their return. The final stage of the alluded cycle involves a series of intrinsic and extrinsic elements to the orbit of the safekeeping of the goods, but as alerted in the beginning of this text, to transform the vicious cycle into a virtuous one, the actors of preservation have a moral imperative: either they produce massive actions that take the trafficking and the return of cultural heritage out of a condition of invisibility or they perpetuate the system whose gears will only favor the primacy of the imperialist colonizer, committed to maintaining the status quo.
References Albuquerque MC (2013) Entre nãos, sons e sins: atitudes educativas e vicissitudes do ser índio. In: XXVII SIMPÓSIO NACIONAL DE HISTÓRIA, 2013, Natal-RN. Anais do XXVII Simpósio Nacional de História Borges LC (2019) Relações político-culturais entre Brasil e Europa: o manto tupinambá e a questão da repatriação. Revista das Americas, v.15. 2013. https://docplayer.com.br/12138816-Relacoespolitico-culturais-entre-brasil-e-europa-o-manto-tupinamba-e-a-questao-da-repatriacao-luiz-car los-borges-1.html. Accessed 30 Mar 2020 Borges LC, Botelho MB (2010) Museus e restituição patrimonial – entre a coleção e a ética. In: XI ENCONTRO NACIONAL DE PESQUISA EM CIÊNCIA DA INFORMAÇÃO. Rio de Janeiro. Anais do XI Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Ciência da Informação. Rio de Janeiro, 2010. http.//enancib.ibict.br/index.php/enancib/xienancib/paper/viewFile/3593/2717. Accessed 30 Jan 2020 Brandão AC (2003) O museu na aldeia: comunicação e transculturalismo (o Museu Missionário Etnológico Colle Don Bosco e a aldeia Bororo de Meruri em diálogo). Tese (Doutorado em Comunicação e Semiótica) - Pontíficia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, São Paulo Carleton K (2010) Native American material heritage and the digital age: “virtual repatriation” and its implications for community knowledge sharing. Dissertação (Pós Doutorado em Antropologia) - Universidade de Michigan, Michigan, 2010. http: //deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/77643/1/carltonk.pdf. Accessed 13 Jan 2020 Carvalho A, Oliveira Silva DL, Braga GB (2014) Perspectivas recentes para curadoria de coleções etnográficas. Revista do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, São Paulo, v.14 Christofoletti R (2017) O tráfico ilícito de bens culturais e a repatriação como reparação histórica. In: Christofoletti, Rodrigo. (org.) Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Editora Universitária Leopoldianum: Santos Costa KL (2018) Pensar o patrimônio cultural por meio da repatriação e restituição de bens culturais. Patrimônio e Memória. São Paulo, v. 14, n. 2. 2, jul-dez Díaz MA (2011) Entre diálogos y repatriaciones. Reparación colonial por la memoria y preservación de Machu Picchu. Antípoda, n.12, Jan–Jun Fleck JP (2018) Da guerra para o museu: A tentativa de repatriação do canhão “El Cristiano. Trabalho de conclusão de curso (Museologia) - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul Françozo M, Broekhoven L (2020) Dossiê Patrimônio indígena e coleções etnográficas. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas. v. 12, n.3, Belém, 2017. http: //editora.museugoeldi.br/humanas/#. Accessed 20 Jan 2020 Gomes IB (2014) Máscaras Jurupixuna - reflexão e proposta acto performativo etnográfico. Dissertação (Mestrado em Museologia e Museografia) - Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa
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Melo (2010) Kàjré: a vida social de uma machadinha Krahô. Dissertação (Mestrado em Antropologia Social) - Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal Prott LV (2008) The ethics and law of returns. In: (org) Return of cultural objects: the Athens Conference on the Return of cultural Objects to their Countries of Origins. v. 61, n°1–2, 2009. Atenas Prott L (2009) The History of Return of Cultural Objects. In: (org.). Witnesses to History: a compendium of documents and writings on the return of cultural objects. Paris: Unesco Robichez J (2015) A destruição deliberada do patrimônio cultural da humanidade nos conflitos armados como instrumento de aniquilamento da dignidade da pessoa humana a gênese da proteção jurídica do patrimônio cultural da humanidade. Revista Diálogos Possíveis, Salvador, Jan/Jun Santos B, de Sousa. (2006) A gramática do tempo. Cortez, São Paulo Thompson A (2013) Coleções etnográficas e Património Indígena. XXVII SIMPÓSIO NACIONAL DE HISTÓRIA: CONHECIMENTO HISTÓRICO E DIÁLOGO SOCIAL. Anais do XXVII Simpósio Nacional de História: Conhecimento histórico e diálogo social. Natal. https://www.snh2013.anpuh.org/resources/anais27/1371304362_ARQUIVO_ColecoesE tnograficaePatrimonioIndigena.pdf. Accessed 20 Feb 2020 Trindade JCF (2018) Restituição de Bens Patrimoniais em Portugal: Da década de 1980 à actualidade. Dissertação (Mestrado em História e Patrimônio) - Universidade do Porto, Porto
World Heritage in Danger: Case Studies About Some of the Factors that Threaten Cultural Sites Inês de Carvalho Costa
Abstract The selection of World Heritage in Danger as a theme, more specifically, the factors of risk that threaten Cultural sites, derives from the understanding that the sense of loss is a strong promoter of heritage safeguard. With the present article, we have as main goal the realization of a critical reflection on endangered world heritage sites through a multinational perspective, based on the analysis of three case studies that can illustrate some of the main threats that harm cultural sites. For that end, several sources will be addressed from international documents like Conventions and national decrees, but also the documentation available on UNESCO’s Official Website. The essence of the research will focus on the evolution of heritage safeguard mainly from the 70s of the 20th century, and until the 2nd decade of the 2000s. The present text aims to contribute to a global and more humanized perspective on World Heritage in peril. It also intends to innovate through the recognition that the sense of loss is a major promoter of the protection of endangered sites. Keywords Sense of loss · World Heritage · Risks Throughout history, the sense of loss was always an important booster for heritage safeguard. The personal consciousness about this disturbance derives from several (in)direct experiences when the will to know a certain site was cut off by hazard or by its disappearance. The first awakening to the subject matter of World Heritage in danger, and the risks that menace the properties, occurred in 2015 due to Kathmandu’s This investigation was developed in the scope of the master’s degree in art history, heritage, and visual culture (2018–2020) attended at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Porto’s University (Portugal). It consists of an adaptation of part of the Dissertation entitled O Sentimento de perda. Património Mundial—Casos de estudo dos principais riscos para os Bens Culturais (2020), oriented by Prof. Dr. Maria Leonor Botelho and argued by Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Christofoletti. The dissertation proposes a diachronic and multinational analysis of the subject matter since the fourteenth century and until the second decade of the 2000s. Inês de Carvalho Costa—Master’s in art history, heritage, and visual culture at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Porto’s University (Portugal). I. de Carvalho Costa (B) Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Porto’s University, Porto, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_15
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earthquake. The destructive outcome of the incident—observed from a far distance— resulted in a bewilder acceptance that part of that universal legacy had been hopelessly lost. Almost in a cause–effect logic—or perhaps as compensation—curiosity was driven to the Italian territory. From Florence to Verona the contact with the cultural richness of the country proved the privilege that is to testify what for centuries was protected by others. The final push happened thanks to the accounts of Syrian friends who saw their homeland ravaged by war, depriving them of their cultural identity, security, and ambitions. Therefore, the personal interest in the topic converges with its social relevance since the maintenance of peace and respect for Human Rights sometimes depends on heritage protection (and vice versa) (Costa 2020). The solemnity of the question can and must be extended to the political, economic, and environmental fields once a more sustainable and less tumultuous future relies on the preservation of these properties. The theme is equally pertinent to the scope of Historiography since it allows us to comprehend how the episodes of creation and destruction are not isolated or incidental, but cyclical, and a significant part of human evolution. The rising enthusiasm about Heritage Studies is a strong omen to heritage safeguard and the debut of new models of investigation. Even if in the academic universe the theme of endangered world sites it’s not completely new, most of the researches are focused on a unique case study or territory, which does not seem to represent the international cooperation in Heritage matters. Thus, it is believed that a multinational approach, centered on some of the factors that prejudice cultural sites, can benefit current discussions on the topic. It is also thought that this is the best format to make justice to such an intricate theme that comprises both the national and global scales. Despite being similarly essential, the reflection on natural sites will be addressed in general terms considering their deviation from our field of study which is specifically devoted to cultural properties (even if nowadays the concepts of natural and cultural heritage are intertwined). To appease the analysis proposed and respect the publisher’s guidelines it was decided that the investigation should have some chronological boundaries. Hence, this research covers the period between the 70s and the second decade of the 2000s. On the other hand, it was set that the study should not have geographical barriers, although the sites mentioned belong to UNESCO’s World Heritage Lists. Taking into consideration that the risks are the objects of study, and not the properties themselves, there were selected three case studies that allow the understanding of how some threats can seriously damage cultural sites. The properties elected to “illustrate” the dangerousness of those risks belong to different geographies (South America, Europe, and the Middle East), periods (from the first until the seventeenth centuries AD), and typologies (Cultural Landscapes, archaeological remains, and one individual architecture). Even if each site is harmed by a predominant cause of peril, every property is jeopardized by more than one menace at the same time. Consequently, the selected case studies end up representing part of the fourteen factors of risk enunciated by the Organization. This compendium includes the Cultural Landscape of Potosí (Bolivia), the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley (Afghanistan), and the Notre-Dame Cathedral that is inserted in the area of the Banks of the Seine in Paris (France). This compilation also expresses the
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heterogeneity of the endangered sites and the multiple difficulties behind their preservation. Although one of these properties is not considered in peril by UNESCO, it is believed that its analysis demonstrates how despite a remarkable protection policy the risk still exists. This is the case of the Parisian Notre-Dame which almost burned to the ground in April 2019 (Bandarin 2019). Ergo, the main goal of this investigation is the realization of a critical reflection on World Heritage in danger through a transnational perspective based on the exam of three case studies that demonstrate how some factors of peril can jeopardize cultural properties. This viewpoint aims to reveal the extent of the issue worldwide and to recognize the current theoretical and practical state of heritage preservation policies. From the previous premises, it is possible to imply some of the questions that guided the research, for example: What relevance has the sense of loss for the amelioration of heritage protection? Which are the most common factors of risk that threaten cultural sites? The most affected territories? Are there factors of danger shared by different sites? Which are the biggest obstacles to their resolution? And at last, which possible solutions were found to revert the problem? During the inquiry, there were also raised several hypotheses, such as the existence of a bigger number of endangered sites that aren’t considered as threatened by international organizations, the presence of financial and political benefits behind the participation in safeguard campaigns, the existence of political and economic interests behind the omission of threats that halter some of the properties, and, finally, the endurance of inequalities in the way endangered sites are treated not only by the Organization but also by the international community (Meskell 2018). Regarding the methodology adopted, this analysis resulted mainly from the exam of UNESCO’s website which presents all the information about the World Heritage Lists, their evolution in time, and the properties inscribed on them. On a general basis, the website of the Organization offers all the necessary data to attain an impression about the state of conservation of those sites since their inscription on the Lists and until the current days. Besides, the information available on the platform allows the reader to comprehend their management and protection requirements, the criteria that justified their nomination, and the characteristics that guaranty their authenticity and integrity. The critical reflection about the case studies also emanated from the exam of the state of conservation reports (SOC) that were analyzed alternately, every other year, since some data are repeated in consecutive documents. When the property does not have SOCs for a certain period, for example from 1999 to 2010, were examined the documents of successive years, for example, the report from 1998 and the one from 2011, to fill any potential gap of information. The last SOCs to be included in the study date from 2019 because until the time of submission of the present text the ones from 2020 were not available. Ultimately, this text tries to deepen the knowledge about endangered World Heritage sites and the risks that imperil them. This reflection arises from a personal will to contribute to the thinking about the subject matter, today in a theoretical form, tomorrow perhaps on the field. This study also intends to present a more humanized point of view about the topic through the deliberation of the impact that the sense of
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loss has for the evolution of heritage protection. This approach also aims to demonstrate the existence of gray areas, of conflicts amid local interests and international obligations, among economic, political or heritage matters, and in extreme situations, between life preservation and heritage safeguard. It is exactly this perspective, less abstract and more connected with the defense and the progression of Human Rights that justifies the reading of this text by the scientific community. In the next pages, we will present a critical analysis of the evolution of UNESCO’s World Heritage Lists. Following this examination, the set of risks identified by the Organization will be addressed to prepare the interpretation of three case studies. Lastly, the final considerations will include retrospective scrutiny to UNESCO’s history and a brief reflection about the future of the endangered sites.
1 UNESCO World Heritage Sites 1.1 UNESCO World Heritage List Derived from the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO 1972), the World Heritage List had its first inscriptions in 1978, the year during which it had 12 properties inscribed, 8 cultural, and 4 natural sites (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). During the last decades, the extent of the properties recognized has universally significant did not stop to increase, and in 2019 the List reached a total of 1121 sites (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). Despite the “World Heritage” label being a “brand” of quality and importance accepted worldwide, the exponential growth of the List has been heavily criticized. This almost “uncontrolled” development implies the progressive dissolution of the hierarchies of protection. Some also blame the Organization for the unequal representation of the continents. Indeed, since its creation the List has been mainly composed of European and Northern American properties, knowing that the time that registered the biggest number of inscriptions from these territories was the year 2000 (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). Contemporarily, South America, and the Caribbean region also hit the highest number of sites inscribed (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). Regarding the Asian and Pacific region, the tendency of the inscription has been rising irregularly since 1987, contrary to the case of the Arab States. Strongly engaged during the 70s and 80s, those countries have been decreasing the nominated sites, except for the years of 1997 and 2011. In this regard, we recall that when the Arab Spring was triggered (c. 2011), and in the subsequent years, there was a big number of sites that were inscribed on the World Heritage Lists, some of those already considered has threatened by the international community. On the other side, Africa showed the best number of inscriptions in 1980. Since that year that the participation of the continent has been unevenly suffering from periods of decrease followed by years of bigger involvement (UNESCO Official Website 2020a).
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From the exam of the World Heritage List and its evolution, we can identify some inequalities about the representation of different territories. Hereof, the State Parties with the biggest number of properties inscribed are China (55), Italy (55), Spain (48), Germany (46), and France (45). However, when the area of these countries is compared, we grasp the conclusion that Italy is the State with more sites with the World Heritage designation. Antagonistically, at least 25 States do not have a single classified property, like for example, Guinea-Bissau or the Bahamas (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). Through the analysis of the graphics made available by the Organization, we can also fathom the tendencies of the inscription of several typologies. For that reason, it is possible to identify a special bias to safeguard cultural sites during 1979, 1987, 1997, and the year 2000. Natural sites were mostly added to the List in 1981, 1983, and 1999. Mixed properties were particularly inscribed in 1979, 1988, 1990, 2016, and 2018 (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). The same logic of examination can be administered to the identification of tendencies related to the addition of subcategories. For example, the highest number of forests added to the List was registered in 1999, in the same year the marine and coastal properties also recorded its biggest listing (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). The pinnacle of admissions of cities and sites occurred in the year 2000, and the landscapes stroked their record in 2004 (UNESCO Official Website 2020a). In the long run, a relative slowdown on the number of enrollments outcomes the limitations that UNESCO has been applying to control the unbridled growth of the List. However, there is probably still a long way until an equal geographical representation is achieved once some of the countries do not have the necessary means to comply with the demands of the Organization.
1.2 UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger Also established in 1972, the List of World Heritage in Danger it is considered a record of reference in the documentation of threatened sites. Since its officialization in 1978 that it testified the inscription, rehabilitation, and removal of several sites, whose integrity and authenticity were menaced by serious and specific dangers. In its genesis, we find the Natural, Cultural, and Historical Region of Kotor (Montenegro) that was added to the List in 1979 after a massive earthquake that severely affected the area (UNESCO Official Website 2020a, b). The second property to instate the List was the Old City of Jerusalem and its Walls, included in 1982 due to a set of complications related to intentional destruction, the lack of management systems, and the loss of its authenticity (UNESCO Official Website 2020a, c). Since its creation in 1978 that the List has been growing. However, the year that registered the highest number of endangered properties was 2016, with a total of 55 sites in peril. Nevertheless, there are also some hopeful examples like the one from the Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System that was considered in safety in 2018, after the implementation of new safeguard policies by the State Party (UNESCO Official Website 2020d). A year after, the Birthplace of Jesus: Church of Nativity, and the
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Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem, and the Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter Works were removed from the endanger List for being no longer threatened (UNESCO Official Website 2020e, f). Despite those positive cases, the pressures persist, and in that same year (2019) the Islands and Protected Areas of the Gulf of California were included on the List as a result of the growing risk of extinction of vaquita, a threatened species dependent on that habitat (UNESCO Official Website 2020g). In the last four decades, only two properties where irremediably disqualified from the World Heritage Lists regarding the loss of their outstanding universal value. One was the Arabian Oryx Sanctuary because the State Party decided to reduce almost completely the protected area, which doomed the survival of the oryx an endangered species from that habitat (UNESCO Official Website 2020h). The other one was the Dresden Elbe Valley that lost the “World Heritage” title has the result of the construction of a new bridge near the center of the city, which according to the Organization broke with the harmony of the landscape (UNESCO Official Website 2020i).
1.3 UNESCO’s List of Factors Affecting the Properties After an inquiry made in 2008 about the periodic reporting exercise, the World Heritage Committee created a List of some of the main factors of risk that threaten cultural and natural properties (UNESCO Official Website 2020j). This index resulted from two years of collaboration between heritage specialists from both the natural and cultural fields. The present-day List is composed of 14 general categories of risk that are subsequently divided into specific causes of danger. The purpose of this List is to homogenize the language used for the description of the hazards. Notwithstanding, in UNESCO’s Website the sections devoted to the state of conservation reports of each site feature two types of description of the threats: a standard one, that correspondents to the general aspects enunciated by the Organization, and a narrative one, devoted to a deeper and more detailed explanation on how a liability impairs a specific property. In other words, on the state of conservation reports is firstly introduced the standard name of the risk and secondarily the description of its particularities. It is important to recall that the List does not distinguish between cultural and natural pressures or even the hypothetical from the confirmed ones. The lack of distinction can be justified by the fact that any property can be inscribed as endangered since it is menaced by serious and specific dangers. Even so, we believe that the elaboration of a scale of risk would benefit the users, and the properties since it would clarify the hierarchies of safeguard and the urgency of some protection measures. For purposes of conceptualization, the main factors of risk listed are buildings and development, transportation infrastructures, utilities or service infrastructures, pollution, biological resource use or modification, physical resource extraction, local conditions affecting the physical fabric, social or cultural uses of heritage, other human activities, climate change or severe weather events, sudden ecological or geological events, invasive/alien or
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hyper-abundant species, the management or institutional features, and other factors that are still not covered by the List. In the following pages the three case studies selected1 will permit the analysis of how these aspects disturb the properties, how several threats can coexist at the same time, which are the main obstacles to their resolution and some of the possible strategies to get around them. Every case study starts with a brief description of the site, a revision of its management, and protection requirements, integrity, and authenticity. Those are followed by a diachronic exam of its state of conservation since its inscription on UNESCO’s List until the current days, thanks to the reading of the state of conservation reports (SOC). Finally, every case of study is finished with a critical reflection about the success or insufficiency of the measures implemented by the State Party and the international organizations.
2 Risks for the World Heritage Sites—Cases of Study 2.1 Extraction of Physical Resources—City of Potosí (Bolivia) The first case of study is devoted to the City of Potosí, which was inscribed in UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1987. Located at the Bolivian Andes, Potosí is a city with pre-Hispanic origins. During the sixteenth century, more precisely in 1572, this urbanization became an Imperial City after the visit of Francesco de Toledo (1515–1582), the Vice-king of Peru. Potosí is known for having one of the biggest industrial complexes in the world, dated, exactly, from the sixteenth century. During the same period, the city developed significantly due to the discovery of silver on the southern part of Cerro’s mountain, which contributed to transforming the region in the main center of exportation of silver to Spain. Resulting in the inflation of Spanish currency that shifted the economy on a global scale. The zenith of the mining activities in the territory was reached after 1580 when a new technic of extraction— that used hydraulic mills—was invented. In the seventeenth century, the city was mainly composed of colonists and indigenous people, which were forced to work on the mines. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the extraction activities 1 Within
the scope of the above-mentioned dissertation, there were explored eight cases of study from where we selected the following three to exemplify how some factors of risk can damage cultural properties. The original eight study cases were devoted to the Historical Centre of Vienna (Austria), which is mainly affected by housing and urban development, the Dresden Elbe Valley (Germany), that lost the World Heritage title due to an infrastructure of land transportation, Assur, which is threatened by utilitarian and service infrastructures, the City of Potosí, which is going to be examined here, Abu Mena, that is especially threatened by the cultural uses of its territory, the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley, another example chosen to approach in here, Venice and its Lagoon, which despite not being officially considered as threatened is constantly affected by climate changes, and finally, the Banks of the Seine in Paris that will be addressed here because of the 2019 fire at Notre Dame’s Cathedral (Costa 2020).
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start to slow down, even though they never ceased completely. Nowadays, the city still counts with some components of the production chain, from reservoirs to mills, from aqueducts to ovens but also the structures that used to lodge the colonists and the indigenous that were stepped away by an artificial river. The city also comprises a big variety of religious buildings from which we distinguish the Cathedral. The national coin house, which was constructed around 1759, and the patrician houses are also elements of interest thanks to their Andean baroque language.2 All these components represent an important testimony of the socio-economic situation of the city in modern times and allow us to understand the architectonic and artistic influence of Potosí for the central region of the Andes (UNESCO Official Website 2020k). Regarding the protection and management requirements, there are several documents of interest for this case study. One of the first texts of reference is the State Political Constitution (1967), which declares that the monuments and the archaeological sites belong to the State, and for that reason cannot be exported. Since the Bolivian Government is responsible for the registration and preservation of the properties, the State alerts that the manifestations of popular industries are extremely relevant and demand higher protection policies (República de Bolivia 2008). Equally important, the Bolivian Law of National Monuments (1927) establishes that the national monuments are those properties that possess artistic or traditional value by their historical, artistic, or archaeological components (El Congreso Nacional 2015). The Supreme Decree 05918 of 6 November 1961 also recognizes the State’s duty to protect the artistic, historical, and cultural “treasures” of the pre-Colombian, colonial or republican era. Among these properties are architectures, urban complexes, and monumental buildings before 1900. This document mentions the historic monuments of Potosí which include the National Coin House, and the residences of the royal officials in town (Estenssoro 1961). The Decree 15616 from 11 of July of 1978 also mentions Potosí as a monumental city of continental significance. The same document appeals to a preservation campaign through the creation of a National Commission of Restauration, specifically oriented to the revaluation of the city. Between the responsibilities of that Commission would be the realization of national and international actions to obtain technical and financial resources (Suarez 1978). Plus, the Decree 15900 of 19 October of 1978 declares that the intentional destruction of national monuments or cultural sites of national importance is punishable by law (Asbun 1978). Despite the existence of several documents devoted to the protection of Potosí, the property is considered in danger since 2014. The integrity and authenticity of the cultural site are at peril by the lack of a protected area, and due to the continuous exploitation of physical resources (UNESCO Official Website 2020k). 2 The Andean Baroque appeared around 1660 in the Peruvian city of Arequipa and spread across the
Andean region including Potosí thanks to commercial trade and emigration. This artistic movement is characterized by the fusion between the European Renaissance, and Baroque legacy with the symbolism of the indigenous cultures from the Andes. Apart from the regional particularities, the Andean Baroque tends to mix floral, animal, figurative, Christian, and pre-Colombian symbols, and it is mostly found in domestic and religious architecture (Bailey 2010).
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After an analysis of the state of conservation reports, it is possible to affirm that in comparison to other properties inscribed on the World Heritage Lists, the City of Potosí is scarcely documented. Since its inscription in 1987, the cultural site lacks documents referent to at least 15 years (the one from 1994, and the reports from 1997 to 2010). From its addition to the List that the site needs major conservation measures to guaranty the integrity of its architectural and archaeological heritage. Despite the existent legal documents devoted to the protection of Potosí, there are still some lawful gaps that menace its safeguard, especially when it comes to the exploitation of the Cerro. The severity of the danger is such that in 2011 part of the mountain collapsed, which forced the realization of a new mission to the site by UNESCO and its advisory bodies. From the actions required to stabilize the mountain, measuring the mines and making their topographical analysis are considered fundamental steps to facilitate the monitoring process. It was also suggested that the mining teams should be alerted to the use of adequate, and less invasive technologies that may reduce the impacts of extraction. The consolidation and safeguard of the Cerro—for which the Manquiri Mining Enterprise cooperated—were also interpreted as essential stages to the future development of touristic activities (UNESCO Official Website 2020l). From the legal barriers to the resolution of the problem, we enhance the necessity of changing the Supreme Decree 27787 (2004) that allows the mining activities above the 4400 m, considered a sensitive area of the Cerro. Even though the Decree defends the exploitation of resources in harmony with the preservation of the mountain the truth is that the perpetuation of these activities at that altitude compromises the structure of the Cerro (UNESCO Official Website 2020l). This topic must be taken into consideration knowing that a big part of Potosí’s population is dependent on that economical sector, which justifies that the workers have permissions to continue the extraction actions. The reallocation of those workers would be pivotal to soften the problem. In 2014, when the site was included in the World Heritage List, there were serious tensions between the mining community of Potosí and the Bolivian government due to the drastic decrease of mineral value. The strain reached its pick on the protests of 2015 in La Paz. The civil instability ended up making international assistance and the implementation of a management plan impossible (Deutsche Welle 2017). After years of trying to circumvent legal barriers and stabilizing the mountain, the State Party recognized that the measures implemented to reverse the situation of the property were not enough. At that point, UNESCO exposed the low consideration of some threats, and the stagnation of the actions applied to alleviate the Cerro, for these reasons the Organization insisted on the creation of a coherent conservation plan before new interventions on the site. In 2018, despite the lack of advances in the conservation issues, there was some progress in the elaboration of a management plan, the delimitation of the buffer zone, and the legal frame from the safeguard of Cerro. In the same period, there were also made some geophysical studies about the site thanks to the support of the Ministry of Mining and Metallurgy. One year later the State Party would submit a very incomplete report about the state of conservation of the city even though the process of limitation of the buffer zone and a new map of the area were finally finished (UNESCO Official Website 2020l).
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Regarding the communication of the site on UNESCO’s platform, the information available on the webpage is enough to understand the outstanding universal value of the property, its requisites of integrity, authenticity, management, and protection even though there are dozens of state of conservation reports missing. When it comes to the requests of international assistance, the Website also allows us to comprehend that since the site was inscribed on UNESCO’s Lists there were several applications accepted, especially during the 90s (UNESCO Official Website 2020k).
2.1.1
Final Considerations on the Case of Study
Potosí is a great example of the repercussions that the activities of the extraction of physical resources may have for both cultural and natural heritage. Even if the mining sector is a significant part of Potosi’s history, which outstanding universal value results exactly from the infrastructures derived from that industry, continuous exploitation has been progressively damaging the mountain. By perpetuating these activities, the risk of collapse of part of the Cerro increases every day threatening not only the cultural site but also its population. Since the property was considered as endangered by UNESCO the limitation of the mining activities has been debated, however, this is a controversial topic since an enormous amount of families depend on the sector, and the high capital of the industry hinders the decision-making (UNESCO Official Website 2020k). Another detail that complicates the preservation of the cultural site is the lack of a management and conservation plan, which has been required since the property received the World Heritage title. Despite some specific setbacks that truly delayed its creation and execution, after almost three decades of being inscribed in the World Heritage List and international assistance of 30 000 USD offered in 2015, each day there are fewer justifications for this absence. Fortunately, the SOCs from 2018 and 2019 show some developments in what comes to the revision of some legal instruments devoted to land use. To conclude, even if on UNESCO’s Website, the City of Potosi is quite well described, the information available could be simplified since the state of conservation reports mixed data from different periods, which can mislead the reader (UNESCO Official Website 2020l).
2.2 Other Human Activities: Cultural Landscape of the Bamiyan Valley (Afghanistan) Located between the mountains of Hindu Kush in Afghanistan, the Bamiyan Valley accesses a basin bordered at the north by a cliff. This Cultural Landscape is known by having archaeological remains along the Valley. In one of these rocky formations, there are two magnificent niches were used to be the colossal Buddha figures destroyed in 2001 by the Taliban. At the bottom of the landscape, there are several
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monasteries, churches, and sanctuaries from the third to the fifth centuries. Most of the cellars and niches and interlinked by galleries where can be observed several Buddhist representations. Along with the ramifications of the river, there are also the Kakrak cellars dated from the sixth to the thirteenth centuries. Around this area, it is still possible to look at the remains of a giant Buddhist sculpture and a sanctuary form the Sassanid period (second to seventh centuries). Lengthways the Foladi Valley there are also the Qoul-I Akram and Lalai Ghami cellars, equally interesting from the ornamental point of view. At the center of the basin are the remains of the Shahr-I Ghulghular fortress (sixth to the tenth centuries) that represents the importance of the Bamiyan as a stopping point at the Silk Road. Eastside from there, are the remains of the Qallai-I Kapari A and B dated from the sixth and eighth centuries. In Shahr-e Zouhak survive the remains of the Islamic period correspondent to the Ghaznavid, and Ghorid dynasties (from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries). Summing up, the Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley are precious testimonies of the artistic and religious activity developed in the region, especially between the first and the thirteenth centuries (UNESCO Official Website 2020m). Concerning the protection and management requirements, the Cultural Landscape of the Bamiyan Valley and its archaeological founds belong to the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. However, after the war, their safeguard became harder, since there used to be some private properties in the area that saw their legal documents disappear or being destroyed during conflicts. The civil instability that affects the region also hindered the problem. The financial and technical source of funding is the Ministry of Justice since 2004. Therefore, the management of the site is from the responsibility of the Ministry of Information and Culture and the Governor of the Bamiyan Province. To help manage the area the Institute of Archaeology, and the Department of Historical Monuments preservation are also involved. Having in mind the insecurity that harms the region the immediate protection of the site is made by a team of guards, and occasionally by the 02 Unit, a special force devoted to the protection of cultural sites. Since its inscription in the World Heritage Lists (2003) that the property has been helped by the international community in cooperation with the Afghan government. Still, since 2003 the site has been considered as in danger by UNESCO, due to the instability of the niches—resulted from the Taliban attacks—the deterioration of the painted murals, and the safety issues. Therefore, the integrity of the site seriously depends on the resolution of those problems, yet, it is believed that the authenticity of the property remains “intact” once the Landscape still represents the particularities of mud-brick constructions so singular, and yet fragile, in their forms, colors, and configuration. The Valley also maintains the architectural testimonies of the evolution of the region through different periods (UNESCO Official Website 2020m). The study of the state of conservation reports from the Bamiyan Valley its quite explicatory of the gravity of its situation. In 2003, two years after the attacks, one of the first measures done was the elaboration of a safeguard plan that included the necessary actions to reinforce the structure of the niches and to preserve the remains that resulted from the destruction of the Buddhas. The management of the site also
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required the realization of archaeological excavations and the outline of a sustainable tourism plan able to contribute to the rehabilitation of housing, services, agriculture, and regional infrastructures (UNESCO Official Website 2020m). In the year following its inscription, the first state of conservation report alerts to the fragile state of the property and recommends the strengthening of the cliffs, interventions on the mural paintings, in a mosque, and the transformation of a building to accommodate workers and materials. There was also reported some interest in documenting and mapping the site through 3D technologies. Curiously, it was exactly the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas that lead to the foundation of Cyark, and NGO responsible for the creation of an online 3D repository about heritage sites (Cyark 2020). At the beginning of the inscription of the property, it was also raising a proposal for a museum in the Valley, however, the project would end up abandoned due to bigger necessities (UNESCO Official Website 2020n). After the recovery and storage of remains of the mural paintings and the destroyed Buddhas, the need for a management plan based in a zoning system was still being felt. However, there were made some advances to reconnect local communities with the site through the elaboration of a workshop. Adding to this positive achievement the excavation works were held in cooperation with actions of training to Afghan archaeology professionals. In the same period, around 2006, the sensitive operations of demining started in collaboration with the United Nations Centre of Mining Action in Afghanistan (UNESCO Official Website 2020n). Despite some advances, in the following years, the State Party would struggle to implement the necessary measures, and the state of conservation reports would be poorly executed, maybe due to the raising insecurity felt on the region (UNESCO Official Website 2020n). In this regard, we open a parenthesis to remind us that the country has been suffering from armed conflicts almost permanently. After the 9/11 attacks, the USA invaded the country under the pretext of liberating it from the Taliban regime, but also with the intent of dismantling Al-Qaeda (Sather-Wagstaff 2016). Since the occupation, NATO has supported several military actions on the country to fight terrorism. Still, the huge number of civilians, soldiers, and rebels whose life was taken forecasts a long-term trauma (Sather-Wagstaff 2016; Council on Foreign Relations 2020). The abandonment of Bamiyan by the militaries and the lack of a management plan led to the deterioration of the site. During 2008 the actions of demining where expanded, and the training of guards were reinforced to prepare them how to act in case of illicit traffic of cultural property. At the same time was also implemented a system of inspection by the Ministry of Information and Culture (UNESCO Official Website 2020n). In 2010 the debate about the safety responsibilities of the site started to complicate since UNESCO felt that the State Party should find a way of financing the security teams without international support (UNESCO Official Website 2020n). The situation would become even worse in the succeeding years. In 2014, despite all the known threats the Organization alerted to the possible reconstruction of at least one of the lost Buddhas, and for the construction of a road near the site. The road would end up being constructed even though the environmental impact evaluations were only delivered to UNESCO after the conclusion of the project (UNESCO Official Website 2020n).
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The doubts about the economical sustainability of the security teams were confirmed in 2018 when UNESCO warned the absence of guards on the property due to financial cuts. Plus, the Organization alerted to the progressive decrease of the funds available for the protection of the site. From a legal perspective, it was suggested the revision of some national documentation about cultural properties, once according to the actual legislation the Bamiyan Valley does not belong to any protected area. The possible return of the local population to the region and the new mining project also raised some concerns (UNESCO Official Website 2020n). Unfortunately, the state of conservation report form 2019 does not present better outcomes, since most of the actions to safeguarding the place were delayed. On the other hand, thanks to international assistance were possible to hire a team of guards that is supported by a police team. The training measures and the actions implemented to raise awareness among the community continued even though the communication between the State Party and the Organization didn’t get stronger (UNESCO Official Website 2020n). When it comes to international assistance it is important to remember that since the inscription of the site in the World Heritage Lists the international community has been highly participative in helping the safeguard of Bamiyan but also other Afghan properties like the Minaret of Jam. In this regard, some of the biggest contributors are the Japanese, Swiss, Italian, and Korean Funds-in-Trust. A new investment from the Afghan government dedicated to the protection of the site from 2017 to 2026 can be a new source of hope for the cultural site (UNESCO Official Website 2020m).
2.2.1
Final Consideration on the Case of Study
The Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley are a great example to understand how certain human activities can harm cultural properties. The richness of the Buddhist and Islamic inheritance of the Valley is constantly threatened either by intentional destruction, illicit traffic of cultural property, or even thanks to the construction of inappropriate housing. Contrarily to what usually happens, the site was inscribed on the World Heritage Lists when its threats were already known by the international community. After the 2001 explosions, some elements of the Valley were severely damaged, which determined that the first measures implemented were directed to the consolidation of the cliffs and niches. Notwithstanding, since the property belongs to UNESCO’s Lists that the lack of funding and the instability that affects the region has attracted other factors of risk like looting. The financial limitation of the State Party it’s hapless but understandable if we considered that the country is weakened by decades of conflict. The constant instability resulted in an enormous humanitarian crisis, which necessarily overlaps the basic needs of the population to heritage safeguard policies (UNESCO Official Website 2020m). Regardless of the universal damage that the loss of the colossal Buddhas represents, one must question what the dimension of the emotional and spiritual wounds for the local community is. Effectively, the will to reconstruct the sculptures it’s a strong indicator of the impact of the Taliban attack on the genius loci. The conscious
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of loss—which gains intensity in a country uninterruptable butchered by war—makes plausible the recreation of the Buddhas through 3D light projections made by Jason Yu and Liyan Hun (Thondepu 2015). The immaterial reborn of the Buddhas it’s a symbolic gesture. Its testimony and insurgency against those who attempted to eradicate a piece of culture. It is an act of perseverance and protection for those who even fragile stand up in defense of their identity. But will this luminous animation—that screams the unrepeatable nature of the sculptures—be enough to mitigate the trauma? At the beginning of 2020, the USA agreed with the Taliban to possibly remove the militaries from the country (BBC News 2020). Will this be a motive of relief or concern? Will this represent a new era of hope for the Afghan cultural heritage? Or will the properties that do not comply with the Islamic beliefs continue to be targeted? From a practical point of view, the safety of the property depends on a stable sociopolitical situation and from the cease of all armed conflicts. While this is not possible, the protection of the Valley by guards and armed forces is essential, even though this may implicate continuous funding by the international community. Simultaneously, the maintenance and conservation of the elements of the Valley need to be continued to avoid their degradation. We also believe that raising awareness among local communities is equally essential, especially since several families live in caves from that region. This connection between the population and the site may represent a new hope for the future of the property since its safeguard is also interlinked with the recognition of its outstanding universal value. Another benefit that can come from the engagement of the community in the safeguard is the possible economic revitalization of the region through, who knows, the creation of new employment opportunities connected to the protection of the site. For that purpose, it would be necessary to elaborate a plan of interpretation and presentation of the property— which was already proposed by UNESCO—so in the future, the place could be explored for touristic purposes. When the situation permits it will also be necessary to establish the legal ownership around the buffer zone.
2.3 Sudden Events: Notre-Dame Cathedral at the Banks of the Seine in Paris (France) The city of Paris grew around the Banks of the Seine, near its intersection between Maine and the Oise. The historic center of the city develops between the Sully and Iéna bridges, the reason why along that area we can find other bridges, quays, the Island of the city and the Island of Saint Louis. The architectural and urban richness of the banks’ dialogue with that from the Islands, which are interlaced by the construction of roads, quays, and even by the course of the river itself. The union between its components attributes geographical, historical, and artistic value to the site, which buildings testimony to the city’s evolution in time. Therefore, the banks of the Seine are a living document about the French capital. Around the river, we
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can find the Sainte Chapelle and the Notre-Dame Cathedral, two exquisite examples of the medieval period. The Pont Neuf is also a place of interest and an unavoidable symbol of the Renaissance. The urban planning of the Island of Saint Louis, more precisely the one from Marais, Malaquais, and Voltaire is quite harmonic and dates from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries. The Louvre Museum, the Palace of the Invalides, the military school, and the Monnaie belong to classicism. From the famous international exhibitions that occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, remain several architectures, the most famous one is the Eiffel Tower, a revolutionary building also in its scale for the iron architecture. The main avenues from that area, idealized by Georges-Eugène Haussmann were also a motif of inspiration across the world (UNESCO Official Website 2020o). Respecting the management and protection demands, the elements that are included in the World Heritage area of the Banks of the Seine in Paris are protected by a strong legal framework. Between the documents of relevance to this study case is the Code du Patrimoine, updated in 2020, which clarifies which are the institutions devoted to cultural heritage, such as the National Monuments Center, that can intervene in statal properties; the City of Heritage and Architecture, which is a public institution of industrial and commercial nature devoted to the disclosure of architectures; and the Heritage Foundation, a non-profit that cooperates with private entities to protect and intervene in non-classified properties. It is essential to remember that every one of these institutions has members of the State in its constitution (Articles L141-1 to L143-15) (République Française 2020a; UNESCO Official Website 2020o). Equally important, the Code de l’urbanisme, revised in 2020, possesses several articles dedicated to the environmental impact evaluations. One of these clauses quotes the Ile-de-France, region that includes the city of Paris. This document determines that certain plans and programs executed in the region must be subjected to those studies (Article L104-1). The properties that are not covered by an urbanistic management plan are the responsibility of the municipalities that must identify and create legal instruments for their protection (Article LL111-22). The Code also allows interventions if most of the characteristics of the building are maintained (Article LLL111-23) (République Française 2020b; UNESCO Official Website 2020o). Even though the Code de l’environnement, consolidated in 2020, is mostly devoted to the protection of natural sites, it contains some terms that can be adapted to general risk prevention policies (Article L162-3, Articles L562-1, and L562-2) (République Française 2020c; UNESCO Official Website 2020o). Within the area inscribed as World Heritage site, there are several places and architectures of interest such as the Hôtel des Invalides or the Trocadéro Gardens. Most of the buildings, open spaces, and even the banks of the river belong mostly to the State. Despite the inexistence of a management plan or even a specific authority devoted to the protection of the site, the legal documents existent applied to private properties expand the power of the State in heritage matters. One of the most relevant documents for the comprehension of the management of the site is the Mise en valeur des Berges de la Seine dans Paris. Cahier des prescription surbaines et paysagères (1999). This document establishes norms for activities and architectures (permanent or temporary) sited around the banks of the Seine, by controlling their
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height, distance from the borders, typology, function, materials, and general dimensions. However, the text opens some exceptions for monuments (Port Autonome de Paris, Mairie de Paris & Service Départamental de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine de Paris 1999; UNESCO Official Website 2020o). The Specifications de prescription des installations saisonnières. Architecture et paysage sur le quais et berges dans Paris (2015) also intends to regulate the seasonal occupation of the lower banks from the Island of Saint Louis to the Grand Palais or the Eiffel Tower, namely through the limitation of which structures can be placed at the site (Service Territorial de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine de Paris, Mairie de Paris & HAROPA 2015). The preservation of the integrity and authenticity of the property results not only from a strong involvement from the French government but also to the application of protection measures like, for example, the progressive reduction of traffic circulation near the canal, project which started in 2000 and was concluded in 2016. The authenticity of the site, which combines the perspectives over the Seine, the urban fabric, and the monumental architectures may be threatened by urban development, pollution, and mass tourism. Therefore, the preservation of its outstanding universal value depends on a strong and rigid legal framework (UNESCO Official Website 2020o). Regarding the analysis of the state of conservation reports from the site, the first documents date from 1992, one year after the inscription of the property in the World Heritage List. The first SOC pointed out only one possible factor of risk, housing. Without international assistance requests, and with a monitoring mission made by ICOMOS for that same year, the management of the property seemed under control. However, the project that initially worried the Committee, which consisted of a building that was supposed to be erected near the river, was validated by a member of ICOMOS, who recognized that the new structure would not affect the outstanding universal value of the property. Curiously, the cultural site has only three reports available on the platform, the ones from 1992, 2000, and 2019, may be due to its exemplary management. Eight years after the first document the State Party delivers a more detailed one in 2000. This time, the State Party alerted to the occurrence of storms that started the year before (1999) and damaged several architectures inscribed in UNESCO’s Lists. Some of the affected architectures were around the Seine in Paris. Following the storms, national authorities surveyed the damages and calculated the reparation costs. Between the most damaged architectures was the Parisian Notre-Dame Cathedral which saw part of its external sculptures collapse due to the weather conditions. At that time, UNESCO advised the State Party to request international assistance to help cover the costs of reconstruction, however, France didn’t appeal (UNESCO Official Website 2020p). In 2019 the Banks of the Seine in Paris watched one of the most memorable events of the decade, the 15th of April fire at Notre-Dame. The catastrophe justified the realization of a third SOC which pointed the risk of fire as the main threat to the site. The dimension of the damage was such, that in a few months, and answering the request of a state of conservation report by UNESCO, the State Party communicated to the Organization about the creation of an emergency plan in which all the immediate measures of protection were cleared. Some of these urgent measures included the consolidation of Notre-Dame’s structure and the safeguard of its movable pieces.
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The monitorization of the architecture and its structural resistance counted with the participation of the French Lab of Research in Historical Monuments, and the French Center of Investigation and Restoration of Monuments. During the aftermath phase, these institutions were responsible for monitoring the effects of humidity in the structure, for example, the appearance of noxious microorganisms. In the report from 2019, the State Party recognized the professionalism of the fireman involved in the rescue mission, thanks to whom some pieces only suffered light damage due to the water used to extinguish the flames. Notwithstanding, the French authorities admitted that since the architecture was being inspected to understand the source of the fire, it wasn’t possible, until that date, to elaborate a complete document about the state of conservation of the Cathedral (UNESCO Official Website 2020p). UNESCO’s conclusions for that year attested the severe damage of the Cathedral, and despite the incomplete report, the Organization applauded the efforts of the French authorities involved in the rescue mission. UNESCO also suggested the creation of a Fund, a special entity to manage it, and the implementation of legal documents capable of accelerating the interventions at Notre-Dame. Curiously, the Organization remembered that any intervention should respect the 1972 Convention and that the restoration projects should be presented to the World Heritage Center before being implemented. Thanks to the Organization were also found three specialists to support the French State in the process (UNESCO Official Website 2020p). When it comes to the communication of the property in UNESCO’s platform, the Banks of the Seine in Paris have a complete and updated webpage (UNESCO Official Website 2020o).
2.3.1
Final Considerations on the Case of Study
Since its insertion in the World Heritage List in 1991 the Banks of the Seine in Paris have been managed in an exemplary manner. Except for punctual threats that appeared along the years, which justified the existence of only three states of conservation reports, the French State has been blameless in resolving potential threats and maintaining a dialog with the Organization. Despite some touristic pressure, some urban development projects, and automobile circulation near the river, the cultural site has been particularly fragile facing sudden natural phenomena. From the 1999 storm to the 2019 fire, the Banks of the Seine and some of its elements almost succumbed due to these threats. These occurrences confirm that despite a strong legal framework and exceptional management policies the risk still exists, like the fire from 2019 proved. However, the dimension of the accident could have been bigger if the French authorities didn’t act with such professionalism (UNESCO Official Website 2020p). The Notre-Dame case is an exception. Even if the Cathedral is an architecture inserted in the World Heritage area, the fact that this singular building is threatened doesn’t necessarily mean the whole property must be considered in danger. The degradation of the Cathedral doesn’t harm the outstanding universal value of the Banks of the Seine. However, the fire provoked an emotional impact that attracted
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the media’s attention. By consequence, Notre-Dame is a powerful example of how the sense of loss can impulse heritage safeguards. At the Banks of the Seine, the Parisians watched the combustion of a national symbol, which made them fear the devastation of part of their identity. In other Banks of the world, the international community felt the anguish of the Parisians and took as their own their sense of loss, what resulted in an effective—and almost instantaneous—campaign of fundraising for the Cathedral’s interventions (Nugent 2019; McAuley 2019). The billions raised in the days following the disaster surprised the public opinion, and there were several critics to the disproportion of the contributions in a time where social inequalities in France were debated trough the “yellow vests” movement (McAuley 2019). One of the causes that may facilitate the fundraising was the participation of several associations, such as the France Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the Notre-Dame Foundation, the Friends of Notre-Dame, and the Center of National Monuments (Bandarin 2019). Another probable cause for the success of the campaign was the involvement of three French families (Arnault, Pinault, and Bettencourt-Meyer) which promised to donate millions for the restoration process. One must remember that in France these major donations have fiscal benefits, which fired the debate about the intentions of the magnates and led the Pinault family to affirm that it wouldn’t accept any posterior benefit (Baker and Denis Baker et al. 2019). From a political perspective, after the fire, the French State got directly involved and became the main entity responsible for the interventions at the Cathedral. Emmanuel Macron (1977-), President of the country, assumed publicly the direction of the works. This political implication in heritage matters is very common in the French case since the State was always an active intervenient in heritage safeguard. However, this doesn’t mean there aren’t political interests behind the participation of the government on the campaign, especially if we consider the instability and public discontent of the population with Macron (McAuley 2019). Returning to the Cathedral, with the destruction of the roof the structure was at risk of collapsing. Thereby, and considering the loss of the pinnacle created by Violletle-Duc, President Macron launched a contest for the presentation of proposals for the reconstruction of the building. This resulted in multiple proposals with visionary, conservative, and even utopic visions for the “new” Cathedral (Dixon 2019; Ravenscroft 2019). To that purpose, UNESCO remembered that all interventions should respect the 1972 Convention and that this was an excellent opportunity to show the French “savoir-faire” (UNESCO Official Website 2020p). The recommendations of the Organization were then aligned with the French Code de l’urbanisme (2020) mentioned earlier, which allows interventions if most of the components of a building are maintained (République Française 2020b). The projects for the Cathedral may originate new aesthetical and structural models, but they must respect the preservation and authenticity requirements of the building. Plus, any choice must have into consideration the risk of new fires, and the sustainability of the materials and techniques applied. For now, the main priorities are the stabilization of the structure to guaranty its integrity and authenticity. More than a year after the fire, the works needed to be stopped due to the pandemic crises provoked by the new Covid-19, therefore, the emergency measures are not concluded yet. What attests to the doubts
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raised by Francesco Bandarin, former Director of UNESCO, which found some “irregularities” with the chronogram presented for the interventions (Bandarin 2019; UNESCO Official Website 2020o). Summing up, the Notre-Dame case raised a few questions difficult to ignore. Albeit the compromise demonstrated to the reconstruction of the building, the exorbitant amount collected is living proof of the inequality’s existent in the universe of heritage protection. Adding to this, Notre-Dame enhances the power that the media have in raising attention to a certain endangered property, which also avers that the interest in a safeguard campaign can derive according to the location of the property (Europe), its typology (catholic building), the fiscal benefits associated with the donations (tax reductions), and its propagandistic power. All these premises reinforce the belief that a democratic communication of the sites and their recognition by the international community can determine their survival or their irremediable loss.
3 Critical Conclusions 3.1 A Retrospective Analysis to UNESCO In the beginning, UNESCO showed some traces of the colonial power in new international legislation, that more than being a defense tool, acted as an instrument of vigilance of foreign properties. In fact, during the twentieth century, some State Parties used heritage protection matters to raise against imperialistic power, like happened with Egypt that claimed the national domain of its archaeological findings (Meskell 2018). Fearing external control, some countries resisted the concept of international assistance, especially since the missions had a one-sided nature that overlapped the opinion of the occidental specialist to that of the native (Meskell 2018). In its first years, the Organization was also punctuated by elitism, and a patriarchal structure, mainly composed of Northern American and European men, and only on rare occasions by women like the British archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes (1910–1996) (Meskell 2018). Nowadays, UNESCO has a more balanced structure when it comes to gender representation, even though its geographical composition remains unequal. Today, most of the employees are still Europeans, besides, some State Parties never had representatives at the World Heritage Committee, since the presence at the annual meeting requires a financial framework that some are not able to support (Meskell 2018). With time, UNESCO’s goals were also reoriented, changing from the peace mission to technical assistance, and the safeguard of monumental properties. This variation superimposed cultural tourism to the investigation. Up to now, the technocratic system revealed its limitations since the assistance programs were named as imperial development strategies, and the technocracy proved to be insufficient toward the lack of management systems. The multiplication of environmental issues and the reduction of funds also threatened UNESCO’s objectives. With the 2011
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crisis, the financial cuts increased, which was reflected in the hundreds of unpaid interns working for the Organization, and the few numbers of professionals with long-term contracts (Meskell 2018). The progressive bureaucratization of heritage matters implies another alteration. In its origins, UNESCO was formed mostly of specialists and academics, nowadays, the organization it is composed mainly of politics, consultants, and bureaucrats. Under political pressure and affected by the lack of funding, UNESCO ends up being subordinated to the interests of the bigger contributors, which influence the budgets and the programs (Meskell 2018). Despite the use of a neutral language, the normative documents produced result from intense discussions where each country plays in favor of its interests. A clear example of this can be traced to the funding break portrayed by the USA when the Old City of Jerusalem was included in the World Heritage List (1982) (Meskell 2018). To reinforce their influence within the Organization some countries form alliances, which is the case of BRICS that connects Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa by economical welfares. Over the years those countries have been contesting the contributions of the advisory bodies. Albeit these unions may have the power to counter European hegemony within the Organization, they can also take to partial results, especially when it comes to the inscription of sites on the World Heritage Lists (Meskell 2018). The powerlessness of UNESCO in face of the disrespect of the 1972 Convention ends up discrediting its potential because more than promoting heritage safeguard the Organization became a powerful platform for marketing and soft power (Meskell 2018). While its deviation from the original goals, the insufficiency of the normative documents, and its subordination to diplomacy, UNESCO continues to be the most important institution in heritage safeguard at a global level, without which we would have more sites to lose.
3.2 What Future to Endangered Sites? Is it possible to imagine the Andes without Machu Picchu? Cambodia without Angkor Wat? Or even Greece without Athens’s Acropolis? The singularity of each heritage site is a distinguishing sign, it is proof of cultural heterogeneity, a physical or intangible trace of the metamorphoses of a civilization, and simultaneously, from the perpetuation of its identity. Thus, the intentional destruction of cultural sites it is an enemy of the memory and an allied of repetition, this one tries to transform the truth into a myth, sometimes by processes of dehumanization and genocide. The defense of the universal legacy must then act as a shield against extremism, and as an incentive to the harmony between nations, independently on how variable heritage interpretation can be. The signs of dilapidation always activated the sense of loss, which led to the progressive improvement of heritage safeguards. From the theoretical corpus to praxis, the recognition of the irreplaceable essence of these properties determined which testimonies were preserved to the next generations. The selection to posteriority manifests itself since the pharaonic era, and until contemporary times. However,
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centuries of debate about heritage protection did not erase the ambivalence existent in this scope, since all the developments are sometimes threatened by revolutionary acts or armed conflicts. With the gradual improvement of international laws and normative documents, the concept of heritage is also expanded, which is represented in the appearance of new vocabulary and new typologies recognized as significant. However, once again, some phenomena and historical moments contribute to realizing how all these documents are insufficient in the face of unethical forces. Therefore, we believe that the symbiosis between heritage and local communities is essential and depends on the appreciation of common values shared by different territories. In this sense, cultural sites can act as connecting shafts between State Parties, capable of maintaining and promoting peace. For this reason, it is important to establish international principles of safeguard and guaranty their ratification by most of the countries without forgetting their cultural differences. Notwithstanding, one must always remember that these dissonances—which are indispensable, but occasionally incompatible—hinder the mission since the universality of the properties is not always accepted. After the creation of the 1972 Convention were established the World Heritage Lists, in which inscriptions multiplied to exhaustion in the following decades. The fast growth of the number of sites recognized as World Heritage led to the trivialization and dilution of safeguard hierarchies. Consequently, gentrification, house speculation, and cultural tourism raised uncontrolled in sites with the UNESCO “brand.” This affluence brought other harmful results, as the degradation of several sites, their loss of authenticity, and even intentional attacks on cultural properties. All these alterations, social, political, economic, and environmental resulted in a bigger number of endangered sites, which are not always recognized as such. The gravity of the issue can be attested by simply following the media, which each day announces a new occurrence. In defiance of all developments, the 2000s proved how it is still necessary to make the heritage apology since some lessons of the Past were already forgotten. With the terrorist attacks to the Bamiyan Buddhas centuries applied on their protection were sacrificed. For the exploration of natural resources, Potosi’s population is threatened by the possible collapse of part of the Cerro. And even safeguard efforts can result in an unpredictable calamity, like happened with the fire at the Parisian Notre-Dame. From heritage “abuses” derive so many other infractions to Humanity and against the obligations of the present toward the future generations, especially in countries with totalitarian regimes or democratic ones only at the surface. Equally delicate are the speeches of World leaders that insist in devalue the catastrophes and refuse the universal value of these properties. Equally harmed are the countries with a history of occupation or constant armed conflicts, which in view of permanent insecurity do not have the necessary resources to defend, maintain, and revitalize their heritage. That does not mean those countries are not favorable to heritage protection, this simply implies that their current framework forces them to overlap the basic needs of the population to those of heritage. From the analysis of the three case studies we understand that the permanence of the sites within the List of World Heritage in danger is mainly related to legal
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barriers (Potosí), exposure to sudden climate events (Banks of the Seine), structural instability (Notre-Dame and Bamiyan), and incoherent management systems (Bamiyan and Potosí). In extreme situations, the integrity, and authenticity of those sites are harmed irreversibly, which may lead to the loss of their outstanding universal value, and subsequently to their removal of the Lists. Even though some properties depend on international assistance to “survive,” it is proven that the technical help provided by the Organization isn’t enough to guaranty the protection of those sites. The commitment of the State Party, the completion of the measures suggested, and a stable political and economical framework yes, are sine qua non conditions to the resolution of the problem. Yet, one must pop the questions. Without sanction mechanisms—in a context were heritage is progressively more politicized—how can UNESCO guaranty the impartiality of the evaluations and the respect for its normative documents? It has been pointed by many authors that the 1972 Convention needs periodic revision, something that its 37 Article already considered. However, we think that to reinforce its credibility UNESCO needs an even more profound reformation. The decision-making must be retaken by specialists, researchers, and academics under the precepts of gender equality and geographical representation. We believe this reorientation would increase the impartiality of decision-making since the Organization wouldn’t be dependent on State representatives. Of course, this change would not please a lot of the current heritage actors, and it could lead to the decrease of funding, however, it could also facilitate the completion of UNESCO primordial goals and contribute to a more successful safeguard of the properties. Endless bureaucracy and the inequalities between the treatment given to endangered sites must also be contradicted, through the channeling of resources for practical solutions and the democratic communication of the sites. In conclusion, the future of World Heritage endangered sites depends on the contemporary generations and their change of attitude toward these non-renewable properties. The resistance of those historical testimonies demands the uplift of heritage protection to State priorities, and the outline of a more democratic and sustainable future. So that the properties return to their splendor, it is urgent to think their prospective role to the process of humanization and to reflect on the damage that their loss represents. Until then, we continue to watch how destruction keeps entrenching. Spreading. And vulgarizing.
References Asbun J (1978) Decreto Ley nº 15900. Gral. Juan Pereda Asbun, Presidente de la República Bailey G (2010) The Andean Hybrid Baroque. Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru Baker L, Denis, P (2019/04/18) RPT-As Notre-Dame money rolls in, some eyebrows raised over rush of funds. https://www.reuters.com/article/france-notredame-donations/rpt-as-notre-damemoney-rolls-in-some-eyebrows-raised-over-rush-of-funds-idUSL5N2201QH. Accessed 25 June 2020
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Bandarin F (2019/08/02) New law regarding Notre Dame says restoration must preserve its ‘historic, artistic and architectural interest’. https://www.theartnewspaper.com/analysis/it-s-official-thenew-notre-dame-will-look-like-the-old-notre-dame. Accessed 25 June 2020 BBC News (2020/02/29) Afghan conflict: US and Taliban sign deal to end 18-year war. https:// www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-51689443. Accessed 25 June 2020 Costa I (2020) O sentimento de Perda. Património Mundial—Casos de Estudo dos Principais Riscos para os Bens Culturais. Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto, Porto Council on Foreign Relations (2020/06/25) Global conflict tracker. https://www.cfr.org/global-con flict-tracker/?category=us. Accessed 25 June 2020 Cyark (2020) Our Mission. https://www.cyark.org/ourMission/ Deutsche W (2017/07/23) Police battle protesting Potosi miners in Bolivian capital. https://www. dw.com/en/police-battle-protesting-potosi-miners-in-bolivian-capital/a-18602802. Accessed 25 June 2020 Dixon E (2019/05/10) Architect unveils striking proposal for ‘green’ Notre Dame. https://edition. cnn.com/style/article/france-notre-dame-green-scli-intl/index.html. Accessed 25 June 2020 El Congreso Nacional (2015) Bolivia: Ley de 8 de marzo de 1927 Estensoro V (1961) Bolivia. Decreto Supremo 05918/1961. Normas Complementarias sobre Patrimonio Artistico, Histórico, Arqueologico y Monumental McAuley J (2019/04/18) Billionaires raced to pledge money to rebuild Notre Dame. Then came the backlash. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/billionaires-raced-to-pledge-moneyto-rebuild-notre-dame-then-came-the-backlash/2019/04/18/7133f9a2-617c-11e9-bf24-db4b9f b62aa2_story.html. Accessed 25 June 2020 Meskell, L (2018) A future in ruins. UNESCO, World Heritage, and the dream of peace. Oxford University Press, Oxford Nugent C (2019/04/17) Pledges reach almost $1 billion to rebuild Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral. https://time.com/5571518/notre-dame-donations/. Accessed 25 June 2020 Port Autonome de Paris. Mairie de Paris. Service Départamental de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine de Paris (1999). Mise envaleur des Berges de la Seine dans Paris. Cahier des prescription surbaines et paysagères Ravenscroft T (2019/04/25) Seven alternative spires for Notre-Dame Cathedral. https://www.dez een.com/2019/04/25/notre-dame-spire-alternative-cathedral-designs/. Accessed 25 June 2020 República da Bolívia (2008) Constitución Política de la República de Bolivia République Française (2020a) Code du Patrimoine République Française (2020b) Code de l’urbanisme République Française (2020c) Code l’environnement Sather-Wagstaff J (2016) Heritage that hurts. Tourists in the memoryscapes of September 11. Routledge, New York Service Territorial de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine de Paris. Mairie de Paris. HAROPA. (2015). Specifications de prescription des installations saisonnières. Architecture et paysagesur les quais et berges dans Paris. Juillet 2015 Suarez H (1978) Decreto Supremo Nº 15616. Gral, Hugo Banzer Suarez Presidente de la República Thondepu N (2015/06/13) Bamiyan Buddhas: Destroyed by Taliban, Recreated by Chinese couple. https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/bamiyan-buddhas-destroyed-by-taliban-recrea ted-by-chinese-couple/story-cpZnDnyEaOOyaCOZ60vWdK.html. Accessed 13 June 2015 UNESCO Official Website (2020a) World heritage list statistics. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/stat/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020b) Natural and Culturo-Historical region of Kotor. https://whc.une sco.org/en/list/125/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020c) Old City of Jerusalem and its walls. https://whc.unesco.org/en/ list/148/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020d) Belize barrier reef reserve system. https://whc.unesco.org/en/ list/764/. Accessed 28 July 2020
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UNESCO Official Website (2020e) Birthplace of Jesus: church of the nativity and the pilgrimage route, Bethlehem. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1433/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020f) Humberstone and Santa Laura Saltpeter works. https://whc.une sco.org/en/list/1178/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020g) Islands and protected areas of the Gulf of California. https:// whc.unesco.org/en/list/1182/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020h) Arabian Oryx sanctuary. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/654/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020i) Dresden Elbe valley. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1156/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020j) List of factors affecting the properties. https://whc.unesco.org/ en/factors/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020k) City of Potosí. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/420/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020l) City of Potosí. Documents. State of Conservation reports. https:// whc.unesco.org/en/list/420/documents/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020m) Cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/208/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020n) Cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley. Documents. State of conservation reports. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/208/documents/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020o) Paris, Banks of the Seine. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/600/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO Official Website (2020p) Paris, Banks of the Seine. Documents. State of conservation reports. https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/600/documents/. Accessed 28 July 2020 UNESCO (1972) Convention concerning the protection of the world cultural and natural heritage
The Risk of Fire in Twin Buildings of the Ouro Preto Historic Center: World Heritage Antônio Maria Claret de Gouveia, Giovana Martins Brito, and Ana Elisa de Oliveira
Abstract UNESCO recognized the set of historic buildings of Ouro Preto in 1980 giving it the title of World Cultural Heritage. Following Portuguese colonial construction method on steep slopes, the first inhabitants built buildings underpinning one another. Construction materials were local quartzite stones and gross wood pieces. These remaining twin buildings sets scattered over the city are especially important scenes of contemporary Ouro Preto and motivated its recognition by UNESCO. The aim of this work is to make a brief evaluation of fire safety policies in Ouro Preto evidencing fire risk parameters on important sets. It was found that actual occupation of the buildings generates an important fire risk. Awareness of the population is expressed by citizen’s movements asking national and municipal authorities to pay attention to fire safety. The Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) has made efforts to tackle this issue in building’s conservation guidelines. But there is much more to be done to reduce fire risk on these historic buildings in order to set them at an admissible level. Keywords Ouro preto city · Fire risk · Fire safety policies · Twin buildings This research started from the interest in developing a work for the “International Congress on Urban Human Heritage Management: preservation challenges and This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF 2020. A. M. C. de Gouveia (B) Fire Risk Analysis Laboratory, Federal University of Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] G. M. Brito Cultural Heritage Laboratory, Research Group Heritage and International Relations, CNPq, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] A. E. de Oliveira Landscape Laboratory, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_16
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risks/International Symposium on World Heritage Meaning in the International Context.” In this sense, we sought to understand what would be officially treated as a world heritage site. Thus, a survey about the Brazilian cities that have this title was carried out. Of these, the cities of Diamantina, Congonhas, Ouro Preto and Belo Horizonte were selected—places that the group already had contact with. From this, the geographical location, as well as the conditions of transport and visitation, influenced the choice for the city of Ouro Preto, which the theme of the imminent fire risk already drew the attention of researchers and, in addition, fit in one of the thematic axes of the aforementioned event. That said, a survey was carried out on references and consultation materials that covered the chosen theme. Soon, contact was made by email with professionals in the areas of heritage, history, architecture and engineering and, finally, we visited the city to experience the urban dynamics of Ouro Preto. In those days, the experience in the city was very intense: we evaluated IPHAN documents, spoke to university professors, with the fire department and with the local population, in order to better understand the object of study. From this, a geographic cut was established, and the focus was on Count of Bobadela Street, since it is a very important street for the city—being an axis of public attraction in the dynamics of the place—and, at the same time, it has already presented claims related to fires. Finally, the use of theses, articles and dissertations, with the intention of strengthening the debate and understanding better the topic, was extremely relevant, for the foundation of the material, as an important and critical document for the current context of the city, the country and the world, in relation to fire cases.
1 The Concept of Fire Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of fire has undergone changes and new interpretations (de Gouveia 2017). According to Technical Instruction No. 2/2017 (CBMMG 2017), which addresses the terminology of protection against fire and panic, the term fire is defined as “fire without control.” This approach is reinforced, for example, in the work “Fire Safety in Brazil” (p. 43): The definitions below translate exactly what fire is: • Brazil NBR 13860: Fire is fire that is out of control. • “International ISO 8421-1: Fire is the rapid combustion spreading in an uncontrolled way in time and space”. In this sense, it is observed the formulation of other views for such an understanding of the traditional concept of fire, as in the work “Introduction to fire engineering—for students, architects, engineers, administrators and firefighters.” In this analysis, the author proposes that the traditional concept of fire is characterized by two main aspects—externality and inexorability (de Gouveia 2017), which is configured as a problem in the treatment of the theme. “Externality is the characteristic that makes the fatalistic view of fires persist today” (de Gouveia 2017).
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“The inexorability reflects the continuity power of the combustion reaction to the destructive power of the fire, which, once the fire has developed, is self-sustaining and can only be interrupted by the decomposition of the fire triangle […]. It explains the passive character of many prescriptive security measures adopted”. Gouveia, p. 39, 2017).
In view of this, the start of ignition used to be explained by the fire triangle (Fig. 1) and, currently, we speak of “fire tetrahedron” (Fig. 2) to express the dynamics of fire (Seito 2008). “At first glance, the fire triangle suggests three ways of reducing the risk of developed fire: reducing the fuel load in a compartment, reducing the likelihood of the combustible material being exposed to a heat source and reducing the oxygen content in the environment. These three alternatives are used in fire safety projects and are “external” in the sense that they do not use the physical characteristics of the combustible material or the heat source”. (Gouveia, p. 43, 2017). “In summary, the traditional concept of fire as “uncontrolled fire” is an external view, distant from the physical phenomena that occur in the affected environment. By not making use of the notion of object that starts the fire, relying on the sufficiency idea of the “fire triangle”, the concept gives rise to the appearance of the prescriptive project, because the fire, which appears, is unknown from where or why, demands fire resistance in the pre-disaster stage and combat in the post-disaster stage”. (Gouveia, p. 47, 2017)
Fig. 1 Fire triangle. Source Ana Elisa de Oliveira 2019
Fig. 2 Fire Tetrahedron. Source Ana Elisa de Oliveira 2019
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Fig. 3 Fire as a result of the interaction between fire, building and users. Source Ana Elisa de Oliveira 2019
On the other hand, a new vision on the fire concept appears in the work “Introduction to fire engineering—for students, architects, engineers, administrators and firefighters,” contemplating several aspects that did not appear, until then, in the traditional concepts: The new concept proposed is therefore the following: fire is the result of the interaction between fire, the building and the users, an interaction that develops through multiple chemical, physical, biological, and psychic phenomena, mutually influential and mostly occurring in a very short time.” (Gouveia, p. 49, 2017).
In summary, fire is treated as a multifactorial event that involves several aspects and, thus, several other phenomena of varied origins (Fig. 3).
2 Fires in Brazil and Worldwide Based on the research carried out, a brief chronology of the most recent fire cases in Brazil and in the world will be presented, with the purpose of highlighting not only the urgency of carrying out further studies on the topic, but also the importance of following safety and security instructions. with appropriate preventive measures. Since the accident can start in the most varied ways—from the lack of resources for repairs to the incorrect use of space—it is necessary to be aware of all of them. On September 2, 2018, the National Museum suffered a major fire that consumed about 90% of the collection. Located in Rio de Janeiro, the museum was founded by King Dom João VI and figured as one of the most important scientific institutions in the world, standing out in the studies of paleontology, anthropology, geology, zoology, archeology and biological ethnology. The building was also the scene of major historical events such as the first Constituent Assembly and the signing of the Declaration of Independence of Brazil. According to a report written by Carolina Cunha on the UOL website, the accident at the museum would have been a reflection of the lack of resources and poor risk management, in other words, the problems in the structure of the building were mixed with the absence of a plan for preventing
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and fighting fires (Cunha 2019). The cut in the maintenance budget has severely affected the institution, so that by the time when the investment of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) to install a new fire prevention system was finally going to be released, it was too late. On April 15, 2019 it was Paris’s turn, the Notre-Dame Cathedral burned for more than 9 h. EXAME magazine points out the possibility that the fire was related to the restoration work that was being done in the building, since the set of scaffolding near the base of the tower was one of the first places where the fire was seen (EXAME 2019). The spiked spire and church roof collapsed completely. The Gothic-style cathedral began to be built in 1163 and was completed in 1345. Centuries later, in 1845, Viollet-le-Duc, an architect and one of the main theorists of restoration, carried out the restoration project for the church, giving it the appearance we knew until the fire. Being a symbol of western civilization, the cathedral is on the UNESCO World Heritage List and is the most visited historical monument in Europe. On October 4, 2019 a chapel in the city of Sopa, district in Diamantina, was hit by a fire. The chapel of Saint Rita of Cassia is part of the heritage listed in the city due to its historical, cultural and artistic value. The fire consumed the interior of the building, causing the collapse of the tower and the roof. The church was then banned because what was left was still in danger of falling apart. The fight against flames was carried out by nine soldiers, three vehicles and a water truck. There were no casualties because the church was closed at the time. According to Fernanda Canofre on the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, hypotheses involving fireworks that were being kept on site and that the fire could have started due to a short circuit were raised; the causes have been investigated by the Civil Police (Canofre 2019). According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) on the 2010 demographic census, the district has 540 inhabitants (IBGE 2010), so it is possible to understand the commotion of the region’s residents who cried when witnessing the fact.
3 The Vulnerability of the City of Ouro Preto, in Relation to the Fire Situation Located in the state of Minas Gerais and characterized by irregular layout— composed of winding roads, large blocks and some alleys (Salgado 2010)—Ouro Preto has about 70 thousand inhabitants, according to the last demographic census of 2010 (IBGE 2010). The city was firstly named Vila Rica and was established in the seventeenth century from the exploration of gold, from the “trunk path” (Salgado 2010) and has, in its historical nucleus, a morphology similar to the ones of the past centuries, due to the architectural production and the implantation model that was reproduced, even in the twentieth century, with the toppling of the city, preserving the colonial typological aspects (Costa and Netto 2015) (Figs. 4 and 5).
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Fig. 4 Scheme of implantation of colonial houses in the city of Ouro Preto. Source Ana Elisa de Oliveira 2019
Fig. 5 Houses and townhouses on Rua Direita. Source Giovana Martins Brito 2019
“The buildings are located in the tested lot, with no frontal retreat and, to a large extent, no lateral retreat. In general, on sloping land (towards the river, for example) the buildings have a greater number of floors on the rear facade.” (Salgado 2010, p. 34).
These characteristics, unfortunately, corroborate a problem: the imminent risk of fire that the city suffers, since the proximity of the buildings contributes to a possible horizontal spread of the fire, in case of any accident inside any of the properties. “The closer one building is to the other, the greater the chances of spreading fire through irradiation and conduction - a fact of concern for houses from the colonial period, which were mostly built with the side walls on the boundary of the land, joining each other. The
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neighboring buildings must be taken into account, in addition to the layout of the streets, their dimensions and obstacles, which can hinder the arrival of the fire brigade team”. (Pollum 2016, p. 88).
There is, in addition, another issue that contaminates the debate about the risk situation in Ouro Preto: the constructive characteristic. One easily identified type of construction that represents the city of Ouro Preto is the townhouse (Costa and Netto 2015). This typology implies the difficulty of escape that the residents can have, in case of a fire, since, generally, the stairs are steep, narrow and, still, made of wood—combustible material (Alves 2003). Another problem is the fact that fire fighting at heights has only the front access façade (Alves 2003) (Fig. 6). “In the case of Baroque buildings, although the constructions are not, as a rule, of large surface, the insufficient fire resistance of internal partitions (for example, wooden floors) and external partitions (walls of pau-a-pique and wooden partitions) can result in large volume fires.”(Alves 2003, p. 36).
In addition, there is a change in use—necessary, depending on the context of current life—that the old colonial buildings suffer. Rua Direita, for example, has bars and restaurants, which contribute to the attraction of the region’s public. In these typologies, however, some claims have already occurred, causing damage to property. Another aggravating factor is the irregular topography itself, characterizing the narrow and winding streets and also the response time of the fire brigade, combined with the lack of hydrants in the region of the historic center. “There are some influencers in the arrival time of the firefighters, such as distance, traffic and road conditions and even climatic conditions that can hinder or prevent access. The ability of the Technical Team to identify, solve or propose alternatives in the face of obstacles will be directly linked to a better response time.” (Pollum 2016, p. 89).
Fig. 6 Fire fighting through the front facade. Source Movimento Mineiro CHAMA—Consciousness and preservation against fire (de Gouveia 2003)
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In a conversation with the 3rd Military Fire Company of Ouro Preto, it was reported that there are only three fire hydrants in the historic nucleus and only one is in operation—the distances between them being more than 70 m, is a problem, since that the hoses are only 15 m long—and there is also the problem of regularizing the projects to combat fire and panic, as shown in Tables 1 and 2 (Fig. 7). From this diagnosis, it can be understood that Ouro Preto is in an imminent risk situation, as it presents several factors that contribute to a possible accident, affecting several elements that characterize the historic site and also the population that enjoys the city. Table 1 List of regularization of fire and panic combat projects
ADDRESS
SITUATION
06 Count of Bobadela Street
CANCELED PROJECT OVER 5 YEARS
08 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
104/106 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
105 and 109 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
106 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
110 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT NOTIFIED DURING INSPECTION
111 Count of Bobadela Street
CANCELED PROJECT OVER 5 YEARS
124 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
134 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
135, 137, 139 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER REVIEW
138-A Count of Bobadela Street
CANCELED PROJECT OVER 5 YEARS
142 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
143 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
150 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
151 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
155 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED (continued)
The Risk of Fire in Twin Buildings of the Ouro … Table 1 (continued)
313
ADDRESS
SITUATION
159 and 161 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
160 and 162 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
166 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
167 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
170 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
173 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
180 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT NOTIFIED DURING INSPECTION
181/185 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
189 Count of Bobadela Street
NOTIFIED PROJECT UNDER ANALYSIS
189 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
24 Count of Bobadela Street
CANCELED PROJECT OVER 5 YEARS
26 and 28 Count of Bobadela Street
NOTIFIED PROJECT UNDER ANALYSIS
27, 31 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
32 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
40 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
42 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
48 Count of Bobadela Street
CANCELED PROJECT
55, 59, 63 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
62 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
64 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
63 Count of Bobadela Street
CANCELED PROJECT OVER 5 YEARS
65 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
72 and 76 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
75 and 79 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID (continued)
314 Table 1 (continued)
A. M. C. de Gouveia et al. ADDRESS
SITUATION
78 Count of Bobadela Street
PROJECT APPROVED UNDER ANALYSIS
80 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
84/82 Count of Bobadela Street FDIR EXPIRED 88 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
95, 105, 109,111 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID (PARTIAL)
96 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR VALID
97 Count of Bobadela Street
FDIR EXPIRED
Source 3rd Military Firefighters Company / 1st Military Fire Brigade - Ouro Preto *FDIR = Fire Department Inspection Report
4 Preservation and Combat Movements After the fire at Hotel do Pilão, which occurred in 2003, a fire preservation project started in the city. This proposal became known as the Flame Movement (Movimento CHAMA—Consciousness and Preservation against Fire) (de Gouveia 2003), and had the participation of different institutions: UNESCO; Fire Department; Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP); National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN); Government of Minas Gerais through the Secretary of State for Culture, Ouro Preto Art Foundation (FAOP), IEPHA (State Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage of Minas Gerais) and State Forest Institute (IEF); Ouro Preto City Hall; Ouro Preto Commercial, Industrial and Agricultural Association; Association of Residents of High Historic Center and local entities. In other words, the entire city was mobilized to carry out preservation actions. As stated in the presentation text written for Technical Notebook number 5 of the Monumenta Program—”Analysis of fire risk in historic sites”—this project had as main proposals: “(…) preliminary diagnosis of commercial and service facilities; training and formation of brigades; better equipment and infrastructure for the Fire Department; awareness campaigns and normative proposals”. (de Gouveia 2006, p. 7)
However, the project was faced with the absence of a scientific basis that could support preventive and combat measures appropriate to the physical and morphological conformations of the city and, consequently, of other colonial sites in the country (Fig. 8). The preparation of the fire risk diagnosis in Ouro Preto was divided into several stages to define the perimeter to be worked out and the respective activities that would be developed in each area. Thus, we tried to adapt the safety and risk factors
Public Area
Tiradentes Square
Camargos Baron Street
Carlos Tomaz Street
Henrique adeodato Street
Quintiliano Advisor Street
Baron of Camargos Street
Baron of Camargos Street
Tiradentes Square
Costa Sena Street
City
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
8
205
7
100
8
193
4
196
4
No
CENTRO
CENTRO
CENTRO
CENTRO
LAJES
ROSÁRIO
CENTRO
CENTRO
CENTRO
Neighborhood
Table 2 Location and situation of Ouro Preto’s hydrants
Near Pharmacy College
Corner Baron of Camargos
Near the Minas College
Near the Beer Bar
Inside the Barracks
Near the 52º BPM
Near the Ouro Preto Inn
Behind Minas College
In front of CAEM
Landmark
Inoperative
Operative
Operative
Operative
Operative
Operative
Operative
Inoperative
Operative
Situation
Unsatisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory
Satisfactory
Pressure
Unsatisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory
Satisfactory
Flow Rate
(continued)
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
12/06/2018
12/06/2018
12/06/2018
12/06/2018
Inspection Date
The Risk of Fire in Twin Buildings of the Ouro … 315
Senator Rocha Lagoa Street
Rosário Square
Doctor Orlando Ramos Street
Father Rolim Street
Father Rolim Street
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
OURO PRETO
1
661
344
2
68
No
Neighborhood
CENTRO
CENTRO
PILAR
ROSÁRIO
CENTRO
Landmark
Bus Terminal
Near Palace of Mercy
Near Dom Veloso School
In front of Rosário Church
Near Dom Pedro II School
Source 3rd Military Firefighters Company / 1st Military Fire Brigade - Ouro Preto
Public Area
City
Table 2 (continued) Situation
Operative
Operative
Operative
Operative
Inoperative
Pressure
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory
Flow Rate
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
12/05/2018
Inspection Date
316 A. M. C. de Gouveia et al.
The Risk of Fire in Twin Buildings of the Ouro …
317
Fig. 7 Location of the hydrants in the historic center of Ouro Preto. Source 3rd Military Firefighters Company—Ouro Preto—1st BBM
through various simulations. The first stage was concentrated on Saint Joseph Street and had a lecture for residents. There was also an attempt to integrate UFOP students by offering them a place to work with the survey team; however, the interested students did not have available time. The solution found was, then, to allocate a paid scholarship to some students from the Federal Center of Technological Education in Ouro Preto (CEFET-OP) and provide them with training in fire engineering notions. During the activities, a wide photographic survey was also carried out. Through the analyses it was possible to propose protective measures. The system of external and internal fire hydrants with little hoses appears as an essential element for fighting fires. In this case, it is necessary to guarantee the water supply with provision for a suitable volume reservoir. Added to that are fire detection, alarm and extinguishing systems. Fire extinguishers of adequate quality and quantity can also be effective in solving fire principles of smaller dimensions, preventing the fire from
318
A. M. C. de Gouveia et al.
Fig. 8 The angel with the torch and the red triangle of the flag of Minas Gerais form the logo of the Flame Movement. Source Movimento Mineiro CHAMA (Flame Movement of Minas Gerais)—Consciousness and preservation against fire (de Gouveia 2003)
spreading. Regarding the behavior of individuals, the educational level of users is essential to avoid further losses. In this sense, the understanding of the building’s structure, the materials stored in it and its flammable potential, as well as familiarization with the operations and safety devices and with the escape possibilities, lead to the understanding of the best measures and actions to be taken in case of fire emergency. Regarding the types of construction characteristic of the Brazilian Baroque, they were classified into three categories: the compartmentalized construction; the construction that favors the horizontal spread of the fire and the large volume construction that allows horizontal and vertical propagation of the fire. In addition, due to changes in the form of occupation of buildings, it is important that the survey of fire loads is periodic. In this case, it would be ideal to have a complete survey in every five years and a sample survey in every two years or when the evidence shows that it is necessary. It is worth highlighting the need to prepare a risk diagnosis before the fire safety project. This is necessary because the illusion of security becomes a danger, especially in colonial cities where general protection measures may not be effective in this specific context. In this way, the diagnosis makes it possible to
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319
Fig. 9 Pages 1 and 2 of the risk diagnosis prepared by the Flame Movement. Source Movimento Mineiro CHAMA—Consciousness and preservation against fire (de Gouveia 2003)
understand the determining variables in the project, which must be analyzed in each property that presents a risk of fire generalization (Fig. 9).
5 Conclusion and New Possibilities Based on the research conducted, it can be concluded that it is valid to reflect on the turnover of the city’s firefighters. Having a cohesive group and having a good knowledge about the best routes to reach the accident site can represent a considerable advantage for fighting the fire. Sometimes the time of arrival and parking the vehicle in a strategic place, both to replenish water and to have greater access to the building in question, can contribute to reducing damage. In addition, we can think of awareness booklets to be distributed to the local population and tourists. Such leaflets must contain information from Ouro Preto accompanied by instructions on the precautions to be taken in a representative place of Brazilian colonial history. This material can be shared in churches, museums, municipal offices and institutions of art and culture in the city. It is also interesting to create applications and disseminate them on social networks in order to make the notions of preservation more accessible to the community. Thus, it is understood that the zeal for cultural heritage must be viewed as a daily
320
A. M. C. de Gouveia et al.
duty that belongs to both the responsible bodies and the population. The exercise of citizenship is thus linked to the notion of identification and the sense of belonging of men to the cultural symbols of their country. In this sense, Ouro Preto carries with it the enchantment of Baroque art and the historical dimension of a colonial city whose relevance is affirmed by the mining period and the episode of the Minas Gerais Conspiracy (Inconfidência Mineira) of 1789. Therefore, by rethinking the concepts related to fire and reflecting on the recent accidents caused to our built heritage, we can build a new scenario. Articulated action between municipal sectors, institutions of culture and heritage preservation, educational spaces and the community form the necessary link for the development of a good plan for safeguarding cultural assets. Thus, it is proposed to resume the Flame Movement (Movimento Chama) project and incorporate new measures that contribute to the prevention and fight against flames. May the city blessed by the angels of Aleijadinho also be protected in the best way by all of us.
References Alves RM (2003) Análise de risco de incêndios em edificações em sítios históricos, 132p. Dissertação (Mestrado em Engenharia Civil) – Escola de Minas, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto Canofre F (2019) Incêndio destrói capela histórica em Diamantina. Folha de São Paulo, 4 de out. de 2019. https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/cotidiano/2019/10/incendio-destroi-capela-histor ica-em-diamantina.shtml. Accessed 16 Nov 2019 CBMMG - Corpo de Bombeiros Militar de Minas Gerais (2017) Instrução Técnica nº 02. Terminologia de proteção contra incêndio e pânico, 2ª edição Costa SAP, Netto MMG (2015) Fundamentos de morfologia urbana, 1ª edição. Belo Horizonte: C/ Arte Cunha C (2019) Ciência - o que o Brasil perdeu com o incêndio do Museu Nacional? UOL. https://vestibular.uol.com.br/resumo-das-disciplinas/atualidades/ciencia-o-queo-brasil-perdeu-com-o-incendio-do-museu-nacional.htm?. Accessed 15 Nov 2019 de Gouveia AMC (2006) Análise de risco de incêndio em sítios históricos. Brasília, DF: IPHAN / MONUMENTA (Cadernos Técnicos; 5). de Gouveia AMC (2003) Movimento Mineiro CHAMA – Consciência e preservação contra o fogo. Ouro Preto de Gouveia AMC (2017) Introdução à engenharia de incêndio. Belo Horizonte: 3i de Gouveia AMC, Andrade AT (2007) Fire load survey of historic buildings: a case study. J. Fire Prot. Eng. 17:103–112. Maio EXAME, Revista. O que se sabe sobre o incêndio na catedral de Notre-Dame. 17 de abr de 2019. https://exame.abril.com.br/mundo/o-que-se-sabe-sobre-o-incendio-na-catedral-denotre-dame/. Accessed 16 Nov 2019 Pollum J (2016) A segurança contra incêndio em edificações históricas, 332p. Dissertação (Mestrado em Arquitetura e Urbanismo) – Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis IBGE - Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Censo Demográfico 2010.
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Salgado M (2010) Ouro Preto: Paisagem em transformação. Dissertação de mestrado em Ambiente Construído e Patrimônio Sustentável. Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais Seito A (coord) (2008) A Segurança contra Incêndio no Brasil, 1ª edição. Projeto Editora, São Paulo
Plunderers of Devotional Heritage Denismara Eugênia de Oliveira Nascimento
Abstract Minas Gerais is recognized by UNESCO as the Brazilian state with the largest amount of cultural goods in the country. Thus, the region starts to stand out in the national and international cultural scene. Hence, it is worth making an analysis of the element which has most disappeared in the state: Catholic sacred art. This occurs through thefts in religious buildings, which have occurred since the 19th century, in the state of Minas Gerais. These robberies and thefts show an embezzlement in the Brazilian cultural/sacred collection and mainly within the groups that experienced them. As a result, these goods have become the target of highly specialized criminal groups. Therefore, they are part of the illicit traffic of art and heritage and help to place the latter at the top of the largest traffics in volume in the world. This crime is recurrent until today and, in most cases, it does not end with the recovery of the stolen collections. It is important to mention that, for the article, news and publications in printed and electronic newspapers about thefts of sacred works are used as a research base, dealing with the disappearance and, sometimes, the recovery of these objects. In addition to the emphasis given by these sources to the disappearance of sacred art, they also address the issues involved with it such as traders, collectors and antique dealers who illegally purchase these pieces. Therefore, we intend to understand the impact of these thefts on cultural heritage. Keywords Sacred art · Cultural heritage · Minas Gerais
This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Denismara Eugênia de Oliveira Nascimento—Master’s student in History, at UFJF and Member of the research group: Heritage and International Relations CNPq - Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Christofoletti. D. E. de Oliveira Nascimento (B) UFJF, Research Group: Heritage and International Relations CNPq, São João del Rei, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_17
323
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Works of art The thief takes something wider and more comprehensive than pieces with commercial value. In fact, he is carrying the spiritual and affective values of the community. (Leonor Sá 2009 p. 22)
The statement of museologist Leonor Sá given to an interview with the Estado de Minas newspaper, on May 7, 2009, marks the concern of robberies and thefts involving humanity’s cultural goods, more specifically the sacred works. This crime highlights the lack of cultural and devotional collections of groups that experienced them. In the latter, there is an impact on the affective relationship with these objects, leading them to resent the loss of identity. Referring to the devotional images, one soon thinks of the genius of the artist Antônio Francisco Lisboa, Aleijadinho, known for producing prestigious works in the visual arts, receiving prominence in the world for his peculiarities. His works began to disappear from museums, private collections and religious temples, through robberies and thefts. Many of them have been subtracted by specialized gangs to be sold in the illicit market for incalculable values.1 That is made with the elaboration of routes to loot pieces that would have already been identified by the thieves. In view of this concern, the sale of artistic objects and the linking of rare objects that give status to their owners stand out here (Etzel 1979, p. 134). The statistics of the General Conference of the United Nations (UNESCO) indicate that the illicit illegal market for cultural goods in the world is only behind drug trafficking and arms trafficking. This type of international trafficking has grown thanks to the great financial return. Its movement generates more than 6 million dollars a year, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). With this, “it is estimated that private individuals are the target of the greatest number of thefts, followed by museums, archaeological sites and places of worship” (Chirstofoletti 2017, p. 115). The specialized gangs that carry out this type of criminal action have great historical and cultural knowledge, knowing exactly what they are stealing. According to official sources, among the most trafficked works are paintings, sculptures, statues and religious objects. These crimes are believed to be aimed at money laundering; the greed of collectors to complement their private collections, and through artnapping, a kind of theft and resale to the insurers themselves, revealing a trade between insurers and the museums that negotiate with the traffickers themselves (Christofoletti 2017, p. 115–118). In Brazil, in its last decade, there was a significant increase in crime involving works of art in the country, “exposing the risk and fragility of a great diversity of collections” (Fabrino 2012, p. 15). This illegal sale is increasingly impoverishing the country’s cultural legacy. In this perspective, it is good to highlight the devotional heritage, which sustains tradition in the lives of groups, many of which are linked to religion through the practice of faith. Therefore, according to Karnal and 1 According
to Thomáz Franchi, owner of AntiquárioCasarão in Tiradentes (MG), Aleijadinho’s pieces are worth no less than 300/400 thousand reais when they are on the market.
Plunderers of Devotional Heritage
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de Fernandes (2017, p. 15), this belief creates “sacred places, unusual objects that must be respected and practices around material objects. For the devotee of a saint, his image, the place of his birth or death, relics and devotional practices are this piece of the sacred.” With that, it is also necessary to understand that these pieces follow an identity, the result of the experience of groups that participate in this culture.
1 Sacred Works of the State of Minas Gerais In Brazil, one of the most stolen types of work is Sacra2 : religious works that are mainly in churches and chapels. As a result, mainly because of the high value attributed to these goods in the illicit market, this patrimony became the target of highly specialized gangs. Establishing “thus a mixture of pecuniary, cultural and social interests that result in the extraordinary appreciation of images and other liturgical objects, mainly silver implements, the famous and coveted Brazilian silverware.” (Etzel 1979, p. 134). Such valuation of artistic objects admits several explanations, highlighting “the intrinsic value, since they are generally made of noble and expensive materials, such as precious metals and hardwoods” (Pinheiro 2006, p. 06). The interest in the intrinsic value of works of art, however, was not new in this period. When conducting a survey of cases of theft of churches in the region of the old district of Rio das Mortes, in Minas Gerais, we realized that the practice goes back to the nineteenth century. According to the criminal process of the Historical Archives of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute—IPHAN Section São João del-Rei (MG), we can note this fact: In 1865 in Prados, in the parish of São José del Rei; in which, on the supposed night of the crime, a sacred silver piece of altar was stolen from the Mother Church. This sacred piece was stolen by Joaquim Nery Ferreira and passed on to Raimundo Januário de Almeida, who destroyed it and tried to sell the pieces in São José del Rei., stolen in the Matrix of Meadows. He was arrested by a pedestrian escort while fleeing in Arraial de Matosinhos. Defendant Joaquim Néri Ferreira’s sentence execution document is dated in October 1865 for the theft. (Processo crime, box: PC 25-07, in the Historical Archive of IPHAN-Section SJDR.)
Sacred works had no commercial value, but because they were made of expensive materials or made with silver implements and accompanied by jewelry, the thieves’ greed arose (Etzel 1979, p. 134). On the other hand, it was the privatization of objects, which generated a mixture of pecuniary, cultural and social interests that result in the valuation of these objects that started to incorporate and serve as adornment in private homes. In the specific case of Minas Gerais, cultural assets are mostly 2 The
types of cultural heritage assets to be the biggest target of robberies and thefts according to the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) are “the archaeological material, which historically, worldwide, one of the biggest targets of robberies and thefts, with a view mainly to the black market for such goods located mainly in European countries and the United States. It is also very common to steal religious artifacts (mainly imaginary, that is, sculptures, but also liturgical instruments, such as thuribles, chalices and candlesticks, etc.)” See more details on the website: www.iphan.gov.br.
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recognized for their protected cultural value. In this perspective, sacred works are part of this collection, composed of images and other material elements of devotion. Thus, diverse types of objects3 used by the communities related to them in the manifestation of their belief and religious experience. The religious images were brought to the Minas Gerais region by paulistas, who came through the bandeirantes since the beginning of their settlement, between the years 1965 and 1710. Center of wealth for almost a century, the state created conditions for a peculiar religious imagery of great beauty and originality (ETZEL, 1979, p. 95). As stated in the following passage, the favorable local conditions for “artistic production enabled this development, provided by economic wealth and stimulated by strong competition, covering both the ordering of works and their execution.” (Coelho 2005, p. 18). The organization and requests for ornamentation, construction, repair of churches and chapels, were made by the brotherhoods and confraternities of Minas Gerais. Each village that was formed was creating its own religious temple. The religious brotherhoods and fraternities, despite the tutelage of the Portuguese crown, served to organize the maintenance of cultural ties, playing a fundamental role as associative spaces. In view of the absence in Minas Gerais of both Jesuit colleges and conventual foundations of the Benedictine, Franciscan and Carmelite Orders, which emphasized the expansion of Catholicism in the coastal regions, it can be said that almost all the churches built in the region at the time colonial time has have, in its their origins, associations of brotherhoods or third orders. Even the mother churches, directly subordinate to the central ecclesiastical administration, depended on the brotherhoods of the Blessed Sacrament and the patron saint for their edification and the promotion of worship. These two main brotherhoods had their own space in the chancel, whose altarpiece was intended for the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament at the top of the throne, with the image of the patron being generally at the base, in a central position. (Oliveira 2005, p. 19 apud Coelho, 2005)
This aspect is essential to understand some practices that artists from Minas Gerais produced in their works with extraordinary originality. According to CaioBoschi’s quantitative analysis, “approximately 40% of the total number of artists and craftsmen exercised” (Boschi 1988, p. 17) the trades of “carpenters, joiners and carapinasexisting in Minas in the 18th century” (Boschi 1988, p. 17). A number of artists recognized in art history also performed in the region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Here, we mention the sculptors identified by “Olinto Rodrigues” (2005, p. 131–148 apud Coelho, 2005) in the state of Minas Gerais: Francisco Xavier de Brito (?–1751), Francisco de Faria Xavier (?–1759), José Coelho de Noronha (active between 1747 and 1765), Francisco Viera Servas (1720–1811), Padre Félix Antônio Lisboa (1755–1838), Manoel Dias (active from 1790), Vicente Fernandes Pinto (active in the early nineteenth century), O Mestre de Barão de Cocais (1770), Mestre de Sabará (active from 1780), Mestre de Piranga (second half of the eighteenth century), Valentim Correa Paes (? -1817), Antônio da Costa Santeiro (c. 1746–?), 3 It is important to note that this collection includes items and objects such as candlesticks, ambulas,
thuribles, among others, implements, vestments or vestments used by the parish priest in the exercise of his activities, sculptures of devotion, painting, furniture, structures integrated to the temple, which conform to the interior of the building, such as altarpieces, cross arch, among others.
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Mestre do Cajuru (active from c. 1770), Mestre from Smiling Angels (active from c. 1770), Mestre from São João Evangelista de Tiradentes (with construction dragged during the second half of the eighteenth century), Joaquim Francisco de Assis Pereira (1813–1893). The examples of the teachings of these artists, according to Boschi (1988, p. 16– 34), were more useful when the learning took place in familiar terms. After this foregoing, we return to the case of Aleijadinho, in which his father Manuel Francisco Lisboa was a carpenter, foreman and architect, his name is linked to the main works carried out in the first half of the eighteenth century, in Vila Rica. And to his half brother, Father Félix Antônio Lisboa, who for a part of his life was a priest and worked with a woodcarver and a saint, learning the trade with his already famous half brother (Olinto 2005, p. 139 apud Coelho, 2005). Other forms of learning also developed, with a number of slaves who learned certain trades from their masters. It is known that Aleijadinho had slaves4 in his work team for the execution of whole pieces of sculpture (Boschi 1988, p. 32). In Minas Gerais, artists did not bother to group with colleagues in the profession due to their duty of office. They conquered and enjoyed ample freedom of action, basing their work on a regime of free competition reflecting more particular aspects in their works. To this day, there is a great fascination for Minas Gerais imagery. With their exceptional quality and with no serial manufacturing characteristics (Etzel 1979, p. 97), the works now have relevant aspects, such as their relevance in plastic arts and the common good, belonging to a specific place and community (Kühl and Kühl 2016, p. 37 apud Quatremére de Quincy). In view of this, community members are deprived of the image of their patron or devout saint. Again involving theft, in which many works have not yet been found.
2 Missing Works The concern with the evasion of works of art is an opportune subject, since news about the theft of religious artistic works has been constant, even in recent years considering mainly the alarming number of goods subtracted in colonial mining towns. According to the Public Ministry of the State of Minas Gerais—MPMG, about 60% of the sacred cultural heritage of Minas Gerais is no longer in its place of origin, 30% of which are lost and 70% stolen. Considering the lack of security and the vulnerability of mining temples and museums, this heritage has become the target of highly specialized gangs. 4 “Among
the best known, there are two slaves from Aleijadinho: Agostinho, who, according to Rodrigo José Ferreira Bretas, the first biographer of Antônio Francisco Lisboa, was a woodcarver, and Mauricio, the best known, who has the same job as the first, in the words of the aforementioned biographer, “he was always sharecropper with Aleijadinho in the salaries he received for his work” having participated in the sculpture works of the Prophets of Congonhas do Campo, during which he died.” CaioBoschi, p. 33.
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According to the MPMG, the cities of Ouro Preto and Nova Era are among the cities that appear with the largest number of pieces still missing. Regarding the first, it stands out for being the first city in Brazil to become a World Heritage Site (September 5, 1980). The historic city has as its headquarters the Igreja do Pilar, built in 1710, demonstrating to be a grand temple, with remarkable characteristics of the Braga workshops and “decoration of the chancel, which integrates in works of different artists in surprising harmony” (Oliveira and Campos 2010, p. 23). Having been inaugurated in 1733, the church had pieces of the Eucharistic Triumph as part of the collection, one of the most important festivities in the country’s religious history. In 1973, this same collection suffered the theft of approximately 17 pieces, consisting of “custody and three silver goblets, gold-plated, of Portuguese origin” (Jornal Estado de Minas5 ). Until then, their whereabouts are no longer known. The city of Nova Era, located 140 km east of Belo Horizonte, has the Church of São José da Lagoa as its headquarters. Built in the colonial period around 1766, over the years, it was redecorated in Rococo style, being a work from the late eighteenth century.6 The historical and cultural importance of the monument took a significant step during 1953: it was registered by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute—IPHAN. The headquarters suffered the embezzlement of approximately 60 sacred pieces. The thefts were said to have been made around 50 years ago, causing a stir in the city’s population. Fortunately, the Estado de Minas newspaper shows in its report on November 20, 2003 the return of the image of Nossa Senhora do Rosário (of Portuguese origin from the XVIII century) with three silver crowns, that were safe, a custody and six sparklers. Pieces were rescued in August of that year by the Federal Police. Upon finding the pieces, there was a community demonstration in the city. In the face of these concerns, campaigns were created and organized to help combat this crime. One was through an incentive from the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage—IPHAN, which has manifested actions since its creation to safeguard Brazil’s cultural heritage.7 With its progressive institutional consolidation, the body with numerous initiatives carried out by the superintendence of Minas Gerais adds a series of events promoted aiming to contribute and collectively alert to the crime of cultural goods. In 2003, the exhibition “Patrimônio Busca Imagens Furtadas” was created in order to allow community participation with the body, in the process of protecting 5 Information
found on the website of Jornal Estado de Minas. Available at: https://www.em.com. br/app/noticia/gerais/2013/09/01/interna_gerais,442837/roubo-de-pecas-sacras-de-basilica-emouro-preto-complete-40-years-of-impunity.shtml. 6 Information found on the Nova Era City Hall website. Available at http://www.novaera.mg.gov. br/detalhe-da-materia/info/igreja-matriz-sao-jose-da-lagoa/26886. 7 National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service—SPHAN was the first institutionalized preservation body, created in 1937. The operation of SPHAN, concerns preservation activities, as in the selection of assets for tipping, with initiatives and projects that show the importance of carrying out actions educational activities such as protection and preservation of heritage. Its formulation took place over the years, becoming nowadays the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage—IPHAN.
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the sacred cultural heritage. The exhibition toured the mining towns of São João delRei, Tiradentes, Ouro Preto, Mariana and others, with banners of missing images and educational lectures to encourage the protection of works and alert communities about crime. After this initiative, Olinto Rodrigues dos Santos Filho, a former researcher at IPHAN-Tiradentes, received a letter together along with two sacred pieces in order to return them to their place of origin. In the anonymous letter, it says: São Paulo 12/22/2003. Dear Olinto, in 1st place I would like to congratulate you for your exhibition, and your book. Well, we visited the exhibition and identified these two saints that we had bought at a fair in São Paulo. The notoriety does not interest us, but we think that you are the best person to make these 2 pieces return to their place of origin. Obs: The pieces were exactly in this state in which they are. Again congratulations and thanks.8
When returning images from his personal collection, after identifying them as of stolen origin, the person responsible for the letter, positively expressed the action. Another measure taken by the agency was the creation of the database, an online system designed for public consultation of sought-after cultural assets. It is possible to consult goods that are being sought, those that have already been redeemed and both, facilitating the identification of works and avoiding the purchase of them on the market. In addition to the database, IPHAN receives the collaboration of the Federal Police—PF, the International Criminal Police Organization—INTERPOL and the Federal Revenue Service—RF. Controlling the antiques trade is another concern. For this reason, on December 13, 2007, the National Register of Art and Antiques Dealers—CNART, became a national registry: “Via the web, which aims to make available in one place the register of merchants and auction agents who negotiate antiquity objects, works of art of any nature, manuscripts and old or rare books”(IPHAN).9 Before the period covered, trade was illegal, as explained by promoter Marcos Paulo de Souza Miranda.10 From now on, traders and auction agents have the obligation to register11 and periodically send to IPHAN the list of goods traded to avoid the practice of money laundering and the loss of works acquired illegally (Law nº 9.613/1998 and IPHAN Ordinance No. 396/2016). In addition to these actions, seniority dealers must: 8 Personal
archive of Olinto Rodrigues dos Santos Filho.
9 Information found on the IPHAN website, available at: http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pagina/detalhes/
615/. 10 Information found in the article “Estado em Alerta” of the Estado de Minas newspaper of January 20, 2008, p. 5. 11 “All traders and auction agents who negotiate antique objects, works of art of any nature, manuscripts and old or rare books must register with CNART; whether natural or legal persons, who trade directly or indirectly, including through receipt or assignment on consignment, import or export, possession in deposit, intermediation of purchase or sale, electronic commerce, auction, fairs or informal markets, permanently or eventual, principally or accessory, cumulatively or not, observing the provisions contained in Law No. 9,613/1998. In addition to the registration, those dealers or auctioneers who negotiate the objects listed in Art. 3 of Normative Instruction No. 01/2007 must also register the objects, observing the provisions contained in Decree-Law No. 25/1937.” See more information about CNART at: www.iphan.gov.br.
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Adopt internal procedures and controls to prevent money laundering; Maintain in your establishment a register of customers that carry out operations with a value greater than or equal to ten thousand reais; Keep in your establishment a record of operations with a value greater than or equal to ten thousand reais; Communicate to the Financial Activities Control Board/COAF any operation or set of operations from the same client that involves payment or receipt in a kind of a value greater than or equal to ten thousand reais; Communicate to COAF any operation or set of operations that is considered suspicious of money laundering; If there has been no operation that can be reported to COAF, annually report to IPHAN the non-occurrence of suspicious operations; Auction agent: previously presenting to IPHAN the list of antiques and works of art for sale at auction to be held. This process carried out by CNART helps in the recognition of pieces “of historical and artistic value that are marketed in the country, which helps to identify those that can be recognized as national historical and artistic heritage (DecreeLaw No. 25/1937 and Normative Instruction nº 01/2007)” (IPHAN).12 Another used instrument that offers preservation initiatives is the inventory, which consists of: identification of characteristics, particularities, history and cultural relevance, aiming at the protection of material cultural assets, public or private, adopting, for their execution, objective and well-founded technical criteria of a historical, artistic, architectural, sociological, landscape and anthropological nature, among others (de Campos 2013, p. 121 apud ALMG13 2012).
The inventory, according to Marcos Paulo de Sousa Miranda, is not only used today in Brazil. Attempts to safeguard cultural assets in the country were already present in actions and preliminary projects prior to the creation of SPHAN, such as: In the first quarter of the 18th century, Friar Agostinho de Santa Maria surveyed and described the images of the Virgin Mary and the temples found in the Archbishopric of Bahia and in those of Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do norte, Maranhão, Pará, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, with the work published in volumes 9 and 10 of the work called “Mariano Shrine and stories of the miraculous images of Nossa Senhora”, which was published in Lisbon in 1722. Still in the colonial period, Francisco Mesquita, registrar of Fazenda Real, prepared the inventory of existing buildings in Recife and Mauritius, after the expulsion of the Dutch, listing 290 properties and describing their construction techniques. (Rodrigues and de Souza Miranda 2012, p. 326)
Research for the purpose of inventories continues to be carried out and generating important work helping to protect cultural heritage. We have as an example, the inventory made by IPHAN, in which it made a survey of objects of Brazilian religious art. It started in 1986 in Minas Gerais and has been extended to some states in the 12 Information found on the IPHAN website, available at: http://portal.iphan.gov.br/pagina/detalhes/
1020. 13 Legislative Assembly of Minas Gerais.
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country. Already completed in the state of Minas Gerais, the documentation produced made according to Regina Weinberg (2005, p.10 apud Coelho, 2005): “it is possible to recover stolen parts, an advance for the safeguarding of the collections.” In this scope of action in the defense of the Brazilian cultural heritage, the Public Ministry, through the Prosecutors of Justice, also play an important role in protecting protection: “being able to adopt preventive or repressive measures, judicially or extrajudicially, in order to enforce the current legislation, which protects the integrity of cultural assets at administrative, civil and criminal levels” (Miranda 2012, p. 02). In order to fulfill this important mission, in 2008: The State Prosecutor’s Office for the Defense of Cultural and Tourist Heritage of Minas Gerais, in conjunction with the IT sector of the Attorney General’s Office, developed and launched the “System for the Registration of Sought Sacred Parts,” (…) a bank of data on missing mining sacred pieces, allowing quick consultation of all information regarding the goods (characteristics, dimensions, origin, level of protection) and thefts (date, number of the Police Inquiry). It is an unprecedented intelligence tool in the country that has been helping both the work of the Prosecutors and the police and administrative bodies to protect cultural heritage. (Miranda, p. 9)
A task force was also carried out jointly with MPMG, through two operations called “Operation Pau Oco I and II”—the name referring to the old baroque wooden images, cast, for the clandestine transport of gold. This incentive seeks to contribute to the rescue of the sacred cultural heritage. Held in conjunction with the Operational Support Center to Combat Offenses Against the Economic and Tax Order, in several antique dealers in Minas Gerais. Tax irregularities and non-compliance with the rules on trade in cultural goods were found by several traders, and civil and criminal judicial measures were adopted. To have an idea of the dimension of this type of activity, one of the inspected companies was assessed R $7,000,000.00 (seven million reais), due to the finding of tax irregularities. As for the “Pau Oco II” operation, planning began on June 20, 2008, when a mini-course on crimes against cultural heritage was held at the headquarters of the Attorney General’s Office, with the participation of IEPHA, IPHAN, CECOR-EBA-UFMG, Museum Superintendence and Support Center for Organized Crime Fighting Offices. Then, public servants were trained to photograph and film cultural goods and to use software to identify missing religious pieces. On July 30, the operation was launched in five cities (Belo Horizonte, São João Del Rei, Ouro Preto, Tiradentes and Contagem), with eight establishments being inspected. In each of the several teams that worked in the operation, a server was in possession of a notebook with the program installed, and it could be verified, in real time, if there were any sacred pieces launched in the register of missing and wanted goods in the inspected establishments. The operation, carried out with the support of the State Finance Department, obtained excellent results: tax documents seized with evidence of tributary irregularities and 38 sacred pieces of doubtful origin seized. (Miranda, p. 9)
The experience of these initiatives was successful, allowing to highlight the relevance of these bodies for the recognition and implementation of the various legal instruments for the protection of cultural heritage. It is important to consider that, in case of any type of information or anonymous complaint about the whereabouts of any missing sacred religious piece, it is essential to contact the Public Ministry through the e-mail [email protected] or by telephone 127. Reach out to IPHAN by phone (21) 22621971, fax (21) 25240482, by e-mail [email protected], or at
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Fig. 1 Poster of missing sacred mining works (Made available by MPMG)
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the online bank itself. Or, with the State Institute of Historical and Artistic Patrimony of Minas Gerais IEPHA/MG through the website www.iepha.mg.gov.br (Fig. 1).
3 Specialized Gang The attacks on the artistic and devotional historical heritage, through the theft of cultural goods in religious buildings, are not the fruits of today. In this perspective, there are recurring news and publications in printed and electronic newspapers about thefts of sacred works, dealing with the disappearance, and, sometimes, the recovery of these objects. In the reports of the Estado de Minas newspaper, an increase in attacks against property was identified in recent years, addressing subjects involved, such as traders, specialized gangs, collectors and antiquarians who illegally acquired these pieces. The repercussions of this crime in the press bring important contributions to the understanding of robberies and thefts (Fabrino 2012, p. 35). It is believed that these crimes have the desire of collectors to want to ornament their homes with the works and end up acquiring them illegally on the black market, without an invoice; and also through the action of money laundering. It is necessary to analyze the report of the Estado de Minas newspaper of August 20, 2003, in which it reveals the scheme of a specialized gang through the arrest of M.M,14 appointed as head of a specialized gang. In testimony to the Federal Police, M.Mclarifies: “The scheme for theft of sacred objects always began with orders from collectors”. The identified gang acted not only in Brazil but also in countries in Europe and Latin America. According to IPHAN, in the 1990s alone, the disappearance reached 300 pieces and only 15 of them were recovered. In 1994, more than 100 pieces from the eighteenth century were carved out of wood and gold. In that same decade, the thieves’ interest was to pass through colonial mining towns, with a target, the works found in the Baroque churches, built in the eighteenth century. Much of the sacred mining cultural heritage was destined for the state of São Paulo, followed by countries in Europe, such as Spain and Portugal (Jornal Estado de Minas 2003, p. 26). According to the investigations, the gang was well structured, made up of five people accused of theft, the member who headed the group, four receivers, one restorer and three people linked to antique dealers. The stolen pieces are distributed to antique dealers, whose owners act as receivers. In the closed commercial circle of sacred objects, collectors are notified of the arrival of new pieces. ‘After being taken to private collections, the location of the work becomes practically impossible’, explains the delegate. The delegate says that some pieces arrive in Europe taken by foreign tourists, who are presented to antique dealers by Brazilian collectors. Portugal (Jornal Estado de Minas 2003, p. 26)
Due to the fact that some members of the group were not free due to habeas corpus, they did not interrupt the criminal attacks, which occurred again in 2001. According to delegate Moura Gomes (Jornal Estado de Minas, 2003, p. 26) “the group has 14 Acronym
(name and surname) of the head of the specialized gang.
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been acting for at least ten years and, after the last arrest, he it stopped the criminal attacks until 2001, when he it resumed his its actions.” After this analysis, the Public Ministry, “with the help of other bodies (Federal, Civil Police, IEPHA, IPHAN, etc.) (…), managed to get all members of the gang to be prosecuted and convicted, and in relation to two elements, the conviction has already become final” (Miranda, p. 08). The crimes perpetrated by this gang showed the embezzlement in the sacred Brazilian cultural collection and especially for the groups that experienced them. The meaning of these works goes beyond their materiality, it generates the understanding of these groups, mainly through the construction of their identity memory. Memory, as stated by Pollack “is like the feeling of identity in this inherited continuity, it is an important point in the dispute for family or group values, a focal point in people’s lives” (Pollak 1992, p. 202). It can be seen there, that culture provides the identification of the singularities of a given society, at any time. Thus, with the last arrest of the group, the actions decreased and the action in the rescue of these assets has been making an important contribution to society, preserving its history and culture, as it is understood that the current identity of its people comes from them.
4 Final Considerations With the present work, it was possible to realize that the disappearance of sacred mining works is among the largest organized crimes in the country. The growing interest in question is to try to expose the concern, as well as the search for the recovery of these assets that most of them are no longer in their place of origin, which generates incalculable losses for cultural heritage. Among the many ways pointed out for the protection of these assets, we sought to show the participation of many segments of society focused on asset protection, which has resulted in the creation of essential tools for the inspection of illicit trade and for the effective control of the circulation of goods., art objects and antiques. The awareness and measures taken to safeguard these assets in Brazil, was the result of “officialism imposed by Decree-Law No. 25/1937, when expressly declaring that cultural heritage can be recognized by law, administrative act or judicial decision.” (Rodrigues and de Souza Miranda 2012, p. 177), which is leading to a satisfactory result in relation to the number of protected and recovered assets over the years. However, there are still issues to be improved, as these crimes still happen frequently. Losing more and more of their devotional strength, sacred works “went from objects of devotion to the category of artistic and decorative pieces of increasing value in esteem and money” (Etzel 1979, p. 13). For this reason, it was essential to portray the market “for cultural goods and works of art, as it is currently a gateway to several other very important themes for safeguarding cultural identity” (Christofoletti 2017, p. 123). For, the loss of these goods can be seen mainly as aggression to the devotion and the feeling of a community, traditionally linked to their manifestations of faith. The representativeness of these objects plays a concrete role in the experience
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of social groups regarding the very materiality of these symbolic objects. It is in view of this materiality, that the believer concentrates, prays, cries, asks for protection, cures, sympathies and experiences miracles (Karnal and de Fernandes 2017, p. 15). Currently, dialogues such as those transcribed in the title of this text have shown how the loss of these works influences the identity of the community. It is necessary to understand how the return of the works follows a consolidated practice, the result of the experience of groups that participate in this culture. The way in which these sacred works are appropriated to the group that experiences them can be analyzed in the act of returning works to their place of origin. In this sense, we return to the significant example of the return of stolen works that occurred in the city of Nova Era in Minas Gerais, portrayed in the Estado de Minas newspaper of November 20, 2003, in which it describes the return of sacred works and the feeling of joy to the go back to their place of origin. In it, faithful ones and the community celebrate the return of some sacred pieces. The newspaper exposed the return of the image of Nossa Senhora do Rosário (of Portuguese origin from the eighteenth century), three silver crowns that were safe, a custody and six sparklers.15 Upon finding the pieces, there was a community demonstration in the city, as reported in the following fragment: Joy and a lot of rhythm to greet the return of the image of Nossa Senhora do Rosário (of Portuguese origin, from the 18th century) and 11 other pieces stolen in April from the Mother Church of São José and recovered in August by the Federal Police. Yesterday afternoon, the residents of Nova Era (18 thousand inhabitants), 140 km east of Belo Horizonte, had a simple party from in the entrance of the city, at the BR-262/381 interchange, to the historic center (…) When someone shouted that the cart arrived at the headquarters, no one else could stand still. And the contagious rhythm of the congadeiros, dressed in white and colored ribbons, filled the churchyard and the interior of the church with harmony.16
The meaning of all this joy goes beyond its concreteness, it generates the understanding of these groups (Meneses, 2017), mainly through the construction of their identity memory. Memory, as stated by Pollack “is like the feeling of identity in this inherited continuity, it is an important point in the dispute for family or group values, a focal point in people’s lives.” (Pollak 1992, p. 202) Maria Efigênia Dias Domingues, 64 years old tells us: “Nossa Senhora do Rosário is on the altar dedicated to black saints. It is very important for the congado, who here in Nova Era, dates from the seventeen and seventeenth century. Our brotherhood is old and has tradition in the region.” Thus, because they have common constituent elements in their lives, they must feel like they belong to the same target group, the same memory. (Pollak 1992, p. 202) When the motorcade arrives at the headquarters, the contagious rhythm of the congadeiros filled the churchyard and the interior of the church with harmony, and the speech of José Martins da Silva, 82 years old, is exalted: “Thank God, the saint is 15 More
information on the Nova Era City Hall website. Available at http://www.novaera.mg.gov. br/detalhe-da-materia/info/igreja-matriz-sao-jose-da-lagoa/26886. Accessed in June 2017. 16 More information in the newspaper: WERNECK, Gustavo. Senhora do Rosário returnsto Matriz. Jornal Estado de Minas. Belo Horizonte, p. 21, 20 nov. 2003.
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back in our city”. It is in this construction and continuity of the groups’ identity that the memories are being reworked. The groups that live together the most are able to structure their memory. In this way, people create devotional practices making their identification or recognition possible. At this moment, identity is “an extremely important factor in the feeling of continuity and coherence of a person or a group in its reconstruction of itself”17 (Pollak 1992, p. 204). The disappearance of these pieces of the church shows how much this crime harms the construction and maintenance of the identity of these communities. The return of trafficked goods and works of art is more than a historical repair, as advocated by Christofoletti (2017, p. 128), it is the maintenance of tradition in the life of groups, being very linked to religion, and therefore, guiding life community. The return of these works promotes can represent the consolidation of the experience of groups that participate in this culture.
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From Works Aimed at Favoring Tourism to Attacks Against Cultural Heritage: A Story About Corruption and Modernity in the Cusco Case Kathia Espinoza Maurtua
Abstract The aim of the current article is to identify some of the issues underneath the cultural heritage depredation observed in Cusco, such as the corruption in official institutions responsible for protecting cultural heritage and the ideology of modernity in Latin American spaces, based on the analysis of two recent cases. Both issues are complementary in discourses in favor of works aimed at enabling tourist growth, which were consolidated as local and national economic development strategies in compliance with the Western modernity discourse. Since the founding of new states in America, the pursuit of the Western modernity paradigm, which was later articulated through concepts of progress and development, led these spaces to passively assimilate ideas that were implemented to the detriment of local populations and of their cultural productions. These ideas privileged the cultural heritage of European origin and subjected these populations to the predatory scheme of global tourism. They were implemented in the contemporary cultural heritage field by means of international meetings sponsored by international organizations since the second half of the twentieth century. A broader perspective about cultural heritage, always based on the Eurocentric approach, was gradually formed in meetings where local residents were introduced as significant elements to the production and preservation of such heritage. However, such an introduction was based on a vertical education scheme, according to which, residents could be educated for this purpose. Nevertheless, based on the herein analyzed cases, local residents’ participation is not passive because they organize themselves to contradict the official discourse threatening the cultural heritage they are identified with. They not only expose the consequences of losing their cultural heritage but also highlight the corruption observed in institutions This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Kathia Espinoza Maurtua—Ph.D. student in History at Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF); Master’s Degree in History. Member of the Cnpq Research Group ‘Heritage and International Relations’ at UFJF. Member of the Cultural Heritage Laboratory (LAPA—Laboratório de Patrimônios Culturais) at UFJF. K. E. Maurtua (B) Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_18
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responsible for protecting it; such corruption worsens the crisis currently affecting the cultural heritage in Cusco City. The first case analyzed in the current study refers to the construction of Sheraton Hotel on Saphy Street, in the historic district of Cusco City, which lacks national and international regulations focused on its preservation. Likewise, the second analyzed case refers to the construction of Chinchero Airport, which has been depredating the Sacred Valley and threatening to place Cusco City in Unesco’s list of endangered cultural heritage. The actions taken by official bodies, which have put the cultural heritage at risk, and the response of social groups that have organized themselves in its defense at national and local levels were herein analyzed. These aspects had been previously addressed in my master’s thesis (2020), but I herein return to them given their relevance for the analysis of cities classified as World Heritage by UNESCO. Keywords Cusco · Cultural heritage · Institutional corruption · Ideology of modernity The national configuration, resulting from colonialism and modernity, exposed the cultural heritage to an intense period of predation, material and immaterial, in which the marginalization of indigenous populations was institutionalized as part of the discourse of the elites responsible for administering the national heritage. The management system they built for this purpose was constantly aligned to the Western model, in a clear ideological subordination, although occasionally in the face of the loss of cultural heritage resulting from this perspective, some of its representatives, as well as other social groups, perceived and denounced their unviability. On this occasion, we will focus on the case of the Cusco to expose the gears, and the results of this complex system, which is explained from the European presence in the region. In the fifteenth century, European technological advances “allowed the discovery of the New World (1492), the emergence of the modern state (absolutist monarchy), the globalization of the economy and the conquest of the world by the West” (Burga 2005, p. 32, translation is ours). To exercise their dominance, the colonialist states began two processes: the first is composed of the activities related to the extraction of resources to move them to Europe; while, the second refers to the beginning of an acculturation process on oppressed societies. Milton Santos endorses these claims through the recognition of three historical models of territorial organization in Latin America, dedicated to satisfying the interests of colonialist states; which had continuity during the Republican1 period. For its part, the process of acculturation was based on the demeration of American cultural expressions from their comparison with the Western cultural model. However, the indigenous populations managed to resist this process of acculturation in such a way that they were not: “neither completely aculturate, nor dissolved in new syncretic cultures, but responded from metonera very diverse to Spanish colonial domination” (Burga 2005, p. 206, translation is ours). Santos Herceg says the ideas of Juan Gines de Sepúlveda demonstrate this “foundational disrespect” against Native American civilizations. 1 For
more information see: “Ensaios sobre a Urbanização Latino-americana”.
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The latter [JuanGines de Sepúlveda] is for Latin America the author of what could be called the “foundational” disrespect, alluding to the reasons behind the right of spaniards to conquer in the New World. The jurist’s fundamental argument will be the “indesmentible” fact that the inhabitants of this New World were barbarians. This being “barbarians” implies his “ineptitude of understanding” and his “inhumane customs” (1996:82–83). These “little men”—as he calls them – on the one hand, they lack culture, science, writing, history, have no written laws, which demonstrates their lack of rationality (1996: 105–113) and, on the other hand, they are anthropophagous, they make human sacrifices, they have ungodly cults to idols, which proves that their customs are inhuman (1996:133). From there the war of conquest would be rationally justified. (Santos 2010, p. 140, translation is ours).
With the same arguments, in part of the Republican period, they were removed from national political projects, for being, according to them, carriers of the backward race caused by their degenerate races. Thus, Bruce (2007), considering Dalal, notes that when the notion of race for humans became scientifically unsustainable, culture was used and when, in turn, this notion proved ineffective, the one of ethnicity arose; the terms change, but the process of division and exclusion of the identified as another, is the same. Indeed, the movements caused by the independence processes did not affect the racist social structure formed during this period. Because the educated elite emulated and spread colonialist ideas that marginalized the bulk of the indigenous populations, from the former colonies. So, backed by the discourse of modernity and progress, because, “Progress is set in motion and expanded, as practice and theory, from the West to the wholeworld” (Burga 2005, p. 42, translation is ours), and the process of acculturation did not end with the beginning of the Republican period, as the idea of Western superiority remained in the American imaginary because European countries transformed into unquestionable models of “progress” and spaces dominated in eternal followers of their ideas. This fact, in our view, is a decisive element in understanding the why and how of the predation of Peruvian cultural heritage. Next, we will conduct a brief review on the administration and exploitation of the cultural heritage of civilizations originating in Peru, colonial and republican period, focusing on the specific case of archaeological sites. To then land this discussion on one of the events markings on the history of Cuzqueña, as it was: the arrival of the Yale University Commission, in the early twentieth century.
1 Approach to the History of the Management of Archaeological Heritage in Peru: The “Discovery” of Machu Picchu to the West Duringurante the colonial period, the huacas2 (wacas or guacas) were exploited according to: “the concept owned by the deposits, treasures and huacas established by the Spanish Crown in order to perceive the fifth real that was the tribute totally linked to mining activity” (Arista 2012, p. 14, translation is ours). Subsequently, 2 Also
known as burials or treasures, they are religious worship spaces of native civilizations.
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in 1574, the Ordinances of Toledo came into force, establishing: “the conditions to which those who seek or discover treasures in enterramientos, graves, guacas cúes or temples of Indians” (idem) should submit. The search for the treasure of the “ancients” was, in this way, organized in “companies huaqueras” that distributed the profit of their commercialization, as is recorded in the Books of Accounts of the sixteenth to the nineteenth century guarded by the General Archive of Peru.3 With the beginning of the republican period (1821), the urgency of building a national identity promotes the creation of the first legislation in favor of the protection of the national historical and archaeological heritage through Supreme Decree No. 89 of April 2 of 1822, with which, the extraction of archaeological remains of the huacas is prohibited, without the permission of the government, and it is established that the monuments of antiquity are the property of the State (Arista 2012, translation is ours). In addition, the National Museum was founded for the shelter and exhibition of Peruvian cultural heritage. By then the huacas had been almost three centuries of exploitation; however, 10 years after their promulgation the applications for the excavation of huacas were identical to those recorded during the colonial period.4 Later legislations terminated Decree No. 89, as Emilio Gutiérrez de Quintanilla, former director of the National Museum, explains, who, in 1921, published the memorial: “Esfuerzos i Resistencias 1912–1921”, where he highlighted the difficulties that he faced during his tenure as director of the museum, one of these being the absence of adequate legislation for the protection of cultural heritage. Gutierrez had as models the laws of France, Mexico, Belgium, etc., and it specifically mentions the law of 1887, and the regulations, of 1889, of France, for the conservation and protection of historical and artistic monuments; as well as its Commission on Historic Monuments (1889). In addition, it refers to Austrian, Mexican (1897) legislation and considers relevant, the recommendations of the Fourth International Conference of Buenos Aires of the International American Scientific Congress (1910). In the latter, a nuclear issue was addressed to understand the problem of archaeological sites in the region “permits to exploit and excavate”. In light of these examples, Gutierrez criticizes Peruvian laws enacted in 1840, 1893 and 1911. Such laws [of protection of cultural heritage] do not exist in Peru. The only one that exists in this regard is the one dictated by the Huancayo Congress on November 28, 1839, and promulgated on January 9, 1840 by President D. Agustín Gamarra and his minister D. Manuel 3 Among dozens of applications for registration of these huaqueras companies are: the case recorded
in 1596 of the residents of Lima, Bartolomé Montenegro Ginobes and Juan Rodrigues, free brunette; allowing us to observe the level of organization and the participation of individuals belonging to various social groups in these companies, when those mentioned give, as a donation, to the priest Miguel Angel Carlos, a quarter of the profits from the excavation of a "burial" (huaca) located on Cerro San Cristóbal. In addition, another way to confirm the participation of persons belonging to various social levels is through alterations in records; where new members are seeded. Thus, in the case of the company of Montenegro, the documents specify that Juan Rodrigues granted a power to Pedro Gómez, a tailor resident of Puerto del Callao, to represent him in the Huaquera company that settled with Bartolome of Montenegro. (AGN, N1, leg 17, p. 257, f. 07, 1599). 4 As an example we have the case of José Martel and Juana Ponce, who requested permission from the Prefecture of Lima to excavate in the city of Lima and outside its walls; especially in Rufas Street (AGN, leg 40, p.6, f. 1832).
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Ferreiros. This law authorizes all Peruvians to freely and without paying the rights demanded by the old laws, discover hidden treasures exploiting the huacas. In front of this, the supreme decrees of April 27, 1893, and August 19, 1911, not only lack binding force, but produce outside of administrative orbit, and against the tutelary principles of law. The judiciary does not admit them as norms, and, consequently, it decides in favor of private law any conflict in which the State exercises its authority with the mere historical criterion of the conservation and protection of pre-Hispanic monuments that, to this day, and by rare exception among educated nations, is contrary to legal law. (Gutierrez, p. 30, 1921, translation is ours).
As an intellectual of his time Gutierrez saw in the legal framework of “cult” nations the way to contain the predation of the Peruvian archaeological heritage. However, for the academic, existing but deficient legislations must have been sufficient to prevent the “export” of the 74 boxes containing the archaeological remains of the Inca culture, collected, by the members of the Yale Commission, on the site that would become the most well-known sane archaeological site nationally and globally: the Inca city of Machu Picchu. In the Inca period (1200–1532), Cusco was the capital of the empire, while, its urban division was characterized by presenting three areas: the noble center, residence of the nobility area and the expansion zone (Salcedo 2007). In the center of the city of Cusco was the Coricancha, called by the Spaniards as Temple of the Sun, was the place destined for the most important religious rites. Another important ceremonial place was the central square of Cusco, there were also numerous temples, palaces, royal warehouses and other buildings for the state administration (Bauer 2008). “Public buildings were made of finely carved stone, with such delicacy that the joints matched from stone to stone and no mortar was necessary” (Lumbreras 1986, p. 114, translation is ours). The expansion of the Inca domain begins with the defeat of the Chanka, a civilization that a century later would become the main ally of the Spaniards. “By 1400 A.D., the Incas had unified the region under their rule and the city of Cusco had emerged as the capital […] in the span of three generations, the Inca empire grew to control a vast area of South America” (Bauer 2008, p. 16, translation is ours). “The Inca empire was the largest state ever developed in the Americas. The last of a series of complex Andean societies […] comprised a territory that stretched from present-day Colombia to Chile” (Bauer 2008, p. 13, translation is ours). At the time, the Spaniards arrived, the Incas ruled a population of approximately 8 million people from their political center in the Cusco Valley (Bauer 2008). Consequently, the success of the rapid Spanish invasion was mainly due to “the alliances celebrated between various ethnic groups of the Andes with the Castilian invaders, in whom they saw their liberators” (Espinoza [s. n.] 1977, translation is ours). The triumph of the Spanish and their allies caused that the indigenous cultural expressions (architecture, art, etc.) were systematically destroyed and, through a process of acculturation, the native population was finally subdued. In 1847, William Prescott’s work renewed interest in the Incas around the world, attracting the interest of Germans, French, English, Italians, etc. among these are: Alexander Von Humboldt, Léonce Angrad, Johann Jakob Von Tschudi, Clements
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Markham, Charles Wiener and Antonio Raimondi (Bauer 2008, p. 26). Thus, Americans and Europeans came to Cusco to study Inca culture. From this framework of interest in Inca history, the most famous expedition in the history of Cusco was led by Yale University professor Hiram Bingham in 1911. In total, the Americans made three expeditions (1911–1916). As a result, Bingham declared himself the discoverer of Machu Picchu and made to know to the Western world the existence of the Inca city. However, the subtraction of 43,332 Incas archaeological pieces during expeditions and the Peruvian state’s multiple attempts to recover them highlights the continuity of the colonialist looting scheme in the history of the Yale Commission by Cusco. At the time, Gutierrez strongly rejected the actions of Americans like the state by granting him missing permits to the laws in force. During the government of Mr. Billinghurst, Mr. Hiram Bingham, Commissioner of Yale University, and of the Geographical Society of the United States of America, obtained the supreme decree of October 31, 1912, in which he made exceptional concessions. in the name of the « international label » that appear motivated there precisely because Mr. Bingham HAD NOT SUBJECTED until then “to what art. 5 and 6 of the supreme decree of April 27, 1893”. The first exception consisted of violating the decree of December 23, 1911; the second, in contravention of art. 4 of August 19, 1911; the third, to consent to the export of all pieces, single or duplicate, although the Government reserves the right to demand the return “of the unique objects and that of the duplicates that are removed or have been removed”. (Gutierrez, p. 30, 1921, translation is ours).
The local authorities of Cusco, known academics and the population themselves, also, showed their rejection of the practices of the members of the Yale Commission, as evidenced in the 1916 telegram addressed to the Minister of Instruction in Lima. Minister of instruction.—Lima—Diario “Sol” several individuals denounce serious facts practiced scientific commission at Yale University, chaired by Dr. Bingham. He is accused of practicing excavations in the Ollantaitambo area, exporting numerous archaeological objects, Cuzco, just alarmed. Violation of laws demands immediate official action to prevent further work. Before proceeding insistently elections requesting that it would bring complications, we do present management, waiting for effective energetic measures if necessary, withdrawal of the Yale commission. “Arguedas, mayor; Valcarcel, President of the University Association, Vega Enrique, President of the National Center for Art, History. (AGN, Telegram, 1916). (AGN, Telegram, 1916, translation is ours).
Today, Machu Picchu is the most visited archaeological site in the region and, therefore, the flagship of tourism in Peru. The story of his find, according to a group of academics and politicians, is comparable to the script of an Indiana Jones film, in which the ignorant local inhabitants accompany the foreign company in their treasure hunt; which starts from a small track that coupled with foreign ingenuity ends up in the treasure location. Then the members of the adventure return to their countries to receive recognition of their “discovery/knowledge” of ancient civilizations. A speech in which locals disappear, to give way to “Indiana Jones”. Because, during the republican period, the subalternization of indigenous social groups, after the displacement of Spain, remained under the rule of France, England and the USA, successively. It is now known that Machu Picchu is in a district that bears the same name, above the Sacred Valley, in the province of Urubamba, 80 km from the historic center in
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the department of Cusco. The Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu mountains are contoured by the Vilcanota River and the Inca archaeological site is located between the peaks of both mountains. It belongs to the intangible area called the Historical Sanctuary of Machu Picchu that protects the biosphere and the archaeological site, in a space of more than 30 ha. In addition, Machu Picchu’s location appears on republican maps and colonial documents. […] the enlightened traveller Charles Wiener (1851–1913) tried to reach Machu Picchu. On his map of the “Vallée de Santa-Ana”, this traveler located the Place names Matchopicchu and Huaynapicchu with astonishing approach. Daniel Buck, for his part, repaired an even more […] These are the Place-names Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu that appear in the “Map of the valleys of Paucartambo, Lares, Ocobamba and the Vilcanota ravine”, erected in 1874 by Herman Gohring. The toponymy Picho or Piccho appears in some 16th-century documents discovered in recent times. However, it is not known whether these place names refer to the ruins or simply geographical points. (Kauffmann 2014, p. 325, translation is ours)
With regard to its construction, there is an inaccuracy in the dates, for Kauffmann this occurred during the time of the Incas Pachacútec and Tupac Yupanqui during the last third of the sixteenth century (2014, p. 327), while studies of national Geographic point to the middle of the fifteenth century. The whole is divided into two large areas, agricultural and urban; the latter is subdivided into Sacred Space and Residential Space (Kauffmann 2014), and, con relation to its purpose, it has been attributed uses, which more seem more like a projection of the European world, rather than an attempt to think of its real usefulness in the Andean world. In this sense, we refer to the idea of palace (European style), when, in this archaeological complex, have been found spaces where wild species of potatoes and other roots were adapted; in addition, houses that could have been used by the people. In this sense, it could be considered a citadel, in strictly Andean terms.
2 On Tourism in Cusco and the Inclusion in the List of World Heritage Sites of Its Historic Center and the Citadel of Machu Picchu In 1983, the historic center of Cusco and Machu Picchu were declared a World Heritage Site. The latter was recognized as a unique work of Inca ingenuity, also considering Hispanic heritage. However, we must draw attention to Unesco’s discourse that romanticizes the destruction of much of the Inca material cultural heritage, turning Spanish predation into a conservation will, as expressed to follow in the synthesis that describes the city in the list of WORLD Heritage sites of UNESCO: Located in the heart of the Andes, this city became under the rule of The Inca Pachacutec a complex urban center with distinct religious and administrative functions. Its surrounding area was divided into areas clearly delimited for agricultural, artisanal and manufacturing production. By owning the city in the 16th century, the Spanish conquistadors preserved
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their structure, but built churches and palaces on the ruins of the temples and monuments of the Inca city (UNESCO, 2020, online resource, translation is ours)
This Eurocentric narrative is because the United Nations and its specialized agencies were created in response to the devastation caused during World War I and World War II, seeking solutions that would solve cross-cutting problems for the nations concerned. In this period: “Parts of Rome, Berlin, Budapest … were destroyed by war” (Diegoli 2017, p. 446, translation is ours). This space of international debate was constituted as a source of rules on various aspects of life in society, including in the field of cultural heritage. Unfortunately, the resolute documents of these meetings were passively assimilated by American societies, ignoring their belated participation in such meetings. Thus, the American states, anecdotally, aligned the same as European urgencies over cultural heritage and the mechanisms for their preservation, when American reality and needs were far removed from the Western scene. Thus, guardianship was restored, which was in fact a new form of domination of the most influential European countries over American states; setting up uninterrupted colonialism, either by violence (during the so-called colonial period), or by guardianship (through international agencies). In this sense, the cultural heritage of the new paradigm, proposed by international organizations, demanded the resignification of these spaces to enter this new mercantilist logic. What resulted from a list of spaces that deserved distinction would lead to the accelerated commercialization of cultural goods (Choay 2015). Consequently, American spaces face not only the risks of the commercialization of their heritage, within the framework of a globalized culture, but also face the contradictions inherent in the spaces declared as World Heritage sites of Unesco, because of the problems generated by having to fit in and survive in a theoretical and social construction that discredits them. Choay confirms these ideas when she acknowledges that, while the commercialization of heritage is equally negative for both tourists and world heritage sites, the level of threat in these spaces is not always the same. There is a vulnerability inherent to the heritage of the peoples of South America (2015). It is considered that UNESCO’s distinction brings with it the possibility of monetize of cities and influences the behavior of local authorities, to the point that the very existence of the spaces becomes dependent on their inclusion in the world heritage list. A clear example of the above is the statements of Carlos Guarnizo Castro, former president of the disappeared Development Corporation of Cusco (CODE-Cusco), on the verge of obtaining the title, stated that: However, Cusco goes through the danger of collapsing if the watersheds (Sapi and Tulumayo rivers) that passes under the city burst, because the technical maintenance has not continued even at the time of the Incanate. He said that to cover the costs of this aspect, UNESCO would be expected to declare Cusco as a Cultural Heritage of the World, which would allow to receive funds from that body for the maintenance of the city in general (El Comercio, 1982, s.n, translation is ours)
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Also, in cities declared world heritage, municipal and state administrations often promote projects to promote tourism; without qualms about local interests. Because of which the authorities abandon their responsibility to the villagers and become servants of the tourism industry, which makes these spaces increasingly difficult to inhabit. As the figures show: “According to the master plan of the Historic Center of Cusco, in 1981 about 27 thousand people lived in the area, in 2003, 13 thousand. Currently it is estimated that they are 10 thousand inhabitants” (Diario Correo 2011, online resource, translation is ours) Note that we are not against tourist activity but in favor of the recognition of the inhabitants as the main beneficiaries of local and national projects. For its part, Meneses endorses our idea by raising a nuclear question that reveals this prevailing need. How can something that is good for “humanity” not be good for those who, as inhabitants, would have the ideal conditions to fully enjoy it (that is, contiguity, the possibility of reiteration, continuity, integration of multiform appropriations) and of personal and community rootedness in the other outlines of current life)? Therefore, it would be advisable, without establishing monopolies, barriers or scales, to always initiate any intervention project from the base, focusing on the inhabitants’ concerns, as they should be the priority users of the “good thing” (MENESES, p. 40, 2006, translation is ours).
On tourist activity in the region we can mention that, in the last 5 years, the arrival of international tourists to Peru has grown by 39.7%; while Cusco ranks as the second most visited department in Peru (Promperu 2018, online resource), reaching the approximately 3 million and a half visitors per year. This has repeatedly put the city’s cultural heritage at risk. The predation perpetrated by tourists in small groups commonly refers to pints on Inca and Hispanic architecture and behaviors that disturb public order. Meanwhile, modifications of existing buildings and the creation of new constructions for transport and stay of tourists represent an even greater risk. To land these placements in specific cases, we will analyze two controversial projects that aim to meet and promote the tourist demand of the city of Cusco and the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu. The construction of the Sheraton Hotel on Shapy Street in the heart of the historic center of the City of Cusco and Chinchero Airport.
3 Two Works to Promote Tourism that Threatens the Cultural Heritage of Cusco Chinchero Airport is being built in the village that bears the same name, is the obligatory step to reach Machu Picchu, and is located in the Sacred Valley (30 km from the city of Cusco); aims to facilitate tourist access to the Inca citadel. Indeed, this work, which to date has been executed, threatens to disfigure the landscape of the valley and foster disorganized urban growth in an area that presents vestiges of the Inca past, which for a large group of technicians and academics would mean the extinction of Chinchero. Among which is Dr. Alberto Matorell Carreño, former president of ICOMOS-Peru, whom we had the opportunity to interview. His impressions
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delve into a situation, in particular, already in Chinchero: the disorganized occupation for trade. This limited view of heritage as a commodity, Matorell tells us, has been supported by renowned academics who seem to have subjected their wills to economic or political interests. […] as in Aguas Calientes, in Chinchero informality is gaining ground in the search for a place to do business. Condemning him, in this way, to his disappearance; this is a process of de-escalation […] from the idea that heritage only serves if it attracts tourists. A position that has done so much damage to the history of Peru. Unfortunately, big names of archaeology and so on have become part of this system and today they are silent or approve of such serious issues as the Chinchero Airport (verbal information, translation is ours)5
For her part, the historian Natalia Majluf through a website that allows the signing of petitions, circulated a letter addressed to the President of Peru Martin Vizcarra to reconsider the project. The signatures of comuneros in the Chincheros area, academics, artists, etc. amounted to 150 thousand; while the Decision of the Peruvian President remains unchanged, and, unfortunately, the project continues its construction. Both the Chinchero Plateau and the surrounding valleys are populated with platforms and canals and are crossed by ritual lines designed by the Incas—unsurpassed geometras—that divided and organized communities throughout Cusco. In the Inca conception of the world, these lines starting from Coricancha, the famous Temple of the Sun, sacralize all the space they reach and Chinchero is a nerve point of that system. The Incas and their ancestors perfected Andean crops there; in this area they were domesticated to the best camelids and weaved the most valuable garments. If this project is carried out, irreparable damage will be done when this place is destroyed. (MAJLUF, 2019, online resource, translation is ours)
In addition, project detractors resort to technical reasons (soil type, water supply in the city of Cusco, etc.) to stop this announced catastrophe. In December 2019, the controversy grew because the Peruvian government did not respond to the request for Unesco’s heritage impact study, the response period of which had already expired a few months ago. For this reason, possibly the city of Cusco, in a very short time, will become part of the list of world heritage in danger. In Photography 1, we can observe the advances to 10% of the land removal work, started in 2019, for the construction of Chinchero Airport. The image demonstrates the irreparable damage this project has already caused to the Sacred Valley, in this first phase which, we say, has only advanced 10% of what is planned. In an excerpt from the letter sent by Unesco to the Peruvian state, it urges the government of Vizcarra to fulfill its obligation to protect the cultural heritage inscribed on the world heritage listis; which “despite not being located precisely in Chinchero”, are closely related to three sites registered in the Cusco region: the City of Cusco, the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu and part of the inca road “Qhapaq Nan, Andean Road System”. For his part, the President of Peru Martin Vizcarra, affirmed or: “We will generate profits for this region and Peru, but also for the area of 5 Interview
conducted by the author with Dr. Alberto Matorell, former president of ICOMOS-Peru, which took place on January 10, 2020 (m4A file, 1:42 min).
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Photograph 1 Land removal (at 10%) of the Chinchero Project. Source Ministry of Transport and Communications of Peru
direct influence, specifically of the chinchero district” (BBC NEWS WORLD 2019, online resource, translation is ours). So with this project, it is expected that in 2023, the current number of tourists will double, which would reach 6 million visitors per year. While in the same historic center of Cusco, less than two blocks from the main square of Cusco, we find a structure that destroyed not only the landscape of the cultural good; but, in addition, during its construction it finished with three Inca walls, Inca lithic elements, canals and cobblestones of the colonial era. The structure to which we refer belongs to the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel, which was built in the property No. 604 and No. 704 of Calle Saphy and the house No. 5 of Bosco Street. All of these were part of the nation’s cultural heritage and the world heritage site. It is also located in front of one of the headquarters of the Deconcentrated Directorate of Culture of Cusco. This structure, still unfinished, of seven floors and two basements, was in charge of the real estate company R & G S.A. with authorization from the Municipality of Cusco and the Cultural Directorate. In an area where the construction of basements is not allowed and only two levels are allowed according to the Master Plan of the Historic Center of Cusco, in force since 2004. The officials involved are being investigated to determine responsibilities. In 2010, R&G S.A acquired the property located on Saphy Street and obtained the permits to build in the same year. At the beginning of 2012, the company dismantled the pre-Hispanic wall No. 1 “even though the implementation of the Archaeological Monitoring Plan, indispensable to do these works, was only authorized in 2014” (Salcedo 2019a, b, online resource). Subsequently, the wall was reared on cement blocks without complying with the required methodology, then:
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In May of that year, they disarmed Wall No. 2, which had a foundation of the Inca era. In the monitoring works, they found a pre-Hispanic wall that is more than 500 years old, but, according to Culture, compliance with a conservation plan was not established. And two months later, in July of that year, they dismantled the Wall No. 3. Neither was a conservation plan implemented nor was the wall recorded in the inventory. (Salcedo 2019a, b, online resource, translation is ours).
On which it should be noted that the Deconcentrated Division of Cusco Culture had full knowledge of these activities. In 2013, the demolition of the house of Saphy Street began; then, in 2014, 3 days after finishing his management, former mayor of Cusco Luis Florez García extended for 3 years the construction license of R & G S.A. In 2015, the press announced the construction of a four-star hotel of the US chain Four Points by Sheraton in agreement with real estate company R&G S.A, which would be opened in the first half of 2016. In 2015, the members of the Commission of Jurists Against Corruption and Social Defense of Cusco put the population on alert about this construction that violated the restrictions of the Cusco Master Plan and the obligations to be national and international heritage; which, despite all this, had official authorizations. In December 2016, the work was paralyzed by the Provincial Municipality of Cusco and in parallel, the Directorate of Culture initiated two administrative procedures sanctioning the company for attacking cultural heritage. In June 2017, the Directorate of Culture sanctioned R&G S.A for demolishing, according to this entity, willful and illegally the two-story adobe house of Saphy Street to build instead a three-story concrete building. However, in 2012, the Provincial Municipality of Cusco had authorized demolition even though the authorization of the Ministry of Culture was not available, a mandatory requirement under the General Law of the Cultural Heritage of the Nation (No. 28296). The culture directorate states that the disassembly authorization granted by the municipality is illegal. While R&G S.A claims that it requested the disassembly order because the case was imminent danger from presenting internal and external fissures. Based on resolutions 905—concerning demolition—and 998—for conducting archaeological excavations without authorization—the Directorate of Culture checks and sanctions the act with a fine of more than 4 and a half million soles, stating that pre-Hispanic and colonial remains had suffered “irreversible” damage. However, the legal process was pending for the demolition of the house. In September 2018, the Provincial Corporate Prosecutor’s Office Specialized in Corruption Crimes of Officials denounced 26 officials and ex-officials of the Deconcentrated Directorate of Culture of Cusco, as well as other citizens, for supporting the construction of the Sheraton hotel. “The prosecutor in charge of the case, Gloria Soto, attributes to those investigated crimes of illegal extraction of cultural property, omission of public officials’ duties, destruction, alteration of property and ideological falsehood” (LA REPUBLIC 2019, online resource). Following an appeal by R&G S.A in January 2019, Culture Minister Rogers Valencia Espinoza signed the resolutions annulling sanctions 905 and 998, leaving the fine exceeding 4 million for the damage caused to the Spanish estate; and, the reason was that the sanction was imposed when the administrative sanctioning process had expired.
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In addition, on 11 March, 12 officials accused of favoring the company R&G S.A were disqualified for the public service; however, a representative of the Commission of Jurists of Cusco affirmed that 7 of them were still exercising public functions; showing the vulnerability of Peruvian laws. In March 2019, the journalistic medium “Lima la Gris” made public an email planning the expiration of the sanctioning processes of the Sheraton case. The communication was intended for lawyer Rubén Carrión and was sent by Ricardo Ruiz Caro, advisor to the director of the Deconcentrate Division of Culture of Cusco, Luis Nieto Degregori and had the title “Directorial Resolution of Expiration”. The communication of the email reveals that Ricardo Ruiz Caro despite being criminally denounced by the case of the hotel on Saphy Street, as an advisor to the Ministry of Culture, personally planned the expiration of the sanctioning processes, that is, he was a judge and part of a case where he is involved together with other officials of the DDC of Cusco (Cavello 2019a, b, online resource, translation is ours)
The advisor Ricardo Ruiz Caro, according to the same medium, is investigated in three tax folders for crimes against cultural heritage (Cavello 2019a, b, online resource, translation is ours). In September 2019, the action for protection was granted by the Commission of Jurists Against Corruption and Social Defense, which requested to demolish the total structure of the Sheraton hotel. According to statements of the Indian Committee for the Defense of Cusco “The judgment of the Civil Room of Cusco marks an important historical precedent in defending the right of the indigenous population to the preservation of its culture, and hits the existing corruption networks in the Ministry of Culture” (Salcedo 2019a, b, online resource, translation is ours). On January 13, 2020, even within the stipulated deadlines, the Deconcentrated Directorate of Culture of Cusco delivered to the Fifth Civil Court of the Superior Court of Justice of Cusco the technical report regarding the intervention of the hotel. To date, the hotel has not yet been demolished, and, the current Director of Culture of Cusco stated for the newspaper Correo, that the DDC: “reiterates that the cultural heritage of Cusco is fully respected and that the actions that put or have jeopardized the monumental character of the city of Cusco will be sanctioned rigorously and without contemplation, with strict adherence to the law and justice” (DAILY MAIL, 20202, online resource, translation is ours). Photography 2 shows the current status of the Sheraton hotel. This building has been transformed into a new monument, forcing the concept, to recall corruption in Peru and state predation, which sponsors, strategies that attack indigenous culture. The construction of Chincheros Airport and the Four Points by Sheraton hotel show that, despite the existence of international laws, plans and obligations in favor of heritage, the interests of the tourism industry and the idea of development, in terms of currencies (commented by Matorell), are above their compliance. Two confluent analyses emerge from this reality. The first has as a nuclear element the corrupt practices in the Ministry of Culture, its departmental headquarters; as well as the technical and theoretical trials of specialists who have sold their analyses, but what should we understand for corruption? According to Quiroz, corruption is:
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Photograph 2 Current image of the Hotel Saphy. Source El Comercio 2019
[…] the misuse of political-bureaucratic power by staff cliques, colluded with petty private interests, in order to obtain economic or political advantages contrary to the goals of social development through embezzlement or diversion of public resources, and distortion of policies and institutions (Quiroz 2013, p. 38, translation is ours)
This line of analysis is predominantly the case of the Sheraton hotel. For its part, the second aspect concerns the use of the ideology of Western modernity of progress and economic development to justify actions that undermine cultural heritage and its heirs; that is, the collectives that make it part of its identity construction. With this, we do not deny the existence of suspicious situations of corruption in the construction of the airport; but, due to the fact that it is a large public work and which has also been requested by the local authorities (since the 1980s) has become a symbol of modernization and progress. Thus, both explanatory aspects are found to help us in the complex problem concerning the cultural heritage of Cusco. Both by corruption and by modernity, the cultural heritage in the city Cusco is treated as a currency generator by the state agencies, responsible for its protection, and by all those who support predation actions against it. This retrograde vision is comparable to the wills expressed at the Quito meeting, which was organized by the OAS, half a century ago, at which it was recommended that heritage be included as part of the development plans and, consequently, is preserved mainly for its potential to generate income through tourism. In 1967, at the meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), which occurred in Ecuador, the Quito Standards were developed; bringing heritage discussion to the American territory from the perspective of economic and social development. In this, it is considered that monuments and archaeological, historical and artistic attractions are potential tools for the progress of the region. Through a plan to revalue the cultural heritage and thus face the economic crisis of the bloc in this period. “Consequently, measures leading to their preservation and proper use are no longer
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only related to development plans, but form or should be part of them” (OAS 1967). They also discussed the problem of the exploitation of cultural heritage—which will be explained below—they said that: it is essential to extend due protection to other movable property and valuable objects of cultural heritage in order to prevent further deterioration and subtraction with impunity and to ensure that they contribute to the achievement of the objectives pursued through their proper display in accordance with modern museum technique. (OAS, 1967, online resource, translation is ours).
And, with regard to the “phenomenon of acculturation” of the colonial period, for this organism, it became an element that printed a genuinely American singularity, about: “imported styles”, hiding, under the discourses of progress, the prevailing need to review the social results of the colonial period. While his vision of the inhabitants is: […] (i) unable to appreciate what is best for the community from the distant point of observation of the public good, the inhabitants of a population infected with the “fever of progress” cannot measure the consequences of their acts of urban vandalism that they perform cheerfully with the indifference or complicity of the local authorities (OAS, 1967, online resource, translation is ours)
At this specific point, we see a clear opposition: on the one hand, modern ways of living are against cultural heritage and, on the other hand, a solution is proposed from the passive assimilation of the same discourse. However, it is recognized that as a result of the abandonment of the State, in some communities, civic groups have emerged in defense of heritage, which indicated that they were achieving excellent results, and that, if appropriate, they should be considered in the plans, with special attention in small communities. In addition, the OAS document suggests that revaluation projects should consider the “sociological acquis of national folklore”. Unfortunately, what emerges as a result of the previous placements is that the scenario in which Peruvian national heritage (material and intangible) is embedded is una auspicious, because the institutional structure and relational structure, in terms of John Scott, converge in the maintenance of colonial practices that, adapted to capitalism, continue to attack the existence of heritage. The institutional structure, then, comprises the groups of normative expectations that make up the skeletal organization of a social system. Institutions are supported through a network of intertwined beliefs and rules of action that are maintained in individual minds as scattered knowledge and reproduced or transformed through communication (Scott 2011, p. 159, translation is ours)
However, civil society responds to this structure through the formation of groups in defense of identity and cultural heritage as a fundamental right of the human being. As opposed to the passive vision of the inhabitants who are represented at international meetings. In this sense, the case of the Sheraton hotel allows us to observe the participation of various groups, including some developed within institutions; among which we can mention: Ciudadanos de a pie, American Institute of Art, Forum Cusco, QHESWA SIMI HAMUT’ANA KURAQ UNTUR QOSQO; The Departmental Federation of Workers of Cusco (FDTC); and the Commission of Jurists
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Against Corruption and Social Defense. The latter is responsible for denouncing the illegal construction and officials involved and for introducing the amparo action for the demolition of the Sheraton hotel which was approved in 2019. Over the course of approximately 6 years, these groups organized demonstrations, discussion tables and demanded responses to R&G S.A. For example, in 2016, they organized a demonstration that gathered approximately 8,000 people “through the streets of the Imperial City at the “Sheraton” march does not go!” (LA REPÚBLICA 2016, online resource, translation is ours). In 2019, they met at the front of the Superior Court of Justice and shouted: “Cusco is wonderful and not merchandise! Cusco defends Cusco is not sold! Cusco I love you for that I defend you!” (LA REPUBLIC 2019, online resource, translation is ours). They also raised their voice of protest in the University Paraninfo of Cusco’s Plaza Mayor, and, on one of the posters, wrote: “Cusco demands Demolition Civil Death to Corrupts”. Thus, the uncritical assimilation of the ideas produced in the patrimonial debates in the west, in which Peru only had participation from 1964. They reveal that the exogenous problem of globalization that leads to the commodification of cultural goods is not the only arm of colonialism and modernity that reaches American spaces. For, colonialism and modernity also approach with faces of the solution to maintain, on a more subtle level, the image of the European civilizing who directs the fates of the Americans and tells them what to do. It cannot be the generator of the problem, the creator of the solution; this nullifies American creativity that should be the mechanism for solving the region’s problems.
4 Final Considerations The Latin American States, in this case, Peru, from its foundation to the present day have passively assimilated foreign discourses, as a result of this, action indigenous cultures and their cultural expressions have been systematically subalternized. It is in this way that the Eurocentric stance of the dominant heritage discourse, of the official bodies, has been contributing to the maintenance of this unfavorable condition for these populations. Because of this, the theoretical and practical changes that expanded the concept and uses of cultural heritage placed their cultural productions at particular risk. This explains, in part, that the cultural heritage in Peru is first and foremost a tourist product, as evidenced by the devastating consequences of the construction of Chinchero Airport and the Sheraton Hotel, which violate national and international commitments for the preservation of the local cultural heritage and jeopardize the traditions, culture and identities of the Cusqueños. Therefore, we decided to dedicate much of the text to explain the context in which the construction of the Shapy Street hotel took place and to indicate to those responsible for these actions. To show, on the one hand, how some of the officials of the body responsible for ensuring The Peruvian cultural heritage acted in part, in violation of their duties, to benefit their building; and, on the other hand, expose the
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organized response of the Population in defense of their heritage, which revealed the questionable behavior of the officials who favored the construction company R & G S.A. For its part, the case of Chinchero Airport represents a higher level threat, as it is a larger public work that would not only end the landscape of the Sacred Valley and the traces of the Inca culture in the region (placing the declared area by Unesco in the list of endangered heritage) but, in addition, would end the traditional ways of living in the town (and with them, their customs, memories and identities) because there is no plan that contemplates their preservation. Even, at this time, a disorganized growth of the populated area has already begun, with the objective of creating space to satisfy the future demands of tourism. We conclude that these predatory actions are justified in the discourse of “modernization” for economic development that does not influence the improvement of the quality of life of the local inhabitants but quite the opposite, and they are articulated by the corruption of state institutions that should ensure and do not protect cultural heritage, coupled with that of academics (specialists) who support the interests of the tourism industry. That is why we can say that the ultra-passed debate of the Quito Conference (1967) in which the integration of tourism into the development plans of the American States was established has not been overcome. This time-held behavior has limited the importance of cultural heritage to a source of foreign exchange and has sponsored the predation of heritage and cultural landscape in the Cusco region. This fact reveals the urgency of creating solutions for the preservation of: memories, local identities and material and intangible heritage; where locals are the main beneficiaries. They have also demonstrated, as in the case of the Sheraton hotel, possessing a genuine interest and effectiveness in dealing with the predation of cultural heritage. Thus, evidencing the ineffectiveness of the vertical education model of official bodies in which it is intended to “educate” the population about the importance of their own culture, which is compromised when acts of corruption within their institutions compromise the stipulated. Therefore, the inhabitants should be regarded as important sources of knowledge and experience in this task as well as main beneficiaries of any action on their cultural heritage. In this way, it would be confronted not only with the predation of heritage but also with the centuries-old subalternization of these populations.
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Cavello E (2019a) Correo revela la planificación de “caducidad” de los procesos sancionadores del hotel Sheraton de la calle Saphy. Lima Gris. [n.l.], 15 March 2019. Disponible en. http://www.limagris.com/correo-revela-la-planificacion-de-caducidad-de-los-pro cesos-sancionadores-del-hotel-sheraton-de-la-calle-saphy/. Accessed 14 Dec 2019 Cavello E (2019b) Ricardo Caro, asesor del Ministerio de Cultura, tiene tres denuncias penales. LIMA LA GRIS. Disponible en. http://www.limagris.com/ricardo-ruiz-caro-asesor-del-minist erio-de-cultura-tiene-tres-denuncias-penales/. Accessed 07 Dec 2019 Chinchero, el polémico aeropuerto que Perú va a construir cerca de Machu Picchu (2019) BBC NEWS MUNDO. [n.l.], 15 May 2019. Disponible en. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-ame rica-latina-48279144. Accessed 07 July 2019 Choay F (2015) As questões do patrimônio: antologia para um combate, 2 edn. Ediciones, Lisboa, p 70 Cultura entregó informe para la demolición del hotel Sheraton en Cusco (2020) DIARIO CORREO. [n.l], 13 ene. 2019. Disponible en. https://diariocorreo.pe/edicion/cusco/cultura-entrego-informepara-la-demolicion-del-hotel-sheraton-en-cusco-929758/?ref=dcr. Acceso 30 ene. 2019 Cultura y municipio de Cusco piden demolición de hotel Sheraton (2019) LA REPÚBLICA, [n. l.], 29 ago. 2019. Disponible en. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/2019/08/29/cultura-y-municipiode-cusco-piden-demolicion-de-hotel-sheraton/. Accessed 07 Sept 2019 Cusco sale a las calles exigiendo la demolición del hotel Sheraton (2016) LA REPÚBLICA, [n. l.], 20 September 2016. Disponible en. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/804685-cusco-sale-las-cal les-exigiendo-la-demolicion-del-hotel-sheraton/. Acceso 03 ene. 2019 Cusco (2019) Con plantón exige la demolición del Sheraton por dañar muros incas. LA REPÚBLICA, [n. l.], 28 ago. 2019. Disponible en. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/2019/08/ 28/cusco-con-planton-exigen-la-demolicion-del-sheraton-por-danar-muros-incas/. Accessed 07 Sept 2019 Diegoli L (2017) Valoração da memória social: conceitos e reconhecimentos para a salvaguarda de bens culturais. In: Christofoletti R (Org.) Bens culturais e relações internacionais o patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Editora Universitária Leopoldianum, Santos Espinoza W (1977) La destrucción del imperio de los incas. 2da edición. [n. l]: Subdirección de Publicaciones y Material Educativo del INIDE Fiscalía formaliza denuncia a 26 personas que habrían avalado daño a patrimonio en Cusco (2019) LA REPÚBLICA. [n.l.], 06 September 2019. Disponible en. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/131 3198-fiscalia-formaliza-denuncia-26-personas-habrian-avalado-dano-patrimonio/. Accessed 07 Sept 2019 Gutierrez E (1921) Esfuerzos i Resistencias 1912–1921. Lima: Taller Tipográfico de Museo, por Ramón Barrenechea ICOMOS (1967) Normas de Quito: Informe Final de la Reunión sobre Conservación y Utilización de Monumentos y Lugares de Interés Histórico y Artístico. Quito Kauffmann F (2014) Machu Picchu Portento de la arquitectura inca. LEX FACULTAD DE DERECHO Y CIENCIA POLÍTICA, LEX N° 13 - AÑO XII - 2014 – I, pp 321–332 Lumbreras L (1986) Una nueva visión del antiguo Perú. Munilibros, Lima Martel J (1832) Archivo General de la Nación. Superior Gobierno Contencioso, leg 40, p. 6 Maurtua K (1980–2016) La identidad como un nuevo pilar en la construcción de las ciudades inteligentes: el caso de Cusco y Ouro Preto. Dissertação (Mestrado em História) - Programa de Pós-graduação em História, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora. Juiz de Fora, p. 192. 2020 PERFIL del turista extranjero (2018) PROMPERU. [n.l]. Disponible en. https://www.turismoin.pe. Accessed 01 Nov 2019 Población originaria en Cusco estaría desapareciendo (2011) DIARIO CORREO. Disponible en. https://diariocorreo.pe/peru/poblacion-originaria-en-cusco-estaria-desapareciendo-509629/. Accessed 13 Oct 2011 Quiroz WA (2013) Historia de la corrupción en el Perú. IEP, Lima Rodrígues J (1599) Archivo General de la Nación, N1, leg 17, p. 257, f. 07
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Modernity, Huacas and Heritage Depredation on the Peruvian Coast. The Specific Case of Chan Chan, World Heritage (1986–2020) Jeremy Gibran Dioses Campaña
Abstract This paper aims to analyse the influence of European modernity on the actions of civil society and the Peruvian state at all levels of the social structure. And, more specifically, European modernity as a key element for understanding the social dynamics that affected the preservation of the huacas, spaces considered sacred by the members of the original civilizations. Thus, this general framework operates as a scenario where all the attacks suffered by the Chan Chan archaeological complex during the period from 1986 to 2020 are inserted. The choice of this temporality is related to the need to understand how the destructive behaviour of civil society and the inaction of the Peruvian State were not modified by the recognition of the Chan Chan citadel as a world heritage site by UNESCO; neither were they modified by the notices of revocation of the title. This leads us to an even more complex scenario, where the reluctance of civil society and the Peruvian State to modify their practices is essentially due to an identity factor built on European modernity; expressed, in part, through the archetype of the Creole - a white colonised subject -, which fluctuates between pride in their cultural heritage and the destruction of the same, an ambiguity that makes it a complex phenomenon, which we will try to elucidate in this paper. Keywords European modernity · Creole · Huacas · World heritage
This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Jeremy Gibran Dioses Campaña—Master from the Federal University Juiz de Fora and member of the Group–Heritage and International Relation CNPq/LAPA-UFJF. PhD student in History at UFJF. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Marcos Olender. J. G. D. Campaña (B) Federal University Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_19
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1 The Influence of European Modernity in Peru Our starting point will be to understand European modernity as a discourse that is vulnerable to the cultural expressions inherited by American civilizations, involving, among other things, its expansion and commercialization worldwide. Likewise, we understand that modernity is a concept valid only for European reality and, in consequence, incompatible with American reality. So, over the colonial and republican period, the Huacas de la costa and, in this case, Chan Chan suffered actions at the expense of its preservation, in favor of the modernity sought through illustration and, later, in pro of the progress directed toward the “modernization” of Peru during the long republican period. Showing that these ideas will not only cause the frustration of never having been able to reach impure indicators by European imperialist centers, a bell that, in an autochthonous cultural matter, has destroyed large volumes of cultural productions belonging to the localized civilizations in these spaces. There is no record. The actions describe are expressions of colonialism that were maintained through the adaptations carried out by the American elite and maintained as social praxis by different groups, including those who were subalternized in their daily life lives over the Republican period. […] Praxis is where the operation and action is dialectical syntheses of what is happening in a society and what people are doing. It represents the confluence of the structures in operation and the agents in action, a combined product of the momentum of the operation (at the level of totalities) and the course of the actions undertaken by the members of the society (at the level of individualities). (Sztompka 1995, p. 369).
Thus, the praxis of the Hispanic-American elites continued the modern colonialist ideas, acting in the structure with the objective of maintaining elements of the colonial period, in the new stage of the nineteenth century, from where the republics were built. In this sense, Jhon Scott (2000) analyzes the social structure and defines it as the result of the confluence between the institutional structure and the relational structure. So, Scott mentions that Parsons, around the twentieth century, started a systematic study on the institutional structure through which he determined that the idea of expectation is present in each social meeting and functions as a norm that allows to regulate the behavior of individuals, as well as, the rules create a framework that allows individuals to act by adding to these limits? However, the norms and Parsons always respect the concept of compensation as a second mechanism that reinforces the first. The institutional structure, then, comprises the groups of normative expectations that form the skeletal organization of a social system. Institutions are supported by a network of interwoven greens and rules of action that are maintained in individual minds as dispersed knowledge and are transformed through communication (Scott 2011, p. 159).
For whatever reason, all that concerns European modernity is legitimated, among them the abuse and the outrages against subalternized groups. So, the transgression, from this ideology, fluctuates between positive and negative (as we will see more). Thus, the institutional structure and the relational structure converge on platforms by
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means of which this Euro-centric thought is reproduced, from where social structures not only erode these structures but also reproduce, as convenient for them. In order to understand this universe of colonialist ideas present among social agents, we will use the “concept of subject that is understood as an active principle that has qualities and has the possibilities of acting in the social structure” (Gremias and Courtés 1982, p. 395). For this, white colonizing subject has been kept as a reproducer of this colonialist ideology expressed through political projects, literature, press, state bodies, among others, and, as we mentioned, these ideas filtered out to subalternized groups. In this sense, initially, we should explore the construction of the concept of modernity to, later, understand how it works and what is the position is within this discourse of Europeans and Americans. As such, the European colonization of the sixteenth century in the only place of colonialism, inserted in modernity this geographic space called by the Europeans as America. They managed to adapt the stories belonging to this continent, understood by them as the European periphery, which would be for American social groups and the center of their reality; complementing the military conquest with the American imaginary. This antagonism between the European and the American peripheries was replicated in everyday practices, generating a dynamic in constant conflict. According to Jacques Le Goff: “More precisely, the conceptual game hidden by the old modern opposition has become, when in the Renaissance,” old “to designate the old man, a senior that humanists consider a model to imitate” (2016, p. 165, authors’ translation). It is clear that, in Le Goff’s thinking, modernity and old age maintain a dialectical relationship. For the modern could not exist without the old. In this sense, we believe that, with the European invasion in America, the antagonism suggested by Le Goff was adapted to this new reality, and was once used as something natural to all civilizations present in America in a dialectical relationship with it. Modern considered inherent to Europeans. In response to the conquering violence, the social agency carried out by the indigenous and mestizos people, even closer to the original cultures during the sixteenth century, which in the eighteenth century, eroded the modern structure through military rebellions, religious expressions, using its writing, etc. So, to understand social agency and structure, we will rely on the theoretical proposal of Margareth Archer (2009) called Analytical Dualism, through which she intends to analyze the agency and the structure separately, but recognizing and maintaining the relationship and influences each other. In this sense, between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the work of the indigenous chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala and the production of the mixed chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega constituted some of the most relevant rebel expressions in the context of writing.1 This shows that the agents erosioned and eroded the structure and are interacting with them through their institutions, social norms, compliance, etc. 1 Both authors are explored in greater measure in our investigative work: The writing, the European
illustration and the myth of Buen Salvaje. The case of La Sociedad de Amantes del País, Lima (1791–1795) (Master’s Research). UFJF, Juiz de Fora, 2020.
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[…] We can see that the strategies and mechanisms used by social agents to influence the social structure may differ due to the multiple variants and context. In the case of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, he, who comes from the Inca nobility, used other discursive tools, such as: the redirection of the arguments of salvation for the other ethnic groups; the use of language through which he testifies to the veracity of other chroniclers (concept taken from Herodotus); it coincides with Guaman Poma, subtly testing the conduct of Europeans; etc. In fact, I aim at a more discreet and less reactionary critic than Guaman Poma. The reserves that are currently being destroyed in the nuclear areas of western thinking. It dismantled fundamental elements, such as: temporary lectures; the quests related to government malnutrition, which mainly included the abuse of subalternized settlements; and the inquiries directed at the political administration, demanding indigenous autonomy; etc. Leaving without effect the myth of salvation attributed to them in the Europeans and trying to recover, to restructure and test the mythical occidental thought, its autonomy and its culture (Dioses 2020, p. 135).
In this sense, we must understand this conflicting relationship as fluctuating and with characteristics defined by the position in the social structure, because of the condition of the social agency. This is how we can understand how, even some indigenous people, participated in excavations that clearly attacked their cultural heritage. The first observation about these attitudes on the part of these subalternized settlements derived from the addition of these social groups to European modernity; because they are discredited and without many options, they must act according to this totalitarian idea. The second observation on the subject is linked to the need to withdraw some benefit to solve essential problems such as food, clothing, etc. Some members of the school of the Annales, understand that the geographical and economic constitutes the social base, being cultural, in function of an analogy with a house, the top level of this construction. In fact, there are several cases of expeditions recorded in the documentary history of the Real Audiencia de Causas Civiles and in the Superior Litigation of Gobierno belonging to the General Archive of the Nation of Peru (AGN). Among the highlights of the expeditions carried out by José Martel and Juana Ponce, who requested permission from the city of Lima to dig in and around this city, in order to find what is commonly called Inca treasures, stand out of the (Superior Gobierno, Step 40). In fact, there are multiple cases of expeditions registered in the documentary background of the Real Audiencia de Causas Civiles and in the Superior Gobierno Litigation belonging to the Archivo General de la Nación del Perú (AGN). (On the other hand, the sale of land containing huacas, sacred spaces of pre-Hispanic cultures, located in the Surco-Lima valley, made by Francisco Javier Valentino to Luis Cuya (N4, Stage 957). Both cases were part of more than two expeditions registered in the national archive, which constitute of daily expressions carried out by people belonging to all social groups that were depositaries of colonialist ideas and were carried out over the colonial and republican period. The documentation that the AGN del Perú maintain confirms that the binomial colonialism modernity is maintained in the different stages of Peruvian history, only modifying somasome superficial elements, but maintaining this structure. For this reason, Peru did not help the changes in the imagination, guided by the illustration in the eighteenth century “The second and most famous polemic between ancient and modern food between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th
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century. to the square of the Siglo de las Luces and ends in Romanticism” (2016, p. 170, translation nuestra). And, also, the decimononic romanticism present in the intellectuals of the nineteenth century who claimed to improve thinking to modernize the American letters and to make changes in the economy to “modernize” these spaces in progress. As well as mentioned, the construction of generalizing categories is a characteristic of modern Euro-centric thinking that tends to generate the illusion of bosses that we have to achieve to be modern, but due to the particularities of Latin America it has been impossible to adjust to these guidelines; confirming the initial text premise. For this reason, the illusion generated by the utopia of the “progress” that was desperately sought by modern American elites in the past, because the realities of the young American nationals differed from those homogenizing linearities of this Euro-centric world project. Hobsbawn is an important example that reflects this problem: […] it would have a more homogeneous characteristic, and it would rather be internationally sovereign, with sufficient extension to provide the basis for national economic development; there should be a single body of political and legal institutions of a broadly liberal and representative type (if you decide, you should count on a single constitution and be a state of law), but also at a lower level, to guarantee autonomy and local initiatives. It should be composed of “citizens”, that is to say, of the totality of individual inhabitants of their territory who enjoyed certain legal and political rights, before, before, say, associations or other types of groups and communities (1988, p 26, translation is new).
In this sense, “La independencia no deshizo la colonialidad; sencillamente transformed its contour” (Quijano and Wallerstein 1992, p. 584). As such, the American elite took care to maintain European modernity; succeeding in setting the foundations for the construction of a republican society thought the lineaments of these elites that maintained a national project exclusive to Peruvian indigenous and African groups, as they are considered distant from modernity. The Peruvian reality did not differ from other American spaces, in Argentina the ethnic extermination policy directed mainly against developed indigenous settlements, which was supported by Sarmiento’s policy. And in Chile the panorama was very similar. To decide, what happened in Peru was not exclusive; on the contrary, it was part of a continental project that attacked indigenous peoples and African Americans. Thus, within this framework, a national Creole identity was consolidated, as a result of the antagonism expressed in the initial part of the text, in which all indigenous and African people are linked to the back. But what do you mean by Creole identity? Quiroz (2013) produced an interesting work as a subject of study on corruption in Peru, from where I carried out a balance of economic losses that affected the economic and social development, since the eighteenth century until the republican period, leaving the conclusion that: The estimated annual average level of between 30 and 40% for the cost of the budget, and between 3 and 4% for the PBI in the long term (from 1820 to 2000), the cost of corruption. Peruvian economic and social development in its republican history has been structural and consistently high or very high, despite cyclical variations. Considering that in order to achieve self-growing growth, an average annual growth rate of PBI of between 5 and 8 per square meter is required, due to systematic and uncontrolled corruption, Peru has lost the
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equivalent distribution of approximately 40 at 50 per cent of its development possibilities (Quiroz 2013, p. 554).
For its part, Portocarrero (2001) was in charge of studying the concept of criollo, which, according to its statements, is semantic and ambiguous because it designates: […] The Creole is associated with joy, ingenuity and humor, resulting in many Peruvians themselves, very entable, what identifies us and what we can assume the “big mouth”. However, for these Peruvian myths, the child is also synonymous with the repudiable, the abject, that which must be rejected if a single person would be respected (Portocarrero 2001, p. 541).
I conclude that the Creole world continues to be governed by the other, white colonizing subject. And the challenge of the country is to try to decolonize thinking in a globalized world. For our part, we understand that the modern project of life has been destroying the image of valuable and ancient indigenous people and African origins, so that, once vulnerable, they are susceptible to being violated and robbed. This is how the robot becomes a positive value, which is institutionalized and filters social agents located in the less privileged positions of the social structure. As a result, we agree with both historiographical proposals, helping us to understand that this colonial structure remains and influences the social conduct of agents. Following the example of Portocarrero, we will focus on social agents because they are finally those who dynamize the modern thinking structure. For that, in the next subtitle, we will briefly explore what was the Chimú civilization, producer of the urban center of Chan Chan, and how modernity has motivated a series of run-overs on its own from the very beginning.
2 Chan Chan and the Creole Identity Avatars The Chimú civilization was one of the most important social, political and economic organizations that emerged in the north of the current Peruvian territory. They developed approximately between 850 d. C. and 1470 d. C., and its decay was caused, in part, by the Inca invasion during the period named by John Rowe as Late Horizon, after 20 years of Cuzqueño military siege. The first occupations of Chan Chán at the end of the Middle Horizon (A.D. 850) reflected a new political change in the Moche valley, from where the course once again holds primacy. This urban center, located on the north bank of the mouth of the river, rises with the time of the time in the capital of a vast empire, the Chimú, which in its peak moments controls the 1,300 coastal kilometers between Tumbes, to the north, and the Valle del Chillón, al sur (García 1998, pp. 28, 29).
In function of what García mentions, we can understand that the construction of this urban center responds to an important level of complexity achieved by this civilization. But, because of the Incan invasion and, later, the Spanish invasion suffered a series of damages. In the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the Bishop of Trujillo Jaime Baltazar Martínez de Compañón paid a visit to the entire Bishop
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of Trujillo, through the current record of his monumental structures in this urban center; as well as archaeological pieces, resulting from the plunder carried out by him and the people who were part of his Bishopric Visit. Due to all these invasions suffered by the archaeological complex, it is difficult to know with certainty its original extension; but according to Mego (2015) the extension of the archaeological complex of Chan Chan in the colonial period, as well as an extension of 21 square kilometers. For itshis part, Gutiérrez (1990) mentioned that in 1967, the State, for the first time, registered as intangible zone the complex of Chan Chan with an extension of 14,145715 square kilometers. By the calculations mentioned, it is assumed that a little more than 6 square kilometers has been lost; but, only approximate data because the original dimension of this complex are not known. With the emergence of the republican period and the ideas of modernizing Peru, the continuation of harmful actions to the preservation of indigenous cultural collections is very hard. In this case, the Chimú society, Politics and Peruvian society revolved around agro exportation, maintaining an economy that was sustained by the structure of colonial domination, from where the indigenous people—exploited through the myth system during the colonial period—in changing their social position remaining silent through the yanaconaje. So, the panorama was adverse for indigenous people and their cultural collections. For not only did it stay in the submission, a bell that, for the territorial advance of the farms producers of rice and sugar cane, mainly, but it was also demolishing the “huacas de las quuales” that there are no record (Figs. 1 and 2). By the extent of the Chimú civilization, we can perceive that it coincides with the territories that would be testimonies of an agricultural development, as we mentioned, sustained during the nineteenth century at the expense of the constructions that caused this civilization and others that also developed in these spaces., such as: Lambayeque, Moche, Chancay, etc. “[…] The sugar cane is a hot-climate plant […] the geographic distribution of this plant in Peru has been successful due to the time and demand of the markets: from 1680 to 1720 it was preferably cultivated in the Lambayeque and La Libertad valleys (3); from 1720 to 1800 in the surrounding towns to Lima”(Burga and Flores 1987, p. 46). In fact, Alberto Flores Galindo and Manuel Burga (1987) research consisted of an important work oriented to the study of the national oligarchy that has been going through the period of its heyday through the crisis, which has been marked by the assumption of Augusto Bernardino Leguía of the presidency of Peru in 1908, and preceded by a series of protests led by Trujillan traders and hacker workers owing to the actions of the government in favor of concessions to the large company. Situation that we will not find out because it is not the focus of our investigation. For we are more interested in the height of this oligarchy because it is the period where the attacks on cultural heritage onof the coast were maximized. “The vigorous development of the sugar cane in the period from 1895 to 1930, obeys a combination of a series of factors that we will analyze to show the particularities and the forms that acquire the development of the sugar cane” (Burga and Flores 1987, p. 46).
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Fig. 1 Extension of the Chan Chan Urban Center. Source Eduardo García (1998)
For both authors, the second half of the nineteenth century will be the context in which the greens produced by the guano trade—seabirds used as fertilizer— contributed to the modernization of the blue hackers, the generation of an internal god by the workers to promote more development of these farms, and, therefore, the importation of labor from China, under certain conditions. As mentioned above, in the first decade of the twentieth century, the blue oligarchy of the coast suffered a first coup as a social and political group. But it only with the agrarian reform carried out by the military government of Velazco Alvarado, which emerged in 1968, structurally attacked this social group with political representation. However, the agrarian reform carried out by his government, regardless of success or failure, was what I read about the real power of these farms through whatever colonial practices that remained.
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Fig. 2 Chimú expansion. Source Eduardo García (1998)
Likewise, we can see through the action carried out by the coastal oligarchy, that the Creole identity was one of the expressions of European modernity. Throughout it, some elements of the colonial inheritance have been maintained which, even without the loss of political and economic power of this oligarchy, have remained as a constituent element of the idiosyncrasy of Peruvian societies, which does not summarize everything that exists in Peruvian societies, but it has had an important influence that could be perceived in actions against subordinated social groups and indigenous cultural collections and African origins. In addition, as we have seen in the first part, identity created Creoleism, an expression of European modernity, and also filtered out the pubs located in at the lower levels of the social structure, as well as a reality that resonates even in the present. For this
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reason, we understand that the historical problem observed has now become a single historical question to form part of our daily history, which probably must be studied with greater demands from sociology, anthropology and other social sciences. For in the “siquiera” with the declaration as World Heritage by UNESCO in 1986, it was possible to stop the historical depredation suffered by the complex; this reality invites us to carry out a finer analysis that includes other points of the problem in order to finally understand what is happening in the social spectrum so that these practices can be maintained at the expense of this archaeological complex, which, in terms of anthropology and sociology, we have suggested as an explanatory possibility the injustice of the nefarious inheritance of European modernity expressed through the concept of criollism, explored by Gonzalo Portocarrero. Thematics from the misinformation of tourist visits, the activation of the state organs to maintain it in its state, has the depredation of the cultural collection contained in these spaces and the reprehensible behavior of the visitors that attack this urban formation. The importance of this complex has not only been recognized by experts, state agencies, etc. A bell that has also been highlighted by the most important television stations in the world, such as CNN. I believe that Chan Chan is one of the most important spaces in the “Nuevo Mundo.” Y, year: This vestige of the Chimú culture, was chosen as one of the 20 most spectacular places; among them also the temple of Tiwanaku (Bolivia), the pyramid complex of Tikal, Petén (Guatemala); the complex of Monte Albán (Mexico), the Parque Museo La Venta (Mexico), the historic state site of Los Montículos de Cahokia (United States), among others (La República, 2013, online resource).
Its great importance has been rectified with new findings in the complex. So, in the period of the Republic, the discovery of a mural is recorded in high relief with unprecedented decoration and 19 idols talled in wood. “The presentation of the new halls of the adobe complex in America was under the responsibility of the Minister of Culture, Patricia Balbuena, and the representatives of the Regional Directorate of Culture” (La República, 2018, online resource) (Photo 1). Regarding the decrease in tourist visits, it is mentioned that: Freedom. Despite the great tourist potential, La Libertad only managed to capture 4.4% of the 4.2 million foreign tourists who arrived in Peru in 2018, occupying position 9 in the ranking of regions, which was led by Lima, Cusco, Tacna, Puno and Arequipa, as revealed by a report by PromPerú (La República, 2019, online resource).
The historical and archaeological relevance that the site still maintains, despite the constant attacks, is not consistent with the number of tourist visits recorded in this newspaper: “[…] Trujillo (84.6%), Huanchaco (66.8%), the Complex Of Chan Chan (38%) and the huacas of the Sun and Moon (19.6%)” (La República, 2019, online resource). However, due to the vulnerability and the little investment to maintain an archaeological complex of this importance, the scarcity of tourism, for now, becomes a positive element for lacking mechanisms that avoid the known harmful elements of tourism. For now, the state mechanisms used for its preservation are quite discreet and are accompanied by limited resources. The local authorities organize activities that
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Photo 1 Wooden idols. Source The Republic (10/22/18)
contemplate the awareness of children and young people in school stage, and, without wishing to detract from them, they do not constitute projects that solve the nuclear problem that contemplates all the corners of Peruvian society and that are part of a historical construction oriented to the ideas of European modernity which directly attack heritage and its heirs. Which, in turn, have kept the production of their culture adapted to new contexts, even having predatory elements from their heritage, such as the figure of the “huaquero,” a grave robber. Ambiguity that plots the complexity in civil society, but that, as we already mentioned, can be explained by the concept of Creoleism. The symbolic elaboration of adobes is also part of the awareness-raising actions promoted by the Chan Chan Archaeological Complex Special Project, through the Unit for Promotion and Citizen Participation, within the framework of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Chan Chan’s registration. on the UNESCO World Heritage list (La República, 2016, online resource).
Where primary school students from the “Millennium Chan Chan Educational Institution” from the Huanchaco district were involved. We reiterate, without detracting from these initiatives, that they do not address the nuclear problem that continues to subject everything concerning the American populations and, with them, their heritage. In addition to a poor budget allocated by the Peruvian government to the Ministry of Culture, the task of solving the problems exposed is, to say the least, very complex. Both to face the problem of education, which is key to decolonizing thought and alienate European modernity, and to face the problems caused by natural phenomena, the solutions are still far away. For example: in 2015, only 22 million soles were allocated for the prevention of the natural phenomenon called “El Niño.” The large number of archaeological sites shown in Fig. 2 demonstrates the insufficient budget to deal with this phenomenon. And it was feared that another catastrophe would happen again, such as the loss of 80% of the Huaca del Taco, in the year of 1997.
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“The archaeological sites located in the coastal area of La Libertad are those most at risk from El Niño. We have attended 13 sites of the more than one hundred that exist in that coastal area, because the region has approximately 15 thousand archaeological sites that we have identified in all its extension, which include the Andean zone and part of the jungle, “says María Elena Córdova, in charge of the Department of Culture of the department of La Libertad (La República, 2015, online resource).
Thus, the lack of trained professionals who manage to glimpse the underlying problem is combined with the climatic factor in complicity with a State that does not fully understand the superlative importance of the preservation of indigenous cultural heritage. It is within this framework that the white colonizing subject is inserted, who historically transferred his way of seeing American societies as inferior, even reaching biologically indigenous people. Thus, the problem is structural, historical and of social thought, overcoming all “racial” barriers. Well, as previously mentioned, everyone becomes the reproducer of this colonialist and Eurocentric thought. The problems exposed took place chronologically in parallel with the evaluations carried out by UNESCO in order to analyze whether the archaeological complex of Chan Chan was finally removed from the list of heritage at risk. In 2014, this archaeological complex was under observation and was visited by: “The mission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) completed yesterday its work of supervising the actions carried out to protect the Chan Chan archaeological complex” (La República, 2014, online resource). However, this situation was not resolved and in 2016, they continued to seek the removal of the Chan Chan archaeological complex from the list of heritage at risk. Among the measures implemented by the State bodies responsible for the preservation of this complex, it is found, having “installed 835 m2 of this pavement that can support loads greater than 100 tons per square meter” (La República, 2016, online resource). In addition to: “[…] the protection of the sector known as Hearings. In this area, which always represented a greater risk of affectation due to rains, more than 4 thousand meters of coverings have been installed to protect the entire area, that exhibits varieties of reliefs”(La República, 2016, online resource). Despite these attempts not to leave the list of World Heritage Sites. The reality of civil society and the Peruvian State provided sufficient arguments for Chan Chan to have had its World Heritage title revoked. In parallel with the efforts of the competent authorities to resolve the problem of the title, in 2015, the discovery of a preHispanic mummy in the trash was recorded: “A mummy was found in the central berm of the Trujillo-Huanchaco highway, at the height of the Chan Chan Archaeological Complex, by public cleaning workers of the Huanchaco District Municipality” (La República, 2015, online resource). And although Chan Chan’s title as a World Heritage Site was maintained, the actions to the detriment of the complex were maintained. The collection of garbage in the complex, paints on the walls, and other acts against the conservation of the complex were registered until February 2020. In 2017, news was recorded about the poor state of the archaeological complex due to poor administration by the regional government for not providing good administration of garbage collection in complicity with the criminal conduct by the residents of the same zone. “Soils, bricks, tires, bags and sacks with organic waste are some
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Photo 2 Subject standing in the prohibited area. Source The Republic (2017)
of the wastes that affect the panorama of the “World’s Largest Mud Citadel”: Chan Chan. Right in the area that defines the limits between the districts of Huanchaco and La Esperanza, lower part (in the Alan García and Santa Verónica sectors)” (La República, 2017, online resource). Later, in October of the same year, a subject, claiming that he had paid his entry, walked on structures that could not be used for that activity further complicating the situation of the archaeological complex because, on this date, it was still on the list of heritage in danger. “In a video broadcast by the Blue Label portal, the violent attitude of the man is observed while he is forced to withdraw from the declared World Heritage Site. Given this, the subject, who is wearing a white cap, tells the police to “do not touch it” and that standing on buildings “is not a waste” (La República, 2017, online resource) (Photo 2). In 2018, a few spots were discovered on the walls of the citadel. Apparently, due to the content, they were made by adolescents, said those responsible for conducting the evaluation. And, fortunately, the paints did not affect the original wall because they were made on the material used for the restoration of the wall. “[…] The director of the Decentralized Directorate for Culture of La Libertad, María Elena Córdova Burga, clarified that the wall located on the west side of the Ñing An Walled Complex, known as the Velarde Palace, does not show any affectation as a result of the paintings made by unknown” (La República, 2018, online resource) (Photo 3). During 2019, after 2 years, the competent bodies failed to solve the problem of garbage. Situation that reveals the degree of inefficiency on the part of the State organs. “The Chan Chan archaeological center, a Cultural Heritage of Humanity, shines with waste and garbage along the Evitamiento road, in Trujillo. This oversight has been recorded in previous years” (La República, 2019, online resource). And in February of this year, the invasion and destruction of the archaeological terrain for
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Photo 3 Paints on walls in Chan Chan. Source The Republic (2018)
the construction of pools for raising ornamental fish were denounced, damaging at least four areas of the complex. “The case was taken by the First Corporate Criminal Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of La Libertad, which verified with an investigation in the Pampas de Alejandro sector carried out on February 4; The technical and legal staff of the DDC were present there”(La República, 2020, online resource). Thus, completing a disastrous system that feeds back from the malpractice of those in charge of preserving heritage, a precarious fund to protect the large amount of cultural heritage existing in Peru and, finally, the validity of the white colonizing subject in the imaginary of Peruvian societies. Well, without colonialism and modernity—inherent elements—the social dynamics that have maintained these praxis that attempt against one of the most important cultural assets, and that would even represent an economic benefit that would reverberate in the others, could not be explained areas. This ambiguity being the nuclear characteristic of the concept of Creole studied by Portocarrero, which had already been denounced by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala in 1615, through the figure of the black Creole who represented for him the corruption of Africans caused by contact with Western culture. Thus, these archetypes help us to understand that the actions perpetrated by the huaqueros, other unscrupulous characters in Peruvian societies, although with evident modifications in their behavior, essentially share the elements of European modernity that allow us to better understand the apparently inconsistent actions shown throughout the text.
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3 Final Considerations The institution of European modernity, resulting from colonialism, has been and is a key part of understanding, in part, the actions that attack the cultural heritage belonging to indigenous civilizations. Well, as it has been exposed in the text, by means of this Eurocentric thinking the European invaders linked the autochthonous populations with the old and worn out. Managing to violate these subordinate groups in order to subdue them and steal everything that is useful for their interests. In addition to this scenario that was not very auspicious for indigenous ethnic groups, authorities such as: the Viceroy, members of the public administration and Creole elites, instituted the concept of creole through which practices oriented to theft and the search for crime were institutionalized? own benefit, even if this means the degradation of the common good. Which, according to Portocarrero, even filtered social groups located in less privileged social positions. Thus, through this historical framework, by the principle of inertia explored by Sztompka (1995), we understand that the social structure was maintained without modifications. Those in charge of maintaining this social structure without nuclear alterations were the Creole elites who took over political and economic power after the expulsion of the Spanish. Thus, praxis to the detriment of subordinate groups and the cultural heritage inherited by their ancestors was also deprecated in the republican period. With the declaration of Chan Chan as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986, the situation did not change. Well, the colonial and modern permanences in the collective imagination have remained firm. Even if the revocation of the title of World Heritage Site meant an even greater drop in the number of tourists, and with it, the loss of jobs in the region. Well, as Portocarrero would say, transgression as a specific form of enjoyment, even if it means the depletion of resources, constitutes a nuclear form in the construction of the concept of Creole that is a nuclear part of the social behaviors of Peru today. Thus, characters such as: “the huaquero” (grave robber), the merchant of archaeological pieces, the invaders of huacas, etc. They are the local characters who materialize these ideas and who are implicitly accepted by the complicity of those people who do not find these actions uncomfortable. And these actions, that depreciate equity, come to be considered as positive values. But this praxis is not exclusive to these local characters, but they are the projection of an ideology that also involves the State and its organisms. As we have perceived it when confirming the little importance of these archaeological sites for the State, the inefficiency of those responsible for preservation, the ineffectiveness of public sanitation policies that also end up affecting the Chan Chan complex. Thus, civil society and the State are responsible for the systematic losses that we have observed throughout the text.
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Online Resources Chan Chan es reconocida como uno de los sitios más espectaculares del Nuevo Mundo. La República, Lima, 26 de dic. 2013. https://larepublica.pe/archivo/760903-chan-chan-es-recono cida-como-uno-de-los-sitios-mas-espectaculares-del-nuevo-mundo/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020 En tres meses se conocería si Chan Chan sale de la lista de patrimonios mundiales en peligro. La República, Lima, 04 de dic. 2014. https://larepublica.pe/archivo/838725-en-tres-meses-se-con oceria-si-chan-chan-sale-de-la-lista-de-patrimonios-mundiales-en-peligro/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Encuentran momia de cultura Prehispánica en basural. La República, 14 de Abr. 2015. https://larepu blica.pe/archivo/870145-encuentran-momia-de-cultura-prehispanica-en-basural/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Sitios arqueológicos con escaso presupuesto para protegerse de El Niño. La República, 24 de agosto 2015. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/877317-sitios-arqueologicos-con-escaso-presup uesto-para-protegerse-de-el-nino/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Chan Chan busca ser retirado de lista de patrimonios en riesgo. La República, 16 de jun. 2016. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/777570-chan-chan-busca-ser-retirado-de-lista-de-pat rimonios-en-riesgo/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Trujillo: Ancestral práctica de elaboración de adobes es replicada por escolares en Chan Chan. La República, 25 de nov. 2016. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/824966-trujillo-ancestral-practicade-elaboracion-de-adobes-es-replicada-por-escolares-en-chan-chan/ Access 20 enero del 2020
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Trujillo: Basura y desmontes siguen afectando zona arqueológica intangible de Chan Chan. La República, 20 de ene. 2017. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/841694-trujillo-basura-y-desmontessiguen-afectando-zona-arqueologica-intangible-de-chan-chan/. Accessed 20 enero del 2020 La Libertad: sujeto daña patrimonio cultural de Chan Chan y no respeta a policías. La República, 28 de oct. 2017. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/1137934-la-libertad-sujeto-dana-patrimonio-cul tural-de-chan-chan-y-no-respeta-a-policias-video/. Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Directora de Cultura aclara que pintas no afectaron muro original de Chan Chan. La República, 15 de may. 2018. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/1243201-directora-cultura-aclara-pintas-afecta ron-muro-original-chan-chan/. Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Descubren mural inédito y 19 ídolos de madera en ciudadela de Chan Chan. La República, 22 de oct. 2018. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/1343158-descubren-mural-inedito-19-idolos-maderaciudadela-chan-chan/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Trujillo: Zona intangible de Chan Chan luce llena de basura. La República, 28 de ene. 2019. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/1402834-trujillo-zona-intangible-arqueologica-chan-chanluce-llena-basura-desmonte-libertad/. Accessed 20 enero del 2020 La Libertad solo logró captar el 4.4% de los turistas extranjeros el 2018. La República, 15 de set. 2019. https://larepublica.pe/economia/2019/09/15/la-libertad-solo-logro-captar-el-44-de-los-tur istas-extranjeros-el-2018/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020 Denuncian daños al Complejo Arqueológico Chan Chan en Trujillo. La República, 12 de ene. 2020. https://larepublica.pe/sociedad/2020/02/12/denuncian-danos-al-complejo-arqueolog ico-chan-chan-en-trujillo-lrnd/ Accessed 20 enero del 2020
Memory of Slavery as Material and Intangible Heritage: The Case of Valongo Wharf and the Passados Presentes Project Hebe Mattos Abstract This paper is a reflection on the relationship between historical research and the public narrative that seeks to question the political meanings behind the presence of the slavery past at the present time based in two different experiences: the nomination and recognition of the Valongo Wharf as World Heritage by UNESCO and the development of the project of tourism of memory “Passados Presentes” (Pasts Presents) (www.passadospresentes.com.br). As written in the summary, this paper discuss two different initiatives of building public narratives about the slave past in Brazil: the nomination and recognition of the Valongo Wharf as World Heritage by UNESCO and the development of the tourism project memory “Passados Presentes” (www.passadospresentes.com.br).1 My reflec-
1 The
final proposal for nomination of Valongo Wharf Archeological Site on the World Heritage List was delivered in February 2017. The working group responsible for preparing the nomination was composed of the Historian Mônica Lima e Souza, the Architect José Pessoa, the Archaeologist Rosana Najjar, under coordination of Anthropologist Milton Guran. Cf http://portal.iphan.gov.br/upl oads/ckfinder/arquivos/1548-2173-Revised%20Nomination%20Text-en.pdf. Accessed on April 6, 2020. The Passados Presentes project—Memories of Slavery in Brazil was an initiative of the Passados Presentes Research Network (LABHOI/UFF—the Laboratory of Oral History and Images at the Fluminense Federal University and NUMEM/UNIRIO—Center of Memory and Documentation of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro), directed by Hebe Mattos, Martha Abreu and Keila Grinberg. The project was submitted by the Reference Center for Afro-Brazilian Studies of South Fluminense and JLM Artistic Productions to the Petrobras Intangible Cultural Heritage Bid in 2012. For the development of research and digital platforms, it also had the support of FAPERJ/COLUMBIA GLOBAL CENTER, through the Passados Presentes project: Slavery and Reparation in Public Policies of Education in Brazil, coordinated by Hebe Mattos (LABHOI/UFF) and David Scott (Columbia University); FAPERJ Nº 35/2014—Program “In Support of the Dissemination and Popularization of Science and Technology in the State of Rio de Janeiro 2014,” coordinated by Keila Grinberg (NUMEM/UNIRIO). Cf. http://passadospresentes.com.br/site/Site/index.php/principal/index?ling=br. Accessed on April 6, 2020. H. Mattos (B) Laboratory of Oral History and Image-LABHOI/UFJF/UFF, Campus da Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora - Rua José Lourenço Kelmer, S/N, Juiz de Fora 36036-900, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] URL: https://www.ufjf.br/labhoi/ © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_20
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tion about Valongo Wharf was originally prepared as a keynote speech in a seminar to commemorate the 450th anniversary of the city of Rio de Janeiro, celebrated in 2015. That year, I took part in the event celebrating the city’s anniversary, revisiting this topic that was long silenced from the city’s collective memory: its role as the largest slave port in the Americas and all its repercussions. One of the city’s main initiatives in commemorating its 450th anniversary was preparing the proposal nominating Valongo Wharf, archeological site of the city’s slave port to be included on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list. I was a member of the scientific council of the board that proposed the candidature of Valongo Wharf by UNESCO where I had the opportunity to participate on the discussions that helped define the idea of a material World Heritage that is mostly significant for its immaterial value. In the words of ambassador and historian Alberto Costa e Silva, as coordinator of the Advisory Board that prepared the proposal for consideration of the Valongo Wharf as World Heritage Site (on September 30, 2014): The Valongo Wharf deserves to be considered UNESCO Heritage because it is the site of the most complete memory of slavery we know. It is of importance not just to Brazilian history and our life as a nation, but to world history as well. The Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe once said that history is neither good nor bad; it just is. And we are this history, with its long bright periods and its terrible nightmares, like this one that seems interminable and that left us deep scars like Valongo, living monuments that need no words to explain them, that are what they are, and that touch us through the stones we tread upon and the stones we gaze upon; stones that, after horrific journeys, welcomed the feet of many of our ancestors, and tell a little of this long, tragic and amazing chapter in the story of man’s life on earth.”
This quote constitutes, as well, the opening lines of the final dossier submitted to UNESCO by a panel of experts named by the Rio de Janeiro city council. Monica Lima e Souza, historian from UFRJ, developed the final historical report for the Valongo Wharf as a site of sensitive memory with worldwide relevance widely based on the more recent historiographical research about the area (Fig. 1). The Valongo Wharf Archeological Site was rediscovered in 2011, during renovation of the city’s port area for a series of international events in which Rio would serve as stage in the years that would follow, especially the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. In 2008, Italian anthropologist André Cicalo, while conducting field research in Rio about Brazil’s earliest affirmative action experiences, made a very interesting documentary called Memories on the Edge of Oblivion, which touched upon the absence of any memory of slave traffic in the region. Only 5 years later, Cicalo would spend 2 years in Rio de Janeiro affiliated as visiting researcher at the Laboratory of Oral History and Image (LABHOI/UFF/UFJF), accompanying the resurgence of the memory of slavery in the Rio port area, which culminated in the Valongo Wharf Heritage initiative as well as in the transformation of the public discourse regarding the black movement, the municipal authorities and Brazilian society in general in terms of the trauma and pain that could be associated with
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Fig. 1 Valongo Wharf, photo by Guilherme Hoffmann
this memory.2 How could this happen? Notwithstanding twenty-first century historians and some nineteenth century black intellectuals, silence was the method most predominantly adopted by Brazilian society as a way to deal with the memory of the slave trade. As we hope to demonstrate, we needed to get to the twenty-first century before we could change this kind of general attitude, even if the beginning of the process of change dated back to the late twentieth century and to the 1988 Constitution in particular. The quilombola social movement, the affirmative action initiatives and the policy of recognizing intangible heritage are all rooted on articles of the last Constitution.3 The process of expanding citizenship engendered by the 1988 Constitution is the source of the emergence of new ways to question a past that up to then, for a variety of reasons, was better left forgotten. The historical research of slavery in Brazil suffered consequences from this change in meanings, including new historiographical guidelines that have emerged since then. It was the Marquis of Lavradio, Viceroy of Brazil in 1779, who approved the space for Valongo as an area of disembarkation, burial, quarantine and sell of recent arrival enslaved Africans, through the following decree: 2 Cf.
Memories on the edge of oblivion/Memórias do Esquecimento, a film by Andre Cicalo, 2008. https://vimeo.com/41609298, accessed on 06/04/2020. Outras Áfricas. Slavery and Black Heritage in Rio de Janeiro, a film by Andre Cicalo, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8iEsY1TyQY. Accessed on April 6 2020. See also: André Cicalo (2015) ‘Those Stones Speak:’ Black-Activist Engagement with Slavery Archaeology in Rio de Janeiro, Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, 10:3, 251–270, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2015.1087833. 3 Cf. Hebe Mattos and Martha Abreu. "Remanescentes das Comunidades dos Quilombos": memória do cativeiro, patrimônio cultural e direito àreparação. Iberoamericana (Madrid), v. 42, pp. 147–160, 2011.
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“The new blacks who arrive from the ports of Guinea and Africa, after a determination of health, are to be disembarked and immediately taken to the Valongo site where they will be held from Pedra da Prainha to Gamboa. And there, their departure will be arranged, the sick will be cured and the dead will be buried, without the possibility of ever leaving there for the city no matter the reason, nor will they be buried in the city’s cemeteries after they die”4
The construction of the Valongo was, therefore, a slavery’s tribute to the new sensitivities created by Illuminism. It sought to shield the city’s residents from the spectacle of horror necessarily entailed by the slave trade. The proposal of Valongo Wharf as world heritage to UNESCO was considered more than the archeological reminiscence of the biggest slave port in the Americas. It was considered a complex for receiving, burying, quarantining and selling new black slaves, in the late eighteenth century. The Valongo area defined by the Marquis of Lavradio was the place of a slave market that had a number of storehouses where the new captives were offered for sale, as we can see in the images of Debret, the French painter whose prints so strongly expressed the slaveholding nature of Rio in the early nineteenth century.5 Before quarantine and sale, Valongo was a place of death. Forgotten for more than a century, the archeological vestiges of the cemetery of new black slaves were located in the 1990s during renovation of a private home that was turned into an archeological site and memorial, largely thanks to the initiative of the owner with some support from historians, like the ambassador Alberto da Costa e Silva. There, the burial of the recently arrived, in supposedly sacred ground, concealed the practice of summary incineration in mass graves on a scale that is hard to imagine.6 As a private institution of memory, the archeological excavation of the Institute of New Blacks was officially included in the African heritage circuit established in the port area by the Rio de Janeiro city council in 2014 and as a key part of the buffer zone of the Valongo Wharf archeological site.7 But the Valongo complex was not just a market or a place of death; it was a place where survivors could recover and be given some rudiments of the Portuguese language and training for work before they were sold off as well. Cultural exchanges between “escravos ladinos” (Brazilian-born and African slaves who already knew the language and customs of Brazil, according to the terms at the time) and new Africans from various origins who had arrived in the
4 Cf.
Honorato, Cláudio de Paula. Valongo; o mercado de escravos do Rio de Janeiro, 1758 a 1831. Dissertação de Mestrado em História. Niterói, UFF, 2008. (nota 125) https://www.historia.uff.br/ stricto/teses/Dissert-2008_HONORATO_Claudio_de_Paula-S.pdf. Accessed on April 6, 2020. 5 To see the image, cf: http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1978. Accessed on April 6, 2020. 6 Cf. Julio Cesar da Silva Pereira. À Flor da Pele: o cemitério dos pretos novos no Rio de Janeiro. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond/IPHAN, 2007. 7 Cf. http://pretosnovos.com.br/museu-memorial/cemiterio-dos-pretos-novos/. Accessed on Apr. 6, 2020. The Buffer Zone area of Valongo Wharf Archeological Site may be seen in http://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/ckfinder/arquivos/1548-2173-Revised%20Nomination%20T ext-en.pdf (pp. 23–25). Accessed on April 6, 2020.
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region were made iconic through the romantic eye of Bavarian artist Johan Moritz Rugendas.8 Valongo was the location of the tragedy that was the slave trade, but it was also the first place to see the miracle of creolization—an expression by Richard Price.9 Without going into all that the concept implied, the expression empirically states the researcher’s amazement in the face of the process that makes people who have been completely uprooted from their homes, oftentimes coming from distant cultures and subject to terrible violence, able to communicate with each other and reinvent themselves in the slaveholding societies of the Americas. After the first law banning slave trade in 1831, the Valongo complex itself was abolished to make way for what is known as the Empress’s Wharf. It was built in 1843 to receive the Neapolitan Princess Teresa Cristina de Bourbon, the wife of Emperor Dom Pedro II. So, the old slave port was wiped off the map. The invisibilization of Valongo and prohibition on public punishment of slaves are hallmarks of the ambiguity of nineteenth century Brazilian society. Despite the continuity and even unprecedented expansion of the slave trade within the context of the coffee boom from 1830 to 1840, the traumatic spectacle of the arrival of new black slaves was forever removed from the heart of the Imperial Court. What has practically failed to appear in the discourse of the time and has since then remained absent from most memorial and historiographical narratives is the extent of illegal slavery that followed this. It is at that point that the proposal of making Valongo Wharf World Heritage in 2014/2015 meets with the development of the Passados Presentes project that I coordinate with the historians Keila Grinberg and Martha Abreu in the same period, an initiative shared with three quilombo communities as keepers of a Brazilian National Intangible Heritage recognized as such since 2005: the Jongo do Sudeste. On the site of the project: “The Atlantic trade of enslaved Africans to the Americas is considered by the United Nations as a crime against humanity. The State of Brazil, created in 1822, was directly responsible in this process: from the horrors of the middle passage to the violent enslavement that took place on Brazilian lands. Despite this, the African presence in Brazil left an invaluable cultural legacy that is now officially recognized in various cultural heritages of the country, including the Jongo do Sudeste. (…) (…) With a goal of recognizing these stories and encouraging tourism of memory in Rio de Janeiro, the Passados Presentes project—Memories of Slavery in Brazil, in partnership with the communities, built permanent exhibits in the Quilombo of Bracuí, the Quilombo of São José da Serra, and the town of Pinheiral. The tourist signs and the open-air memorials seek to honor the victims of the tragedy of enslavement and to celebrate the black cultural heritage created by the survivors on Brazilian lands. The first memorial was inaugurated in the city of Pinheiral in 2015, the first year of the International Decade for People of African Descent established by the UN (2015–2024). The Passados Presentes project was developed using the Memory Sites Inventory of the Atlantic Slave Trade and the History of African Slaves in Brazil, a work coordinated by 8 See
the image in http://slaveryimages.org/s/slaveryimages/item/1973, accessed on April 6, 2020. Richard. “THE MIRACLE OF CREOLIZATION: A RETROSPECTIVE.” NWIG: New West Indian Guide/ Nieuwe West-IndischeGids, vol. 75, no. 1/2, 2001, pp. 35–64. JSTOR, www. jstor.org/stable/41850094. Accessed on Apr. 6, 2020. 9 Price,
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Hebe Mattos, Martha Abreu, and Milton Guran at the Laboratory of Oral History and Images at the Fluminense Federal University (LABHOI/UFF), with the support of Unesco’s Slave Route Project in 2014. The Inventory was the basis for this site’s elaborated database. Here [on the website of the project] you will find information on sites of memory of slavery in Brazil, as well as entries on the intangible cultural heritage of the state of Rio de Janeiro, such as capoeira, jongo groups, and quilombos. Information on other regions will be added as further research is conducted and additional partnerships will be established. The project also includes 4 mobile apps with four routes: the old “Little Africa” in the port region of the city of Rio de Janeiro, around the Valongo Wharf, which was the main port of entrance for slavery in the Americas, named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO; the Ruins of São José do Pinheiro (Pinheiral), the quilombo São José (Valença), and the quilombo do Bracuí (Angra dos Reis), in partnership with the Quilombo and jongueiro communities. These activities have been stimulating sustainable economic initiatives among the descendants of the last generation of Africans enslaved in Brazil.” (www.passadospresentes.com.br)
Once Valongo had closed down after the first law banning slave trade in Brazil (1831), at least 750,000 Africans entered Brazil through small slave-holding farms along the coast, with an even more frightening lethality rate. Each ship carried hundreds of mostly young people. The few records that remain of the time that describe these places of quarantine and death, generally produced by belated initiatives attempting crackdown after the second law prohibiting the importation of slaves in 1850, contain striking descriptions of newcomers who had died or were left to die in areas near paradisiacal beaches along the coast. All of this with full complicity on the part of local population. For the survivors, the life expectancy on the large coffee and sugarcane plantations did not go much beyond 8 years of work.10 In 2012, the Laboratory of Oral History and Image mobilized a network of slavery historians from Brazilian universities to compile an inventory of 100 places of memory in the history of African slaves in Brazil, in collaboration with the Science Committee of the UNESCO Slave Route Project. The beaches that were the site of illegal disembarkation were one of the categories on the list and the one that best reflected new trends in historiographical research studies.11 In the nineteenth century, it is estimated that at least 1.5 million Africans arrived in Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro, most of them arrived at the Valongo Wharf and later at clandestine ports along the coast, such as the old Bracuhy estate in Angra dos Reis, today site of the quilombo community that goes by the same name, where one of the memorials of the Passados Presentes project was built in partnership with the quilombo communities of Rio de Janeiro. The image, that follows, is from the 10 Mattos, Hebe (Org.). Diáspora Negra e Lugares de Memória: a história oculta das propriedades
voltadas para o tráfico clandestino de escravos no Brasil imperial.Niterói, EDUFF, 2013. 11 Mattos, H (Org.); Abreu, M. (Org.); Guran, M. (Org.). Inventário dos lugares de memória do tráfico
atlântico de escravos e da história dos africanos escravizados no Brasil/Inventoryof Sites ofMemoryoftheAtlanticSlave Trade andtheHistoryofEnslavedAfricans in Brazil. Niterói: PPGH-UFF, 2014. Cf. http://www.labhoi.uff.br/repair/ppp/pdf/Inventario_dos_Lugares_de_Memoria_do_Trafico_A tlantico_de_Escravos_e_da_Historia_dos_Africanos_Escravisazados_no_Brasil.pdf Accessed on Apr. 6, 2020.
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Fig. 2 Marilda De Sousa—Passados Presentes Memorial Quilombo Bracuí, 2015, Photo by Guilherme Hoffmann
memorial exhibit in this quilombo, where the slave ship Camargo arrived in 1853. In the photo, Marilda de Souza, one of the leaders of the quilombola movement, receives a visit from one of that area’s public schools (Fig. 2). Nowadays, among the beach areas of illegal disembarkation, in addition to the archeological sites that were as yet little explored, an even greater monument is found in the collective memory of the rural black residents who still inhabit the vicinity. The oral tradition of Quilombo de Bracuí could be followed in more than one web platform.12 The documentary A Present Past: Afro-Brazilian Memories in Rio de Janeiro, a film by Hebe Mattos and Martha Abreu, finished in 2011, highlights the strong oral tradition of slave descendants from the former plantations of the Souza Braves family, in the south of the state of Rio de Janeiro.13 It rescues vivid details about the illegal trade of slaves and the experiences of enslaved Africans and freed ancestors. The Quilombo of Santa Rita do Bracuí originates from the Santa Rita do Bracuí Plantation. Its main function was to receive illegally enslaved Africans brought to 12 See
the web itinerary “o comércio ilegal de africanosescravizados/the illegal trade of enslaved Africans” in the site Identidades do Rio: http://www.pensario.uff.br/mapa/comercio-ilegal-de-afr icanos-escravizados. Accessed on April 6, 2020. 13 Available online at http://www.labhoi.uff.br/passadospresentes/en/filmes_passados.php Accessed on April 6, 2020.
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Fig. 3 Passados Presentes Memorial Quilombo Sao Jose, 2015, Photo by Guilherme Hoffmann
Brazil in the nineteenth century. After the definitive ban on the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil, the plantation owner, José de Souza Braves, freed the captives living there and, in his will, he bequeathed to them the plantation’s territory. The descendants of the freed people of Bracuhy are now the guardians of the memory of African landings in the region, as they continue to fight for the title to their lands. The Jongo and this oral tradition are part of the cultural and family heritage that became a core aspect of the quilombo identity of this community. Both support broader political struggles against racism and contribute to ensuring collective ownership of land. The Passados Presentes project developed four memory circuits that tell the history of this last generation of enslaved Africans, whose experiences connect the history of the city of Rio de Janeiro to its surroundings. The mostly children and teenagers captured in Central Africa and disembarked in Valongo Wharf and later on slaveholding estates along the coast, such as the one that gave rise to today’s Bracuhy quilombo, the bulk of survivors, spent the rest of their lives on plantations in the coffee regions of the Paraíba do Sul River Valley, such as the old São José da Serra estate, whose lands today constitute the São José da Serra quilombo, in Valença. The present-day São José da Serra quilombo is made up of descendants of two couples of African slaves on an old coffee plantation located there during the midnineteenth century. It is the focal point of the second tour of the project and one of the most famous Jongo groups of Brazil. Jongo is a cultural manifestation of AfroBrazilian song, verse, dance and percussion whose origin is found in the cultural traditions of the Bantu-speaking peoples of Central Africa and officially recognized in 2005 as Brazilian cultural heritage (Fig. 3).
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Fig. 4 Passados Presentes memorial Pinheiral City, 2015, Photo By Guilherme Hoffmann
During the first half of the twentieth century, most of the descendants of these last African slaves migrated to the urban areas of the state of Rio de Janeiro mainly through the railroad network. The city of Pinheiral, built around an old railway station where many freed slaves arrived, reflects this movement. The third exhibition of the Passados Presentes project was built there in partnership with the Jongo association of the city, known as Capital do Jongo with the support of the city council. Unfortunately, the recent political change in Brazil broke off this essential political support and the exposition was undone in 2018 (Fig. 4). Across the railroad tracks, the descendants of the last African slaves also returned to the port area of the country’s former capital, around the old port of Valongo. The memories of this part of the city of Rio de Janeiro were named by the artist and samba composer Heitor dos Prazeres as Pequena África (Little Africa) in the early decades of the twentieth century. Widely used in books, lyrics and samba schools’ storylines, the term came to identify a significant part of Rio’s poor area where the African presence and black cultural heritage forever influences not only the history of Rio de Janeiro, but of all Brazil. Little Africa became a cornerstone part of the buffer area of the Archeological site of Valongo. There, the famous samba carioca was born and many other manifestations of afro-carioca culture flourished. On Passados Presentes website: On the turn of the 19th century to the 20th, the cultural life of Little Africa and the city itself were renewed with the arrival of black migrants, especially those coming from Bahia and the old coffee plantations of the Paraíba Valley, as well as of Portuguese, Italian, and Jewish immigrants. Little Africa became an important center for Rio’s black culture and for new forms of political mobilization, such as unions, uprisings, and new musical genres. In this context, samba emerged as a particularly distinctive genre and gained visibility throughout the country; in addition, various black associations were founded as well as social clubs
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Fg. 5 Pedra do Sal, 2015. Photo by Guilherme Hoffmann
and dance clubs, each with its own Carnival group, that linked Little Africa with the most modern musical and artistic styles of the time.
The black culture in the Valongo Wharf/Little Africa area is mostly associated only with the black migrations from Bahia and their Western African traditions, such as candomblé. Yet, Bantu-speaking Africans from Central Africa constituted the majority of the black population of the area during the first half of the nineteenth century and their descendants, migrants from the former slave areas around the city, were protagonists in the founding of the city’s earliest samba schools during the first half of the twentieth century.14 The Pedra do Sal recognized as material cultural heritage by the state of Rio de Janeiro since the 1980s is an icon of old Little Africa (Fig. 5). The site today also is claimed as the seat of a modern quilombo by black residents who came from the state’s old coffee plantation areas. The Quilombo da Pedra do Sal is the third foundation of the official “buffer area” of the World Heritage of Valongo Wharf. Between the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, the area of the current quilombo was characterized by commercial activity and the arrival of enslaved Africans. Nowadays, the ruins of the Valongo Wharf and the Cemetery of the PretosNovos (recently arrived Africans) mark the passage of more than one million Africans through Little Africa, a story of pain and suffering that cannot be forgotten, but Little Africa and the Quilombos of Pedra do Sal pay tribute to the resilience of Black culture through this process of violence and pain.15 14 See
also Martha Abreu. Da Senzala ao Palco. Canções Escravas e Racismo nas Américas. Campinas: Unicamp, 2917, ePub2: 978-85-268-1395-3 ePub3: 978-85-268-1396-0. 15 Cf. Abreu, M. e Mattos, H. Relatório Histórico-Antropológico sobre o Quilombo da Pedra do Sal: em torno do samba, do santo e do porto. In: Eliane CantarinoO’Dwyer. (Org.). O fazer antropológico
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References Abreu M, Mattos H (2012) Relatório Histórico-Antropológico sobre o Quilombo da Pedra do Sal: em torno do samba, do santo e do porto. In: O’Dwyer EC (Org.) O fazer antropológico e o reconhecimento de direitos constitucionais. O caso das terras de quilombo no Estado do Rio de Janeiro. E-papers, Rio de Janeiro, pp 23–67 Abreu M (2017) Da Senzala ao Palco. Canções Escravas e Racismo nas Américas. Unicamp, Campinas. ePu2: 978-85-268-1395-3; ePub3: 978-85-268-1396-0 Cicalo A (2015) Those Stones Speak, Black-Activist Engagement with Slavery Archaeology in Rio de Janeiro. Latin Am Carib Ethn Stud 10(3):251–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/17442222.2015. 1087833 Cicalo A (2008) Memories on the edge of oblivion/Memórias do Esquecimento, a film by Andre Cicalo, 2008. https://vimeo.com/41609298. Accessed 06 Apr 2020. Outras Áfricas. Slavery and Black Heritage in Rio de Janeiro, a film by Andre Cicalo, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=x8iEsY1TyQY Honorato CDP (2008) Valongo; o mercado de escravos do Rio de Janeiro, 1758 a 1831. Dissertação de Mestrado em História. Niterói, UFF. (note 125). https://www.historia.uff.br/stricto/teses/Dis sert-2008_HONORATO_Claudio_de_Paula-S.pdf Mattos H, Abreu M (2011) Remanescentes das Comunidaddes dos Quilombos”: memória do cativeiro, patrimônio cultural e direito á reparação. Iberoamericana (Madrid)42: 147–160 Mattos H, Abeu M, Guran M (Org) (2014) Inventário dos lugares de memória do tráfico atlântico de escravos e da história dos africanos escravizados no Brasil/Inventoryof Sites ofMemoryoftheAtlanticSlave Trade andtheHistoryofEnslavedAfricans in Brazil. Niterói: PPGH-UFF. http://www. labhoi.uff.br/repair/ppp/pdf/Inventario_dos_Lugares_de_Memoria_do_Trafico_Atlantico_de_ Escravos_e_da_Historia_dos_Africanos_Escravisazados_no_Brasil.pdf. Accessed 06 Apr 2020 Mattos H, Scott, D (2014) Faperj/Columbia Global Center, through the project pasts presents: slavery and reparation in public policies of education in Brazil, coordinated by Hebe Mattos (LABHOI/ UFF) and David Scott (Columbia University); FAPERJ Nº 35/2014-Program “In Support of the Dissemination and Popularization of Science and Technology in the State of Rio de Janeiro 2014,” coordinated by Keila Grinberg (NUMEM/UNIRIO).http://passadospresentes. com.br/site/Site/index.php/principal/index?ling=br Mattos H (2013) Diáspora Negra e Lugares de Memória: a história oculta das propriedades voltadas para o tráfico clandestino de escravos no brasil imperial. Niterói, EDUFF Pereira JC (2007) À Flor da Pele: o cemitério dos pretos novos no Rio de Janeiro. Garamond/IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro Price R (2020) The miracle of creolization: a retrospective. NWIG: New West Indian Guide/Nieuwe West-IndischeGids 75(1/2):35–64. JSTOR (2001) www.jstor.org/stable/41850094. Accessed 06 Apr 2020
e o reconhecimento de direitos constitucionais. O caso das terras de quilombo no Estado do Rio de Janeiro.Rio de Janeiro: e-papers, 2012, pp. 23–67.
Legislation and Ethnography for the Preservation of World Heritage Sites
Control of Movable Property Circulation and Network Performance: Perspectives for the Supervision of Cultural Heritage Virgynia Corradi Lopes da Silva and Adriana Sanajotti Nakamuta
Abstract With the purpose of presenting some perspectives of network activity within the theme of cultural heritage supervision, the article “Control of movable property circulation and network performance: perspectives for the supervision of cultural heritage” analyzes the horizontality of the control activities of the circulation of movable cultural heritage, observing the performance of the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), federal agency for the preservation of cultural heritage in Brazil. To what extent could the premises of acting in a network contribute to rethinking the inspection of cultural heritage? The positive effects of coordinated intersectoral activities offer some possibilities for the supervision of cultural heritage. Keywords Movable cultural property · Circulation control · Networking
This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Virgynia Corradi Lopes da Silva—Master in Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Heritage School - Lúcio Costa Center/IPHAN. Adriana Sanajotti Nakamuta—PhD in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Professor of the Professional Masters in Heritage at the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute and of the Faculty of São Bento do Rio de Janeiro. Supervisor of this work. V. C. L. da Silva (B) Preservation of Cultural Heritage, Heritage School—Lúcio Costa Center/IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] A. S. Nakamuta Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_21
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The thematic axis “Legislation and inspection of heritage preservation at the national and international level” immediately referred us to the following question: how does the inspection act in the service of preserving elements that were endowed with the ability to refer to the cultural past of a community. Fortunately, it is possible to point out in this introduction at least one possible answer. Beforehand, it is necessary to highlight that a cultural heritage is not something that exists by itself, much less a cultural heritage recognized through municipal, state, national, global institutional policies. As we see in Carsalade (2015), in this sense, the cultural asset that is legally protected achieves the status of heritage (p. 20). In Brazil, legal protection can occur in two different ways: through an administrative act (listing), or by virtue of legislation (which does not require an administrative act). Two aspects should be pointed out: (1) both forms of legal protection occur from cultural selection operations - highlighting, among cultural assets, those with symbolic values more representative of the idea of collectivity, thus being desirable to be preserved; (2) both protections are based on the power of the State’s administrative police, which, according to Di Pietro (2017), is the “faculty that the State has to limit, condition the exercise of individual rights, freedom, property, for example, with the objective of establishing collective well-being, of public interest ”(p. 158). Simplifying, inspection would be the administrative-operational name for the execution of the State’s administrative police1 power, of its capacity to restrict. Through preventive measures (licensing, authorization) and coercive measures (administrative sanctions), inspection subsidizes the preservation of cultural heritage by allowing the State itself to conduct the utilitarian dimensions of protected cultural assets by technical means, so that their physical and symbolic integrity for a community can be guaranteed. This would be a possible answer to the question initially proposed. However, it is necessary to emphasize that this would be a very brief conceptualization of the activities that essentially involve the overlapping of collective rights over individual rights, based on guidelines as subjective as those that characterize the process of applying values for the patrimonialization of cultural goods. Many nuances permeate inspection activities under a public policy of culture, not least because in such activities, the less they are rethought, the more they can be formed in the very overlap of the authoritarian interface of the State in the private life of each individual without reaching any collective objective. With this conception in mind, we directed the research toward the relationship between collective interests and inspection, with the objective of contributing as much as possible to rethinking the activities that involve the power of administrative police within the scope of public cultural heritage policies. 1 There are two types of police power: the judicial police, which acts in a repressive manner (after an
irregular event), and whose execution is the responsibility of the Federal, Civil and Military Police, and affects people; and the administrative police, which acts in a preventive manner (to prevent an irregular event from occurring), and whose enforcement is the responsibility of the police forces and administrative bodies of an inspection nature, and focuses on assets, rights and activities (Monjardim 2014, online).
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Given the wide spectrum of activities that configure the exercise of the inspection of cultural heritage, we seek to establish as a cutout those measures dedicated to the control of the circulation of movable heritage‚ that are carried out in Brazil by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN). To justify these choices, we point out that the performance of IPHAN is relevant because it is the body that conducts the federal heritage policy, and also because it is the main organizer for the preservation of world heritage sites located in Brazil. The control of the circulation of movable cultural heritage, in spite of apparently offering an unusual perspective of the inspection of cultural heritage—if we consider the predominance of this theme focused on real estate and historical complexes–, allows us to observe, in the legal and administrative structure of its functioning, a horizon that points to the importance of the maturation of an inter-sectorial network action.2 According to Inojosa (2001), intersectorality would be “the articulation of knowledge and experiences with a view to planning, for the execution and evaluation of policies, programs and projects, with the objective of achieving synergistic results in complex situations” (p. 105). Associated with the concept of transdisciplinarity, the network, according to Olivieri (2003), is about “organizational systems capable of bringing together individuals and institutions, in a democratic and participatory way, regarding related causes”‚ from horizontally constituted and flexible structures (p. 1). Each actor involved in the dynamics of working in a network plays its role according to collective objectives; intersectoriality adds to this notion the involvement of other organizational contexts, with the sum of different perspectives on the same work object. We will seek to analyze in our section the elements shared between the intersectoral activities of circulation control and the performance in networks, seeking to highlight the definitive characteristics for the dynamics of collective work. We believe that the listing of these elements can create focal points for inspection strategies compatible with the collective interest.
1 Control of the Circulation of Movable Heritage: Horizontality According to Merryman (1986), there are two different ways of thinking about cultural property: “cultural nationalism” and “cultural internationalism.” In general, cultural nationalism would be the model of thought that restricts certain cultural properties to the public domain, ultimately legitimizing export controls and repatriation demands. In internationalist thinking, cultural properties would be endowed with universal character, without definitive links with the territoriality of countries, which would legitimize, for example, the international displacement of certain properties that are in unfavorable conditions of conservation to places where they could have better infrastructure access. (p. 831). 2 It should be noted that intersectorality is part of the dynamics of collective work within and outside
a networked structure.
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We can consider that, although the Brazilian federal heritage policies are not the result of an integral alignment with nationalism or internationalism with regard to the amplitude of the values of cultural properties—that is, it gives space for national valorization-, as much as the valorization national, in specific relation to the legal dominance regime of movable heritage, federal patrimonialization is related to a considerable extent to cultural nationalism. The legal protection of these heritages gives a set of powers to IPHAN that allows it to monitor and regulate the circulation in and outside of Brazil through mechanisms for monitoring trade and internal circulation, and measures that prevent definitive export and regulate temporary exits abroad for cultural exchange purposes.
Images taken from the scanned newspapers “O Fluminense” (Rio de Janeiro, 29 December 1999 issue. General, p. 10) and “Ultima Hora” (Rio de Janeiro, 27 September 1983 issue, column “Ponto de Vista”, by Cícero Sandroni).Each image refers to a notable episode related to circulation control. The news on the left refers to the occasion that occurred in 1999, when Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then President of Brazil, inadvertently presented Pope João Paulo II with a image of Santana Mestra dated from the eighteenth century, which, however, was protected by pursuant to Law No. 4,845/1965 (Law of the Monarchical Period). This law prevents the definitive exportation of goods and crafts produced or incorporated into Brazil until the end of the year 1889. The image on the right refers to the occasion that occurred in 1983, when the Brazilian Tourism Company (EMBRATUR) mobilized efforts to take a set of works by Antônio Francisco Lisboa, Aleijadinho, located in the Bom Jesus de Matosinhos Shrine, in Congonhas/MG, for an exhibition at the headquarters of the United Nations in New York/USA. The initiative did not receive support from the population of Congonhas, whose mobilization restrained EMBRATUR’s initiatives to move the original copies to the exhibition abroad.
It is worth mentioning that, although the protection of the State does not obstruct the lawful trade of cultural heritage, the control of circulation prevents the transfer of these heritages to a foreign domain—which, in practice, reduces the possibilities
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of negotiation in the international market. The restriction of exports and the mechanisms that demand the return of these heritages when in temporary exit regimes circumscribe them to the territoriality of the country. It is possible to consider, therefore, that it is a control system that arises from an essentially political desire to affirm national sovereignty. From the perspective of maintaining the sovereignty of the Brazilian national state, it is possible to think of the control of the circulation of movable heritage as a complex system of surveillance and regulation that in the vast majority of situations does not mobilize only IPHAN, but a whole network of actors within and even outside the country, such as the Brazilian Institute of Museums (IBRAM), the Secretariat of the Federal Revenue of Brazil, the Federal Police, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the International Council of Museums (ICOM), among many other organizations, entities, organized societies and of private initiative, at all levels of power, and that are involved in controlling the circulation of cultural properties—whether to combat and prevent illicit trafficking, or to encourage licit circulation for cultural or commercial purposes. Operationally, the effectiveness of the inspection of the activities aimed at controlling the circulation of cultural properties depends predominantly on the execution of intersectoral processes, which activate a variety of actors, each one with their own particular contexts and structures to act. Specifying each actor and role within this network would be a task that would surpass the objectives proposed by this article but we will seek to analyze the elements in IPHAN’s performance that can serve as a focal point to improve the structures of its network related to the control of the circulation of cultural movable heritage.
2 IPHAN Amid the Network for Controlling the Circulation of Movable Heritage It is possible to consider that IPHAN, as a federal cultural heritage body, has a strategic, tactical operational, legal and recommendatory function within the control network for the circulation of movable heritage. The institute acts in the control of the licit and illicit circulation, inspecting the trade of archaeological properties, works of art and antiques (where it also acts as an accessory regulatory entity for the purpose of preventing money laundering crimes); authorizes the temporary export of movable heritage registered and protected by law; and licenses the shipment of archaeological materials abroad, for research purposes. In cooperation with other government entities (Special Secretariat of Culture, Ministry of Justice, Secretariat of the Federal Revenue, Federal Police, among others), it contributes as a consultant in processes of claiming cultural properties illegally displaced from their countries of origin and acts in the prevention and fight against trafficking, cooperating with investigations, training, sensitizing actors, and seeking to expand channels of dialogue. It also contributes with practical instruments,
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such as the Database of Wanted Cultural Properties—BCP; the Register of Art and Antiques Traders—CNART; and, recently, along with the Secretariat of the Federal Revenue, it offers a free online consultation service on legal restrictions on the export of cultural properties. In an attempt to further elucidate Iphan’s role in controlling the circulation of legally protected movable heritage, we will briefly present the legal frameworks that structure the institute’s activities and the administrative procedures that are active. Then, we will analyze the activities from the perspective of network performance, in order to highlight the elements shared between control measures and intersectoral activities. Decree-Law No. 25/1937 In 1937, Decree-Law No. 25 was issued, which institutes the “tombamento”–legal instrument that lists and protects cultural properties of archaeological or ethnological, bibliographic or artistic value and whose preservation is of collective interest. In addition to preventing the destruction or mutilation of listed cultural properties, the Decree-Law also created a series of measures aimed at controlling the circulation of movable properties, shaping the exercise of administrative police power as shown in the table below. Attributions of Decree-Law No. 25/37 and Their Types of Control and Administrative Police Power Article and paragraph
Content
Circulation control type
Associated police power
13
The definitive listing of private property will be, on the initiative of the competent body of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, transcribed for the due effects in a book in charge of the real estate registry officers and registered next to the domain transcript
N/A
N/A
13, § 1º
In the case of transfer of Indirect (monitoring) ownership of the properties referred to in this article, the purchaser must, within a period of 30 days, under penalty of a fine of ten percent on the respective amount, make it appear in the registry, even if it is a matter of judicial transmission or cause of death
Coercive
(continued)
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(continued) Article and paragraph
Content
Circulation control type
13, § 2º
In the event of displacement Indirect (monitoring) of such properties, the owner must, within the same period and under penalty of the same fine [10% of the value of the property], register them in the register of the place for which they have been displaced
Coercive
13, § 3º
The transfer must be communicated by the acquirer, and the transfer by the owner, to the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, within the same period and under the same penalty.
Indirect (monitoring)
Coercive
14
The listed property will not be able to leave the country, except for a short term, without domain transfer and for the purpose of cultural exchange, in the opinion of the Advisory Council of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service
Direct (interruption/interposition)
Preventive (authorization)
15
If attempted, except in the Direct case foreseen in the previous (interruption) article, the export, outside the country of the listed property will be kept by the Union or by the State in which it is found
Coercive
15, § 1º
Once the owner’s liability N/A has been determined, a fine of five per cent of the value of the thing will be imposed, which will remain hijacked as a guarantee of payment, until this is done
Coercive
15, § 2º
In the event of a repeated offense, the fine will be raised to double
Coercive
N/A
Associated police power
(continued)
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(continued) Article and paragraph
Content
Circulation control type
16
In the event of the loss or Indirect (monitoring) theft of any object that has been listed, the respective owner must inform the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, within a period of 5 days, under penalty of a fine of ten percent on the value of the thing
Coercive
26
Traders of antiques, works N/A of art of any kind, manuscripts and old or rare books are required to have a special registration with the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, and they must also present every six months a complete list of historical and artistic objects they possess
N/A
27
Whenever auction agents have to sell objects of a nature identical to those mentioned in the previous article, they must submit the respective list to the competent body of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, under penalty of being subject to a fine of five percent on the amount of the objects sold
Coercive
Indirect (monitoring)
Associated police power
(continued)
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(continued) Article and paragraph
Content
Circulation control type
Associated police power
28
No object of an identical Direct nature to that referred to (interruption/ in article 26 of this law interposition) may be put up for sale by merchants or auction agents, without having previously been authenticated by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, or by an expert in whom it praises, under penalty of a fine of five percent on the value assigned to the object
Coercive
28, § único
The aforementioned object N/A will be authenticated by paying an expert fee of five percent on the value of the thing, if it is less than or equivalent to one conto de réis,(a former monetary unit of Brazil) and an additional five thousand réis per conto de réis or fraction that exceeds
N/A
Subtitle: N/A = Not applicable Table by Virgynia Corradi, based on (Brasil 1937)
It should be noted that although the circulation control outlined in the legal commands of the Decree-Law was extensive, it could only be effective from the listing of movable cultural properties. Even so, even with the listing of some collections, the control of the circulation of movable heritage started to be formally exercised through IPHAN’s authoritative competence for temporary exits (according to article 14) only from the 1970s.3 In 1985, the Cultural Heritage Consultative Council authorized a resolution determining the retroactive registration of the “accessories” (movable property, or integrated to the architecture) that comprised the architecture and collections of the listed religious buildings (churches). Certainly, the religious movable properties that decorate the temples fit, in an exemplary way, the hypothesis of intellectual accession. There is no way to conceive a religious temple without the objects of its services - in these cases, the listing would not be of the “Church 3 The
minutes of the 58th meeting of the Cultural Heritage Advisory Council, held in 1972, on an extraordinary basis, are possibly the first deliberative meeting on the exit of listed cultural assets. It is worth highlighting the relevance of these minutes when considering the role of the Council as an official decision-making body regarding requests for temporary withdrawal of cultural properties.
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as such”, but the building of such a number. When a church is listed and not the building, the legal meaning of this act extends not only to the property, but also to all movable objects that “by destination” access it intellectually. It should also be added that, from the point of view of the administrative act, it is relevant that the designation of the property as “church” and not as “building” reveals the objective of the administrator’s act of will when it is listed, as specification of the cultural asset to be protected. (Castro 2009, pp. 81–82).
Although it is not directly dedicated to the issue of control of circulation, the change in the listing of religious collections—including the generation of retroactive effects—has had significant consequences for the exercise of inspection, since, as the example of the protections by force of law—as we will elaborate further on— an immediate effect of administrative police power was created on a set of assets (religious collections) of which there was not yet enough technical specification— such as material type, execution technique, authorship, location, among other basic information to support inspection activities. Inventory initiatives, such as the National Inventory of Movable and Integrated Properties (INBMI), during the 1980s, emerged as a way to fill the knowledge gap about the existing properties in the churches listed as cultural heritage at the federal level. Decree-Law No. 25/37 has the authoritative competence regarding temporary export of movable heritage. It is the only direct control of circulation, which is formally regulated by IPHAN through Ordinance No. 262/1992; due to its direct relevance for the control of circulation, this ordinance will be presented separately below. The inspection of trade of works of art and antiques also has a procedure regulated by the following normative instruments: Normative Instruction No. 1/2007, which provides for the special registration of traders of antiques, works of art of any nature, manuscripts and old or rare books and makes other arrangements; Ordinance No. 80/2017, which provides for procedures for investigating administrative infractions committed by traders and auctioneers of antiques and works of art of any nature in breach of Law No. 9,613/1998 and Decree-Law No. 25/37, also indicating the imposition of sanctions, the means of defense, the appeals system and the way of collecting debts resulting from violations; and Ordinance No. 114/2017, which amends Ordinance No. 396, of September 15, 2016, which provides for the procedures to be followed by individuals or legal entities that sell antiques and/or works of art of any nature, in the form of Law No. 9,613, of March 3, 1998. It is important to note that in 2016, IPHAN was identified by the Financial Activities Control Council (COAF) as a regulatory and supervisory4 entity in the trade of art and antiques, for the purpose of preventing crimes of money laundering and terrorist financing, in accordance with the definitions of Law No. 9,613/1998, which came to complement the powers provided for in Decree-Law No. 25/1937. Law No. 3,924/1961 4 It acts as an “regulatory and supervisory institution in an ancillary manner, as it defines the warning
signs, applies sanctions in case of omission and supervises the realization of the registration by traders and auctioneers in the sector. However, this does not make IPHAN the regulator for the entire art market. Nor does the Institute manifest itself as to the economic value of goods in commerce— which is a function of the market—nor does it investigate activities considered suspicious, which is the responsibility of the criminal prosecution bodies and entities ” (IPHAN 2016, online).
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In 1961, Law No. 3,924 was enacted with regard to archaeological and prehistoric monuments. In its fifth chapter, entitled “From the shipment, abroad, of objects of archaeological or prehistoric, historical, numismatic or artistic interest,” the referred legislation establishes that: Article 20. No object that presents archaeological or prehistoric, numismatic or artistic interest may be transferred abroad without an express license from the Directorate of National Historical and Artistic Heritage, contained in a release “guide” in which the objects to be transferred. Article 21. Failure to comply with the prescription of the previous article will imply the summary apprehension of the object to be transferred, without prejudice to the other legal arrangements to which the person responsible is subject. Single paragraph. The object seized, the reason for this article, will be delivered to the Directorate of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (Brasil 1961).
In order to contribute to the measures taken in compliance with the provisions of the legislation, IPHAN’s Ordinance No. 197, created in 2016, provides for procedures for requesting the shipment of archaeological material for analysis abroad. There is no explicit mention of the temporality of exits, so definitive export is not prohibited; however, IPHAN must authorize international movement involving properties protected by this legislation. Law No. 4,845/1965 In 1965, Law No. 4,845, known as the “Law of the Monarchical Period,” was enacted, prohibiting the export of cultural properties produced or incorporated into Brazil until the end of 1889, unless temporarily, for the purposes of cultural exchange and at the discretion of the competent authority—in this case, the Advisory Council for Cultural Heritage, a socio-state interface linked to IPHAN. This is a different type of protection, known as ex vi legis, that is, under the law itself.5 According to Castro (2009), protection by virtue of the law is distinguished from tombamento because it occurs immediately, dispensing the administrative act, since its effects derive from the law’s validity (p. 20). In other words, the properties under the Law of the Monarchical Period protection do not go through any previous administrative activity that prevents them from leaving the country, under the terms of the legislation6 ; all of these properties, just because they fall under that legislation, are already automatically prevented. IPHAN’s activity, in this case, is restricted to verifying the incidence of protection based on the (provoked) verification of each object, since, due to the very nature of 5 As
well as the protection provided by Law No. 3,924/1961. is interesting to note that although the Law of the Monarchical Period contributes to prevent the dissociation of cultural assets in the country, it adds nothing to the physical conservation of the objects it protects; in this sense, only the tipping has legal conservation effects, based on the provisions of article 17, which establishes that: the things listed cannot, under any circumstances, be destroyed, demolished or mutilated, nor, without special authorization from the National Historical and Artistic Heritage, to be repaired, painted or restored, under penalty of a fine of fifty percent of the damage caused.
6 It
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protection, prior technical recognition of each property covered by the Law of Monarchical period is operationally unfeasible. The administrative procedure of IPHAN corresponding to the authorization for temporary export delegated by the Law of the Monarchical Period is also regulated by Ordinance No. 262/1992. International agreements In 1970, the control of the international circulation of cultural properties took on global proportions to combat illicit trafficking: the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, adopted by the UNESCO’s Member States. It reinforced in Brazil the already existing mechanisms to control circulation, finding in them the necessary bottlenecks to contribute to the efforts to mitigate international illicit trafficking. The aforementioned convention was promulgated by Brazil in 1973, through Decree No. 72,312, and IPHAN acts among other sectors to implement the planned measures. In 1995, the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) approved the Convention on stolen or illegally exported cultural properties. Complementing the 1970 UNESCO Convention, the UNIDROIT Convention establishes, within the scope of private law, the means of legally returning cultural properties illegally removed from their places of origin. It was promulgated by Brazil through Decree No. 3,166, on September 14, 1999, and, although it does not generate competencies for IPHAN, the Cultural Heritage Advisory Council acts as a consultant in cases of requests for the return of cultural properties to their countries of origin. 7 Ordinance No. 262/92 In 1992, the then Brazilian Institute of Cultural Heritage (IBPC), issued Ordinance No. 262, which regulates the authorization procedure for the temporary exportation of properties listed by Decree-Law No. 25/1937 and those protected by law of the Monarchical Period. This ordinance establishes, in addition to the necessary documentation for the processing of the procedure, the periods of permanence of the properties abroad—6 months (for departures with a single destination) and 2 years for departure involving roaming outside the country—in addition to the administrative sanctions for irregular cases. Furthermore, it defines the Cultural Heritage Advisory Council as the official decision-making body for requests. In 2009, IBRAM8 became
7 Following
the request of Paraguay to the repatriation of the cannon El Cristiano, which had been brought by the Brazilian army as a war trophy, after the taking of the Fortress of Humaitá during the Paraguayan War, an episode that was considered decisive for the outcome of the conflict. At the 65th meeting of the Cultural Heritage Advisory Council, the request for repatriation was discussed by the councilors, in order to support the official positioning of the institute and to contribute to the final decision of the Brazilian government. The cannon was never repatriated, and was on display at the National Historical Museum. No information was found on the state of conservation of the cannon after the fire that destroyed the museum in September 2018. 8 In 2019, the Brazilian Institute of Museums (IBRAM), issued Normative Resolution No. 2, which regulates the Declaration of Public Interest (DIP) of musealized or susceptible to cultural heritage. As with the listing the DIP generates protection effects for musealized or “musealizable” properties after an administrative act by IBRAM. It establishes legal effects of conservation, the right of first refusal of IBRAM, and the authoritative competence of this institute for the temporary withdrawal of assets that have been declared to be of public interest.
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legally involved in the process, in accordance with Law No. 11,906, which determines in Article 4, item XII, the competence of IBRAM to comment on requirements or requests for the movement of musealized properties through the Brazil’s territory or abroad. As a large part of the musealized cultural properties are listed as heritage (through “tombamento”, or protected by force of the law), operationally, IBRAM’s pronouncement powers and IPHAN’s authorization overlapped.
3 Consultation Service on the Existence of Legal Restrictions on the Exit of Cultural Properties In 2016, in order to overcome the difficulty of proceeding with the recognition of cultural properties legally protected on occasions of customs inspection, IPHAN issued Ordinance No. 44, which establishes the administrative procedure regarding the manifestation of the institute on the existence of legal restrictions for the cultural properties leaving the country. Although called “Registration for the Exit of Cultural Properties—DSBC,” the procedure did not consist of authorization or even pronouncement by IPHAN on the movement itself, but rather a free consultation service on the incidence or not of legal restriction for movements abroad, based on the analysis of technical information about each object. The DSBC was conducted by IPHAN to assist the inspection of the Secretariat of the Federal Revenue in relation to those properties that fell within the uncertain identification zone, such as those protected by law, or that were retroactively listed and not identified, and/or that may have been lost or stolen from their places of origin.9 Seeking to speed up the consultation processes and also to relieve some oversight of the large volume of requests,10 in 2017 five categories of exemption from consultation with IPHAN were created with the Secretariat of the Federal Revenue, that is, categories of properties that certainly did not have any legal restriction on leaving the country. In 2019, an online consultation service became available, in which the electronic system itself generates an automatic response whether or not there is a restriction on the output of the property, based on the crossing of request data and the categories of dismissal.
9 In 2017, five categories of exemption from consultation with IPHAN were created with the Federal
Revenue Service; that is, categories of properties that certainly did not have any legal restriction on leaving the country. In 2019, an online consultation system became available, in which the system itself generates an automatic response whether or not there is a restriction on the exit of the property. 10 According to a survey carried out by the São Paulo superintendence, from January 2016 to June 2017, of a total of 6,197 DSBC processes, only three presented some legal restriction, configuring the positive declaration of restriction of three objects in one total of 81,032 objects consulted.
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4 Database of Wanted Cultural Properties—BCP The Database of Wanted Properties—BCP—is an information system that stores technical information (cataloging sheets or images) of cultural properties sought in order to assist investigative activities. The BCP is the result of the Campaign Against Illicit Traffic of Cultural Properties jointly developed by Iphan, the Federal Police (in collaboration with Interpol) and the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and was implemented in 1997. Control of the circulation of movable properties: elements for a network operation: (Inojosa 2001, 103), explains that: “we understand that, among its possible meanings, the word “complexity” refers to what is “woven together.” From what has been reported so far, it is possible to understand the complexity of the task of monitoring and controlling the circulation of legally protected cultural properties. The horizontality of the actions, including the involvement of other institutional agents, increasingly points to the improvement of the networked organizational structure. In this topic, we will seek to investigate the determining elements for the effective control of circulation mechanisms, which are legally under the responsibility of Iphan, but also mobilize channels of action outside the institute. They would be: technical specification on the object of work; creation and publication of performance criteria; and sharing of experiences and knowledge accumulated between different agents involved.
5 Technical Specification on the Object of Work The technical specification of the objects of work is fundamental not only in the inspection activities but also for their planning and execution. Without basic information about what each cultural property is and its context, inspection activities often become inoperable, especially when referring to intersectoral actions. Reconsidering the existence of bottlenecks for the technical specifications of movable properties (retroactive listing of religious collections; protection by force of law), it is understandable that the effectiveness of intersectoral action to control the circulation of cultural properties depends fundamentally on overcoming information gaps with respect to these objects of work. Even so, some shared actions can contribute to Iphan’s inspection actions. As an example, we can mention the situation that occurred in 2018, when an image of Santo Onofre was returned anonymously to the Superintendence of IPHAN in São Paulo, along with a note containing the words “Oliveira M.G.”. After searching the databases of IPHAN, IBRAM, and INTERPOL, information about the image was only found in the database of missing sacred pieces from the Public Prosecutor’s Office for the Defense of the Cultural and Tourist Heritage of Minas Gerais, from the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais (CPPC/MPMG). The database is available online, where it is possible to find information such as the
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source of the missing objects, and images. As Kushnir (2009) points out, “knowing what exists makes it possible to verify a disappearance, a theft. When admitting a disappearance, they need the information from the piece, to find it, or prove their possession, if they find it” (p. 11). With the information found in the CPPC/MPMG database, it was possible to confirm the city of Oliveira as the place where the piece came from; besides finding the information that the same religious image had been stolen from the Museum of Sacred Art Dom José Medeiros de Leite, in 1994.
Images taken from Iphan’s web pages (left) and from the CPPC/MPMG database of missing religious objects
The said image is protected at the federal level because it is contemplated by the Law of the Monarchical Period; in addition, IPHAN shares responsibilities for the fulfillment of measures to combat and prevent illicit trafficking. However, with the impossibility of prior identification of cultural properties protected by law, activities to prevent the risks of illicit trade and trafficking are not operational. On the other hand, the knowledge acquired and published by the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais was essential for the image to be returned to the city of Oliveira.
6 Creation and Publication of Performance Criteria The adoption and publication of performance criteria can simplify referrals, especially in view of the interoperable profile of the integrated network. And the more agreed between the parties involved, the greater the chances of guaranteeing the sustainability of the application of the performance criteria. We will see in the following example an attempt to parameterize decisions for certain requests for temporary exit of protected properties. In 2004, a request was sent to IPHAN to authorize the temporary removal of some sacred pieces—including pieces by Antônio Francisco Lisboa, Aleijadinho—to participate in an exhibition entitled “Fé, Engenho e Arte -Aleijadinho, Mestre do Barroco no Brasil,” which would be held at the Vatican. In the reports of the 44th Cultural Heritage Advisory Council meeting, the
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debate that arose during the deliberation of the decision11 is recorded; in the end, the request was denied by a majority of 14 votes out of 15. The rapporteur’s opinion indicated “protocol failures” in the request, in relation to what was established by Ordinance No. 262/1992; incompatibility of terms, absence of information and insurance policies are some of the reasons raised to justify the negative (IPHAN 2004, p. 39–40). But in addition, the request in question rekindled a discussion in the Advisory Council on the creation of a category of “immovable” properties, and the opportunity was taken to resubmit the proposal to apply three basic criteria for the definitive exclusion of certain properties from loan applications, mainly to a destiny abroad. They would be as follows: Criterion 1—properties integrated with architecture; Criterion 2—sets considered to be of exceptional worldwide value; and Criterion 3—associated with practices of a devotional nature, or cultural references of local or regional populations.12 In addition, there was a proposal to include, in the inventory sheets, a space to indicate the “merit” of the properties: those who obtained a maximum rate would automatically be considered immovable. Although it is possible to problematize the increase in state intervention in the movement of movable cultural properties, the creation of internal criteria to give a little more objectivity to inspection decisionmaking is, to a certain extent, relevant, especially in the face of deliberative processes that deal with collective symbolic representation, risks involved in the international transit of cultural properties, and conveniences in temporary borrowing of cultural properties, amid the particularization of each request. Although they have been developed, the criteria that classify certain properties as immovable have not been officially adopted within Iphan itself, which leads us to another important element: publication. An example of the importance of publishing criteria is a situation that occurred in 2009, involving another request to authorize the departure of a set of paintings on canvas belonging to the protected collection of the São Paulo Museum of Art Assis Chateaubriand (MASP) to participate in an exhibition at the MAPFRE Foundation, in Madrid/Spain. This request was rejected by the rapporteur of the Advisory Council, counselor Myriam Andrade Ribeiro de Oliveira, on the eve of the intended deadline for the temporary exit of the works. As reported by Jurema de Souza Machado, in the reports of the 61st meeting of the Cultural Heritage Advisory Council, regarding the request in particular: I was completely astonished by Counselor Myriam Ribeiro’s report. The process went through, I think that within the deadlines, it was not out of time. Numerous demands were made: insurance, insurance policy, invoice showing the insurance payment, and then, at the end, comes an opinion of the inadequacy of such a large volume leaving the country, after four, five months asking for documents with the assumption that there would be a possibility of exit. So I think that this assumption must precede such a negotiation, because it 11 It is important to highlight that the authoritative competence for temporary departures has the Cultural Heritage Advisory Council as its official decision-making body. 12 Criteria taken from the minutes of the 44th meeting of the Cultural Heritage Advisory Council, held in 2004. Available at: http://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/atas/2004__03__44a_reunio_ordinria__ 30_de_setembro.pdf, accessed on December 17, 2019.
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takes people to exhaustion, creates expectations of the exit and, in the end, claims a criterion of a conceptual nature. You must not leave because there are many, you must not leave because they have already been exposed. So, it is a complete reversal of the procedure, which I consider a failure of the IPHAN standard. The rule only talks about administrative measures, it does not talk about concept, it does not talk about convenience, public interest, anything (IPHAN 2009, p. 54).
The publicity of the criteria is as relevant as its creation; but, in the case presented, we can observe that, unless there is an agreement (including with the involvement of interested parties) and transparency in the parameterization efforts, the exercise of administrative police power comes even closer to the prescription.
7 Sharing Accumulated Experiences and Knowledge Between Different Agents Involved As we can see in the case of Santo Onofre restitution, the sharing of information can be definitive for the successful completion of the actions. Shared knowledge, among other effects, contributes to the development of integrated strategies, and to the interoperability of actions. Due to the sharing of activities related to the control of circulation, IPHAN sought technical cooperation with other entities for training creating practical tools that could assist in the control of the circulation of cultural properties. Among some examples, we can mention the work with Interpol and the International Council of Museums (Icom) in the campaign to mitigate the illicit trafficking in cultural properties, which contributed to the implementation of the Database of Missing Cultural properties (BCP), in 1997; the Interinstitutional Working Group with the Federal Revenue of Brazil, which enabled the creation of categories of cultural properties that do not require consultation with IPHAN about legal restrictions for leaving the country; and the Interinstitutional Working Group with IBRAM, which dedicated itself to the joint revision of Ordinance No. 262/92, to the procedures between the two institutions.
8 Final Considerations When observing the horizontality of the actions that correspond to the fulfillment of the control duties of the circulation of cultural properties, we understand how these activities depend on a maturation of the networked organizational structure. As Amaral (2004) demonstrates, it is possible that the network structure, in addition to operationally enabling the execution of complex tasks, has also the function of being a strategic space for rethinking certain models of authority and power relations (p. 2). The network would undoubtedly contribute to a broader understanding of the complexities of controlling the circulation of cultural properties; could it also contribute to broaden the understanding of the collective interest on the part
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of inspection activities in general? According to Inojosa (2001), overcoming intersectoral cloisters would not only contribute to transversal knowledge, but also to an understanding of the diversity of perceptions that make up the complexity of a given discipline (p. 103). That said, we consider that the complexity of the control of circulation is for your network as well as the complexity of the collective interest would be for the exercise of the State’s own administrative police power. And the complexities, in turn, become more understandable when viewed from different perspectives, however, articulated. For this reason, we believe that enforcement supported by a mature network structure, not only in its operations but also in its social commitments, can broaden the understanding of the complexities that involve the exercise of administrative police power in the service of the preservation of cultural heritage, and thus, in a second moment, contribute to activities more in tune with their social impacts.
References Amaral V (2004) Desafios do trabalho em rede. http://www.aedmoodle.ufpa.br/pluginfile.php/209 772/mod_resource/content/1/Vivianne%20Amaral%20-%20Redes%20Desafios%20da%20R EBEA.pdf. Accessed 20 Dec 2019 Carsalade FB (2015) Dicionário IPHAN de Patrimônio Cultural, v. 1 Castro SR de (2009) O Estado na preservação de bens culturais: o tombamento. IPHAN Di Pietro MSZ (2017) Direito Administrativo. 30ª Edição. São Paulo: Editora Forense Inojosa RM (2001) Sinergia em políticas e serviços públicos: desenvolvimento social com intersetorialidade. Cadernos Fundap 22:102–110 Kushnir B (2009) Da manchete à notinha de canto: os furtos do patrimônio público, a privatização dos acervos do cidadão. Revista Museologia e Patrimônio, vol. 2, n°1. Rio de Janeiro Merryman JH (1986) Two ways of thinking about cultural property. Am J Int Law 80(4):831–853 Oliveri (2003) A importância histórico-social das Redes. Rede de Informações para o Terceiro Setor
Minuts IPHAN (2004) Ata da 44ª Reunião do Conselho Consultivo do Patrimônio Cultural. Rio de Janeiro. http://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/atas/2004__03__44a_reunio_ordinria__30_de_set embro.pdf. Accessed 20 Dec 2019 IPHAN (2009) Ata da 61ª Reunião do Conselho Consultivo do Patrimônio Cultural. Brasília. http://portal.iphan.gov.br/uploads/atas/2009__02__61a_reunio_ordinria__15_de_outubro.pdf. Accessed 30 Jan 2020
Legislation Brasil (1961) República Federativa do. Lei nº 3.924, de 26 de julho de 1961. Dispõe sobre os monumentos arqueológicos e pré-históricos
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Brasil (1937) Decreto-lei nº 25, de 30 de novembro de 1937. Organiza a proteção do patrimônio histórico e artístico nacional Brasil (2009) Lei n° 11.906, de 20 de janeiro de 2009. Cria o Instituto Brasileiro de Museus IPHAN (1992) Portaria nº 262, de 14 de agosto de 1992. Veda a saída do País de obras de arte e outros bens tombados sem a prévia autorização do IBPC
Periodicals Iphan fortalece mecanismos de controle sobre mercado de arte. Iphan, 15 set. 2016. http://portal. iphan.gov.br/noticias/detalhes/3806. Accessed 19 Dec 2019 Monjardim R (2014) Da Administração Pública e do Poder de Polícia. https://rmonjardim.jus brasil.com.br/artigos/189932643/da-administracao-publica-e-do-poder-de-policia. Accessed 20 Dec 2019 Papa terá de devolver Santa. O Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, 29 dez. 1999, Geral, p. 10. http://mem oria.bn.br/docreader/DocReader.aspx?bib=100439_13&pagfis=99613. Accessed 20 Feb 2020 Sandroni C (1983) O Aleijadinho fica. Última Hora, Rio de Janeiro, 27 set. coluna “Ponto de Vista”. http://memoria.bn.br/docreader/DocReader.aspx?bib=386030&pagfis=122974. Accessed 12 Dec 2019
Legislation on the Protection of Cultural Goods: A Compared Study Between Brazil and Italy Caroline dos Reis Lodi
Abstract The aim of this work is to present, in general lines, the history of Brazilian and Italian legislation regarding the protection of cultural goods, comparing the way each norm defines and covers the theme of guardianship, its unfolding in the field of institutions and its advances and setbacks. The choice of Italy as a comparative element is justified by the fact that it is today the country with the largest number of sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, with 55 inscriptions (Brazil has 22 sites), and by the remarkable flow of tourists to the peninsula as a destination, ranking 5th in the world ranking of the World Tourism Organization (Brazil is in 45°). Furthermore, the Italian expertise in the field of restoration, with names such as that of Cesare Brandi and her Central Institute of Restoration (ICR), is recognized internationally. These are just a few examples of how Italy instrumentalises its soft power in order to achieve economic benefits and international insertion. Considering the post-unification period in Italy, the first law of guardianship of monumental heritage in that country dates from 1902. In the case of Brazil, the law regulating the protection of the national historical and artistic heritage was passed on November 30, 1937, during the Getúlio Vargas government. Over the years, we have numerous complements and updates in both legislations. Based on the assumption that the norm is the organizing agent and promoter of the protection and enhancement of cultural goods and activities, and considering the relevance of the European country, as explained above, to the subject in question, it is understood that a comparative study to the Brazilian norm for the cultural heritage sector can contribute to the understanding of different mechanisms of protection, enhancement, and also to the evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of each model. Keywords Cultural goods legislation · Institutions of guardianship · Soft power
This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. C. dos Reis Lodi (B) Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (IPHAN), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_22
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This text aims to expose, in general lines, the history of Brazilian and Italian legislation regarding the protection of cultural assets, comparing the way in which each standard defines and covers the topic of guardianship, its developments in the field of institutions and possible advances and setbacks. The choice of Italy as a comparative element is justified by the fact that today it is the country with the largest number of sites inscribed on the World Heritage List, with 55 inscriptions (Brazil has 22 sites), and because the demand for tourists from the peninsula is notorious as a destination, occupying the 5th place in the world ranking of the World Tourism Organization (Brazil is in 45th). In addition, Italian expertise in the field of restoration, with names like that of Cesare Brandi and his Higher Institute for Conservation and Restoration (ISCR), is internationally recognized. These are just some examples of how Italy uses its soft power to achieve economic benefits and international insertion. Understood as the ability to influence the external political scenario through noncoercive resources (Nye Jr. 2004, pp. 5–9), soft power can be exercised through institutions, public policies and the cultural apparatus. Recently, it has been measured in order to create ranking lists of the countries with the greatest influence. The consulting firm Portland, for example, created the Soft Power 30 ranking, in partnership with the University of Southern California—a reference in Public Diplomacy studies. The first report was prepared in 2015, from the intersection of six objective data (government system, digital infrastructure, global reach of culture, attractiveness of companies, strength of the diplomatic network and level of human capital) with seven subjective data (gastronomy, technology, friendliness of the people, culture, luxury products, foreign policy and habitabilitu). Subjective data were obtained through research aimed at a total audience of 11,000 people in the most representative countries on the international stage. The questions are based on the preference that the international public expresses about a certain aspect of another country, such as cuisine, receptivity to tourists, the desire to visit or study there, the contribution to global culture, among others. All indicators were selected based on the existing literature on soft power. In the last report, organized in 2018, Brazil appears in 29th place and Italy in 12th. Cultural heritage is important in the assessment of soft power since the conservation and promotion of goods of symbolic value can make a given culture relevant to other societies. Such potential, managed in an efficient manner, contributes to the country’s image, as well as providing political influence and attraction of material resources through tourism. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s Creative Economy Report, Cultural heritage comprises the vestiges of our society. Heritage sites are relics of ancient civilizations, over the years considered as cultural heritage of mankind and the heritage of nations. In addition to their cultural and historic value, such unique endowments contribute to reinforcing our identities and broadening our education. Heritage sites are the main attractions in cultural tourism all over the world. For some countries, these sites are major sources of revenue (UNCTAD 2008, p. 114)
In terms of legislation, considering the post-Italian Unification period, the first monumental heritage protection law in that country dates back to 1902. Passing
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through Mussolini and the formation of the Republic, we have numerous complements and updates in the legislation, culminating in the Code of Cultural Goods and Landscape, 2004. In the case of Brazil, the law that regulates the protection of national historical and artistic heritage was enacted on November 30, 1937, during the government of Getúlio Vargas. Here, too, the regulations have been refined for over a little more than eight decades and it is worth noting the prompt inclusion of International Conventions and Recommendations by Brazil. However, we do not yet have a specific code that brings together all the precepts regarding cultural goods. Based on the assumption that the standard is an organizing agent and driver for the protection and enhancement of cultural goods and activities and considering the relevance of the European country, as explained above, for the topic in question, it is understood that a study compared with Brazilian norms for the cultural heritage sector can contribute to the understanding of different mechanisms of protection, valorization and, also, for the evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of each model.
1 Legislation In the preunification period, the first forms of protection were mainly concentrated in the State of the Church (at the time it comprised the entire region of Lazio, Umbria, Marche and part of Emilia-Romagna). These norms (papal bulls), started in the 15th century, were aimed at regulating archaeological excavation activities and restricting the misappropriation of the artifacts found. The most important document of that period was the Pacca Edict of 1820, as it covered the topic of tutelage in a broad way, establishing principles of cataloging and control bodies. Throughout the nineteenth century, the edict prepared by Cardinal Bartolomeo Pacca served as a model for other Italian states such as the Kingdom of Naples (1822) and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (1854), who expressed sensitivity to the problem due to the excavations of Pompeii and Herculano and the works of art of the Renaissance (Cosi 2008). With the unification of the Italian States, completed in 1871, the problem of the protection of cultural heritage had little expression in normative terms for little more than three decades. In 1902, Italy instituted its first guardianship law with the Legge Nasi, or Law on the Conservation of Monuments and Objects of Antiquity and Art, which presented innovative aspects for the time and still remains current, such as the right of first refusal, state in the purchase of protected goods and the regulation of buildings surrounding protected goods. Several authors maintain that the Nasi Law was not very effective, especially with regard to the proposal to create a catalog, a task considered very difficult at a time in need of technological resources and given the complexity of the goods to be cataloged (Castel Lentini 2006). In the following year, Law no. 242 dealt with the export ban of these goods. In 1904, the Royal Decree no. 431 approved the regulation for the enforcement of these laws. This document originates the establishment of the Superintendencies as peripheral control bodies in the national territory. The current system of organization of the
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Superintendencies within the Ministry for Cultural Goods and Activities is a subject that will be addressed later. In 1909, Law no. 364, or Rava-Rosadi Law, “That Establishes and Sets Norms for the Inalienability of Antiquities and Fine Arts,” was approved. As prominent elements, this law broadened the scope of protection, no longer restricted to monuments in a generic way, but encompassing “immovable and movable things that are of historical, archaeological, paleo-ethnological, paleontological or artistic interest,”1 including among “movable things”, Manuscripts, incunabula and objects of numismatic interest. It is also worth mentioning the limitation of private ownership of protected goods in the case of exports and the institution of “notification” as a way to make the inclusion of a property on the protection list official. The environmental heritage received particular attention in Law no. 778 of 1922, which declared special protection to these goods due to their natural and panoramic beauty. When located on private property, the owner was notified of the public interest. Therefore, any and all works that could alter the configuration of the property should be authorized by the Ministry of Public Education, under penalty of a fine (Italy 1922). A considerable normative reform in terms of protection of cultural and environmental heritage took place during the period of Fascism, precisely in the year 1939. The reform, proposed by the then Minister of National Education, Giuseppe Bottai, has Law no. 1089, on the “protection of goods of historical and artistic interest,” and Law no. 1497, which deals with the “protection of natural beauty”. Bottai defended the importance of culture as an indispensable instrument of education and construction of the identity of a people. In addition to addressing the issue of valuing cultural assets in an innovative way, the reform made a re-reading of all the matter already dealt with in the previous regulation, starting to contemplate the various cultural activities (theater, opera, cinema), the State archives, the copyright, town planning, administrative organization and restoration procedures. In this sense, it is worth highlighting Law no. 1240 of 1939, which created the Regio Istituto Centrale del Restauro (today IstitutoSuperiore per la Conservazione ed ilRestauro— ISCR). Designed by Giulio Carlo Argan and Cesare Brandi, the institute was opened in 1941, with the objective of establishing scientific bases and unifying methodologies for the restoration of works of art and archaeological objects2 at national level. Headquartered in Rome and Matera, ISCR is a technical body of the Italian government, linked to the current Ministry for Cultural Goods and Activities and is a reference in the field of restoration. After World War II, Italy assumed the form of republican government and approved, in 1947, its Constitution. In force since the following year, the Constitutional Charter establishes in its article 9 that: “The Republic promotes the development of culture and scientific and technical research. It protects the landscape and 1 In
the original: “Art. 1: Soggettealledispositizionidellapresentelegge le coseimmobili e mobilisabbianoestorico, archeologico, paletnologico o artistic. Ne sono esclusigliedifici e glioggetti d’arte diautoriviventi o lacuiesecuzione non risalga ad oltrecinquant’anni. It brings the pure mobilis sleep compresiicodici, gliantichimanoscritti, gliincunabuli, le stampe and incisioni rare and di pregio and le cosed’numeris interest”. 2 Information available on the Institute’s website: .
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the historical and artistic heritage of the Nation” (Italy 1948). In this way, the link between cultural and environmental heritage is affirmed and the State has a duty to guarantee the enjoyment of the community, giving priority to the public interest and no longer limiting itself to the merely conservative problem (Castel Lentini 2006). In article 117, the Constitution decentralizes the issue of valuing and promoting cultural goods and activities to the Regions, while the State is responsible for protecting the public. It should be noted that, prior to Unification, Italy’s fundamental law was the Albertine Statute, signed by King Carlos Alberto de Savoy. The document, which remained in force from 1848 to 1948, did not mention the theme of cultural heritage. In Brazil, despite the first record of initiatives to safeguard historical monuments dating from the mid-eighteenth century (Fundação Nacional Pró-Memória 1980), the first official action took place with Decree 22.928 of 12 July 1933, which established the city of Ouro Preto as a National Monument. With that, the creation of a body to inspect buildings of historical and artistic value, as well as the control of the trade in antiques and art objects, became urgent. This entity—called the National Monuments Inspectorate (IMN)—was created by Decree 24,735 of July 14, 1934 and operated at the National Historical Museum until 1937, when the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN) was created through the Law nº 378 of that year (Magalhães 2015). In addition to IMN, 1934 also inaugurated the theme of historical and artistic heritage in the Constitutional Charter. Its 148th article advocated: Art. 148—The Union, the States and the Municipalities are responsible for promoting and encouraging the development of sciences, arts, letters and culture in general, protecting objects of historical interest and the artistic heritage of the country, as well as providing assistance to the intellectual worker.3
In 1937, at the beginning of the political regime of the Estado Novo, Decree-Law No. 25 was approved, which “organizes the protection of the national historical and artistic heritage” and remains in force. Its first article defines movable and immovable property as having an exceptional archaeological, ethnographic, bibliographic or artistic value, as well as including natural monuments, sites and landscapes. The Federal Constitution of 1988 broadly defines the Brazilian cultural heritage in art. 216, contemplating goods of amaterial and immaterial nature. The Italian Constitution, the one of1948, does not define it. In that country, the concept has been outlined over time in the protection laws.
3 BRAZIL. Constitution (1934). Constitution of the Republic of the United States of Brazil: promul-
gated on July 16, 1934. Available at: . Accessed on: 03 sep. 2019.
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2 Codification of Laws For 60 years, the so-called Bottai Laws (1939) remained the foundation for the protection of cultural goods in Italy. Thus, the legislative matter on the subject remained almost unchanged. In 1999, Legislative Decree nº 490—Single Text of the legislative provisions referring to Cultural and Environmental Goods4 —gave a new configuration to the sector’s regulations, compiling and reorganizing all the national laws in force until then and also including international conventions and regulations and European Union guidelines. In the Single Text, the adopted concept of cultural goods includes any property, movable or immovable, that is “a testimony of value to civilization.”5 The need to adapt the Single Text to the changes made to the Italian Constitution led to the drafting of the Code of Cultural Property and Landscape in 2004.6 The Code makes innovations in the field, such as: strictly submitting urban planning to the landscape; introducing a new relationship between the State and the citizen (the state weight of the Bottai Laws decreases); accepting the alienability of assets in specific cases, etc. The Code treats the protection of Italian cultural heritage in a systematic and harmonious way, contributing to greater efficiency and speed in solving problems and conflicts relevant to the area. In Brazil, the website of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) presents a collection of all national and international legislation on the protection and enhancement of cultural heritage. Specifically considering Brazilian legislation, the portal provides 248 records between laws, ordinances, constitutional amendments, guidelines and normative instructions. Many of these norms are related to specific goods and places, however, the regulations dealing with the most varied topics are significant, such as: protection of archaeological or prehistoric sites shipping artwork abroad; export of old books and bibliographic sets; underwater and genetic heritage; regulation of National Parks; general urban policy guidelines; the Statute of Museums; the Register of Art Dealers; cooperation with public and private
4 Decreto
Legislativo n. 490 de 1999: Testo Unicodelledisposizionilegislative in materiadibeniculturali e ambientali. In: GAZZETTA UFFICIALE DELLA REPUBBLICA ITALIANA. Available at: . Acessoem: 09 set. 2019. 5 This concept of cultural goods was elaborated in Article 148 of Legislative Decree No. 112 of 1998, which deals with several issues related to the administrative functions of the State and the Italian Regions. 6 LegislativeDecree no. 42 of 2004:Codice dei Beni Culturali e delPaesaggio. In: GAZZETTA UFFICIALE DELLA REPUBBLICA ITALIANA. Available in: .
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entities; preventing and fighting fires in listed buildings, etc.7 Considering this situation and after just over 80 years of the Decree-Law 25/37, perhaps it was time to think about a code of laws for our cultural heritage.
3 Ministries In Italy in the 1960s, two important commissions (Franceschini and Papaldo) appointed by Parliament sought to investigate and reorder guardianship laws. The political bodies of the period did not give the deserved attention, but the result of the work of the commissions, such as the adoption and definition of the term “cultural asset,”8 was essential for the most recent legislative production. In 1975, about a decade after the first commission, culture gained autonomy on the Italian political scene, with the creation of the Ministry for Cultural Goods and the Environment. With legislative decree no. 368 of 1998, it changes its name to theMinistry for Cultural Goods and Activities (MiBAC), thus avoiding conflicts with the Ministry of the Environment. The competence of Tourism, entrusted to the Ministry in 2013 and later withdrawn, returned to the same in 2019, changing to the acronym MiBACT. Directly subordinate to the Minister is the Comando Carabinieri Tutela PatrimonioCulturale, a department of the Italian armed forces specializing in operations to combat crimes against cultural and landscape heritage. The agency publishes updated newsletters on stolen art and annual activity reports. The Ministry has 10 General Directorates, dealing with the most diverse sectors, from budget to research and inspection. In the General Directorate of Archeology, Fine Arts and Landscape, 41 superintendencies are inserted, distributed throughout Italy, with the duty to inspect, conserve and manage the patrimony under the tutelage of the State. A superintendency may have as its management area an entire region, as in the case of Friuli, Umbria and Marche, or cover smaller territories, from one to six provinces, which present a remarkable concentration of cultural assets. In the General Directorate of Education and Research, we find ISCR and OpificiodellePietreDure, a Fiorentino institute founded in the sixteenth century specializing in the practice and teaching of restoration of movable and integrated goods. Both entities are responsible for the conservation and restoration itself. The Istituto Centrale per ilCatalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD) is also organically inserted here, with a remarkable performance in inventories and data processing related to
7 All
Brazilian legislation regarding cultural heritage can be checked on the IPHAN website. Available at: . Accessed on: 11 jul. 2019. 8 The Franceschini Commission, established in 1964, defined the concept of Cultural Property for the first time in Italy: civilization”. In: AttidelaCommissioneFranceschini (1967). Dichiarazione I. Available at: . Accessed on: 22 jul. 2019.
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the safeguarded cultural goods.9 The ICCD has 831,114 cataloged goods, divided into nine disciplinary sectors.10 It is worth remembering that the tipping in Italy occurs only at a national level. In Brazil, the Ministry of Culture was created in 1985 and, after setbacks and advances, was removed in January 2019, making Culture a special secretariat linked to the Ministry of Citizenship. In November of the same year, the competence of the Special Secretariat for Culture and its autarchies was transferred to the Ministry of Tourism.11 One of the municipalities of the portfolio is IPHAN, which, in its structure, presents the system of superintendencies (27states and 28 technical offices). In the Department of Cooperation and Promotion (DECOF), we can find an organ analogous to the ICCD, which is the Heritage Documentation Center (CDP), which presents 1,152 assets listed in the four Books of Tombo.12 It may not be a very significant number when compared with Italy and if we consider the territorial dimension of Brazil, but we must keep in mind that the listing here occurs at the federal, state and municipal levels. For the management of museological heritage, the Brazilian Museum Institute imposes itself as one of the arms of the Ministry. The organ would be like the MiBACT General Directorate for Museums. Unfortunately, we do not have research institutions and specific technical applications along the lines of ISCR or Opificio. There is also no exclusive division to deal with violations of laws protecting national cultural heritage, such as the Comando Carabinieri. However, IPHAN relies on the collaboration of the Federal Police, the Federal Revenue Service and Interpol in the dissemination of the Database of Wanted Cultural Goods.
4 Restoration: Regulations and Professional Recognition In the 1930s, Italy officially began to develop guidelines for improving restoration methods. In 1932, the Superior Council for Antiquities and Fine Arts drafted the Italian Charter for Restoration, which was based on the precepts of the Athens Charter (1931).13 The document, which never had the force of law, tried to outline 9 Organizational structure of MIBAC. Available at: . Accessed on: 14 set. 2019. 10 The nine disciplinary sectors in the ICCD catalog are: Archaeological goods; Architectural and landscape goods; Demo-anthropological goods; Photographic goods; Musical goods; Natural goods; Numismatic goods; Scientific and technological goods and; Historical and artistic goods. 11 Changes resulting from decrees No. 10,107 and No. 10,108 of 2019. During the writing of the final version of this work, the current organizational charts were not found on the ministries’ websites. 12 Decree 25/37 considers national historic or artistic heritage the goods inscribed in one of the four Books of Tombo, namely: Archaeological, Ethnographic and Landscape; Historic; Fine Arts and; Applied Arts. 13 The Athens Charter of 1931 presented the general principles for the protection, conservation and restoration of monuments of historical, artistic or scientific interest. It was prepared by the
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the principles that would guide the activities of excavation of deposits and restoration of monuments carried out by the Superintendencies, giving maximum attention to consolidations, interventions based on documents and the problems of the surroundings. It was the first step toward unifying the techniques and criteria for intervention. In the postwar period, in response to the great destruction of heritage caused by the conflict and the need to establish international parameters for conservation and restoration, the International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property was founded in 1959 (ICCROM), under the auspices of UNESCO. Located in Rome, the institute’s mission is to promote research and the training of professionals in the field—a training that is deeply marked by the Italian School of Restoration, since ICCROM had as its organizers experts from ISCR and the University of Rome.14 Several Brazilian professionals, mainly architects, specialized in ICCROM, thus adopting the modus operandi of Italians (Lyra 2016, p. 66). The dilapidation caused by the war conflict also prompted the drafting of a second Charter for Restoration, in 1972. The document, prepared by the Italian Ministry of Public Education, placed a much broader set of goods under the dictates of its instructions than that expressed in the first Letter, from Paleolithic artifacts to contemporary art.15 In the same year, the Convention on the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage was approved in Paris, which recognizes the importance of international cooperation in safeguarding heritage that has “exceptional universal value.” Brazil approved the text in 1977, before Italy, which did it in 1978. For the purposes of the present work, it is worth mentioning what the Convention determines, in Article 5, as measures to be adopted by States Parties: (c) to develop scientific and technical studies and research and improve intervention methods that allow a State to face the dangers that threaten its cultural or natural heritage; […] (e) to facilitate the creation or development of national or regional training centers in the field of protection, conservation and revaluation of cultural and natural heritage and encourage scientific research in this field (UNESCO 1972). Despite having excellent professionals in the area and the existence of undergraduate and specialization courses in conservation and restoration, Brazil does not have, as already mentioned, an official technical training body, similar to ISCR and Opificio, for research, training and permanent dissemination in the area. IPHAN carries out covenants and agreements with national and international entities, but always on a temporary basis. However, it is worth mentioning the work of Edson Motta in the extinct Sector for the Recovery of Works of Art, which operated from International Museum Office/Society of Nations during the Athens International Conference on the Restoration of Monuments. 14 About the history of ICCROM, see: . Accessed on: 14 ago. 2019. 15 Restoration Charter. Italy, 1972. In: IPHAN. Collections and Publications: Patrimonial Letters. Available at: . Accessed on: 21 ago. 2019.
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1947 to 1976. According to María Sabina Uribarren, there was a project in the late 1960s to set up a laboratory headed by Motta that would be a regional reference in Latin America. Unfortunately, the project, which was presented to the OAS in 1968, did not go ahead due to the lack of financial and personnel resources (Uribarren 2015, p. 227). In 2010, the Category 2 Center was created in the structure of IPHAN, through the Heritage School Lucio Costa, which has the seal of UNESCO. CC2, with regional reach, has the mission of qualifying wealth management professionals in the 17 countries covered.16 In the world, there are 11 centers classified in this way and Italy inaugurated its International Center for Research and Training in the Economy of Culture and World Heritage in 2011,17 although outside the MiBACT staff. In addition to CC2, the Lucio Costa Heritage School has a professional master’s degree and, very recently, corporate training, aimed at training the institution’s employees. However, the IPHAN organization chart still lacks specific technical training in conservation and restoration. In spite of the fact that the restoration activity (as we understand it today) has origins in the eighteenth century,18 the existence of the Opificio since the sixteenth century and the creation of the ISCR in 1939, it was only in the year 2000 that Italy launched a regulation on the qualification requirements for restorers. The first document was Ministerial Decree No. 294: “Regulation on the identification of qualification requirements for executors of restoration and maintenance works for movable property and decorated surfaces for architectural goods,” which was revoked by D.M. No. 154 of 2017: “Regulation on public procurement of works on protected cultural assets,” prepared in accordance with the dictates of the Codicedei Beni Culturali and del Paesaggio. This standard deals with professional qualification requirements and defines the types of services (e.g., archaeological excavations; conservation of movable and immovable property). A few years earlier, in 2009, the D.M. nº 86, stated that “Regulation on the definition of the competence profiles of restorers and other operators that carry out activities complementary to restoration or other activities of conservation of movable cultural assets and decorated surfaces of architectural assets.” With another decree signed on May 26, 2009, number 87, the registration of this category of professionals was established. 16 The area covered by the CC2 at the Lucio Costa Center is composed of 17 Portuguese and Spanish speaking countries: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, East Timor, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. In: IPHAN. Lucio Costa Center. CLC/CC2. Training Program. Available at: . Accessed on: 29 ago. 2019. 17 The UNESCO website presents CC2s operating worldwide. Noteworthy: Norway, which has not renewed the agreement for its center; China, which has two centers, one of which is mixed (natural and cultural) and; the Republic of Korea, which recently submitted a request for inclusion of a center. In: UNESCO. Category 2 Centers. Available at: . Accessed on: 29 ago. 2019. 18 According to art historian Alessandro Conti, it was in the eighteenth century that restoration left empiricism to start being developed as a scientific activity, from the study of chemistry and the behavior of materials.
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In Brazil, discussions about the regulation of the profession started in the 1990s. Three bills have already been presented, without success. The first two came to pass together in Congress. The one in 2008 excluded what had been disapproved in the one in 2007. However, it was decided to return to the text of the first proposal, which was vetoed by the presidency of the Republic in 2013, with the justification that the exercise of conservator-restorer activities does not constitute a “risk of harm to society” (Official Diary of the Union 2013). In 2017 another P.L. (by Deputy Chico Alencar) was presented, which was filed. Currently, P.L. 1183/2019 is in process, which follows the molds of PL 9063/2017. The class of conservative-restorer professionals looks forward to the recognition of the importance of this profession in our country.
5 Conclusion We know that in our historical period, conflicts and confrontations occur more and more on a virtual and technological scale. In this context, the instrumentalization of the cultural factor, understood in its multiple facets, whether as an agent of domination or of cooperation, is clear. In the field of world cultural heritage, the interstate relations of the signatories to the 1972 Convention reveal this ambivalent character, insofar as they are based on cooperation, in a perspective of cosmopolitan culture, but which also have an objective of “clientelization” (Milza apud Lessa 2012, p. 172) by exporting knowledge and attracting resources through tourism, technical and scientific training, etc. Considering the conjunctural and structural problems of Brazil, it is worthy to acknowledge its wide performance in the area of cultural heritage. IPHAN, the first body of its kind in Latin America (Fundação Nacional Pró-Memória 1980, p. 25), is internationally recognized and its employees work diligently in the defense and promotion of our assets. However, it may be necessary to strengthen the bases of support for the Brazilian cultural heritage protection policy—its laws and institutions—in a systematic and articulated rearrangement of the sectors involved, in order to achieve more autonomy, demonstrate confidence, attract resources and, therefore, to project itself in the international system.
References Ainis M, Beni Culturali (2009) In: ENCICLOPEDIA TRECCANI. Italia: IstitutodellaEnciclopedia Italiana. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/beni-culturali_%28XXI-Secolo%29/. Accessed: 20 Jul 2019 Associação Brasileira de Encardenação e Restauro. Entenda a tramitação dos projetos de lei sobre a regulamentação da profissão. http://aber.org.br/noticia/entenda-tramita%C3%A7%C3%A3odos-projetos-de-lei-sobre-regulamenta%C3%A7%C3%A3o-da-profiss%C3%A3o. Accessed 20 out 2019
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Brasil. Constituição (1934) Constituição da República dos Estados Unidos do Brasil: promulgada em 16 de julho de 1934. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicao34.htm. Accessed 03 set. 2019 Brasil. Constituição (1988) Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil: promulgada em 05 de outubro de 1988. http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/constituicao/constituicaocompilado.htm Castel Lentini GF (2006) Evoluzionestorica e giuridica dela tutela dei beniculturalidall’unità d’Italia al CodiceUrbani. Cennisulla tutela paesistica. In: Dirittoall’Ambiente, 12 jun. 2006. http://www. dirittoambiente.net/file/territorio_articoli_119.pdf. Accessed 03 Jul 2019 Christofoletti R (2017) Patrimônio como esteio das Relações Internacionais: em questão o soft power. In: 1º Simpósio Científico ICOMOS Brasil, Belo Horizonte. https://even3.blob.core.win dows.net/anais/60127.pdf. Accessed 10 Sept 2019 Conti A (1981) Vicende e cultura del restauro. In: Zeri F (Org.). (1981) Storiadell’arte italiana. Torino: Einaudi. vol. 10. pp 39–112 Cosi D (2008) Diritto dei beni e delleattivitàculturali. Roma, AracneEditrice Diário Oficial da União. Despachos da Presidenta da República: Mensagem nº 400, de 18 de setembro de 2013. Published in 19 september 2013. http://pesquisa.in.gov.br/imprensa/jsp/visual iza/index.jsp?jornal=1&pagina=1&data=19/09/2013>. Accessed 20 Oct 2019 Fundação Nacional Pró-Memória (1980) Proteção e revitalização do patrimônio histórico no Brasil: uma trajetória. Brasília, SPHAN IPHAN (1931) Acervos e Publicações: Cartas Patrimoniais: Carta de Atenas. http://portal.iphan. gov.br/uploads/ckfinder/arquivos/Carta%20de%20Atenas%201931.pdf. Accessed 21 Aug 2019 IPHAN (2006) Coletânea de Leis sobre Preservação do Patrimônio. Rio de Janeiro: Edições do Patrimônio IPHAN (2019) Portal do Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional. http://portal.iphan. gov.br/. Accessed 15 Oct 2019 IstitutoCentrale per ilCatalogo e laDocumentazione. Catalogo Generale dei Beni Culturali. http://www.catalogo.beniculturali.it/sigecSSU_FE/Home.action?timestamp=1521647516354. Accessed 24 Aug 2019 Italia. Costituzione (1948) Costituzionedella Repubblica Italiana. Entry into force on January 1, 1948. https://www.senato.it/documenti/repository/istituzione/costituzione.pdf Italia. Costituzione Legge 20 giugno 1909, n. 364. Stabilisce e fissanorme per l’inalienabilitàdelleantichità e delle belle arti. In: Normattiva: ilportaledellalegge vigente. https://www.normattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1909-06-20;364. Accessed 05 Jul 2019 Italia. Costituzione. Legge 11 giugno 1922, n. 778. Per la tutela dellebellezzenaturali e degliimmobilidiparticolare interesse storico. In: Normattiva: ilportaledellaleggevigente. https://www.nor mattiva.it/uri-res/N2Ls?urn:nir:stato:legge:1922-06-11;778!vig=>. Accessed 21 May 2019 Lessa ML (2012) Cultura e política externa: o lugar do Brasil na cena internacional (2003-2010). In: Lessa ML, Suppo HR (Orgs.). A Quarta Dimensão das Relações Internacionais: a dimensão cultural. Rio de Janeiro: Contra Capa. pp 169–192 Lyra CC (2016) Preservação do Patrimônio Edificado: a questão do uso. IPHAN, Brasília, DF Magalhães AM (2015) Inspetoria de Monumentos Nacionais (1934-1937). In: Rezende MB, Grieco B, Teixeira L, Thompson A (Orgs.). Dicionário IPHAN de Patrimônio Cultural. 1. ed. Rio de Janeiro, Brasília: IPHAN/DAF/Copedoc, (verbete). http://portal.iphan.gov.br/dicionarioPatrimon ioCultural/detalhes/29/inspetoria-de-monumentos-nacionais-1934-1937. Accessed 03 Sept 2019 Mcclory J (2015) The soft power 30: a global ranking of soft power. Report 2015. Portland. https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The_Soft_Power_30_Report_20151.pdf. Accessed 07 Sept 2019 Nye Jr. JS (2004) Soft power: the means to success in world politics. New York, Public Affairs. Chapter One: The changing nature of power. pp 1–32 Settis S (2011) La tutela delpatrimonioculturale. In: EnciclopediaTreccani. IstitutodellaEnciclopedia Italiana, Italia. http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/la-tutela-del-patrimonio-culturale_% 28Dizionario-di-Storia%29/. Accessed 20 Jul 2019
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UNCTAD (2008) Creative Economy Report 2008: The challenge of assessing the creative economy: towards informed policy-making. United Nations UNESCO (1972) Convenção para a Proteção do Patrimônio Mundial, Cultural e Natural. Paris. https://whc.UNESCO.org/archive/convention-pt.pdf UNESCO (2019) World heritage list. https://whc.UNESCO.org/en/list/. Accessed 11 Jul 2019 Uribarren MS (2015) Contatos e intercâmbios americanos no IPHAN: O setor de Recuperação de Obras de Arte (1947-1976). 2015. Tese (Doutorado) – Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo. http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/16/16133/tde07032016-200705/pt-br.php. Accessed 02 Sept 2019
IPHAN Looking Out: International Relations in Preserving National Heritage Carolina Martins Saporetti
Abstract This article presents a study on international relations built by the Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) during the period of Renato Soeiro’s administration (1967–1979), a period when it is commonly acknowledged that the institution’s greatest internationalization process took place. Soeiro, as director of IPHAN, was responsible for adapting the federal agency to the changes in the international and national context and managed to reconcile Brazil’s economic growth with heritage preservation, as a result of the expansion of international relations, such as the approximation of the latter with agencies such as ICOMOS, UNESCO and the OAS. Thus, this article makes a brief analysis of the influence of other countries in the development of public policies and heritage preservation projects in the period indicated. It is also intended to explore the concept of soft power in this context, with a view to its applicability in relation to the internationalist agendas of Soeiro. Keywords IPHAN · Renato soeiro · International relations
1 The Preservation of Heritage in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s From the 1960s on, Brazil experienced a new model of economic development based on industrialization and urbanization. As a consequence of this, there was the swelling of cities, demographic pressure, the growth of the construction industry and real estate speculation. With the implantation of consumer goods industries, almost everything was manufactured: steel, aluminum, cement, household appliances, processed foods, shopping centers (Mello and Novais 1998). Some of these transformations clashed This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. C. M. Saporetti (B) Doctoral student supervised by Rodrigo Christofoletti, UFJF, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_23
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with DPHAN’s1 preservationist practice, which had not been the subject of major debates since 1945. For Joaquim Falcão Fonseca, this stability was a symptom of the relative importance that the post-Estado Novo regimes and their opponents gave to the question of national historical and artistic heritage (Fonseca 2005, p. 139). According to Júlia Pereira, especially in the 1960s, with the accelerated transformation of social and economic structures, explosive industrial development, in certain regions, threatened sites and monuments that should be protected. Public works of indisputable importance were prepared disregarding the existence of these values, the sudden appreciation of real estate and the growth in the number of vehicles in circulation in urban centers always demanded greater space, among other causes, including poorly organized tourist interest, accelerated in the short term. In the long term, destruction and alteration, often in an irreparable way, of monuments or sets that had hitherto only been affected by the action of time. In this context, there was an increased concern with the preservation of urban centers (Pereira 2009, p. 130). The person responsible for managing IPHAN in parts of the 1960s and 1970s was the architect Renato Soeiro,2 who directed IPHAN in the period between 1967 and 1979 and stood out for creating projects in partnership with the federal government and some international bodies. From these, Soeiro was able to relate the economic, urban and industrial development of the period with the preservation of heritage. He was even responsible for implementing programs, such as the Historic Cities Program that linked the profit obtained through tourism and the conservation of the cultural asset (Saporetti 2017, p. 60). The patrimonial asset was used for tourist activities and from the profit obtained in this practice; money was earned for the maintenance of this place and for the necessary restorations. A significant example was the Historic Cities program (PCH) implemented in the early 1970s by the Ministry of Planning and General Coordination (Miniplan) with a view to recovering historic cities in the Northeast of Brazil. The objective of this program was to bring development to this region by raising funds through the use of cultural heritage for tourism. Thus, this period stood out for the development of preservation policies related to the country’s development and for the intensification of international relations. The 1 During the trajectory of the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute, changes were made
to the name of the institution. In 1937, it was called the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN). In 1946, it changed to the Department of National Historical and Artistic Heritage (DPHAN). In 1970, DPHAN was transformed into the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN). In 1979, IPHAN was divided into the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Secretariat (SPHAN), as a normative body, and the National Pro-Memory Foundation (FNPM), as an executive body. In 1990, SPHAN and FNPM were extinguished to make way for the Brazilian Cultural Heritage Institute (IBPC). In 1994, the IBPC was transformed into the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN) (SPHAN 1987, p. 34). 2 Renato de Azevedo Duarte Soeiro was born on December 23, 1911, in Belém-Pará, son of Benedito Duarte Soeiro and Angélica de Azevedo Soeiro. He enrolled in the Architecture course at the National School of Fine Arts at the University of Brazil, on March 15, 1932. Soeiro graduated in 1937. In the following year, he started working at SPHAN as a 3rd class technical assistant. In 1940, he was hired as an architect at SPHAN-MES.
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rapprochement with bodies such as UNESCO, ICOMOS AND OAS was essential for Brazil to expand its knowledge and performance in the sphere of preserving cultural heritage.
2 Renato Soeiro, Heritage and International Relations Soeiro has worked at the institution since its creation. In 1946, he assumed the position of director of the Conservation and Restoration Division (DCR) of the then DPHAN. Renato Soeiro remained in this position until he became director of DPHAN, in 1967. As director of DCR, Soeiro was one of the main representatives of DPHAN at the international level. In this condition, he participated in several events, among them: Meeting of experts organized by UNESCO in Paris—France (1952); PanAmerican Symposium for the Preservation of Historical Monuments—Florida— United States (1965); Meeting of experts—International Council for Monuments and Sites—ICOMOS (UNESCO) in Brussels—Belgium (1966) (SOEIRO, undated). At the meeting in Paris (1952), Soeiro served as representative of Brazil. This event included studies on measures to protect monuments and cultural assets in the event of armed conflict. At the Pan-American Symposium for the Preservation of Historical Monuments (1965), he made a presentation as a delegate of Brazil, in which he spoke about the preservation of heritage in Brazil, the act of protecting heritage and the performance of DPHAN. In this approach, Soeiro expounded on the conditions for the listing, and also about the characteristics of the properties listed in this period (Soeiro 1965). At the meeting of specialists of the International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) (1966), sponsored by the Royal du Patrimoine Belgique Institute, a study was developed on the functioning of the Documentation Centers related to the Council’s activities. In this meeting, Soeiro participated as a delegate from Brazil. He highlighted the problems in the action to preserve heritage in Brazil. In addition to the lack of support from the population, he highlights the difficulty of being able to organize a trained team. Renato Soeiro also stresses the need to create a Documentation Center with a complete library in relation to references and journals on the preservation of national and international heritage, which would assist in the work of technicians, since they would have access to information (Soeiro 1966). This list of actions characterized him as an important representative of DPHAN at theinternational level. In a letter addressed to Rodrigo M. F. de Andrade, in June 1966, Soeiro explained about an IPHAN project that sought to request resources from UNESCO for programs to Increase Tourism and Recovery of Natural Resources. After negotiations mediated by Ambassador Carlos Chagas Filho to obtain support from UNESCO, Brazil was visited by representatives of the organization. In the following year, the mission of UNESCO consultant in Brazil, Michel Parent, was completed. The objective was to “give an opinion on the aid requested for the execution of a service plan for this division, which is intended to be included in the United Nations Incentive Program to Cultural Tourism ” (Correa 2016, p. 20).
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The defense of tourism as a significant factor for economic development and for self-sustainability or the generation of funds for the preservation of cultural heritage summarizes one of UNESCO’s main discourses in the documents produced by this agency in the 1960s. Even with the criticism of that mass tourism could contribute to the degradation of Brazilian cultural assets, the attractive argument that this activity would finance the important restoration works of real estate and urbanized heritage sites, obtaining resources from the private sector and not only from the State, was comprehensively addressed throughout from the 1968 UNESCO report, according to which this was a trend among the most developed European countries (Aguiar 2016, p. 139). According to this document, Brazil’s “exceptional” condition for cultural tourism was a product of its cultural diversity, the existence of preserved urban sites and its propensity for modernity. The latter can be affirmed by the modern architecture existing in cities like Brasília, which would facilitate the construction of tourist facilities. After listing the benefits of Brazilian tourism development, Michel Parent’s report explores the suitability of some of the country’s regions and points out some of the measures necessary for its use. Among these, the stimulation of commercial aviation, maritime and river transport, and the construction of new highways and railways stands out (Aguiar 2016, p. 140). In the report, Parent emphasized the close contact he had with the employees of the then IPHAN, especially with Renato Soeiro and Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade. He stressed that any “global planning for the conservation of artistic goods and certain natural heritage” desired by the government and taken into account by UNESCO should, as Ambassador Chagas emphasized, be carried out through its integration in the country’s development projects. Parent’s evaluations of the more than 35 cities visited during his stays in Brazil resulted in important products, both in relation to protection by DPHAN and in the relevance that such locations have come to assume with UNESCO. In addition to providing a vision of the actions, initiatives and perspectives of this organization in terms of knowledge and preservation of cultural assets on a worldwide scale, his text contributed to understand the relationship established by the notion of “cultural tourism” between DPHAN and UNESCO, a relationship that was realized during this period, with the visit of several experts to Brazilian cities. Cultural Tourism comprises tourist activities related to the experience of the set of significant elements of historical and cultural heritage and cultural events, valuing and promoting the material and immaterial assets of culture (Ministry of Tourism)
According to Cecília Ribeiro, the speech for cultural tourism was considered by Saskia Cousin as “good tourism.” This author’s idea is related to the economic advantages of tourism, without considering the difficulties and conflicts that could occur. Thus, a positive sense was credited forto technicians, countries involved, institutions and tourists. In this way, she highlighted cultural tourism as an alternative discourse to mass tourism (Cousin 2008, p. 44 Apud Ribeiro 2016). For Ribeiro, cultural tourism could not be an alternative proposal or that was opposed to mass tourism. This was related to mass tourism and had it as a reference, since the attraction
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of many tourists could generate large investments in basic and specific infrastructure for tourism and aimed at the economic development of a region or country (2016). In line with the relationship between tourism, economic development and preservation of cultural heritage, parent introduced another interesting opinion on this heritage, which reports again to UNESCO and the management presented by this organization for cultural goods: the concept of World Heritage. In this perspective, the valorization of the universal and exceptional qualities of the goods is described in the recommendations that Michel Parent developed during his stay in Brazil. At the beginning of his text, the French expert emphasized the qualities of that nation, which he describes as “a country endowed with nature, history and the innate and potential qualities of its inhabitants, with exceptional opportunities” (Correia 2015, p. 7). Economic development and its relationship with heritage preservation is a topic that appears even more imminently in the Norms of Quito, approved at the Meeting on the Conservation and Use of Heritage and Places of Historic Interest, which was held between November 28 and December 2, 1967, in Quito—Ecuador. This premise is based on the context of “great progressive commitment” experienced by the American states participating in the meeting, with emphasis on the “exhaustive exploitation of their natural resources” and the “multiplication of infrastructure works and the occupation of extensive areas by industrial facilities and real estate constructions.” Against the “anarchic modernization process” that would have been praised in these countries, the Norms proposed a “conciliatory solution” that aimed at the preservation of their cultural monuments and natural wealth and that was based on their economic valorization: In short, it is a question of mobilizing national efforts to seek the best use of the monumental resources at its disposal, as an indirect means of favoring the country’s economic development. This implies a prior planning task at the national level, that is, evaluating available resources and formulating specific projects within a general ordering plan (Cury 2004, p. 110).
In “Notes on the Quito meeting,” Soeiro presents a summary of the Quito meeting and reports on Brazil’s participation in this meeting: Brazil, in the present meeting in Quito, contributed not only with its experience in dealing with technical issues related to the problems of preservation, valorization and use of cultural goods, but also in relation to the application of specific specificlegislation, fully subscribing to the indications related to complementation of this legislation and, well, to the defenses of the landscape and the export of works of art. Brazil defended the establishment of a program in 2 stages: the first, emergency, and short term, to prevent the disappearance of cultural goods threatened with perishing, which must be preceded by an intense public information campaign, by the current means available, press, radio, TV, cinema, publications, exhibitions, etc., in order not only to draw attention to the duty and obligation of the responsible authorities, but also to the economic benefits that will result from their adequate use within the respective national development plans. In the second stage, the rules for the permanent conservation of these goods would be established (Soeiro 1967, p. 4).
The report of this event, written by Soeiro, specifies his contribution to the Norms of Quito. It is noteworthy the demand by Brazil of the need to extend to Portugal the
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recommendation to link the revaluation of America’s cultural heritage to extracontinental countries, for the same reasons that Spain had recognized the need for this same link, in view of “The historical participation of both in the formation of said heritage and given the similarity of the cultural values that keep them united to the peoples of this Continent” (Soeiro 1967b, p. 4). In this document, the importance of organizing another Inter-American Center for Research and Studies, located in Brazil, was also emphasized, to serve the southern part of the continent, since the Inter-American Center “Paul Coremans” (later called National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museology), installed in Mexico under the auspices of UNESCO, served the northern region (Soeiro 1967b, p. 4). It is important to note that in the Paris Recommendation on Public and Private Works—15th Session of the General Conference of the United Nations— of November 19, 1968, the relationship that was perceived or proposed between the preservation of cultural heritage and social and economic development. Both are seen as duties of governments and as necessary elements for the well-being and fulfillment of peoples; however, they are also simultaneously described as aspects in conflict, given the threats posed by development to the “cultural heritage of humanity.” In this way, the proposal for harmonizing both is developed: Considering, therefore, that it is necessary to harmonize the preservation of cultural heritage with the changes required by social and economic development, and that it is urgent to make the greatest efforts to respond to these two requirements in a spirit of broad understanding and with reference to appropriate planning; Considering, equally, that the adequate preservation and exposure of cultural assets contribute powerfully to the social and economic development of countries and regions that have this kind of treasures of humanity, through the encouragement of national and international tourism (Cury 2004, p. 124).
In line with its previous participations, in 1972, the Convention concerning on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage took place. Brazil was represented by the director of IPHAN, Renato Soeiro. He played an important role in the preparatory meeting for this event. As vice president, he managed to reconcile the interests of European, Asian and Latin American countries. They wanted the theme to be monuments, ensembles and historical places, according to what had been summoned at the meeting. However, the USA and Canada, which have large parks and natural landscapes, insisted that the focus should be on natural heritage, as announced in an article published in the Jornal do Brasil newspaper, on April 8, 1972. In the text approved in this Convention, the main objectives in article 5 of this: In order to ensure the most effective protection and conservation and the most active appreciation of the cultural and natural heritage located in their territory and under the conditions appropriate to each country, the States Parties to the present Convention shall endeavor, as far as possible, to: (a) Adopt a general policy aimed at determining a role for cultural and natural heritage in collective life and integrating the protection of that heritage in general planning programs; (b) Establish in its territory, if they do not exist, one or more services for the protection, conservation and enhancement of the cultural and natural heritage, with appropriate personnel, and having the means to enable it to carry out the tasks assigned to it;
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(c) Develop scientific and technical studies and research and improve intervention methods that enable a State to face the dangers that threaten its cultural and natural heritage; (d) Take the appropriate legal, scientific, technical, administrative and financial measures for the identification, protection, conservation, enhancement and restoration of said heritage; and (e) Encourage the creation or development of national or regional training centers in the fields of protection, conservation and enhancement of cultural and natural heritage and encourage scientific research in this field (Article 5 of the Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1972).
At this meeting, the World Heritage Committee was also created as an adjunct to UNESCO, composed of fifteen States elected in general assembly during the ordinary sessions of the General Conference of UNESCO. It was predicted that the number of members of this Committee would be increased to 21, from the moment that 40 States are part of this Committee (Art. 8 of the Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1972). In addition, a representative of the International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (Center of Rome), a representative of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and a representative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and ItsNatural Resources (IUCN), which may be added, at the request of States Parties, gathered in a general assembly during the ordinary sessions of the General Conference of UNESCO, representatives of other intergovernmental organizations with similar objectives (Art. 8 of the Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1972).3 In 1973, with the support of UNESCO, IPHAN and the Ministry of Planning obtained resources to implement programs that protect heritage through tourism activities, such as the Integrated Program for the Reconstruction of Historic Cities in the Northeast (PCH). The main objective of this program was the economic development of the Northeast through tourism, with cultural heritage as a notable capital. When suggesting solutions for degraded areas, it was assumed that regional economic 3 The International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property was
created as a result of a proposal presented at the UNESCO General Conference in New Delhi in 1956. Three years later, the Center was created in Rome. This Center is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage worldwide through training, information, research, cooperation and advocacy programs. It aims to enhance the field of conservation–restoration and raise awareness of the importance and fragility of cultural heritage. ICOMOS, the International Council on Monuments and Sites, was created in 1965, as a result of the first meetings organized by architects, historians and international experts in the early twentieth century and which materialized in the adoption of the Venice Charter in 1964. This is a global nongovernmental organization associated with UNESCO. Its mission is to promote the conservation, protection, use and enhancement of monuments, urban centers and sites. It participates in the development of doctrine, evolution and dissemination of ideas, and carries out awareness and defense actions. IUCN was founded in 1948. The mission of this organization is to influence and assist societies for nature conservation, and to ensure that any and all use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically sustainable. Collaboration with national and local governments, communities and other bodies, so that protected area systems are created and managed correctly, is one of the specialties of IUCN and constitutes one of its main focuses and the organizations that comprise it.
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reactivation or the redistribution of activities (Correa and Faria 2011, p. 20). Therefore, the main aim was the conservation and restoration of the cultural heritage for an economically viable use. In view of this, it can be seen that Brazil was based on the guidelines from UNESCO, the Organization of American States (OAS), on documents such as the Venice Charter (1964) and Norms of Quito (1967), among others of international relevance, to develop their projects related to cultural goods. The DPHAN started to defend and put into practice the use of cultural heritage to leverage the development of member countries through tourism. The main concerns of IPHAN in this period were the preservation of cultural and natural heritage, the reconciliation of economic development with the preservation of that heritage, international cooperation, the promotion of the tourism potential of the heritage and the integration of states and municipalities in actions to preserve the Union of Brazil. Soeiro, as director of IPHAN, was responsible for adapting the federal agency to the changes in the international and national context and managed to reconcile the economic growth of Brazil with the preservation of heritage, this starting from the expansion of international relations. According to Marcelo J. F. Suano, the best way to express the meaning of the term international relations is: permanent contacts establishing a network of relationships, aiming to reach interests through exchanges (whatever the nature of these exchanges are: economic, political, cultural, military, etc.) between actors whose types and quantities have changed throughout history due to a series of aspects (economic, scientific, technological, geographic, political, etc.) that have given them the power to act in a broader scenario, enabling them to influence, or determine the conduct other actors (2005, p. 257, emphasis added).
In this way, Brazil used this network with international bodies and other countries to seek assistance and develop its policies and projects for preservation of heritage. Based on that, it sought to intensify investments in cultural goods in order to strengthen their image as tourist attractions. Based on this growth, some national cultural heritage stood out worldwide, boosting tourism in the country.
3 Heritage as Soft Power With the increase in the internationalization of IPHAN’s relations, Brazil started to have worldwide prominence around its cultural assets. Foreign tourists started to come more and more to visit the Brazilian heritage. Faced with this scenario, Brazilian heritage has become internationally known symbols. These brands were created to publicize and internationalize the country they are, above all, fruits that can be conceived from the concept of soft power. A relatively new concept in the historiographical field, soft power has gained space beyond the strict discussions of international relations, from which it comes. According to Ballerini, soft power has always existed, perhaps even before Greek philosophers. But it was during the Cold War, when the world was divided into two hard powers, the capitalist and the
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communist, that the power of convincing became mostmore evident. After all, the military power of the USSR prevented it from being ruined from the inside out. Nor was it the US’ military force that won the victory of its system. For the author, another power, more seductive and efficient, made the American lifestyle to infiltrate across communist borders, speeding up Soviet catharsis. This power is called Hollywood, one of the American soft powers (Ballerini 2017, p. 14). For Joseph Nye, creator of the concept, soft power is the ability to influence others to do what you want for attraction rather than coercion. Coercive power would be military ostentation and economic sanctions, classified as raw power, while cultural, ideological and political identity would make up soft power (Nye Jr 2004, p. 19 APUD Christofoletti 2017, p. 17).
Soft power is based on three pillars: culture, political values and foreign policies. Culture is characterized by several symbols and social representations that identify the country, such as sport (football and recently volleyball), music (samba and bossa nova), folklore (carnival) and customs (creativity). Political values are identified by the country’s institutions and its internal engagements. In Brazil, for example, there is the fight for the eradication of poverty and hunger, the struggle for social equality and income distribution … Foreign policy covers factors such as the formation of agenda items, diplomacy, coalitions, multilateral forums and international agreements with Brazilian participation (Gueraldi 2010, p. 85). In this sense, the use of soft power can be seen as a face of power used by state actors and, in this way, to be managed by actors, such as international organizations (Fernandes 2017, p. 184). It is believed that Renato Soeiro played a fundamental role in the internationalization progress of IPHAN, intensifying ties with other countries, so that this process had a great impact on the development of heritage preservation policies in Brazil, thus creating a fertile ground for the production of a set of measures that can be understood as one of the first appearances of Brazilian soft power. Thus, with the internationalization process of IPHAN and the external recognition of national heritage, during the 1960s and 1970s, it was possible to move forward so that, in 1980, the first cultural asset would win the title of World Heritage. That year, the city of Ouro Preto was recognized by UNESCO as a cultural heritage of humanity.4 According to Winter, “the material past and its conservation have been a fundamental mediator of relations between nations, their governments and their people over the past 150 years.” For this reason, according to Jurema Machado, Winter claims that: there is room for “heritage diplomacy”, conceptually distinct from “cultural diplomacy”, since, in heritage diplomacy, in addition to the diffusion of a given cultural expression, bidirectional and multidirectional cultural flows and exchanges also fit, making it possible 4 Declared a National Monument in 1933 and listed by Iphan in 1938 for its architectural and urban
development, it was declared by UNESCO as World Heritage on September 5, 1980, being the first Brazilian cultural asset inscribed on the World Heritage List. The title of Cultural Heritage of Humanity enabled greater public and private investments in the city and helped to maintain parts of its originality.
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to establish a governance field that involves governments and societies around themes, such as architectural conservation, social development, citizenship, immaterial cultural heritage, sustainability, climate change, post-disaster reconstruction or the fight against violent extremism. Recognizing heritage as a form of spatial and social governance favors, in many cases, international cooperation for development, for reconstruction or for the solution of claims on the territory (Winter 2015 Apud Mackado 2017, p. 248).
The understanding of heritage as one of the means of obtaining international cooperation, will help in the perception of the IPHAN’s internationalization process and the influence of this context on heritage preservation policies, since this research starts from the assumption that international relations interfere in the change of thinking about cultural heritage, expanding the view on the preservation of the national historical and artistic monument. Such expanded understanding even includes the understanding of the surroundings, as a fundamental element in the understanding of the urban complex. Cultural heritage has become an increasingly important supporter of multilateral dialogues and, therefore, is part of actions in the scope of international relations. In this segment, archaeological, paleontological sites, museums, cultural spaces, landscapes, international preservation organizations, national states, the immateriality of heritage, the dichotomy between inflation and destruction of heritage, among other elements of influence (Christofoletti 2017, p. 26), would help to build the role in which Brazilian international relations would have a presence in the world of culture. Through IPHAN, Soeiro’s management internationalized Brazil’s presence in international preservation forums and marked the presence of a country that is increasingly active in the arenas of cultural internationalism.
4 Final Considerations Soeiro’s main concerns as the director of IPHAN were related to the preservation of cultural and natural heritage, the compatibility of economic development with the preservation of this heritage, international cooperation, the promotion of the tourism potential of heritage and the integration of states and municipalities into actions preservation of the Union. In order to make progress on these issues, he sought help from international organizations. From what was presented in this article, it can be said that Renato Soeiro was an important figure in the internationalization process of IPHAN. Since 1946, when he held the position of director of the institution’s Conservation and Restoration Division, he was the institution’s main representative at international events, in which he effectively participated. Especially in the 1960s and 1970s, this network of international relations intervened in the development of heritage preservation policies, in accordance with what was being discussed worldwide, such as the use of tourism to conserve heritage and to attract resources. During this period, the link between heritage preservation and economic development was widely discussed. There were about 16 major international events that
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discussed various topics in this context and that produced important documents.5 With his influence, Soeiro obtained great assistance from UNESCO, which, in this period, allowed representatives to come to Brazil, in order to investigate the situations of cultural and natural heritage. These missions carried out in the country were essential for expanding the concept of cultural goods and for implementing projects that related tourism and heritage as an idea of sustainability. An example of these actions, which can be considered one of the greatest achievements of the period focused on the preservation of heritage and its use for tourism in Brazil, was the participation of Soeiro in the Integrated Program for the Reconstruction of Historic Cities in the Northeast (PCH), in 1973, a pioneering project in terms of large federal government investment in the preservation of urban cultural heritage. The PCH acted in the development of the Northeast and North regions through cultural tourism. In this way, cultural goods increasingly came to be seen as relevant instruments for enhancing the state image in the international environment and, therefore, boosted investments and caused impacts on the country’s economy. So did the Brazilian government, invested in its cultural assets and stood out internationally, which resulted in the recognition by UNESCO of its first world heritage, Ouro Preto (MG), in 1980. Still in the 1980s, there were other recognized heritage sites, such as: Historic Center of Olinda—PE (1982), Historic Center of Salvador—BA (1985), Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas—MG (1985). The certification of these Brazilian cultural goods as world heritage has brought greater visibility to the country’s cultural heritage internationally, with a progressive increase in foreign tourists. According to Christofoletti, international organizations began to see heritage more broadly, taking it as part of the speeches and agendas that make up contemporary 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 gained much greater visibility and relevant participation, with an advance in the presence of organizations of preservation in international policy negotiating tables as never seen before (Christofoletti 2017, 24).
Thus, it is observed that soft power has been conquering space “through culture, the exchange of traditions and cultural diplomacy” and thus, it is becoming a generator of changes in International Relations. Above all, it is noted that new powers are influencing and proposing diverse agenda that respond to their real internal and local 5 Paris
Recommendation—December 1962, Venice Letter—May 1964, Paris Recommendation— November 1964, Quito Standards—November and December 1967, Paris Recommendation November 1968, Convention on Means to Prohibit and Prevent Import, Export and Transfer of Illicit Cultural Property Properties—1970, Convention for the Protection of World, Cultural and Natural Heritage—1972, Restoration Charter—April 1972, Stockholm Declaration—June 1972, Paris Recommendation—November 1972., Resolution Domingos Cathedral—December 1974, Amsterdam Declaration—October 1975, Amsterdam Manifesto—October 1975., Cultural Tourism Charter—November 1976, Nairobi Recommendations—November 1976., Machu Picchu Letter—December 1977 (IPHAN website).
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needs. In addition, the Brazilian cultural heritage, in this period, was highlighted as a collaborator in the scope of international relations, which enabled the interpretation of heritage as soft power.
References Aguiar LB (2016) O Programa de Cidades Históricas, o turismo e a “viabilidade econômica” do patrimônio (1973-1979). Annals of Museu Paulista 24(1), Jan-Abr Ballerini F (2017) Poder suave (soft power) [recurso eletrônico]: arte africana; arte milenar chinesa; arte renascentista; balé russo; Bollywood; Bossa-Nova; British invasion; carnaval; cultura mag japonesa; Hollywood; moda francesa; tango; telenovelas/ FranthiescoBallerini. Summus, São Paulo Correia RM (2015) Turismo cultural no Brasil: uma abordagem histórica à luz de Michel Parent (1966-1967). In: XXVIII Simpósio Nacional de História, Florianópolis – SC. Anais. www.snh2015.anpuh.org/resources/anais/39/1439866723_ARQUIVO_Anpuh2015.Com pleto.pdf. Accessed 03 Feb 2020 Correa SR, Faria RS de (2011) O Plano de Cidades Históricas (PCH) no planejamento governamental brasileiro e o desenvolvimento urbano e regional (1973–1979). Risco, São Paulo, 14, 2º semestre Correa SM (2016) O Programa de Cidades Históricas: por uma política integrada de preservação do patrimônio cultural urbano. Anais do Museu Paulista: História e Cultura Mater 24(1):15–58 Christofoletti R (2017) Introdução: patrimônio como esteio das relações internacionais: em questão, o soft power. In: Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power/ Rodrigo Christofoletti (Organizador) – Santos (SP): Editora Universitária Leopoldianum Cury I (org.) (2004) Cartas Patrimoniais. 3ª edição. IPHAN, Rio de Janeiro Fernandes JS (2017) A UNESCO e os bens culturais: desafios de uma agenda complexa. In: Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do soft power. Santos (SP): Editora Universitária Leopoldianum, pp 173–187 Fonseca MCL (1996) Da modernização à participação: A política federal de preservação nos anos 70 e 80. Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, n. 24 Fonseca MCL (2005) O patrimônio em processo: trajetória da política federal de preservação no Brasil. 2ª edição. Rio de Janeiro, Editora UFRJ/ MinC-IPHAN Gueraldi RG (2010) A aplicação do conceito de poder brando (soft power) na política externa brasileira. 2010. 206 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Administração Pública) - Fundação Getulio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro IPHAN. www.iphan.gov.br Mackado J (2017) Feito em casa: o IPHAN e a cooperação internacional para o patrimônio. Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional. 35:245–284 MEC- Diretoria do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional. IPHAN/ COPEDOC/-Rio de Janeiro, Arquivo Personalidades 0419/ Caixa 129. Rio de Janeiro Mello JMC de, Novais FA (1998) Capitalismo tardio e sociabilidade moderna. In: Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz (Org.) História da vida privada no Brasil. Contrastes da intimidade contemporânea. V. 4. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras Ministério do Turismo. Turismo Cultural. http://turismo.mg.gov.br/index2.php?option=com_con tent&do_pdf=1&id=297. Accessed 10 Feb 2020 Nye J Jr (2004) J. S. Soft power: the means to success in world politics. New York: Public Affairs, c2004 Pereira JW (2009) O tombamento: de instrumento a processo na construção de narrativas, 141 f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Museologia e Patrimônio) – Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; MAST, Rio de Janeiro
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Ribeiro C (2016) O que tinha a UNESCO a ver com o desenvolvimento econômico? In: Vitruvius. Ano 16, fev Rodrigo MFCA (1966) 20 out. 1966, Rio de Janeiro - RJ, para Raymundo Augusto de Castro Moniz de Aragão, Rio de Janeiro. Série Assuntos Internacionais Saporetti CM (2017) A gestão de Renato Soeiro na direção da DPHAN (Diretoria do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional) (1967-1979). Dissertação (mestrado acadêmico) - Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora, Instituto de Ciências Humanas. Programa de Pós Graduação em História Secretaria do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional. (1987) Resumo cronológico. Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, Brasília, n. 22 Soeiro R (1965) Conservação dos Monumentos Históricos no Brasil. Memória apresentada ao Simpósio Panamericano sobre Preservação de Monumentos Históricos. St. Augustine, Flórida,1013/06/1965. In: Série: PERSONALIDADES. AA01/M036/P02/CX0129/P0420. II-A. Arquivo Central / IPHAN Soeiro R (1966) Rapport sur la conservation des monuments et des site au Brésil. Bruxelas, Bélgica. 15/12/1966. In: Série: PERSONALIDADES. AA01/M036/P02/CX0129/P0420. II-A. Arquivo Central / IPHAN Soeiro R (1967b) “Notas sobre a reunião de Quito”, 14/2/1967b. Iphan/Copedoc, Rio de Janeiro, Personalidades. Soeiro, R, II A Suano MJF (2005) O discurso teórico nas Relações Internacionais. Civitas – Revista de Ciências Sociais 5(2):245–274, jul.-dez
Indigenous Culture as a Heritage of Humanity. Safeguarding Immaterial Heritage Through the Experience of the Guarani Mbya of the Indigenous Land of Ribeirão Silveira (SP) Priscila Enrique de Oliveira Abstract This research is the result of work that has been developed since 2018 with the Guarani Mbya group living in the Indigenous Land of Ribeirão Silveira, a border area between the municipalities of Bertioga and São Sebastião, located on the northern coast of São Paulo (SP)—Brazil. In this article we intend to demonstrate how the relationship between the healing practices and conceptions of health and disease of the indigenous people is established with the public policies for the health care offered to them. We seek to discuss how legislation understands indigenous knowledge as intangible heritage and how this knowledge and practices are observed and accepted by official policies. This research pointed to a potentially positive action, but one that was unfortunately interrupted by the inefficiency of public power, lack of resources, and interest in promoting actions that could actually go along the lines of the declarations and other international documents. The ineffectiveness of the practices lies not only in the lack of dialogue between health professionals and indigenous people, but above all, in the absence of public policies that actually incorporate the knowledge, desires and needs of these populations into their practices and consider the protagonism of the communities themselves. We were able to observe in the face of this brief experience of rapprochement how transformative these initiatives were and how much potential they had to advance towards an effective dialogue. The rare interest on the part of doctors, the willingness of students to study, research, and work with the indigenous community, and the effective possibility of creating dialogue and building a health policy that actually listens to, respects, and cares about traditional knowledge and the Guarani Mbya way of life, were a glimmer of hope and an encouragement for us to be sure of the right path. Keywords Guarani mbya · Health · Dialogue
This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. P. E. de Oliveira (B) Faculdade São Sebastião (FASS), Universidade Cruzeiro do Sul, São Sebastião, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_24
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This article is the result of a work that has been developed since 2018 with the Guarani Mbya group residing in the Ribeirão Silveira Indigenous Land, a border area between the municipalities of Bertioga and São Sebastião, located on the north coast of São Paulo (SP). It is not an indigenous group but a territory inhabited by these indigenous people since the mid-1940s when they settled there after long years of migration (Cherobin 1981; Ladeira 2007). The process of demarcating the lands of these indigenous people was long and conflicting and is not yet finished. Today they live in the area of 8500 ha with a population of approximately 474 indigenous people. The indigenous land has a health post and a school, which currently serves children from elementary to high school, being linked to both Bertioga’s municipal and state schools, in the case of high school. The health post is linked to SESAI (Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health) and the Municipal Health Secretariat of São Sebastião. Later on, we will discuss in more detail its functioning and its relations with indigenous knowledge about the concept of health, disease, corporeality and healing to discuss the heritage issue. The contact of this group with nonindigenous people happens frequently, there are many tourists who enter the area, where they can buy handicrafts or take a guided tour of the waterfalls and rivers. The group seeks with the public authority ways to make tourism viable in a conscious and regulated manner because, in general, they are not happy with the deliberate entry of tourists in the area. There are also traditional festivals open to visitors and Brazilian Indigenous people’s day is a great festivity. The indigenous people also often leave the village, some to work, others to be assisted at hospitals in São Sebastião or Bertioga, or even visit schools, perform dances and attend other cultural events outside the village, or stay for a few days downtown of the city to sell handicrafts, pupunha palm and ornamental flowers and plants. Both at school and at the healthcare center, many of the professionals are nonindigenous. In this article, we intend to demonstrate how the relationships between healing practices and conceptions of health and disease are established with public policies for the health care of the Indigenous peoples. We seek to discuss how the legislation understands indigenous knowledge as intangible heritage and how knowledge and practices are observed and accepted by public health policies. According to the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (Sect. 2): Intangible cultural heritage are practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and techniques—as well as instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated with them - that communities, groups, and in some cases individuals (…) those heritage is constantly recreated by communities and groups due to their surroundings, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity.
Thus, within the scope of knowledge and uses related to nature and the universe, as well as language and sacred objects, there are the concepts of health, disease and corporeality. In this sense, UNESCO has been prioritizing strategies such as safeguarding heritage, promoting multilingual and multicultural education, stimulating mediation mechanisms that facilitate the participation of indigenous people in decision-making processes and valuing local knowledge, strengthening partnerships
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between indigenous and nonindigenous people and supporting the creation of an exchange network among indigenous people. Therefore, we will address in this article how the Guarani Mbya Indigenous conceptions about healing procedures have been identified, respected, neglected, excluded or even engaged in public health policies, so that we can observe the possibilities that the strategies of the ONG enable to strengthen indigenous people and how in practice the policies to which indigenous people are subjected work. We will verify, from the experience of the Rio Silveiras Indigenous Land in relation to the care provided to indigenous health, the growing need for dialogue and strategies for the treatments to be successful for both points of view: indigenous and non-indigenous.
1 The Daily Routine at the Health Center: “Wiping Ice” In 2018, when we started the research, the health center counted on the assistance of three doctors, a dentist, a nurse, two nursing technicians and four indigenous health agents, an oral health assistant and two indigenous oral health agents. The health center is linked to SESAI (Special Secretariat for Indigenous Health) whose headquarter serves the Ribeirão Silveira Indigenous Land located in Curitiba—PR. All the employees mentioned above have an employment relationship with SESAI, except for the two doctors (Dr Kauan Simões Val and Camila de Aguiar Bernardo) who were hired by the Health Foundation of São Sebastião. The center has two cars and five drivers (four nonindigenous and one indigenous). Part of the medication comes from the Foundation and part from SESAI. We can observe that the relationships established around the Health Center often reflect internal conflicts, negotiations, disputes, knowledge and, mainly, it is a space in which identities are manifested, representations are affirmed, manipulated or denied. The competition for the positions of health and sanitary agents disputes over the use of cars reflect conflicts that show different priorities from the indigenous and health center employees, and also political tensions among the leaders. It is a space for negotiations and disputes, and the way that indigenous people interpret, translate and use medical knowledge is absolutely associated with their way of seeing and perceiving the world. Heritage is understood as a political act that is not dissociated from conflict, both at local, national and international levels (Aieta 2010). Thus, this knowledge about health, disease and corporeality, understood as intangible heritage, reflects the struggle of indigenous people to access public policies that respect their diversity from the awareness of the dynamics of culture, identity and their own conceptions about what may or may not be included in the patrimonialization processes. The infrastructure of the clinic is very precarious as can be seen in the images, many chairs and tables are broken, there was no light in the pediatrician’s room that contained a lamp and a fan. At the location site, there are seven rooms in which three are
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designated for care, one for vaccination, inhalation and other procedures, two offices, a warehouse, a kitchen and a restroom.
Front view of the health post (source: personal file)
The first image shows us the health post and the performance of an ONG1 whose headquarter is in the state capital São Paulo, that works offering some activities while adults and children are waiting for assistance. The head of the ONG, Renata Macedo Soares, organizes donated clothes on tables so they can be taken by the indigenous people, proposes games and songs and even offers beads for making necklaces and other handicrafts. She often organized conversations with mothers and invited the pediatrician so that they could be given guidance and promote a conversation in which the mothers could clear up general doubts and follow guidelines about breastfeeding, food and the use of medications. The ONG’s performance is not officially legitimized as a partnership with the government, although Sect. 12 of the guiding principles of the 2003 Convention points to the need for partnerships: (b) strengthen the public sector’s strategic and management capacities in public cultural institutions, through professional and international cultural exchanges, as well as the sharing of best practices; (c) to strengthen partnerships with civil society, non-governmental organizations and the private sector, and among these entities, to favor and promote the diversity of cultural expressions (emphasis added)
The indigenous leaders authorize the institution’s performance and the healthpost professionals see their actions as positive, such as the initiative of collaboration 1 Welcome
Project/Pedju Porã (Núcleo Morungaba).
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between indigenous people and health professionals, as in the case of the conversation between the doctor and the indigenous women.
Pediatrician cleaning the room before the appointment—Pediatrician in attendance
In general, medical care, according to the indigenous people, is very impersonal and is restricted to quick consultations with prescription medications such as anti-inflammatories and antibiotics. At the beginning of 2018, pediatrician Camila Bernardo came to me for a conversation about the “habits of the indigenous people of Boracéia.” This initiative resulted in the research project about the carework of her and another doctor, the General Physician Kauan, whose main goal as to create mechanisms of approximation and dialogue. Both doctors were interested in knowing the indigenous culture so that they could be more successful in their care and could offer better living conditions for the indigenous people. Dr Camila attended children aged between 0 and 2 years old on Tuesdays, and Dr Kauan worked as a general practitioner on Tuesdays and Fridays due to the frequency of service being below the needs of the indigenous people huge queues were formed. It is important to remember that the service in the village was an initiative of the two doctors, as they had a fixed workload at the foundation and chose to spend part of their time assisting the indigenous people.
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Nursing technician—dressing room, vaccination, inhalation and other procedures. (Personal archive)
In the midst of the very precarious conditions and lack of medication, doctors describe their activity at the clinic as “wiping ice” meaning they did not have an efficient interaction from the government and they did not get enough time and resources to remedy or even minimize the problems they face. However, the greatest inconvenience of these professionals and their greatest challenge was dialoguing with the community. Both showed concerns about understanding indigenous people’s prescriptions and procedural indications. In addition, it was necessary to assure the indigenous people about the habit of medicalization because according to doctors, they gave greater credibility to professionals who prescribed more medicines. This aspect was a priority in Dr Kauan’s service, who even spoke some Guarani words and phrases and sought to know which herbs they used in order to prescribe them instead of medicines. The peak of our concern with the approximation of these two realities was the diagnosis of a child with pneumonia whose parents refused medical treatment and opted for spiritual treatment guided by the shaman. In this specific case, the family signed a document prepared by doctors taking responsibility for the child’s nonhospitalization. To the doctors’ surprise and amazement, the shaman’s treatment was successful. Doctors frequently expressed concerns about tobacco use in the pipe (petynguá) and argued that this practice aggravated lung diseases, as well as the fact that they remained close to bonfires inside cassas among other factors. Numerous studies on Guarani culture reveal that the petynguá (pipe) is closely linked to the personal construction, to the rituals of healing and to the wisdom of the shamans. The smoke is linked to the dialogue with the deities and with the production of “wise
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speeches.” The smoke reproduces the formation of the world by Nhanderu, the main Guarani deity, the primordial fog generated with the creation of the world and of all beings. The use of the pipe and its manufacture reflect sociability and subjectivities that constitute Guarani cosmology (Santos 2017). In these situations, we can see how much cosmology guarantees a space for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. In addition to the connection with spirits and the supernatural world, interpretations about the diseases given by the indigenous people also include ways of defining, interpreting, and dealing with their own bodies. The mythological explanations for the diseases presuppose, therefore, an interlocution of the real world with the supernatural, which is usually performed by the figure of the shaman and other spiritual leaders, but not the doctor. These practices, cosmologies and worldviews are the primary elements in the construction of identities and constitute the foundation for maintaining the survival of indigenous people as differentiated ethical groups (Diehl and Pellegrini 2014). Faced with these and other situations, doctors realized the need to get closer, especially with spiritual leaders, and to obtain knowledge about the Guarani Mbya worldview. Observing the principles of the 20082 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, we see that the document reinforces the right of indigenous people to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, as well as understanding the need to highlight and promote the rights to identity, culture, health, employment, language, etc. It also advocates that indigenous people should proceed according to their interests and needs, recognizes that individuals “have the right to live with physical and mental integrity, freedom and security,” and further states that “indigenous people have the right to be not necessarily assimilated or deprived of their cultures,” which must be respected in their diversity. The statement in Sect. 34 also reinforces “the right of indigenous people to maintain and develop their own habits, spirituality, traditions, practices, and customs or systems of laws, even if they already exist, provided that they comply with international human rights laws.” Inspired by these principles and in view of the importance of knowledge about the intangible heritage of the group, we started to hold meetings to discuss texts, articles, books and videos produced by the indigenous people so that doctors Camila and Kaun could get closer to the Guarani Mbya cultural universe. Also so that we could discuss dialogue strategies that valued the knowledge of the indigenous people and their healing practices, and even as determined by the statement quoted above, that medical care could have the necessary attention to the needs and aspirations of the indigenous people. Thus, in October 2018, a meeting was held at Faculdade São Sebastião (FASS) between Dr. Camila, the shamans (pajés) Igino and Carlos Papá and the nursing students. The shamans shared their healing experiences and beliefs and the doctor spoke about their difficulties and needs to talk with them. It was a unique moment in the approach and dialogue between holders of two kinds of knowledge that coexist even though do not interact often. 2 UNITED
NATIONS. United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Rio de Janeiro: United Nations, 2008. Available on: .
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In a second moment, during the conversation with the leaders, an event in two prayer houses was organized in the first semester of 2019 by the chief deputy Mauro Awa Jexaka Samuel dos Santos, who had always been present at the healthpost. One had the presence of indigenous women, indigenous health agents and Dr Camila Bernardo. The other included indigenous men, indigenous health agents and nursing technician Willians Ferreira.
Dr Camila at the prayer house (personal file)
UNESCO declared, at that time, the international year of indigenous languages whose theme was “Indigenous languages are important for sustainable development, peace-building and reconciliation.” Imbued with these principles, we believed that it was a time to favor dialogues and the possibility of translating medical knowledge into indigenous languages according to what the groups needed to know. On the other hand, it was a fruitful context for translators to inform doctors about the importance of using a pipe, prayers, how often they attend the shaman, and other knowledge that it was impossible for the health center to work on every day. At the end of the meeting, the physician Camila Bernardo stated that the smoke from inhalation was also a possibility of cure that Nhanderu (the greatest Guarani deity) was providing through the hands of the doctors, and that was trying to insert the knowledge acquired about the meaning of the pipe smoke by translating it into another context. In the case of conversation with women, requested by the community, the doctor’s approach was about feeding children, the importance of breastfeeding and baby care. A few months earlier, we had carried out a survey with the person in charge of the Secretariat of Agriculture of São Sebastião, Maurício Rúbio Pinto Alves and with the
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vice Chief Mauro, on the fruits and other edible plants that the indigenous group had access inside the village. From that, the doctor sought alternatives to complement vitamins and other needs, guiding the consumption of fruits and vegetables found on the market, but primarily those available and known in the territory where they reside. These guidelines were transmitted in the Guarani language with the names traditionally known by the indigenous people to health workers. In the case of men, the nurse reported that the indigenous people took advantage of the meeting to ask about condom use and transmission of sexually transmitted diseases. Unfortunately, even in the first half of 2019, there were many changes that interrupted these attempts at dialogue and approximation. Facing many frustrations and difficulties, both Dr Kauan and Dr Camila left the healthpost. At the end of 2019 the difficulties increased, there were many budget cuts and delays in employee payments. Faced with this situation, the nurse Willians Ferreira also resigned. In the same period, the doctor hired by SESAI died. The indigenous people are currently experiencing a moment of transformation, lack of attention and a certain abandonment by the public authorities. However, we were able to observe, in light of this brief experience of approximation, how changing these initiatives were and how much potential they had to move toward an effective dialogue, through which indigenous knowledge would be respected and would coexist with the conventional treatments offered by the public power within the communities, respecting indigenous perspectives and needs. Contrary to what most nonindigenous societies think about Guarani residents in São Sebastião, these individuals have their own very lively cultural universe. In general, both hospitals’ professionals, tourists or other people who come into contact cannot understand that there are cosmologies and worldviews beyond the scientific, eurocentric and colonizing view. The normative instruments, especially elaborated at the international level as declarations and conventions, as well as national legal apparatus, enabled public policies aimed at the registration, protection and dissemination of intangible heritage, and certainly gave visibility to indigenous people and created instruments for strengthening their political struggles. However, there are many obstacles to be overcome and many concepts and actions to be reviewed.
2 “Disease that White People Brought, White People Have to Cure”: Indigenous Intangible Heritage and Its Relations with Public Health Policies As we mentioned, in 2018, UNESCO drafted the action plan3 for organizing the celebration of the international year of indigenous languages (2019). Its focus was on promoting the preservation of languages, not only as a tool for communication and social integration but also as an instrument for strengthening identities, memory, 3 Available
on: https://nacoesunidas.org/evento-na-sede-da-unesco-em-paris-lanca-ano-internaci onal-das-linguas-indigenas/.
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history, traditions, fighting for rights, establishing partnerships and also providing global forums to promote debates with experts to address “new paradigms to safeguard, promote and provide access to knowledge and information in indigenous languages.” In this sense: Linguistic diversity contributes to the promotion of cultural identity and diversity, and to intercultural dialogue. It is equally important in achieving quality education for all, building inclusive knowledge societies and preserving cultural and documentary heritage. Furthermore, it ensures the continued intergenerational transmission of indigenous knowledge, which is vital to addressing global challenges. (UNESCO’s action plan, 2018)
Indigenous languages in case of the relationship between health, disease and healing procedures are important tools for the transmission of this knowledge. Guarani rituals in the prayer house, for example, are performed in the group’s language and such procedures, plants, spirits and objects do not have a Portuguese translation. Thus, strengthening the language means strengthening this knowledge. Also according to UNESCO’s action plan (2018): Indigenous languages also represent complex systems of knowledge developed and accumulated over thousands of years. Local languages are indeed a kind of cultural treasure; they are repositories of diversity and key resources for both understanding the environment and utilizing it to the best advantage of local populations, as well as of humanity as a whole. They foster and promote local cultural specificities, habits and values which have endured for thousands of years.
Although international organizations that intend to preserve material or intangible knowledge and heritage reinforce the need to safeguard, transmit and respect this traditional knowledge, the view of public policies, on the part of society or health professionals, continues to promote intolerance and actions in a colonizing perspective. The medical science that legitimizes the creation of institutions and the production of knowledge that guides procedures, in general considers the disease as the result of a pathology caused by something external to the body and, therefore, adopts external and individualizing solutions. This medicine proposes the distinction between the body and the mind, although in recent years, in some cases, it attributes psychosomatic character to certain pathologies (Gallois 2008, 2011). We are subject to this science through professionals and institutions such as universities, hospitals, laboratories, clinics, health and care posts, all authorized and inspected by the State. In several studies on the relationship between this medicine4 and the patterns of definition and understanding of the disease by a large part of the Brazilian population in different temporal and space contexts, we observed that at all times the doctor 4 In
this paper I will use the term western medicine in a few moments to refer to this institutionalized, officialized medicine, legitimized by the scientific knowledge produced by universities and other research institutions, and whose professionals must be accredited and inspected from legal instruments and defined by the State and by the medical corporation considered official. Anyway, it is about the medicine made official by the State and legitimized by science and its institutions. However, we know that this medicine is also constantly changing and its professionals are not constituted as a homogeneous group that uses, in the same way, the same procedures and theories.
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needs to translate his patient’s speech into the scientific universe. This interpretative effort ends up creating standards and standardizing procedures. In this relationship, the patient also needs to decode the doctor’s language, which ends up marking a power relationship in which doctors show patients their superiority for having certain knowledge. In this way, the relationship is marked by a distance characterized by a one-way street in which the doctor delivers the verdict and the patient complies. For the indigenous people,5 the disease in most cases is associated with witchcraft, bad omens, influences of spirits, spiritual descendants that determine divisions into clans, surnames, etc. and these interpretations are historically constructed. Symptoms can have different meanings added to the symbolic universe of the group and the discomfort of the body is usually associated with society as a whole and, therefore, cannot be treated individually as proposed by western medicine (Langdon 2015). The experience of the body is mediated by culture, named by traditional languages. The definitions of pathologies offered by official standard medicine do not match the ways of categorizing and diagnosing diseases by indigenous people. Historically, they had to seek explanations and places for these (nonindigenous) subjects with whom they were forced to live, including the animals they did not know before contact. In this process, white people were often not considered human, in other cases, they were classified as enemies, potential enemies, supernatural beings or relatives. All the explanations supported and guided the relations that should be established between indigenous and nonindigenous people, and in this way they provided a place to nonindigenous and their manufactured objects. We can see how much cosmology guarantees a space for the diagnosis and treatment of diseases. And so, many times, what is considered a disease for officially accepted medicine, for a given indigenous society it can be just a symptom and vice versa, the same can be said about the cure. The claim of cure by the doctor may not correspond to the indigenous conception, by which the complete healing process often means the removal of spirits that only certain methods and rituals can perform, and often requires more time than the doctor’s verdict. In general, we translate mythologies using metaphorical resources (Douglas 1975). It is necessary to understand that metaphors and concepts are instruments of western society that denote our rationality and inability to understand the “other” from their own meanings. The same can be said for the notions about corporeality. In addition to the connection with spirits and the supernatural world, the interpretations about diseases given by the indigenous people also include ways of defining, interpreting, and dealing with their own bodies, which is also, in most cases, not understandable for western medicine. According to Helman (2003), in western societies, the body has been thought of as a machine, the brain as a computer, food becomes fuel and medication is repaired, and the resumption of functions is linked essentially to productivity. The body, in indigenous societies, according to the anthropologists Castro (1996), must be considered as a fundamental element in the process of building the person, that 5I
use the indigenous category with no intention of generalization, aware that each ethical group has different cultural aspects, representations and historically constructed processes.
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is, it must be considered as the “matrix of symbols and the object of thought.” Thus, the spatial configuration of the village, the initiation rituals, dietary restrictions, definitions of sexual relations, and the understanding of nature are related to the body. In it, the manifestations of nature and society happen. There is no dialectical relationship between body and nature, but the natural elements are domesticated by the groups and the elements of the group are naturalized in the world of animals, and this relationship takes place in the body, which becomes the great arena “where these transformations are possible.” The conceptions of names, substances of the soul and blood are understood from the relationship between body and cosmos. The body has a particular meaning for each culture and it involves the notion of sacred, profane, nature and social rules. These notions justify behaviors of privacy, notions of physical contact/distance, understanding of what is perceived as normal and what is not, notions of disgust, ways of dealing with sexuality, hygiene, death and birth, concepts of modesty, understanding of old age and aesthetic standards. In many societies, biological aging does not match the ways of conceiving social aging; it presupposes different behaviors in relation to old age in different societies. Clothing choices, sexual relations and other behaviors are defined in different ways depending on age in different ethnic groups. On a visit to the São Sebastião hospital where I interviewed some health professionals who treated indigenous people in 2019, I heard from an obstetrician that the Guarani are “indigenous rapists,” referring to the case of a 14-year-old pregnant Guarani girl and the “wild” practice of wishing to bring the placenta to the village (López 2000). For the doctor, this age was precocious for a pregnancy, however, for the Guarani it is a notion of childhood and adult life incompatible with the standards of nonindigenous society (Falkenberg et al. 2017). For the Guarani to bury the placenta close to or inside the house is essential and this practice is part of a cosmology that presupposes, in the case of birth, dietary restrictions, prayers, isolation, sexual abstinence, rituals, social relationships that are not even known by health professionals who serve these families (Ferreira 2013). This type of narrative generates, in addition to a prejudiced point of view, discomfort for women who need to undergo hospital maternity. The body also becomes an instrument for defining boundaries that are established differently according to different ethnic and social groups. Societies define for the body the distances between people and the norms of these borders, both in the private and public spheres. Pain is also a process linked to culture and bodies. Not all peoples react to it in the same way, or attribute it to the same causes and also do not communicate it in the same situations or to the same people (Gabriel and Silva 2013; Pellon and Vargas 2010). Therefore, at the same time that cosmologies and definitions about the body establish indigenous treatments and procedures, or even their resistance in relation to certain methods and medicines of nonindigenous, we cannot ignore that the indigenous people also accept the medicines and treatments suggested by doctors and nurses. The fact that they interpret diseases according to certain cosmologies does not imply departures from or resistance to the methods offered by non-indigenous. The Guarani of São Sebastião generally points out in their narratives that the diseases brought by white people must be cured by them, and this justifies the fight for health
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care by public policies; however, the indigenous people also propose that this service can respect their beliefs, worldviews and procedures. In addition, the various indigenous groups often mix medicinal plants, considering that the mixture could potentialize the action of the remedy by physically strengthening them or protecting them from the action of spirits and spells. This practice mixed with medicines prescribed by nonindigenous has brought a major problem according to doctors: many indigenous people self-medicate by mixing medicines, which has currently caused a significant increase in their resistance to antibiotics and their consequent ineffectiveness. Furthermore, this practice does not obey the temporality that the medicine needs to take effect, often the indigenous people mix medicines and take them in single doses. Since we see culture as something dynamic in a constant process of transformation, both cosmologies and the insertion of new objects have gained new meanings through mediation in the relationships established by contact (Martini 2012). The fact that certain groups establish more contact with the surrounding society and suffer a more ostensible indigenous policy does not put them in a position of fragility, passivity or acculturation. The populations mediated this process, constantly reworking, translating and reframing. In the case of intangible heritage, it is clear that the cultural logic that guided these actions become what one should pay attention to. This puts us before the concept of ethnogenesis (Monteiro 2020) which presupposes “articulation between endogenous processes of transformation and external processes introduced by the growing intrusion of forces linked to Europeans (…) cultural strategy of native actors to create identities in the midst of discontinuity and change.” Thus, we must think that the indigenous people, by inserting certain practices, whether compulsory or not, such as clothes, medicines, new food and housing patterns, among others, developed a way of using and relating to these elements that did not bring them closer to those who did not, but rather continued to differentiate themselves from it by establishing new criteria for affirming identities that obeyed choices and ways of conceiving the indigenous world. In this sense, the disease can be used as an instrument like a “magnifying glass” through which one can perceive these reconfigurations, logics and responses given in the face of contact and contagion, as well as showing the role of the indigenous people in this process. The important thing is to know that at certain times the indigenous people make choices that prioritize their practices and at other times they seek western medicine, or use the two procedures concurrently. Finally, for each situation, they define the origin of the diseases, their diagnosis and appropriate treatment based on their own criteria. This interpretation is only possible because there is a specific cultural logic among the indigenous people and so they make their choices, draw symbolic boundaries and highlight needs and priorities.
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3 Policies and Discourses to Safeguard Intangible Heritage and Its Connections with Reality Concerned not only with the preservation of indigenous territories, knowledge, languages and wisdom, the documentation prepared by institutions, such as the ONU, UNESCO and OIT, prescribe and reinforce the need for the indigenous people to strengthen their own institutions and to be able to participate effectively from them in decisions involving their communities. In 2007, the UN drafted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which, in addition to reinforcing these principles, states that: Indigenous people have the right to participate in decision-making of issues that affect their rights, through representatives elected by them according to their own procedures, as well as to maintain and develop their own institutions.
The document reinforces, in Sect. 19, that the State must consult indigenous people through its institutions and representatives to obtain their consent before “adopting and applying legislative and administrative measures that affect them” and further concludes in Sect. 24 that “along with indigenous people, the states will adopt effective measures to recognize and protect the exercise of their rights.” Eleven years after the approval and dissemination of the ONU declaration, the Guarani Mbya tribe of Ribeirão Silveira Indigenous Land wrote at the end of the meeting,6 to prepare for the 6th National Conference on Indigenous Health, an extensive document of their demands, priorities and needs. Among the most discussed topics, there was the need to “guarantee articulation and periodic meetings between the community and representatives of SESAI.” This recurring challenge shows us how much, in reality, international declarations and resolutions officially adhered to by the Brazilian government are still far from becoming a practice in all of the country’s indigenous lands. Among the priorities, the indigenous people also noted the need for higher budgets and more financial resources, the purchase of cars, fuel and vans, hiring cleaning staff to work at health posts, building sanitary modules for families and ensuring access to water, supplying the centers with medicines, especially those of high cost, and also offering meal vouchers for companions who need to be close to hospitals or other medical care institutions.
6 This meeting took place between October 4 and 6, 2018,
in the premises of the school of Ribeirão Silveira Indigenous Land, with the participation of the community and with representatives of SESAI, São Paulo’s State Health Secretariat and São Paulo’s Municipal Health Secretariat.
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Local indigenous health conference held in Rio Silveiras Indigenous Land (personal file)
Another relevant issue regarding the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People is present in Sects. 24 and 31, which clearly demonstrate the search for the maintenance and safeguarding of indigenous cultural intangibility: indigenous people have the right to maintain, control, protect and develop their cultural heritage, their traditional knowledge, their traditional cultural expressions and the manifestations of their sciences, technologies and cultures, including human and genetic resources, seeds, medicines, knowledge of the properties of fauna and flora, oral traditions, literatures, drawings, traditional sports and games, and visual and interpretive arts. They are also entitled to maintain, control, protect and develop their intellectual property called cultural heritage, their traditional knowledge and their traditional cultural expressions. (Section 24).
The declaration further reinforces that: Indigenous people are entitled to their traditional medicines and to maintain their health practices, including the conservation of their plants, animals and minerals of vital medical interest. Indigenous people also have the right to access, without any discrimination, all social and health services.
Despite the declaration establishing these rights, the view of the surrounding society, especially of the majority of health professionals, falls far short of the effort of intelligibility in relation to others. Once again, more than a decade after the Declaration, the Guarani Mbya reinforced in their document prepared for the National Health Conference that the work of the midwives (shamans) and other spiritual leaders’ different treatments must be guaranteed and recognized by the health professionals working at the clinic. They reinforced, once again, the need for dialogue with public institutions that provide health care to indigenous people so
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that they can “promote meetings and campaigns to prevent suicide, alcoholism, drug use, and women’s health, and that these be financed by SESAI and other partners.” They also noted the need to hire a female gynecologist, pediatrician and the promotion, by SESAI, of professional training courses in all areas of health for indigenous communities, as well as ensuring that they occupy working places in their communities. This last theme also shows how the principles of the Declaration are far from being respectfully put into practice regarding to articulating nonindigenous institutions and their forms of organization of indigenous institutions and leaders. While the declaration was a significant step forward in the field of indigenous cultural preservation, it still remains a document of relative social resonance. In fact, it symbolizes an awareness, but still far from becoming an everyday practice. It is still perceived today as an abyss that separates the safeguard prescribed in the document and its effective absorption by the set of practices, customs and public policies. In relation to public health policies and their interaction with indigenous knowledge (immaterial heritage), in addition to regulation and recognition of rights, instruments are necessary to foster and promote this dialogue, with investments in the training and qualification of health professionals who work in indigenous people’s lands, as well as promoting meetings, discussions and the preparation of materials together. Nonetheless, this does not mean that there are no successful experiences. We can take as an example the AMAZONAIDS7 project developed by UNESCO in 2012 in partnership with several institutions among the indigenous community of the Javari valley. The community along with leaders, indigenous teachers, spiritual leaders and health professionals came together to develop a plan for the prevention and awareness of sexually transmitted diseases, especially viral hepatitis and HIV. In addition to the meetings, materials were prepared such as booklets, which were used by teachers in schools in their work with children and adolescents. The focal point of this project was the participation of spiritual leaders who had priorities in decisions, interpretations and directions on the translation of the knowledge in question. According to UNESCO’s anthropologist Luciane Ouriques Ferreira (2012),8 strengthening the wisdom, culture, self-esteem and organization of the indigenous people is the way to prevent diseases. Thus, in addition to dialogue, it is necessary to listen to the demands of the indigenous people, to promote actions that are continuous and to prioritize the preservation of languages and knowledge, as advocated by international documents for the recognition and warranty of indigenous rights.
7 Health, education and interculturality: dialogue with indigenous people of Javari Valley on preven-
tion of STDs and viral hepatitis project is recorded in a video available on UNESCO’s website https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000216717. 8 Speech extracted from the video Health, education and interculturality: dialogue with indigenous peoples of Javari Valley on prevention of STDs and viral hepatitis available on https://unesdoc.une sco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000216717.
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4 Final Considerations We realize, therefore, that the theme of indigenous intangible heritage involves a complexity, since traditional knowledge is limited to knowledge, practices, sociability and the construction of different identities that coexist with exogenous practices. In this sense, UNESCO’s guideline for the preservation of languages becomes fundamental as objects, plants, healing procedures and specific cosmologies are inserted in language, which are often untranslatable. On the other hand, respect for healing practices and the concepts of health, disease and corporeality strengthens different identities and promotes the group’s self-esteem, which from that point on they can more successfully resort fighting for their rights (Miranda 2019). The initiatives mentioned in this article about the Ribeirão Silveira Indigenous Land point at this direction, however, they were interrupted by inefficiency of the public power, lack of resources and interest in promoting actions that could actually go in accordance with statements and other international documents. The inoperability of practices is not only due to the lack of dialogue between public authorities and indigenous communities, but above all, in the absence of public policies that actually insert indigenous people in their practices and, above all, respect and consider the role of the communities. We cannot ignore the fact that the conceptions of heritage in Latin America have always been characterized by a colonial perspective, in which certain groups, depending on their interests, determine their uses and meanings (Salles et al. 2019) in operating in an integrated way between the lines of a multicultural speech. Thus, while it becomes imperative that the State recognizes this intangible heritage, the autonomy of the indigenous communities that hold it, is subject to state sealing, which defines the rules through their recognized institutions. Thus, knowledge about healing practices and their safeguarding by the State should be based on an intercultural perspective through dialogue and consultations with these communities, only this two-way street, conceived horizontally, could point to a decolonial perspective of health policies and safeguarding and strengthening differentiated ethical identities. It is necessary to recognize that this safeguarding process is exclusive to the holders of this knowledge, and in the case of the relations between public health policies and traditional healing practices, the community should decide how, in what context and under what perspectives these health professionals should act through constant dialogue. It is necessary that institutions, ONGs, public authorities, indigenous communities and other agents actually establish partnerships and work together utilizing resources, so that projects and actions are strengthened over the years and do not succumb to mere memories of initiatives that could have been successful. In this sense, guaranteeing the rights to healing and safeguarding traditional knowledge and indigenous languages will not only benefit these people, but will become prerogatives for the construction of a more tolerant, less violent and less ill society and certainly more ethical and plural.
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World Heritage of Minas Gerais—Disputes of Power and Memories
World Heritage of Minas Gerais: Challenges and Opportunities for Its Management Adriana Careaga
Abstract Heritage is a conflictive field by nature. What heritage do you decide to preserve? Who does it? Who is opposed to it? How is it preserved? How does the scholarship dialogue with local communities? How do you educate yourself on heritage? What mechanisms are put into play for its conservation? UNESCO conceptualizes the management plan as the legal, administrative and strategic tool that preserves those values of the sites that the stakeholders have prioritized at a given moment. It contemplates various functions: sustainability, benefits of heritage conservation for human development, being forward-looking, and dynamic. What effects can disasters have on World Heritage properties in general and on these properties in particular? We highlight the necessary dialogue between international documents and the declared World heritage in the state of Minas Gerais. Disaster risk management (DRM) deals not only with the protection of heritage assets against major threats but also with the reduction of underlying vulnerability factors, such as lack of maintenance, inadequate management, progressive deterioration, or the absence of ecosystem protection zones, which can turn hazards into disasters. DRM should be an integral component of the management of any World Heritage property and linked with disaster management systems at the local, regional and national levels. Due to its high complexity, it requires the greater inclusion of possible stakeholders and processes of mediation, conciliation and capacity building before the disaster, during and after the disaster. The Living heritage approach (Poulios 2010) based on “Functional continuity” emphasizes the change in continuity as an overcoming between the past and the present that frequently does not allow a holistic and complex glimpse of the conservation of the property. Keywords Mining heritage · Living heritage · Functional continuity · Mining heritage · Living heritage · Functional continuity · People centered approach
A. Careaga (B) ICOMOS International/ICOMOS Uruguay, Universidad ORT Uruguay, Montevideo, Uruguay e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_25
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Before addressing the general aspect of heritage management, we would like to question the disciplinary field. These two questions could point the way. What are we talking about when we talk about heritage? Is it possible that we all have the same idea about heritage? Perhaps the first idea that comes to mind when we mention heritage is that it is a subject to a legal declaration, whether municipal, national, or international. However, something we believe is important to highlight is the fact that not all heritage is declared as such, nor even as world heritage of Humanity. In a very broad sense, we can, for example, indicate the heritage of a country, its republican vocation, and its democratic trajectory throughout its history. This aspect recognized by its citizens and also by international organizations provides an unavoidable reference of civic and heritage capital. More narrowly, at a city level, there may be certain recognizable icons for the inhabitant without the need for them to be protected. To illustrate with an example, Montevideo has some interventions on the sidewalks that are known for the “Odin” tiles by their creator. This man, Odin, goes at night filling holes in the sidewalks with colorful tiles that everyone recognizes as a “work of art” and citizen care. When the municipality renewed its sidewalks a few years ago, population, via social networks, demonstrated support for the defense of this artist’s tiles so that they would not be removed. This is a symbolic heritage of the Old Montevideo city. Without ignoring this type of heritage, in this work, we will deal with assets that are declared heritage of humanity and their management. How World Heritage properties are defined? They are defined in articles 1 and 2 of the World Heritage Convention and inscribed on the World Heritage List for their Exceptional Universal Value OUV (which is determined by meeting one or more of the 10 criteria stated in the Practical Guidelines on the application of the Convention for the Protection of the World Heritage (UNESCO/WHC 2017). Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) is the structuring key. According to the Operational Guidelines in its paragraph 49, they establish that an exceptional universal value means a cultural and/or natural meaning that is so exceptional that it transcends national borders and has a common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. As such, the permanent protection of this heritage is of utmost importance to the international community as a whole. For a property to be declared a World Heritage Site, it must demonstrate its OUV. The OUV is supported by three pillars, as shown in the following scheme that must always be: (i) meet the criteria (ii) integrity (iii) protection and management.
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PROTECTI ON AND
INTEGRITY AND
OUTSTANDING UNIVERSAL
Diagram courtesy of IUCN (InternaƟonal Union for ConservaƟon of Nature)
According to the Operational Guidelines (2017), the criteria to take into account the OUV in relation to cultural property are the following: (i) represent a masterpiece of human creative genius; (ii) exhibit an important exchange of human values, over a period of time or within a cultural area of the world, about developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, urban planning or landscape design; (iii) give a unique or at least exceptional testimony of a cultural tradition or of a civilization that is alive or has disappeared; (iv) be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape that illustrates (a) significant stages in human history; (v) be an outstanding example of a traditional human settlement, land use or sea use that is representative of a culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment, especially when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change; (vi) be directly or tangibly associated with living events or traditions, with ideas or beliefs, with artistic and literary works of remarkable universal importance. (The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria); To get closer to the scene of the 1972 UNESCO World Convention on Heritage, we will give some figures: 167 States parties; Properties inscribed on the World Heritage list: • 1,121 properties, 869 cultural, 213 natural, 39 mixed, 39 cross-border, and 53 properties on the List in Danger. One consideration regarding the endangered list: it is a tool designed to draw the attention of the world community to a good that is threatened for various reasons. Being in danger means you can receive funds for its recovery. Unfortunately, party states often view this aid tool as a punishment and not as an opportunity for which it was created. Who are the actors involved in compliance with the 1972 UNESCO World Convention? In its article 8.3, the aforementioned Convention indicates to its advisory the responsible bodies that are:
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– ICCROM, for its acronym in English (International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property), who is in charge of the study of the preservation and restoration of cultural property – ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) who is in charge of the conservation and preservation of cultural property – IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) International Union for the Conservation of natural resources. If we focus our attention on Brazil’s case, we can see that it has a total of 22 declared World Heritage Sites, 14 of them cultural, 7 natural, and 1 mixed. The complete list of the mentioned assets is presented below: Historic Town of Ouro Preto; Historic Center of the Town of Olinda; Jesuit Missions of the Guaranis: San Ignacio Mini, Santa Ana, Nuestra Señora de Loreto and Santa Maria Mayor (Argentina), Ruins of São Miguel das Missoes (Brazil); Historic Center of Salvador of Bahia; Sanctuary of Bom Jesus do Congonhas; Iguaçu National Park; Brasilia; Serra da Capivara National Park; Historic Center of São Luís; Atlantic Forest South-East Reserves; Discovery Coast Atlantic Forest Reserves; Historic Center of the Town of Diamantina; Central Amazon Conservation Complex 5; Pantanal Conservation Area; Brazilian Atlantic Islands: Fernando de Noronha and Atol das Rocas Reserves; Closed Protected Areas: Chapada dos Veadeiros and Emas National Parks; Historic Center of the Town of Goiás; São Francisco Square in the Town of São Cristóvão; Rio de Janeiro: Carioca Landscapes between the Mountain and the Sea; Pampulha Modern Ensemble; Valongo Wharf Archaeological Site, and Paraty and Ilha Grande - Culture and Biodiversity. Now we will take a closer look at mining heritage in the region of Minas Gerais considering the challenges that arise for its conservation and management.
1 Historic Center of Ouro Preto Registration year: 1980 It was registered under criteria (i) and (iii). • Criterion (i): Located in a remote and rugged landscape, the aesthetic quality of the vernacular and erudite architecture and the irregular urban pattern of Ouro Preto make the city a treasure of human genius. • Criterion (iii): The built heritage of the historic city of Ouro Preto is an exceptional testimony to the creative talents of a society built on pioneering mining wealth under Portuguese colonial rule. The stone sculptures carved on the facades, which are distinguished by their originality and design and by the combined use of two materials, gneiss and soapstone.
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CHALLENGES it faces: • Guarantee adequate city management; • Improve urban expansion planning through additional controls on the occupation of the surrounding slopes; • Regulate general traffic planning in the urban area surrounding the protected area; • Effectively develop the tourist-cultural potential of the area, transforming the city into an international cultural destination, recognized for its rich cultural heritage.
2 Sanctuary of Bom Jesus Do Congonhas Registration year: 1985 It was registered under the following criteria: • Criterion (i): The architectural and sculptural complex of the Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos represents a singular artistic achievement, a jewel of human genius, reflecting the apex of Christian art in Latin America, as expressed in the work of Aleijadinho, a completely original and expressive work of the baroque style transported to the tropics. • Criterion (iv): The Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos in Congonhas marks a crossroads in the evolution of religious architecture of the mid-seventeenth century in Portuguese America, more specifically Minas Gerais, as reflected in the slightly recessed towers of flame of the basilica and the innovative rococo-style façade that converge to form an important example of baroque art in Latin America CHALLENGE The greatest challenge facing the Bom Jesus do Congonhas Sanctuary is the need to adopt a management approach for the historic center focused on promoting the integration of the site with the surrounding urban landscape through a process of active inclusion of the various communities.
3 Historical Center of Diamantina Registration year: 1999 The criteria considered for registration were as follows: • Criterion (ii): Diamantina shows how explorers of the Brazilian territory, diamond hunters, and representatives of the Crown were able to adapt European models to the American context in the eighteenth century, thus creating a culture that was faithful to its roots but completely original. • Criterion (iv): The Diamantina urban and architectural group, perfectly integrated into a wild landscape, is a good example of an adventurous spirit combined with a search for refinement so typical of nature.
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CHALLENGES The Monumenta Program, a joint initiative between IPHAN/Ministry of Culture and the Municipal Government, has dedicated significant financial resources to the management of cultural heritage and the recovery of essential historical and public buildings and spaces in the city. Land marking studies related to the Cristais Mountains by IPHAN are currently under development, aiming to strengthen the protection of the natural monument, critical to understanding the context and uniqueness of the Diamantina Historic Site as a unique landscape.
4 Modern Architectural Ensemble of Pampulha Registration year: 2016 The criteria used were the following: • Criterion (i): Niemeyer, Burle Marx, and Portinari collectively delivered a set of landscapes that, taken as a whole, is outstanding for the way it manifests a new modern and fluid architectural language fused with plastic arts and design, which interacts with its context. • Criterion (ii): The modern ensemble of Pampulha was linked to reciprocal influences between Europe, North America and the periphery of Latin America, in particular, to a poetic reaction to the perceived austerity of European architecture. • Criterion (iv): The scope of Pampulha and its innovative architectural and landscape concepts reflect a particular stage in the history of architecture in South America, which in turn reflects broader socio-economic changes in society beyond the region. CHALLENGES • Strengthen protection and specific restrictions for the buffer zone that reflect its cultural value as an essential context for the designed complex. • A management plan establishes a matrix of responsibilities that must be increased to provide strategic guidelines that can encompass management and decisionmaking as formal commitments to progress in key areas. It should provide a sufficiently clear understanding of protection challenges, not only for the key buildings in their landscape setting, but also for the essential characteristics of the traditional neighborhoods that integrates together with the complex a historical urban landscape. • Set of monitoring indicators that are related to the defined attributes of OUV. So far, some challenges facing the world heritage assets of the state of Minas Gerais have been detailed. Now we should ask ourselves: What effects can disasters have on World Heritage properties in general and on these properties in particular? First of all, we should define what is meant by disaster. A first definition could be the interruption in the operation of a community or society that causes a large number
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of deaths as well as material, economic, and environmental impacts that exceed the capacity of the affected community or society to cope with the situation using their own resources. But also… its effects not only on people and property but on the values of World Heritage properties and, when relevant, on their ecosystems. The problem is that heritage is often not included in global statistics on disaster risk. Thus, cultural and natural assets are increasingly affected by phenomena that are less and less “natural” in their dynamics, if not in their cause. However, there is an erroneous tension: save lives or save cultural heritage? Against this, Stovel (1998) argues that this is actually the patrimony of the communities: “The ability of affected individuals and communities to regain equilibrium in their lives should be understood however to depend very much on efforts to retrieve and strengthen those heritage elements and symbols that have traditionally given meaning, order and continuity to life.” (Stovel 1998: 13)
Following this line, we could argue that heritage resources are NOT renewable. So, cultural heritage is always at risk. “It is at risk from the depredations of war. It is at risk from the occasional eruptions and eruptions of nature. It is at risk from political and economic pressures. You are at risk from the daily forces of slow decline, wear and tear, and neglect. It is even at risk from the hand of the overly jealous conservative!” (Stovel 1998)
Another question we could address would be asking what are the main types of threats that can cause disasters? According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), International Council for Science (ICSU) 2007), threats can be of various kinds. Namely: • Meteorological: hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, lightning, fires; • Hydrological: floods, flash floods, tsunamis; • Geological: volcanoes, earthquakes, mass movements (landslides, translational or rotational landslides); • Astrophysics: meteorites • Biological: epidemics, pests; • Derived from human activity: armed conflicts, fires, pollution, collapse or failure of infrastructure, civil unrest, and terrorism; • Climate change: increase in the frequency and intensity of storms, sudden overflow of glacial lakes. If we think about the relationships of natural threats and those derived from human activity, we can notice certain direct and secondary effects according to what is established by ICCROM in the following table:
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Relationship of natural hazards and those derived from human activity.Risk management ICCROM (2014)
The following photo illustrates a recent disaster in Bento Rodrígues and its magnitude it:
Bento Rodrigues devastated by the waste. Photo: State Public Ministry. Nov. 2015
5 The Management Plan as the Key to the Preservation of Heritage Assets It is a requirement of the Operational Guidelines to present a management plan for the property declared as World Heritage Site. The management plan consists of the legal, administrative, and strategic tools that should serve to enable the preservation of those values of the sites that the stakeholders have prioritized at any given time. The functions of this plan would be to:
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Guarantee sustainability over time; Focus on the benefits of heritage conservation for human development; Be proactive meaning to say what can and cannot be done on the site; Be dynamic as people’s values and priorities change over time;
The following aspects must be taken into account in the preparation of any management plan: • • • •
Continuous monitoring system; Participatory Management Plan; Precise delimitation of the buffer zone; Pluralistic management coordination of the conservation and management plan;
All these aspects are crucial but the last one in particular, relative to the plurality of actors, is the key to sustainable management over time. Heritage in itself is a conflictive field that requires permanent interaction between the various social actors involved. Therefore, mediation and conciliation competencies are permanently required to guarantee the full execution of the management plan.
Inclusion of all social actors. Careaga, 2019
If the focus is on disaster risk management (DRM), we see that it concerns not only the protection of heritage assets against major threats but also the reduction of underlying vulnerability factors, such as the lack of maintenance, inadequate management, progressive deterioration, or the absence of protection zones for ecosystems, which can lead to threats turning into disasters. Disaster risk management should be an integral component of the management of any World Heritage property and, therefore, form part of the management plan. It should also be linked to disaster management systems at the local, regional, and national levels. Already in 1998, Stovel warned of the importance of the territoriality in the actions as well as the temporality of them. This author pointed out the response capacity in the phase of disaster preparedness or prevention, in the second stage of response to it and in the third and final stage of recovery. These stages would thus intersect with the local, municipal, regional, and national levels as observed in the following table:
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This Stovel scheme remains in force until the present since it allows us to visualize a continuum in approaching the disaster. Before, during, and after are clearly identified according to the World Heritage Disaster Risk Management publication (2014).
What would be the lessons learned in developing and executing risk management plans? In the first place, we could indicate that there is a certain lack of knowledge of the local communities in the elaboration of risk management plans. Actually, despite the discussion, some of those plans seem to actively ignore the communities. In other words, management plans are drawn up toward the communities and not from and with them. Secondly, the risk management plan should always be incorporated into the dossiers in the site management plans as a form of ANTICIPATION of disasters. Of the 53 properties (natural, cultural and mixed) declared as World Heritage Site that are on the danger list, most of them have problems in their management plans. As previously stated, heritage is a conflictive arena by nature and definition since multiple actors, interests and projections are reflected. For a long time and in a certain way, it still persists, a certain monumental vision that is difficult to eradicate from the
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collective imagination. That vision is focused on tangible aspects. Let us bear in mind that the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is of recent date, 2003. Hence, in the reigning iconography, buildings and constructions are often placed before people and landscapes would therefore seem uninhabited. There is a need to change the approach that requires unavoidable comprehensiveness and interdisciplinarity, as well as participatory management. These aspects would guarantee effective executable and sustainable management plans over time. Currently several transdisciplinary and holistic views converge in the approach to heritage and its management. An approach from human rights and heritage has been carried out for more than a decade by the ICOMOS international working group, Our common dignity/Rights-based approach. This group has the following purposes: • Build strong relationships with communities and peoples in their work; • Adopt the principle of free, prior, and informed consent of the communities of origin before adopting measures related to their cultural heritage; • Offer all possible assistance so that communities and rights holders are consulted and invited to actively participate in the entire process of identification, selection, classification, interpretation, preservation, and safeguarding, as well as the administration and development of cultural heritage. Both individual and collective rights of access to heritage are therefore the center of interest. Some questions that mark their actions would be: What are human rights and what do they mean for heritage management? How are equity decisions made? What rules are applied in decision-making? What values, principles, and approaches guide those decisions? Are all relevant rights holders and duty holders involved? Will all parties feel that decisions are inclusive, effective, efficient, participatory, and legitimate? Another holistic and interdisciplinary vision of heritage conservation is the valuebased approach that draws heavily on the Burra Charter for sites of cultural significance (ICOMOS Australia 1999) and has been further developed and advocated, primarily to through a series of publications from the Getty Conservation Institute. The key concept of a value-based approach is one of the stakeholder groups that claim to place people at the center of heritage conservation. It should be noted that there is a permanent tension in heritage management between technical and social-political aspects. Tensions usually arise according to De la Torre (…) Because cultural heritage has a multitude of values, it is not always possible to protect them all equally. Values are sometimes in conflict, and managers must make decisions that favor some but not others. (De la Torre 2005)
The concentration of power in a leading managing authority is a very sensitive issue. Given the greater power of conservation professionals, a value-based approach seems to focus primarily on preserving materials. A value-based approach, although supposedly putting people at the center of conservation and management (through the stakeholder group concept), actually tends to promote community participation within the rules of conservation professionals and under their supervision. Furthermore, policies do not always address pluralistic approaches but sectoral ones, which
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prevents a global approach. Furthermore, the process of identifying values is not always easy since not all social actors share them unanimously, which shows a latent and manifest conflict of heritage. These values generally and frequently cover tangible aspects of heritage. A strong leadership figure is imposed to lead comprehensive, sustainable, and participatory processes over time. If we graph these tension loops they would appear like this:
Leading authority that coordinates all management efforts. Careaga, 2019
Another possible approach is from Living heritage (Poulios 2010). The central idea of this approach is that of “Functional Continuity,” placing special emphasis on the change in continuity. It is important to note that the core community, is an inseparable part of the site. Processes are prioritized over products (for example Buddhist Temples that are permanently rebuilt). Hence, the traditional concept of authenticity is challenged as a mere preservation of the structure and original materials of the good. The current theoretical framework and practice of heritage conservation, also in the context of a value-based approach, are based on the notion that the authenticity of the sites is not renewable and focuses primarily on the material and the elements of materiality, and thus appears unable to adopt the traditional management mechanisms and practices of maintaining a living heritage site, in which the physical and material structure may have low priority. This approach would go one step further in preservation and authenticity to highlight. In Mehorta’s words: “Most conservation debates discuss change in terms of the loss of something, as opposed to new possibilities, mainly because people (especially the propagators and sponsors of the conservation effort) will easily react to any type of new condition such as something worse than a “magical” moment in the past. (Mehrotra 2004: 26)
This approach to living heritage would enhance an overcoming of the discontinuity between the past and the present, a binomial that often would not allow glimpsing the conservation of the property in a holistic and complex way.
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References De la Torre M (2005) Part one: project background. In: de la Torre M, MacLean M, Mason R, Myers D (eds) Heritage values in site management: four case studies. Los Angeles, The Getty Conservation Institute, pp 1–13 ICCROM (2014) Manual de referencia Gestión del riesgo de desastres para el Patrimonio Mundial ICOMOS Australia (1999) Carta de Burra para sitios de significación cultural. https://www.icomos. org/charters/burra1999_spa.pdf. Accessed 30 Sept 2019 Mehrotra R (2004). Constructing cultural significance: Looking at Bombay’s historic fort area. Future Anterior 1(2): 24–31. en Poulios Poulios I (2010) Moving beyond a values-based approach to heritage conservation conservation and mgmt of arch. sites 12(2), 170–85, May. University of Western Greece, Greece. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233621722_Moving_Beyond_a_V alues-Based_Approach_to_Heritage_Conservation. Accessed 04 Apr 2020 Stovel H (1998) Risk preparedness: a management manual for world cultural heritage ICCROM. https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/2018-02/iccrom_17_riskpreparedness_en. pdf. Accessed 05 May 2020 UNESCO Operational guidelines (2017) https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/
Dispute Over the Social Imaginary in the City of Prophets: Conflicts, Environment and Heritage in Congonhas (1985–2020) Alexandre Augusto da Costa
Abstract The central hypothesis of the article is that Congonhas, a UNESCO world heritage site, began to rethink local identities, thus reflecting an imagery that inspired a long-term view that comprised alternatives to the economic vocation of mining. Besides, it entailed the rescue of the identity ties with Portugal (a country that inspired the devotion to the Lord Bom Jesus de Matosinhos) and the search for expertise in heritage management and promotion. In this sense, the actions of the following main actors will be mapped: City Hall, Public Attorney’s Office, Catholic Church, civil society and mining companies. Keywords World heritage · International relations · Congonhas This essay proposes to investigate the power relations of the identities that were established around the Christian imaginary of devotion to Senhor Bom Jesus de Matosinhos in Congonhas, a city located in the central region of Minas Gerais. The starting point is the UNESCO seal in 1985, which recognized the historic site of the Basilica of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos1 as World Heritage: a masterpiece by the greatest Brazilian Baroque artist, Antônio Francisco Lisboa (Aleijadinho) with the 12 soapstone prophets and the 66 cedar sculptures of Via-crucis, minted at the end of the eighteenth century. In the application proposal sent to UNESCO in 19842 (45-page inventory), approved by the international body in the following year, the importance 1 The
sanctuary was listed by Iphan in 1939 and the city’s architectural and urban complex was recognized by the same Institute in 1941. 2 IPHAN (1984), pp. 1–45. This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Alexandre Augusto da Costa—PhD student in History at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), master in Communication at UFJF. A. A. da Costa (B) Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_26
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of religiosity and mining activity in the city’s imaginary was highlighted, in addition to the exceptionality that marks the cultural identity of Congonhas: the masterpiece of the artistic-architectural sanctuary of Mestre Antônio Francisco Lisboa (Aleijadinho), an artist recognized by important art historians such as Robert C. Smith and Germain Bazin. Still on the master from Minas Gerais, the dossier emphasized that the artist coined one of the last copies of the Sacro Monte3 series of Western Christian art. From an iconographic point of view, the proposal highlighted that the Bom Jesus de Matozinhos Sanctuary in Congonhas […] it is the only one that presents the juxtaposition of biblical prophecies and the drama of the Redemption, according to the traditional line of theological interpretation in search of harmonies and concordances between the Old and the New Testament, abundantly illustrated in medieval cathedrals.4
As means of protection and conservation, in addition to historically reporting the main interventions that the works and the architectural space have received since the end of the nineteenth century, the dossier pointed out that the historical complex had federal (ensured in the decree-law of November 30, 1937, which guaranteed the conservation and preservation of the main elements) and state, through Law No. 5,775, of November 30, 1971, which regulated the organization and protection of cultural assets. The proposal also pointed out that the community, the Church and local authorities were vigilant and were able to report any signs of deterioration to the bodies responsible for the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN)5 and the State Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (IEPHA) (Image 1). While in closing the justification for the inscription of the World Heritage List, the dossier stressed that Congonhas should be recognized by UNESCO: “For representing a unique artistic achievement, a true masterpiece of the creative spirit of man; and (2) because it is associated with beliefs and events of considerable significance.” (Idem, p. 39) The dossier was approved by the UNESCO committee and the whole place was considered a World Heritage Site on December 6, 1985. Until that date, only Ouro Preto—MG (1980), the historic center of Olinda—PE (1982), the Jesuit Missions and the ruins of São Miguel das Missões-RS (1983) carried this title. In 1986, perhaps in an initiative of “mirroring the city,” Congonhas established the first international relations policy aiming to recover and expand the historical and identity ties with the sister city in Portugal, Matosinhos (location that gave rise to the devotion of Senhor Bom Jesus in Brazilian lands). The agreement that was in force until 1996 was resumed in 2018 with an exchange proposal that covers cultural exchanges between artists and musicians, as well as heritage managers from both 3 The
history of the sanctuaries built in reference to Sacro Monte will be detailed below.
4 Cf. Sanctuary of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos. Proposed inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage
List, 1984, p. 35. Available at: . Accessed on December 8. 2019. Available at:. Accessed on December 8. 2019. 5 Currently known as the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN).
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Image 1 Prophet Baruc from the series of 12 prophets sculpted in soapstone in 1800 by master Aleijadinho located in the churchyard of the Basilica of Senhor Bom Jesus de Matozinhos. Author’s collection
cities. These elements provide clues for formulating the hypothesis that the worldwide recognition of the historic site would have inaugurated a new and productive stage of protection of heritage, opening the doors for the implementation of public policies and the structuring of technical teams specialized in the preservation and restoration of listed heritage assets. In these more than 30 years of international recognition of the artistic and historical importance of the heritage that it houses, other interventions have followed, from the restoration of the original paintings of the chapels of the Passion, to the insertion of modern architectural spaces in dialogue with the historic site. Among the main transformations that the city has undergone in the last three decades, the efforts of several actors to implement an adequate structure for the protection of sites, such as the Municipal Council for the Historical and Artistic Heritage of Congonhas (COMUPHAC) created in 1992, stand out; the Monumenta 2002 program; Law 3051/2011, which deals with the Fund for the Preservation of Historical and Cultural Heritage (Fundo Profeta); the Culture, Leisure and Tourism Foundation (FUMCULT); the restoration of buildings such as the Romaria; the transformation of the layout of the surroundings of the listed assets with the requalification of monuments and the insertion of new architectural elements in dialogue with the Basilica of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos—in particular the restoration of Alameda Cidade Matosinhos in Portugal (which connects the Romaria’s Building to the Basilica); the renovation and modernization of JK Square, which connects
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the churches of Matriz and Senhor Bom Jesus; in addition to the construction of the modern Congonhas Museum (a reference center in heritage education) initiated by the Municipal Government, UNESCO and IPHAN, and which is sponsored by mining companies. The construction of the Basilica that houses the sanctuary was started in 1757 by the Portuguese miner Feliciano Mendes who arrived in the already populated lands of Alto Maranhão, where today Congonhas is located. After suffering a serious illness, he made a promise that if he were cured, he would dedicate the rest of his life to building a religious complex similar to those that existed in the region where he was born, near Guimarães, northern Portugal: the sanctuaries of Braga and Bom Jesus de Matosinhos. The first part was completed in 1772. However, the intervention of Antônio Francisco Lisboa (master Aleijadinho) took place only a few years later, as historian Myriam Ribeiro de Oliveira explains: The series of the 12 Prophets of Congonhas was therefore carried out in two stages, as we can deduce from the analysis of the reproduced documents. A first stage covering the year 1800 and some months of the year 1802, and a second stage in 1805, the year in which he completed the figures (Oliveira 1984, p. 30).
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Via-crucis was completed with the six stations of the chapels in seven stations that house 66 cedar sculptures by the Baroque master, named as follows: Last Supper, Garden of Gethsemane, Arrest, Flagellation, Crowning of Thorns, Cruz-as-Costas/Crucifixion. Only in 1930 the paving and gardens were built (Neves et al. 2016) (Image 2). The architectural ensemble also features paintings by Manoel da Costa Athaíde (1760–1830) and the Room of Miracles (Sala de Milagres), which holds a collection of ex-votos (objects offered in thanks for the graces achieved). This collection also contains the collection of 89 painted ex-votos, dating from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. In addition to its artistic value,6 the Sanctuary is one of the main centers of religious pilgrimage in Brazil and receives thousands of faithful people every year. The great pilgrimage—the Jubilee—takes place every year between September 7 and 14, bringing together a crowd of faithful. In order to deeply understand how the devotion to Bom Jesus that took place in Congonhas for more than 200 years took root, it is necessary to look into the lens of the first Christian processions. Fábio França, in the book “Arte e Paixão, Congonhas do Aleijadinho,” reports that the legends about pilgrimages in vow to the crucified Christ date back to the fourth century, probably linked to the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine the Great (280-337 d. C.) who ordered the construction of a church—later replaced by the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher—at the request of his mother, Saint Helena, who would have identified in Jerusalem the places where Christ passed. 6 When
visiting Congonhas in the early twentieth century, the poet Oswald de Andrade was enchanted with the sanctuary and created the poem “Ocaso” in which he described Aleijadinho’s work as: “Soapstone Bible/Bathed in gold from the mines” (Andrade 1974, p. 140). Cf. Oliveira, MAR (1974) Poetry gathered. Brazilian Civilization, Rio de Janeiro.
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Image 2 Scene from Via Crucis, “Cruz-as-costas/crucifixion” with images carved in cedar wood by master Aleijadinho. Author’s collection
According to França (2015, pp. 271–272), to walk the Stations of the Passion of Christ, it then meant to the faithful ones, in the following centuries, to make the Via Crucis or Via Dolorosa—a kind of reproduction of the path that Jesus took, carrying the cross (Via-crucis) from Pretoria (Pilate’s palace) to the Mount Calvary (place of the Skull). This tradition would have been consolidated by the Franciscan priests in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Historically, in the itinerary of these pilgrimages,7 stations (initially known as passions) were created, similarly to what would have happened in Jerusalem, in which devotees stopped, listened to sermons and prayed contemplating the scenes of the suffering of Christ’s stations one by one (França 2015, 272). It has thus become a common practice for Christian believers to plan these trips to Jerusalem once a year or at least once in their lives. As not everyone was able to share this pilgrimage to the Holy Land, it was necessary for the Catholic Church to respond to the devotees’ wishes. It was then that the creation of special places to revive the Passion spread rapidly throughout the Western world. Calvaries8 were created especially in countries like Spain, France, Germany, Italy and Portugal in 7 The
faithful people who went to the Holy Places were called pilgrims—a name that was consolidated from the moment that the city of Rome became a great center of visitation. In this imaginary, since the end of the second century, pilgrims went to the city to venerate the tombs of the apostles São Pedro and São Paulo. 8 Among the best-known pilgrimages in the West are the tomb of Santiago de Compostela, Spain, since the tenth century; that of Bom Jesus de Matosinhos, in Portugal, since the eleventh century;
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the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Path of Calvary, in an attempt to reproduce the Via Dolorosa as close as possible, led to the choice of building sanctuaries in high places—going back to the drama of the Calvary of Christ—in order to allow pilgrims an arduous, difficult path to be followed. They traveled in a kind of zigzag from the Via Crucis stations.9 In Portugal, several sanctuaries were built around the representation of the Stations of the Via Crucis, two of which are exclusively dedicated to Senhor Bom Jesus, as is the case of Braga (Bom Jesus do Monte) and Matosinhos (Bom Jesus de Bouças or Bom Jesus de Matosinhos)—temples that inspired the construction of the Bom Jesus de Matozinhos Basilica in Congonhas. As França (2015, p. 274) explains, devotion in Portuguese lands would have started with the Monastery of Bouças, erected by Benedictines between 940 and 944. In this place, the image attributed to Bom Jesus was placed. Due to the decay of the space over the centuries, in 1534, D. João III, attached it to the construction the University of Coimbra. With the deterioration of the monastery and the growth of Matosinhos, the University decided to build a new temple in 1542, which was completed only in 1550. The image of Bom Jesus de Bouças was transferred to this new space. The expansion of devotion in Matosinhos led to the remodeling of the temple, which was completed in 1732—the same construction that is currently being erected. In the entrance hall of the sanctuary in Matosinhos there are six chapels with the stations of Christ and, attached to the temple, there is the Room of Miracles (Sala dos Milagres). The exaltation of Bom Jesus do Monte corresponds to the devotion in the Sanctuary of the Passion, located in the city of Braga in Portugal. The origin of the first chapel dates back to the year 1522. With the wearing out of the chapel structure, a large church was built in 1725, which then gave way to a new temple that began to be erected in 1784 and completed in 1857. In the sanctuary there are lakes, fountains and grand staircases with 21 chapels scattered on the slopes of the mount. In 1760, in the city of Congonhas, three years after the disclosure of the miracle of the then Portuguese miner Feliciano Mendes attributed to Senhor Bom Jesus, masses were already being celebrated on Sundays and holy days. But the great impulse for the pilgrimage to the saint, would have been given by the granting of the “Eight Brief,” from February 19 to March 11, 1779, of graces and indulgences—especially the Jubilee sanctioned by Pope Pius VI—to the brothers of the Brotherhood and the faithful who made a pilgrimage, once a year to Congonhas. Hence the origin of the Jubilee of Senhor Bom Jesus de Matozinhos, a pilgrimage was celebrated every year, from September 7 to 14 until the present day. France (2015, p. 131) highlights that the Jubilee of Bom Jesus de Congonhas received the pilgrimage name of the devotees themselves. Since its beginnings (1779), it gathered crowds every year and continues, today, to betray thousands of devotees of the Lord Bom Jesus in the month of September.
that of Bom Jesus, in Congonhas, from the eighteenth century; in addition to the shrines of Aparecida (1717), Lourdes (1858) and Fátima (1917). See França, op. cit. 130. 9 From Latin, státio (vigil, stop to pray). Cf: França, op. cit. 272.
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The Holy Festival is among the great pilgrimages of Brazil, as well as that of Senhor Bom Jesus da Lapa (1691) and Bom Fim (1745)—both in Bahia, and Bom Jesus de Pirapora (1725), in São Paulo. Due to the large number of pilgrims, in the 1930s the Pilgrimage was built near the sanctuary, a kind of place for the faithful people, built in a circular shape with dozens of rooms (pilgrimages) around a large patio. It was demolished in 1968, leaving only the two towers of the entrance gate, built to imitate the chapels of the stations. In 1993 the City Hall bought the land and the architect Sylvio de Podestá carried out the building reconstruction project, restoring the original features. In 1995, the works of the space were completed and the road connecting the Basilica of Senhor Bom Jesus to the Pilgrimage was named “Cidade Matosinhos de Portugal” in honor of the sister city, an international partner in the twinning agreement signed by the municipal executives of both countries in 1986. The Pilgrimage began to house Mineralogy and Sacred Art Museums, public agencies and the Educativa radio station (97.5 FM). Currently, the entire building is under renovation. It has been built attached to the property, with resources from the Ministries of Culture and Planning, through the PAC program of Historic Cities: the Ecological Park of Romaria (living area that will house a dam and a butterfly garden) and a modern theater with a steel structure buried in the ground—so as not to compete with colonial architecture—projected by the same architect as the first restoration, Sylvio de Podestá. As noted in the previous paragraphs, pilgrimage was an important vector in the development of the city. To receive pilgrims during the Feast of the Jubilee of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos, the Catholic Church built pilgrimages and shelters for the discouraged and the City Hall. With the emancipation of the city in 1938, it made urban interventions such as alleys and bridges to facilitate the access of the faithful people to the Basilica. Another economic driver (perhaps the main driver) in the development of Congonhas is its mining vocation. Mining started in the middle of the eighteenth century with the gold rush and remains today with the activities of the largest companies of this sector in the country such as Vale and Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional (CSN). The latter has an ore tailings dam—considered the largest in Latin America10 —located in the urban area, in full swing. Because it is located in the Iron Quadrangle region in the State of Minas Gerais one of the most important mineral extraction hubs in Brazil, the municipality’s revenues weigh on the fact that mining companies, in addition to generating thousands of jobs, are responsible for an important part of public coffers with taxes such as the Financial Compensation
10 Available
in:. Accessed in May 9, 2020.
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Image 3 In the foreground is Alameda Cidade Matozinhos de Portugal and in the background, the Romaria, in a circular shape with two main towers on the facade. Author’s collection
for the Exploration of Mineral Resources (CFEM). This tax11 and the Tax on Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS) are the main sources of revenue for Congonhas and provide financial conditions that enable the execution of public policies for the preservation of heritage and the development of the city. In the negative aspect of this mining vocation, there is the exploration of non-renewable sources, pollution, the degradation of the environment, the threat to the listed assets and the very treatment of these companies with the city (Image 3). Vigilant to these issues is the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais (MPMG), one of the important actors in the defense of the local cultural identity. Strong in the inspection of mining companies, it took important measures to penalize the abuses of these companies. With the support of the City of Congonhas, the State Environment 11 At the head of the Association of Mining Municipalities of Brazil (AMIB), the former mayor of Congonhas Anderson Cabido (2005/2012) and the current José de Freitas Cordeiro (2013/2020) engaged in correcting the CFEM, which was calculated up to 2% of the net income of mining companies. The amount was corrected with the approval of the new regulatory framework for mining (after more than 10 years of processing) through Law 13,540/ 2017, sanctioned by then President Michel Temer. With the new legislation, taxation reached up to 4% on companies’ gross sales. This modification provided an even better cash flow from public resources. Compared to 2016, 2018 broke the highest CFEM collection record ever recorded, rising 125% and reaching the mark of R $ 104 million. The municipality is currently the second largest tax collector in Minas Gerais, behind Nova Lima. Available at: https://www.correiodeminas.com.br/site/arrecadacao-do-minerio-mais-que-dobrou-em-congon has-e-cidade-tem-receita-quase-3-vezes-maior-que-brumadinho/. Accessed Mai 9 2020.
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Foundation (FEAM) and mining companies, the Public Ministry of Minas Gerais was decisive in the construction of the Optimized Air Quality Network. The construction of the network was idealized in 2008, with the first technical surveys carried out at FEAM, at the initiative of Promoter Dr. Vinícius Alcântara Galvão. As a result of a Conduct Adjustment Term (TAC) signed between the State Prosecutor and the companies, the network, completed in May 2019, consists of 13 stations. Six of them are located in the neighborhoods Matriz, Basílica, Jardim Profeta, Pires, Plataforma and Lobo Leite and seven others in the areas of the mining companies CSN Mineração, Vale, Ferrous, Ferro + (J. Mendes) and Gerdau. The stations measure air quality in the municipality in real time and check whether the emissions of substances are in accordance with the environmental standard in force established by the National Council for the Environment (CONAMA). When violations are identified, companies are assessed by the Municipal Environment Secretariat in accordance with the Municipal Environment Legislation (Law No. 3096/2011). The assessments provide for: warning, fine, embargo or interdiction of activities. The financial resources from the infractions are allocated to the Municipal Environment Fund. In 2012, in another important moment for the city of Congonhas, the MP had a disagreement with the mining company CSN. Since 2007, the company had announced an investment of R $ 11 billion to expand its activities, which also included the construction of a steel plant, two pellet plants and an industrial condominium. The area explored, however, would involve Morro do Engenho, located in Serra Casa de Pedra. In March 2012, the MPMG, through state prosecutor Marcos Paulo de Souza Miranda, threatened to solicit UNESCO for the city to lose its title of world heritage if the City Council voted against Bill 027 of 200812 that established the limits of mining exploitation and protected the “silhouette” of the Casa de Pedra mountain range. In an interview with the Estado de Minas newspaper, the prosecutor announced: “I am going to solicit UNESCO for Congonhas to lose the title of World Heritage for noncompliance with the convention”13 For MPMG, the hill is the natural frame of the architectural complex of the Basilica of Bom Jesus do Matozinhos and the 12 prophets coined by Aleijadinho. These elements make us think about the political dimension of the construction of different identities, since they constitute the very daily struggle for power relations (Foucault 2012). For Woodward (2007) and Hall (2007), identity is coined by the positioning of differences on the symbolic, social and subjective levels. Each boundary or defined line is the product of symbolic and representational inscriptions. Also, it is in the dimension of culture that the classification systems are established 12 In 2007, the Serra was listed by Law No. 2,697, which provided for the need for specific legislation
to delimit the limits of the polygon of the listed property. In this sense, the bill of popular initiative 027/2008 was presented. After the controversy, the project delimiting CSN’s area of operation was approved in the same year at the City Council. 13 Available at: . Accessed on May 4, 2020.
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and defined by the subjects that give meaning to the world and build meanings and narratives about it (Woodward 2007). The defense of a supposed local identity also comes from the City of Congonhas— as we discussed in the introduction of this essay—in the policies for preservation, restoration and environmental education that encompass municipal schools; in the maintenance of the asset protection fund; and in the capture and management of federal14 and private resources for the conservation and requalification of historic sites. One of the main examples of these efforts is the creation of the Congonhas Museum,15 an initiative of the Municipal Government that used its own resources and others captured by the Rouanet Law, in dialogue with the Iphan Monumenta program and sought sponsorship from BNDES (National Bank for Economic and Social), CSN (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional), Vale, Gerdau and Santander. Other important investments were made possible by the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC of Historic Cities)16 —which provided a new layout for “Alameda Cidade Matosinhos de Portugal,” which connects the Basilica of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos with the Romaria’s Building. In this package of works with resources from the Federal Government captured by the City of Congonhas, interpretive signs for tourists17 are also included, with support from UNESCO, implemented in 2015, which is an integral part of the local Tourism Development guidelines, which seeks to requalify the activity in the municipality. The infrastructure also includes the construction of the Contorno Norte Avenue, which reduced the bus traffic of mining companies in the central part of the city by 90% and the upgrading of the modern JK Square located between the Sanctuary of Senhor Bom Jesus and the Igreja Matriz.
14 In 2013, the City of Congonhas assembled a work team composed of 12 people, coordinated by the Secretary of Planning, Antônio Odaque da Silva, two architects, three civil engineers, a lawyer, two economists, an urban planner, in addition to the Secretary of Works of city, Rosemary Aparecida Benedito and the director of Historical Heritage, Luciomar Sebastião de Jesus, who is also a sculptor and painter. 15 Project by the architect Gustavo Penna, selected in a national Iphan competition, the Congonhas Museum is the first museum of a historical site in Brazil and works in the requalification of the interpretation of the historical-artistic elements that make up the Bom Jesus de Matozinhos Sanctuary— World Heritage recognized by UNESCO in 1985. Regarding the role of museum management, read more at: . Accessed on May 4, 2020. 16 In the City of the Prophets of Aleijadinho, 10 intervention projects were selected by Iphan for the restoration of historic goods, totaling R $ 25.08 million: the revitalization of the original paintings of the church of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos delivered in 2018; the new landscape and architectural contour of Alameda Cidade Matosinhos de Portugal (where the Congonhas Museum is located); the Romaria ecological park and; the municipal theater that is being built with the project of the architect Sylvio de Podestá. These works of the Growth Acceleration Program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento—PAC) with the initiative Historic Cities (Cidades Históricas) are managed by the municipal government’s work team. 17 Congonhas was the first city in Brazil to receive the interpretive signs for tourist approved by UNESCO. Available at: . Accessed on May 5, 2020.
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Through these and other initiatives18 the City Hall and the Public Ministry have been articulating around the construction of a cultural identity that is guided by the conservation, restoration and integration of historic sites with the rest of the city.
1 Final Considerations This essay sought to follow a historiographic path that revisited the elements that constituted Congonhas, based, since the first settlements, on mining activities and the symbolic construction of the “City of Art and Faith.” As we could see, in particular, from the UNESCO seal in 1985, as a World Heritage Site, the tensions between preservation and economic activity have become even more latent. The episodes involving the CSN’s expansion plan—which intended to explore and mine almost the entire Serra Casa de Pedra, the various infractions that affected and still harm the environment (compromising springs, mineral resources and air pollution), point to this direction. This attitude is even more worrying, if we think that mineral activity can bring incalculable losses to society as recently happened in the dam rupture tragedies in the city of Mariana,19 in 2015, and, more recently, Brumadinho20 in 2019. The City Hall and the Public Ministry have been attentive to these problems. The local executive in the inspection of the quality of the dams, or even in the tightening of the legislation against pollution and the strengthening of mechanisms, such as the Environment Secretariat—created in 2018—to report violations and the 18 The Catholic Church, through the Archdiocese of Mariana of the rectory of the Basilica of Bom Jesus de Matozinhos and civil society, especially through the Union of Community Associations of Congonhas (UNACCON) are important partners in the preservation of heritage and in the defense of the environment. The first stands out in the conservation of the Sanctuary (world heritage) and in the traditional celebration of the Jubilee. UNACCON, on the other hand, has been vigilant in the mining activity, reporting the irregularities to the competent authorities in the assessment and inspection such as the MP and the City Hall and promoting debates with society. The main actions of these actors have been mapped in the thesis under construction, of the same name as this essay in the Postgraduate Program in History of the Federal University of Juiz de Fora under the guidance of the professors, Dr. Marcos Olender and Rodrigo Christofoletti and will be detailed in works later. 19 On November 5, 2015 in the city of Mariana (MG), the Fundão Dam belonging to the mining company Samarco S/A (a joint venture between the Brazilian company Vale and the AngloAustralian BHP Billiton) broke. The tragedy flooded several communities and left 19 dead. Altogether 39 cities were affected and 11 tons of fish were killed. The fauna and flora of the Doce River were very compromised and some species are at risk of extinction. See more at: and at: . Accessed May 20 2020. 20 On January 25, 2019, the dam belonging to the mining company Vale broke in the city of Brumadinho (MG) and left a large ballast of devastation on the Paraopeba River and more than two hundred dead. The disaster is considered the biggest workplace accident ever recorded in Brazil. Available at: . Accessed May 20 2020.
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Public Ministry (whenever provoked), it has promoted public hearings at important moments, such as the 2012 debates on the expansion of CSN, and established Terms of Conduct Adjustment (TAC) for mining companies. City Hall and MP were also the creators of the air monitoring stations—managed by the local government—in the real-time inspection of the city’s pollution levels. Such elements also lead us to reflect on the strength of economic power in terms of preserving the environment and protecting heritage. In this sense, the economic factor has been shown to be the main element for two reasons: the fact that mineral activity generates thousands of jobs and moves the economy, and in the evident weight that taxes such as ICMS and CFEM have on the collection of the municipality and in the State of Minas Gerais. As demonstrated in this brief essay, the city has mainly sought to point out alternatives to economic dependence on mining, since 1985, after UNESCO’s seal as World Heritage. Investments in the restoration of the listed assets, such as the Bom Jesus Sanctuary and the Romaria’s Building , the construction of spaces for integration with historic sites, the creation of a working group specialized in raising funds related to heritage and the establishment of international agreements, such as the twinning pact with the city of Matosinhos in Portugal and tourism policies, aim, to some extent, to open up other investment strands for a more sustainable development of the city. Thinking about Congonhas’ identities in this plot full of “us” that are tied between mining, environment, religiosity and baroque art, is an arduous, but urgent task, in times of affirmation of the violence of the capital of mining companies. As a city that is a World Heritage Site, these issues go beyond the place and invite the entire academic community, legislators, environmentalists and heritage scholars from Brazil and around the world to take a closer look at Congonhas. Here, we have only one starting point for understanding the City of the Prophets. “What is history/History for?” (Bloch 1997, p. 75). A little boy once asked his father. It is a question that is difficult to answer. Perhaps, in the case of Congonhas, we have the same uneasiness as the boy. After all, how do you explain such a heterogeneous fabric? Who put the flaps together? With what intention? What kind of city did you want to show? The question revealed by Marc Bloch encourages us to do just like that. The World Heritage city will only be understood if questioned.
References Almeida CAF (1993) Património: Riegl e hoje. Revista da Faculdade de Letras. Porto: Universidade do Porto. Série II, vol 10, pp 407-416 Bazin G (1971) O aleijadinho e a escultura barroca no Brasil. Record, Rio de Janeiro Bloch M (1997) Introdução à história. Publicações Europa-América, Lisboa Brasil. Constituição (1988) Constituição da República Federativa do Brasil. Organização de Alexandre de Moraes. 16.ed. São Paulo: Atlas, 2000 Brasil. Decreto n. 3.551. 4 de agosto de 2000 Choay F (2009) As questões do património. Lisboa: Edições 70
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Christofoletti R (Org) (2017) Bens culturais e relações internacionais: o patrimônio como espelho do Soft Power. Santos: Leopoldianum Darnton R (1986) O Grande massacre de gatos: e outros episódios da história cultural francesa. Graal, Rio de Janeiro Espig M. (2004) O Conceito de Imaginário: Reflexões Acerca de Sua Utilização Pela História. Textura, n. 9, nov. 2003 a jun, Canoas, pp 49–56 Fonseca MCL (2005) O patrimônio em processo: trajetória da política federal de preservação no Brasil, 2nd edn. Editora UFRJ/Minc-Iphan, Rio de Janeiro Foucault M (2012) Microfísica do poder. Trad. Roberto Machado, 24ª edn. Graal, São Paulo França F (2015) Arte e Paixão: Congonhas do Aleijadinho, C/Arte. Belo Horizonte Halbwachs M (2005) A Memória Coletiva. SP, Vozes Hall S (2007) Quem precisa de identidade? In: Silva TT (Org). Identidade e diferença: a perspectiva dos estudos culturais. 7ª ed. Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro: Vozes IPHAN (1984) Proposal for inscription on the UNESCO world heritage list, pp 1–45. http://portal. iphan.gov.br/uploads/ckfinder/arquivos/Dossie%20CONGONHAS.pdf. Accessed 8 Dec 2019 IPHAN (2004) Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (Brasil) (2004) Cartas patrimoniais. Isabelle Cury (org.) 3. Ed. rev. e aum. Rio de Janeiro: Iphan, 2004. Edições do Patrimônio Le Goff J (2003) História e memória. Tradução de Bernardo Leitão et.al. 5 º ed. Campinas: editora da Unicamp Londres C (2004) Celebrações e saberes da cultura popular: pesquisa, inventário, crítica, perspectivas. FUNARTE, IPHAN, CNPCP, Rio de Janeiro Martins ECR (2002) Relações Internacionais: cultura e poder. Instituto Brasileiro de Relações Internacionais, Brasília Neves MP, Costa AG, Ruchkys UA (2016) Os registros do patrimônio geológico nas ruas e praças de Congonhas, Minas Gerais. In: Patrimônio e Memória, São Paulo, 12(1), pp 50–67 Olender M (2017) O afetivo efetivo. Sobre afetos, movimentos sociais e preservação do patrimônio. REVISTA DO PATRIMÔNIO HISTÓRICO E ARTÍSTICO NACIONAL 35:321–341 Oliveira MAR (1974) Poetry gathered. Brazilian Civilization, Rio de Janeiro Oliveira MAR (1984) Aleijadinho: Passos e Profetas. EDUSP, São Paulo Oliveira MAR (2006) Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional (Brasil). O Aleijadinho e o Santuário de Congonhas: Aleijadinho and the Congonhas Sanctuary. Rio de Janeiro: Iphan/Monumenta Poulot D (2009) Uma história do patrimônio no ocidente, séculos XVIII-XXI: do monumento aos valores. Tradução Guilherme João de Freitas Teixeira. São Paulo: Estação Liberdade Rocha MJM (2009) capela. In: IV Seminário Internacional luso-brasileiro. Bragança Riegl A (1999) El culto moderno a los monumentos. Ed. Visor, Madrid Smith RC (1973) Congonhas do Campo. Agir, Rio de Janeiro Swain TN (Org.) (1993) História no plural. Editora Universidade de Brasília, Brasília Veyne P (1995) Como se escreve a História, 3º edn. Editora Universidade de Brasília, Brasília Woodward K (2007) Identidade e diferença: uma introdução teórica e conceitual. In: Silva TT (Org). Identidade e diferença: a perspectiva dos estudos culturais. 7ª ed. Vozes, Petrópolis, RJ
“Past Festivities, Responsibilities”: Urbanistic Conflicts in Ouro Preto After the Seal of World Heritage Dalila Varela Singulane
Abstract As in any other Brazilian city, over the years urbanistic problems such as disorderly growth, irregular occupations, devaluation of memory and history, with consequent disfigurement of spaces and sanitation have significantly increased in Ouro Preto (Minas Gerais), the first city in Brazil to be considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. However, at the time when the reception of such an honour was being discussed, many were the questions about its benefits and burdens to the city. Months before receiving the recognition of the international organ a series of reports of the Jornal do Brasil (RJ) discussed the functioning of the preservation in the country in face of the infrastructure problems that the city faced, being a longstanding problem and that even poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade had already manifested himself saying that “one of these days, Ouro Preto becomes an ‘Interplanetary Monument’ and its problems will continue without solution”. The debate was heated and generated an indisposition of the periodical with the secretary of culture at the time, who did not find it pleasant to have his concerns reduced to a “harmful parochialism”. Therefore, this article seeks to analyse how the dynamic between preservation and urban ordering takes place in places with large historical nuclei, intending to understand how public power and private sectors deal in daily life with Cultural Heritage. Keywords Ouro preto · World heritage · Jornal do Brasil (RJ)
This text was originally published in the Annals of the 1st International Congress on Urban Heritage of Humanity/1st International Symposium on World Heritage of Minas Gerais in the international context. UFJF. 2020. Dalila Varela Singulane—Master’s student in History (CAPES scholarship) at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. Member of the Patrimony and International Relations Research Group - CNPq. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Christofoletti. D. V. Singulane (B) Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_27
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1 The Daily Life of Preservation In an article published on the website “Caosplanado,” Natanael Kafuri talks about preservation in Ouro Preto and its close relationship with tourism. The author classifies the effects of the latter on urban issues as “disturbing,” generating processes of “gentrification, false history, pastiche, facadist architectural preservation, exclusion” (Kafuri 2017). Describing Ouro Preto as a “purely scenic city,” the author points to municipal legislation aimed at the conservation of facades, formalizing pastiche, and false history. The local government would be aimed at “hiding the passage of time in the headquarters district,” and even the facades of the Federal University, located in Morro do Cruzeiro, were covered with trees to minimize the visual impact on the landscape of the historic center. Ouro Preto would be “segregated” between the “official city” and the “real city,” where its residents hardly lived in the World Heritage city, due to the high cost of living, primarily aimed at tourists and students. Kafuri (2017) also points out that the city is regulated by the “Municipal Land Use and Occupation Law, of January 20, 2011, as well as the guidelines of Iphan Ordinance 312, of October 20, 2010,” which would create obstacles for owners, since framing within one of the regulations does not necessarily lead to the approval of the other. These disputes in the daily life of the monument city can be attributed, according to Aguiar (2016, p. 94), to the predominance of modernist intellectuals and architects during the first phase of IPHAN’s performance, and for Lia Motta “the obsession with freezing Ouro Preto’s architecture ended up promoting a mischaracterization and falsification of the urban landscape” (Motta 1987 apud Aguiar 2016, p. 94). The preservation of the historic nucleus of Ouro Preto goes back to the beginning of the constitution of public protection policy in Brazil, when the government of Minas Gerais allocated funds for the conservation of historical monuments, still in 1926 (Aguiar 2016, p. 89). And, through the analysis carried out by the author, it is possible to see that, in this first moment, the preservation of colonial architectural ensembles takes place through the perception of the tourist potential of the locality, and measures for this purpose were instituted by decrees in 1931 and 1932, by the then mayor João Baptista Veloso (op. cit., p. 90): The Mayor of Ouro Preto, using the powers conferred on him by the state decree of February 2, 1931, n ° 9847 and after hearing the Advisory Council and “considering” that the city of Ouro Preto, a mine of Minas Gerais traditions, should preserve its colonial aspect transmitted from our ancestors, “considering” that this colonial feature of its buildings, streets and squares, arouses great interest on the part of tourists, who often visit the city and its surroundings; “Considering” that the buildings that disprove thypo, I mean, colonial thypo (…), hurt the tourists’ sensibility painfully. [emphasis added] (OURO PRETO, Decree n ° 13, of September 19, 1931)
The document still prohibits in its art. 1st the construction of buildings at odds with the colonial style in the urban perimeter of the city. Existing buildings in disharmony with the provisions of the article should undergo modifications to their facades, in accordance with art. 2nd of the decree. These provisions were taken up by subsequent decrees, both from the municipality and at the federal level, solidifying with the
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creation of the Monuments Inspectorate in 1934, which was replaced three years later by the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service, now IPHAN (Aguiar 2016, p. 91). Shortly thereafter, in 1938, Ouro Preto is listed by the organ for its mainly artistic character for keeping expressions of Baroque and colonial in its buildings and, therefore, it is inscribed in the Book of Tombo das Belas Artes. The seal of Humanity Heritage granted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to Ouro Preto, in 1980, intensified the public debate about urbanization and quality of life of the inhabitants in the face of preservation policies, as it can be seen on the pages of Jornal do Brasil (RJ). On September 30, 1980, Jornal do Brasil published an article about the praise that Ouro Preto received from UNESCO. The publication entitled “UNESCO will give priority to the protection of Ouro Preto,” by Maurílio Torres, brought in its lines considerations on the subject. The author emphasizes, in the words of Dimas Dario Guedes, who at the time was head of the National Historical and Artistic Patrol Office, the importance of the city being the first in Brazil and the second in Latin America to receive the seal. A condition that, in addition to emergency restorations, would lead to “boosting cultural tourism programs, ‘ an indirect source of resources for the city ’” (Jornal do Brasil 1980a, p. 16). To guarantee the preservation of the historic nucleus that occupies a large part of the headquarters district, an agreement was signed between the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP), the Pró-Memória Foundation, and the municipality, in which the university would provide services with the resources assigned by the Brazilian Tourism Institute (Embratur). The works on the enveloping hills, which were at risk of landslides, of the historic nucleus, configured the most emergency works due to the safety of the nucleus, in addition to reforestation and support for restoration and inspection activities. Regarding this topic, the rector of the University at the time spoke to Jornal do Brasil: The attribution of the title of Universal Monument to Ouro Preto is in line with all the aspirations of the Federal University, which wishes to develop in parallel with the artisticcultural vocation that is inherent to the city. This title increased the responsibility of the institutions and intellectuals who work here. We are prepared to do our part.
However, it is the degradation, burdens and bonuses of the new title that gain more space. According to the newspaper, in 1968 the international entity sent the “architect Alfredo Viana de Lima, from the University of Porto, to the city of Minas Gerais, to draw up a plan to stop the progressive de-characterization of the city’s architectural baroque.” With the granting of this title, all technical cooperation between UNESCO and the Brazilian Government to protect Ouro Preto will be intensified, mainly the works of containment of slopes, recovery and restoration of deteriorated monuments and the establishment of expansion areas, foreseen by the preliminary project Viana de Lima, later detailed by the João Pinheiro Foundation, a technical advisory body of the Government of Minas Gerais, under the name of Ouro Preto and Mariana’s Recovery and Development Plan. (Jornal do Brasil 1980a, p. 16)
The urban problems faced by the old Vila Rica are intoned by the director of the Aleijadinho Museum and vicar of the Parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição by
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Antônio Dias, Father Francisco Barroso. His main concern was the disordered urban expansion that “is already in a situation of strangulation,” generating the occupation of the slopes and disfiguring the cultural landscape. The priest believed that the seal could bring a better urban planning together with the awareness of the population living in rural areas about the importance of the preserved architectural complex, which in his opinion “constitutes the true value of this city.” With respect to this situation, he says: The expansion zones that allow the people to build without destroying what the city has, while giving the inhabitant, at the same time, the right to live well and with dignity, is one of the advantages that I see become possible with this new situation. Now there is an awareness of the need to implement these zones and an example is the Federal University of Ouro Preto, whose rector has already determined the construction of a pioneer satellite neighborhood, for employees of the institution.
His concerns occupy a large part of the page dedicated to the subject, in which Barroso expresses his question about budgets for the restoration of public and private monuments and buildings, pointing out the high value of this type of work. Like “in the case of Antônio Dias parish, which alone has 10 Baroque churches to periodically maintain and restore,” he noted that parishioners would not be able to afford these expenses. Father Francisco Barroso made an interesting suggestion in the periodical when recalling the questions of his students from the Moral and Civic course, at the Archdiocesan College, about what advantages the attribution of the title of World Heritage would bring to the city. For him, from now on, with the help of UNESCO, an indemnity system could be instituted for landowners located in the historic nucleus, since such a practice would reduce the constant conflicts with the current IPHAN. “What happens is that the owners of the lots have their intentions vetoed by the Heritage and end up selling the land to third parties. There, SPHAN again has to veto the claims of the new owners. And a vicious circle is formed and eternal clashes between the organ and the population ” (Jornal do Brasil 1980a, p. 16). Shortly thereafter, on November 19, 1980, Jornal do Brasil published a new article on Ouro Preto in the “Tourism” section, by the same author as the previous one. In this, the focus is was on what Maurílio Torres classifies as the city’s mischaracterization. The problem is was centered on the construction where the Vila Rica Cinema used to work, which for the author “brutally deforms” the landscape, “due to the great mass of a reinforced cement building, straight and bare walls and a single water roof, covered with aluminized screens. ,” located in the core of the city’s central and noble architecture.” The reverse of this ensemble—a harmonious grouping of buildings, crowned by the circumflex of the colonial roofs, on the west slope of the Santa Quitéria hill, over which the architecture of the Church of Carmo, the Palace of the Governors and the former Chamber and Prison dominates—has suddenly lost its figuration of the mise en scène of the colonial landscape. Such sacrifice, paradoxically, was important to the city in exchange for enriching the heritage of its people. Built according to an unacceptable project and any urban complex, and especially in the largest baroque complex in the world, the disproportionate building, in the shape of a shed,
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was the first major cinema in the city, Cine Vila Rica, owned by the Tropia & Irmãos Company, a pioneer in the establishment of cinema networks in Minas Gerais, and until today it has been serving a population of around 60 thousand people. Like other options, the city has only Cine Salvador, with a capacity for 400 spectators, the Municipal Theater, the oldest in South America, for 300 people, and another seven auditoriums belonging to educational establishments and cultural entities. (Jornal do Brasil 1980b, p. 9)
With the risk of the cinema being sold to a supermarket chain, the newspaper emphasizes that the establishment is a traditional place in the city with its interior being a “typical kitsch wedding cake.” Also bringing an interview with the owner of the building at the time, Mr. Milton Tropia, who says he recognizes the change that the building brings to the landscape, stated that his desire was to “reform its look, at least disguise it, before it falls into less sensitive people .” The owner predicts that he will possibly need to replace the roof due to its degree of deterioration, stating that the company will only be able to bear the costs of an aluminum-coated roof and warns of the visual impact this will cause on the composition of the area. Finally, Mr. Tropia proposes that SPHAN should be interested and bear such expenses, suggesting a project that modifies “the backgrounds of the cinema, adapting, for example, fantasy windows, roofs of four waters, with colonial screens, and planting trees that would disguise the deforming mass.” (Fig. 1)
Fig. 1 Jornal do Brasil. Buildings that totally depreciate the urban landscape of Ouro Preto—like the back of the Vila Rica cinema—remain, even after the city was declared a Universal Monument by UNESCO. Rio de Janeiro, 1980. Digital Library of the National Library. [my appointment]
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Regarding this “adaptation” solution of buildings after colonial and baroque architecture, Kafuri states in his text that “submitting contemporary architectural production to the imitation of secular construction typologies, in order to level them all in a single pattern, is an act that undermines both .” When we talk about historical and cultural heritage, we are talking about the transformation of collective memory into official memory, needing to bear in mind that memory itself is a collective construction with a specific function—generally to reinforce identity and a sense of belonging—” reference to the past serves to maintain the cohesion of the groups and institutions that make up a society, to define its respective place, its complementarity, but also the irreducible oppositions ” (Pollak 1989, p. 7). The memory is then based on the “material provided by history” so that it becomes increasingly solid, within the limits of the coherence of the speeches. Within the examples analyzed by Pollak, one can see the importance that the groups give to the homogeneity of the narratives, with a concern above all with the coherence of the image that is being passed. Traces of this production of organized speeches and their framing are observed in materiality, through monuments, museums, libraries, etc. (1989, pp. 8–9). Therefore, the uniformity sought by the technicians responsible for preserving Ouro Preto at the beginning of the twentieth century, and which reverberates to this day, carry out this activity of framing memory, as they allow and encourage the mimetic production of buildings. In this way, constructions loaded with meaning, histories, systems and important construction techniques, passed on from generation, which must be preserved, are reduced, with the endorsement of the law, to mere elements of scenery. On the other hand, current productions, which would lead architects to an extremely interesting reflection on interventions in historic sites, as well as their insertion in the dynamics of cities, are non-existent. (Kafuri 2017)
Arguing about the need for the protection agency to help him with the renovations, the owner recalls that at the time of the construction of the cinema, in 1957, IPHAN carried out construction works on another floor in a semi-detached house, the former headquarters of the Liceu de Artes e Ofício , in order, according to the author, to hide the mass of cinema for visitors who were at the Grande Hotel. The answer of “Patrimônio”—as SPHAN is called during the article—to the owner of the cinema was made by the words of its regional director, the architect Roberto Lacerda, who said that it is not possible to help a particular enterprise. A similar response was given by the head of the local police station, Dimas Guedes, adding that “Patrimônio” could only offer him a project. This hotel cited by the cinema owner is a project by Oscar Niemeyer and is probably one of the best examples of the integration of new buildings in historic sites. In the 1950s, the discussion about the local environment in the oldest area of Ouro Preto gained strength, as shown by Leila Bianchi Aguiar. “The old discussion, evidenced during the construction of the Grande Hotel, was updated on the need to maintain the colonial style in new buildings or to allow new buildings to be built in other architectural styles” (2016, p. 97). It was concluded at the time that it would be preferable to build new buildings that demarcate other temporalities, as long as there was control and inspection so that they were of “high architectural level,” a decision
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that did not remain over time (ibidem). After some projects for the new hotel were presented to Lúcio Costa and chosen, Niemeyer adapts his project to the objections made by Costa. Without leaving the modernist aesthetic, the architect said: it has a water-only roof without scissors, reintroduces the swing and replaces the shutters in the first study with trellises painted in blue. The first row of pillars, in a square section painted in brown to imitate wood, enhance the structural rhythm and verticality that are balanced with the horizontality of the set. The second row of pillars in a circular section and the recessed glass panels preserve the modernist trait without being evident on the roof facades of water only without scissors, reintroducing the balance and replacing the shutters of the first study with trusses painted in blue. The first row of pillars, in a square section painted in brown to imitate wood, enhance the structural rhythm and verticality that are balanced with the horizontality of the set. The second row of pillars in a circular section and the recessed glass panels preserve the modernist trait without being evident in the facade, which thus takes on an air that evokes the striking simplicity of colonial mill houses, whose inspiration will also be seen later in Brasilia’s palaces. (Jatobá 2015)
It is possible to notice that the building integrates into the landscape in a nonmimetic way, but also without causing a great visual impact. Niemeyer’s project demarcates its temporality different from the historical nucleus around it, and with this its own history is valued since it is an important building in modernist architecture, a style characteristic of the 1940s and 1950s of the twentieth century, which in Brazil gained strength and is made as an important chain. The concern with these changes in the city landscape led to the emergence of the social movement entitled “Ouro Preto S.O.S,” composed of artists, such as Carlos Sciliar, leader of the movement, students and intellectuals. With the movement, they intended to denounce “the rapid and alarming deterioration process that the city’s landscaping is undergoing,” as well as the omission of official bodies on this situation (ibidem). The movement would still have an educational character, with public photographic exhibitions aimed at reflecting on the changes (Fig. 2).
2 Ouro Preto and Olinda: Preservation and Conflict The debate on urbanization and preservation of large historical centers reappears on the pages of Jornal do Brasil, made available in the Digital Library of the National Library, again in 1982, due to the indication of Olinda (PE) as a World Heritage Site.1 The newspaper first reported on Olinda’s proposal as a world heritage site 1 At that moment, the newspaper brings some stories about the patrimonial debate, appearing besides
Olinda and Ouro Preto, a featured story about the restoration of the Palace of Culture, current Gustavo Capanema Palace, after a commitment signed between Rubem Ludwig and Gustavo Capanema, because if the intention is to send the proposal of listing the building to UNESCO as the first contemporary monument to be considered a world heritage site. To this end, agreements were signed with Petrobras to monitor the works, between the Pró-Memória Foundation and Burle Marx, for the restoration of the listed gardens, and, finally, with the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, “for editing documents relating to the construction of the building.” The contract with Burle Marx aimed at restoring 12 construction sites with an area of around 2 thousand square meters. When
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Fig. 2 Grande Hotel. Photo: Sérgio Jatobá. (Jatobá 2015)
in May 1982, in a quick note in the “Informe JB” section. In it, the newspaper points out that the dossier prepared by Aloísio Magalhães, secretary of Culture of MEC, was recommended for approval by UNESCO technicians. With this scheduled for October, the Brazilian government was required to enforce laws to protect the landscape and its surroundings (Jornal do Brasil 1982e). Just over a month later, the author of the proposal, Aloísio Magalhães died and who represented him on the Committee was the director of Conservation and Tipping of SPHAN, Carlos da Silva Telles. The JB continued, over the next few months, giving quick notes on the outcome of the process and on October 21 reported on the change in the date of the meeting for Olinda’s acceptance. It was on Wednesday, December 15, 1982, that Jornal do Brasil reserved a large space on the front page, of section B, for the headline “Olinda forever,” where it informs that the historic city has become a world heritage site. Approved with “unanimity and praise” by the 21 countries that make up the UNESCO Historical Heritage Committee, the newspaper emphasizes the importance of this vote, as Marcos Vinicius Vilaça, secretary of culture, recalled, “the project to consider the city of Jerusalem in danger - (Jerusalem is also a World Heritage Site) - has not found enough quorum by the Committee ” (Jornal do Brasil 1982f, p. 1). The article also brought the history of the northeastern city founded in 1537, by Duarte Coelho, showing its urban consolidation process, and highlighting the local churches. The periodical also induces a asked about the moment of construction of the building, Capanema said that “at that time we were called communists. Now they applaud us,” referring to those who did not want the building, also saying that it was worth it, because “it is eternal” (Jornal do Brasil 1982d, p. 5).
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comparison with the city of Minas Gerais, which is also a World Heritage Site, in which it reproduces Vilaça’s speech: Ouro Preto and Olinda, in the opinion of the Secretary, generally encompass the most significant periods of our culture. They were created under different motivations and situations, architectural plans and different times, and that was exactly what contributed to the approval of the two requests, since UNESCO avoids duplication of characteristics of world monuments in the same country. (Jornal do Brasil 1982f, p. 1)
At the end of the article, one can again observe the concern with the urban issue, as in Ouro Preto, the author—who is not identified by the newspaper—calls attention to the urban situation of Olinda at the time, which with “about 360 thousand inhabitants, spread over an area of 29 square kilometers, (…) is the second largest Brazilian municipality with the highest population density—12 thousand inhabitants per square kilometer .” Being so densely occupied and housing fabric, fertilizer, and plastics industries, Olinda, according to the author, would not have the infrastructure to properly preserve its historical collection, which would be helping in its deterioration. Parallel to this process, the Ouro Preto tourism secretary, Ângelo Oswaldo, reappears in the debate about the overturning of urban centers in the pages of the JB, being accused of “harmful neighborhoodism” in a newspaper column. This is because, according to the newspaper, the secretary declared that Ouro Preto was in danger of being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site “due to the abandonment to which it was relegated by federal, state and - why not? - municipal ” (Jornal do Brasil 1982a, p. 6). The text published in the “Informe JB” section does not include its authorship and states: “It was not Ouro Preto, the first world monument that Brazil offered to Humanity; had Ouro Preto not been a national heritage, the declaration would not be commented on. But, the subject is of interest to the miners and to all Brazilians” (ibidem). In his narrative, the author argues that there is no risk that the first-city monument in Brazil will suffer any kind of change in status, given the constant and large amounts sent by the federal government for its preservation. And he ends by saying that the alleged speech of the secretary is unfair and harmful, not only for the old Vila Rica, but also because the Brazilian government is, at that moment, registering the city of Olinda to also receive the title of world importance. And finally, he says: “this, then, is not the time to create spats, practice tantrums and stage pouting against those who are working with their hands and their heads.” Eight days later, on January 18, 1982, in the “Letters” section, the newspaper published the reply of Ângelo Oswaldo de Araújo Santos and on ten topics the secretary clarified what was previously published. The author began his text by stating that he believed that JB’s accusation of falsely trumpeting the exclusion of Ouro Preto from the UNESCO list is, at the same time, opposing the inclusion of Olinda as a World Heritage Site. Santos explained that the day after the title was handed over to Ouro Preto, April 22, 1981, he had a brief conversation with Mr. Amadeu M’Bow, director general of UNESCO. In this dialogue, the representative of the international institution spoke about how the title would serve to reinforce the commitment of preservation of the Brazilian government toward the city of Minas Gerais and spoke about the situation in Quito, Ecuador, which recently received a delegation to assess
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its situation, since it is also a world heritage site and its government had postponed the measures requested by UNESCO to preserve the site. If the problems continued, there would be a possibility that the Ecuadorian city could collapse. In points 4 and 5, the tourism secretary explains that the same thing could happen to Ouro Preto. Investment in protection and preservation by the Brazilian government was the main objective at UNESCO when granting the title and, therefore, if the situation remained—of an intense deterioration of the historic landscape—there would be a risk of losing the seal, explains Ângelo Oswaldo. 5. Accredited sources from UNESCO pointed out to me that no other Brazilian monument would be declared a World Heritage Site until Ouro Preto offered full guarantees of having consolidated its preservation process, which, unfortunately, did not happen. Mr. Berndt von Drost, in 1979, told me that the Union had, at the time, the intention to make Ouro Preto a Cultural Heritage Site and the Tapajós River as a Natural Heritage Site for humanity. As the Government of Brazil did not propose the Tapajós, only Ouro Preto would be listed, and only until the local issues had reached a satisfactory level of efficient solution. (Jornal do Brasil 1982b, p. 10)
The controversy about Olinda would have started at a meeting with the Council of Culture, on December 8, 1981. According to the secretary, his role at the meeting was to address the “problem of SPHAN / Pró-Memória’s inoperability” and by responding to a question from counselor Mauro Motta about the listing of the city in Pernambuco, he said what he had talked with the UNESCO representative. He added that he did not see “the meaning of the grant if it does not come with rational and systematic work to value the listed property. Olinda does not deserve to be used by SPHAN, as it happens with Ouro Preto.” 7. I remember the disaster in which the cities awarded the title of National Monument are. The fact that they become, one by one, a World Monument can only demoralize Brazil and compromise UNESCO’s objectives, which seems unacceptable to me. At Jornal do Brasil, the poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade wrote that, one day, Ouro Preto becomes an “Interplanetary Monument” and his problems will remain unsolved. (Jornal do Brasil 1982b, p. 10)
Ângelo Oswaldo ends his text by saying that classifying his criticisms of SPHAN as “neighborhoodism” is a “petty retaliation promoted, not for the first time, by the direction of the cultural heritage body.” Clarifying that his speech is not about the funds, but how they are used, since according to him “most of the amount was spent in the formulation of technocratic projects without purpose or consequence”, being the problem of SPHAN and Pró-Memória “ fundamentally, managerial ” (1982b, p. 10). The day after this publication, we found another text for clarification on the subject in the journal, in the same section of “Letters”. This time, it is the secretary of the group “Ouro Preto S.O.S,” Isabel Motta, who lists some notes about the situation in the city of Minas Gerais. According to the author, the movement of which she is part faced numerous barriers to promote her awareness actions on the importance of preservation in the municipality, since from the beginning they were harassed by SPHAN, finding support only in the municipal government. She also said that the movement “came to promote didactic exhibitions, debates and the editing of
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posters by the artists José Aberto Nemer and Carlos Sciliar,” the latter, leader of the movement, already alerting in his works right after the title was granted: “ After the festivities, the responsibilities .” Affirming, over the years, the inefficiency in the preservation agency, since its policy “has turned out to be a fiction, adorning itself with the mythical allegories that the consecratory titles can provide.” And that, just as the secretary of tourism had already said, it was noted that after the seal of World Heritage, the process of de-characterization of the historical nucleus accelerated. 4. We think it is opportune to discuss the concept of harmful neighborhoodism, especially when SPHAN is carrying out an insistent campaign of interiorization, inducing, through cultural packages, the communities of historic cities to assume the burden of guardians of their own goods. Such decentralization would not be so absurd had it not been for the well-known lack of municipal governments on the one hand and, on the other, the fact that the pressures and threats to cultural goods exceed—due to their own historical complexity—the narrow limits of the municipality. When a policy of encouraging community participation is undertaken, it is an elementary rule of the democratic game to know how to listen to at least its institutional representative. (Jornal do Brasil 1982c, p. 10) (emphasis in original) Motta aims to clarify to the newspaper and the readers the situation faced by Ouro Preto, which, like other cities, has to deal with the burden arising from the preservation and protection of its own cultural assets, but which, due to their importance, go beyond the limits of County. In view of the “lack of municipal prefectures,” he directs his criticism to the protection agency, saying that “perhaps SPHAN intends—with the healthy objective of reviving our traditions—to make the community reissue, in the 20th century, the Cartas Chilenas ,” strongly disagreeing with the way the funds received were applied.
3 Conclusion The vision that would take Ouro Preto to the category of World Heritage Site contrasts sharply with the image built for the city during the nineteenth century. The negative criticisms were made mainly by travelers who visited Brazil after the installation of the Portuguese Court in Rio de Janeiro in 1808, and with more recurrence after Independence in 1822. “Imbued with the rationalism of the Lights, they negatively describe the appearance of the houses and the urban form in which they are inscribed” (Salgueiro 1996, p. 127). The criticism was mainly directed to the absence of a wide variety of “dispositions intérieure” and facades. Louis Léger Vautier, in the phrase reproduced by Salgueiro (ibidem), sums up this view: “qui a vu une maison brésilienne les a presque toutes vues.” The layout of the streets and the layout of the buildings were also a target of criticism, since they were understood as a work of chance and without any kind of rationality, an interpretation that endured on the urbanism of Baroque cities. However, more current research shows a new perspective on this type of urbanization: “economic circumstances, mental representations, uses
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and practices make an urban form correspond to the needs of the community that inhabits it” (Rocayolo apud Salgueiro, op. cit., p.129). In the case of Brazilian colonial cities, there is a linearity of streets following the relief and a rational irregularity of squares that invite to leave aside the traditional notion of “spontaneous city” in the name of an organic and dynamic conception of urban space. Giovanna Rosso dei Brenna (1983: 141–5) studied the implantation of the monuments of Ouro Preto proposing a new conception of the baroque space - no longer thought according to the European terms of the grand plan with monumental intersections and axes, but characterized by surprises and unforeseen events - churches suspended on real open-air stages - whose patios function as natural platforms over the abyss - with the mountain landscape as a backdrop. Ouro Preto would then be an affirmative answer to the question posed by P. Lavedan (1957): “Is there-t-ilun urbanisme baroque?” (Willow, op. Cit., P. 130)
The great effort institutionally undertaken by the technicians responsible within the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service made the city a myth, a symbol of Brazilian identity. In her research, Heliana Salgueiro says that “we can consider Ouro Preto as less a colonial city than a city of the 19th century” (1996, p. 126). According to the researcher, the residential architecture that “enchants” visitors dates from the nineteenth and twentieth century and reveals much more about public preservation policies applied to the old Vila Rica than the everyday life of the eighteenth century. The little transformation undergone by the city in the first three decades of the twentieth century led the responsible technicians to disregard the delimitation of its tipping perimeter, believing in the static nature of the place, according to Aguiar (2016, p. 95). “The implementation of the preservation project was beginning to decisively transform the routine of the small town, which now has the permanent presence of federal employees (…)” (ibidem). The construction of the Grande Hotel has rekindled the debate on the construction of new buildings, demarcating their different temporality from the historical center. Its approval also marked the refusal by the neocolonial, which, as shown by Aguiar (op. Cit.), does not have a protected specimen in the city. Thus, in addition to defining what real estate would be saved from destruction and how preservation activity would take place, IPHAN also defined what type of architecture could be integrated with the renowned colonial architecture of Ouro Preto. By controlling and defining criteria for old and new buildings, the agency built a memory of the past and defined the direction of the city’s future, which, from its consecration as a national symbol, became an important reference to the national past. (Aguiar 2016, p. 96)
It was believed that as Ouro Preto is a plan ready city, its urban growth would be controlled by the federal agency, mainly due to the low demographic growth, which in 140 years went from 10 thousand inhabitants to 15 thousand (Nascimento 1995 apud Aguiar 2016, p. 97), and it is only after 1950 that this scenario changes, due to the intense industrialization in the region. Soon, with a large part of the central urban area protected by tipping, the expansion was directed to the surrounding hills, mainly Morro da Queimada, Padre Faria, Santa Efigênia, Morro do Cruzeiro, São José and Cabeças.
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As a result of this model, the disorderly occupation of regions that surrounded the fallen nucleus occurred, as was the case of Serra do Ouro Preto, where the old village called Ouro Podre was located. The fact that they do not belong to the urban complex that was the target of the main preservationist policies of IPHAN did not mean that such peripheral areas had only recent occupation. Ouro Podre, for example, was formed after the occupation of the late 17th century, becoming one of the first mining camps in the region. Its origin can even be proven today through an expressive archaeological deposit with deactivated mines, vestiges of old mining services, falls for water transportation and vestiges of architectural ruins and old chapels from the 18th century, threatened by the new constructions that multiplied in the Serra of Ouro Preto. (Aguiar 2016, p. 97)
The occupation of these locations is reported as problematic by several researchers on the subject, and it became a concern even in the 1960s for Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade. This is because the enveloping environment is part of the cultural landscape that makes up the historic nucleus of the monument city and which already attracted the attention of visitors in the nineteenth century. Saint-Hilaire’s account is exemplary in this regard: Mountains which, on all sides, dominate the city, old houses and in bad condition, streets which go down and go up, this is what was offered to our eyes, When we entered the capital of the province of Minas ( ). From these houses thus interspersed with arid summits and tight clumps of plants there are views as varied as they are picturesque. (Saint-Hilaire 1830: 137 apud Salgueiro 1996, p. 129)
The occupation of the hills is also the focus of Natanael Kafuri, in her text entitled “Wicked heritage: how Ouro Preto secretes its real city,” from 2017, where the author talks about urban problems common to Brazilian cities such as “open sewage, bad quality of sidewalks, low runoff of rainwater and, consequently, flooding. In addition, the unrestrained occupation of slopes, as well as the movement of land on them (…) generates constant geological adversities .” This type of occupation would further segregate the inhabitants, increasing the complexity of urban management in locations such as Ouro Preto. In a World Heritage city, its inhabitants would be spectators of their own reality, with urban management focused primarily on the floating population. The urban problems faced by Ouro Preto predate the seal granted by UNESCO, since the nineteenth century reforms and alterations in its original layout have already been thought of in order to direct its growth and use of public space. The urban challenges imposed on the city are closely related to its status as a heritage, since the city has been a National Monument since 1933, by Decree No. 22,298, that is, its historical value is institutionalized even before the first federal legislation dealing with heritage history of the country, which dates from 1937. Thus, the declaration of Ouro Preto as a National Monument was made within nationalist ideals, as in France, however, in Brazil, having been packed by the modernist movement composed of intellectuals, artists and architects, such as Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, Lúcio Costa and Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade. These had as a principle to create a new art capable of portraying the nation in an attempt to insert it among the most modern and civilized countries in the world. (Pereira 2016, pp. 41–42)
The consideration of a historical nucleus as heritage also diverges from the prevailing notion of the time, since 1931 the Athens Charter was launched, the
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first world document with guidelines for the preservation of assets. “The Charter denies the value of maintaining historic centers, urban areas. This document proposed the preservation of isolated buildings, significant constructions, memory of the past (…)” (Costa 2012, p. 13). The Charter, which originated from the 4th International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM), sought to think of the city from the perspective of its functionality and rational occupation of the land and according to Costa (ibidem) “by disregarding the historic center as a whole ( ) and to value isolated objects, the consecrated building, it is clear that this Charter had a somewhat restrictive character in terms of preserving and valuing society and the territorial formation itself.” In Brazil, the first half of the twentieth century was marked by the search for Brazilian culture and identity, where several thinkers saw this originality from colonial times in the city of Minas Gerais. However, as we saw in the text, “(…) this group of modernists who inaugurated the heritage protection process saw cities as great works of art, unique and complete monuments, leaving the population that lived there subordinate to this idealistic vision, neither mentioned. (Pereira 2016, p. 42). This can be attributed to the way in which the goods to be protected from that period were selected, which depended only on the notorious knowledge of the intellectuals linked to SPHAN, who in their great majority understood this urban space to be preserved in an “untouched” way. This conduct, in the long run, led to problems not only related to the urban development of cities with large protected areas, but also to the very notion of heritage that was consolidated within the agency. In practice, the city conceived as a monument consisted of the overestimation of the aesthetic component, it was the city conceived as a work of art, resulting in a disregard for its social and economic components, which reflected in the uses and activities developed in these cities and in the real possibilities of conservation. This conception of the monument-city “enabled the construction of a conceptual and methodological framework for the development of actions that still deeply mark the institution” (Sant’anna 1995, p. 117 apud Pereira 2016, p. 44).
Also in Olinda, the second Brazilian historical center to be considered a World Heritage Site, we see the concern with the urban issue and its conciliation with the protection of the historical center. As shown by Barreto and Lira (2009), the institutional preservation of the city of Pernambuco is closely linked to the urban development of Recife, since the proximity between the two cities generates burdens and bonuses on the preservation of Olinda. The municipality currently seeks to combine preservation with its urban policy, since it has protected about 1,500 properties, of which 87% are residential, in addition to shops and public buildings, which add up to 22 monuments and 19 secular churches, according to an article published in the G1 portal authored by Thamires Oliveira (2018). As in Ouro Preto, a large part of the conflicts generated in cities with large protected historical centers start from the financial issue for restorations and preservation activities. In Olinda, there is currently the Fund for the Preservation of the Historic Site, which is fed with the payment of small fees and fines for misuse of these spaces. According to G1, about R $ 15 thousand are collected per month, which is relatively little, as explained by Gilberto Sobral, Secretary of Heritage and Culture of Olinda. “One of the equipment restored with these resources was the Teatro Bonsucesso,
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in the neighborhood of the same name. The space requalification work lasted four months and cost R $ 59.6 thousand. The new space is air-conditioned and accommodates up to 134 people sitting ” (PORTAL G1 2018). The city government invests in cheap works that involve the inhabitants, also using the labor of prison reeducants, seeking to requalify the spaces, giving uses that generate revenue for the maintenance of the building itself. Olinda suffered little from urban reforms or pressure from the real estate market until at least 1960, since despite the geographical proximity to the capital Recife, the link between the two was not paved and, therefore, “Olinda was little frequented and sought more specifically by plastic artists who intended to establish a home there, for the bucolic character of their group and for the peaceful way of life of the place ”(Barreto and Lira 2009, pp. 3–4). However, this situation began to change in the 1960s due to the urban and industrial growth of Recife, which in the 1970s led to the construction of the Salgadinho Road Complex, which consisted of paving and widening the road connecting Olinda. At that time, the city was already listed by IPHAN, with a process opened in 1962 and approved 1968 that delimited the protection polygon giving emphasis to the houses. The construction of the Complex generated concern among intellectuals and preservation agents, since it threatened, with its subsequent development of land occupation, the original visibility of the city. Thus, in 1978 after a long debate on the topic, the hills surrounding the historic center were inscribed in the Book of Ethnographic, Historical and Landscape Tombo, so that the previously listed complex was more fully protected, also creating a barrier to urban growth, expanding the protection area to 10.4 km2 , about 1/3 of the total area of the municipality (Barreto and Lira 2009, p. 8). The conquest of honorary titles helped in the preservation and protection of Olinda, many of which, such as the National Monument, had a direct influence on the condition already conquered by other cities such as Ouro Preto. The “Campaign for the transformation of Olinda into a National Monument” was organized since 1972 by the historian Luiz Vital Duarte and received support from several politicians and intellectuals, however, as shown by Barreto and Lira (op.cit), due to political disputes between the MDB and ARENA the project went through the National Congress for five years until it was approved. The transformation of Olinda into a monument city through the various laws and titles received “changed the relationship of its residents with the place, mainly due to the fact that interventions in public and private properties began to be authorized only after approval of the executive project by part of the preservation organs ” (Carvalho 2017, s/p). In addition, the municipality created specific laws for the carnival period, due to the growth of tourism at this time of year. It is interesting to bear in mind that the diverse social and economic dynamics substantially influence the preservation of the built heritage. In Olinda, as shown in the study by Diôgo Carvalho (2017), its economic base is supported by tourism activities not only because of the protected nucleus, but also due to the carnival that takes place in the city. The party moves the municipality, “more than simple stages of revelry, urban spaces were important protagonists in a process in which the government appears as a mediator, controlling, regulating and inspecting their use” (Carvalho 2017, s/p).
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In 2001, the city hall signed the Municipal Law nº 5306/2001, which determines rules and procedures that must be followed during the carnival period. Among which: prohibition on the use of mechanical sound equipment and establishment of unofficial entertainment spots, valuing frevo orchestras and greater fluidity in the parades of carnival groups. It can be seen that both in Municipal Law No. 5306/2001 and in the Carnival Sustainability Program, actions directly related to the preservation of Olinda’s material heritage during the carnival were not contemplated, however the municipal departments of Heritage and Culture and Public Services protect the historic buildings of the city with sidings, the squares are protected with fences and the location of the traffic block points and the chemical toilets, as well as the number of them, are designed to minimize the impacts on the Historic Site. These actions are supervised by Iphan and signed with the Olinda City Hall, through a Conduct Adjustment Term. (Carvalho 2017, s/p)
The management of large historical centers is complex and requires constant cooperation between municipal, state, federal and international preservation bodies, since as we have seen through the pages of Jornal do Brasil (RJ), this does not always happen, causing yet more conflicts. It is true that the preservationist policy of IPHAN has changed considerably since the institution of the National Monuments cities, being currently much more attentive to social issues that permeate Brazilian society as a collective. This change in approach can be mainly seen from the 1970s onwards, as shown by Pereira (2016, p. 45 et. Seq.), moving the notion of monument city to document city, that is, seeking to, from then on, perceive the city as a document and historical source and not only aesthetically as a work of art. In this sense, the city of Laguna (SC) exemplary for Sant’anna (1995) apud Pereira (2016, p. 46): In its strictly architectural dimension, the built heritage of the historic center of Laguna does not present the characteristics of exceptionality normally adopted as criteria for deciding on the opportunity for the listing. From this point of view, we would not know how to choose another building that meets that criterion individually, in addition to the Town Hall and Prison, listed in 1953 by the then National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service. We believe, however, that it is a precious document in the history of the country, less as the site of notable events - although these have also been highlighted there - than by the careful choice of the site; the role that the population can play, due to its location, in the process of expanding southern borders; and, above all, for the urban form assumed, after all, as spatial precipitation of the two previous processes. (IPHAN, p. 9)
The inherent disputes intensified after the UNESCO seal was awarded to Ouro Preto, as well as in Olinda, demonstrating how the enactment of laws and the approval of overturning processes are only the starting point for the preservation of the history and memory of the different groups that constitute Brazilian society. The challenge present in cities with large historical centers focuses mainly on finding strategies that can reconcile preservation, urban growth and tourism, since just as urban growth threatens to be demolished, tourism threatens to distort it, leading to a “trend scenographic .” In addition, it is important that the population is involved in the city’s preservation processes, so that they are not spectators of their own reality, generating the notion of resonance, mentioned by Gonçalves (2005, p. 19). So that, as highlighted by Leila Bianchi Aguiar (2016), cities can effectively fulfill their role as a cultural asset, providing the expansion of citizenship through the management and democratization of urban space.
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References Aguiar LB (2016) Desafios, permanências e transformações na gestão de um sítio urbano patrimonializado: Ouro Preto, 1938-1975. Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro 29(57):87–106, janeiro-abril Barreto J, Lira F (2009) Pesquisa histórica como aporte metodológico na atualização da legislação de proteção federal do Sítio Histórico de Olinda - PE. Textos para Discussão - Série 1: Gestão da Conservação Urbana. Centro de Estudos Avançados da Conservação Integrada: Olinda Carvalho DCO de (2017) Olinda e os conflitos entre o patrimônio e o polo cultural. Minha Cidade, São Paulo, ano 18, n. 206.02, Vitruvius, set. https://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/minhac idade/18.206/6676. Accessed 07 Sept 2019 Costa EB da (2012) Patrimônio e território urbano em cartas patrimoniais do século XX. Finisterra, XLVII, 93, pp. 5–28 Gonçalves JRS (2005) Ressonância, materialidade e subjetividade: as culturas como patrimônios. Horizontes Antropológicos, Porto Alegre, ano 11(23): 15–36, jan/jun Jatobá SU (2015) Grande Hotel Ouro Preto. Um divisor de águas. Arquiteturismo, São Paulo, ano 09, n. 100.02, Vitruvius, jul. https://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/arquiteturismo/09.100/ 5633. Accessed 08 Sep 2019 Pereira DC (2016) Cidade, Patrimônio e Território: as políticas públicas federais de seleção no Brasil do século XXI. Rev. CPC, São Paulo, n. 21, pp 36–70, jan./jul Pollak M (1989) Memória, esquecimento, silêncio. In: Estudos Históricos, Rio de Janeiro: vol. 2, nº 3 Salgueiro HA (1996) Ouro Preto: dos gestos de transformação do “colonial” aos de construção de um “antigo moderno”. Anais do Museu Paulista. São Paulo. N. Sér. vol 4 pp 125–63 jan./dez
Sources Oliveira T (2018) Cidade patrimônio, Olinda enfrenta desafios para a preservação do Sítio Histórico. Poral G1. Available in: https://g1.globo.com/pe/pernambuco/noticia/cidade-patrimonio-olindaenfrenta-dificuldades-para-a-preservacao-do-sitio-historico.ghtml OURO PRETO. Decreto n°13, de 19 de setembro de 1931. Blog Arquivo Público Municipal de Ouro Preto. http://arquivopublicoop.blogspot.com/2013/12/preservacao-do-patrimonio-de-ouropreto.html. Accessed 12 Feb 2020 Jornal do Brasil (1980a) Unesco dará prioridade à proteção de Ouro Preto. Rio de Janeiro. Maurílio Torres, p. 16. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional Jornal do Brasil (1980b) Ouro Preto S.O.S. Rio de Janeiro. Maurílio Torres, p. 9. Hemeroteca da Biblioteca Nacional Jornal do Brasil (1982a) Informes JB. Bairrismo prejudicial. Rio de Janeiro. 10 de janeiro de 1982, p. 6. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional Jornal do Brasil (1982b) Cartas. Ouro Preto. Rio de Janeiro. 18 de janeiro de 1982, p. 10. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional Jornal do Brasil (1982c) Cartas. Patrimônio Cultural. Rio de Janeiro. 19 de janeiro de 1982, p. 10. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional Jornal do Brasil (1982d) Ludwig e Capanema se reúnem para preservar o Palácio da Cultura. Rio de Janeiro, 15 de maio de 1982. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional Jornal do Brasil (1982e) Informe JB. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional Jornal do Brasil (1982f) Olinda para sempre. Rio de Janeiro, 15 de dezembro de 1982. Hemeroteca Digital da Biblioteca Nacional Kafuri N (2017) Patrimônio perverso: como Ouro Preto segrega sua cidade real. Caos Planejado. Available in: https://caosplanejado.com/author/natanael-kafuri/
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PORTAL G1 (2018) Cidade patrimônio, Olinda enfrenta desafios para a preservação do Sítio Histórico. Thamires Oliveira. Pernambuco, 18 de março de 2018. https://g1.globo.com/pe/per nambuco/noticia/cidade-patrimonio-olinda-enfrenta-dificuldades-para-a-preservacao-do-sitiohistorico.ghtml. Accessed 20 Feb 2020
Pampulha Modern Ensemble: Reflections on the Complexities and Contradictions for the Management of a World Heritage Cultural Landscape Flavio de Lemos Carsalade
Abstract This article is about the development of the works related to the recognition of the Pampulha Modern Heritage as a UNESCO’s World Heritage since their first steps until the actions after the recognition, examining systematically the process through a critical viewpoint. Keywords Pampulha modern ensemble · World heritage · UNESCO · Belo horizonte The Pampulha Modern Ensemble was recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site on July 17, 2016, in Istanbul, through Project Decision 40 COM 8B.33, inscribing it on the World Heritage List as a cultural landscape. On that occasion, the World Heritage Committee adopted the bases of the Declaration of Outstanding Universal Value presented in the Application Dossier and which refers to the excellence of its project, especially for the integrated buildings and landscape design. This article proposes to discuss the process of recognition of the good by UNESCO and the subsequent actions related to it. The first part of the text discusses the qualification of the Assembly, a text extracted in part from the Dossier submitted to UNESCO and whose technical part was coordinated by us. The second part shows how the Process was followed up by UNESCO through ICOMOS consultants specially designated by it and the third part critically reflects on the decisions and recommendations of the post-recognition World Heritage Committee.
The author thanks the collaboration of the entire team responsible for the research and logistics of assembling the Dossier of Candidacy of Pampulha, between the years 2014 and 2016, especially to the architect Luciana Rocha Feres, general coordinator of the candidacy, on the part of the Belo Horizonte City Hall. Support CNPQ Research Productivity Grants - Call CNPq No. 09/2018. F. de L. Carsalade (B) Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_28
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1 The Modern Set of Pampulha as Presented in the Dossier The Pampulha Modern Ensemble is shaped by a landscape situation that brings together five buildings articulated around the water mirror of an artificial urban lake, as an integrated result of the creative genius of the main Brazilian names in the arts and architecture in the twentieth century. The set includes the Church of São Francisco de Assis, the Casino (now the Pampulha Art Museum), the Casa do Baile (now the Belo Horizonte Urbanism, Architecture and Design Reference Center) and the Yacht Golf Club (today Yacht Tennis Club), built almost simultaneously between 1942 and 1943. The complex was designed to generate a “total work of art”, integrating works of art and landscaping with buildings and these with the landscape, creating a highly attractive urban park around the artificial dam, a new urban function envisioned by the then Mayor Juscelino Kubitscheck, who sought to overcome its original agricultural belt and water supply functions. Due to its shape, implantation and landscape treatment, the large water mirror of the Pampulha lagoon works as an articulating element of the buildings, reinforcing the visual relationships they establish with each other. Although each building, in itself, the landscaping of its surroundings and the integrated works of art already have special attributes that give it a special place in the historiography of modern architecture, its meeting in a cohesive and strong identity, enhances the individual qualities and makes its creative and scenic strength even more noticeable. The first issue addressed in the Dossier as to the analysis of the set refers to the relationship between the buildings and the Landscape. The water mirror is the result of the impoundment of several streams in a rural region, on the outskirts of the Central Nucleus of the City of Belo Horizonte, therefore a still virgin landscape that was beginning to be altered by human action, but which retained its characteristics of open and green large spaces and, since then, with a marked presence of the water element. The impoundment gave rise, in the local geography, to a range of differentiated landscape situations, such as promontories, peninsulas, small bays, islets, flat and steep banks, different relationships between vegetation and waters, curvilinear and organic perimeter. The scenic beauty of the Complex really seemed to propose a use more linked to leisure and contemplation than the agricultural belt that was originally intended for it. The vision of a public administrator committed to the future and of artists with a strong nationalist feeling and of connection with international avantgarde, led to the imposition of another, the artists’, after the first human intervention to create the lake, created by the use of the new environmental wealth that then appeared on the site. The urbanistic proposal was integrated with the landscape resources in several aspects. First, it presupposed the creation of anchors for the place through urban equipment of great power of attraction such as the casino (the game and the activities that complemented it were, at the time, in Brazil, important elements of entertainment and job creation) and a nautical club (for a non-seaside city, it represented an important novelty, the “sea of Minas”), where, for a deeply religious society, the
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sacred landmark, a church, could not be missing. Secondly, it proposed a territorial occupation with modern urban characteristics, incorporating the European vanguards of the “garden cities”, guaranteed by the resources of more affluent social classes who would have a “country residence” or even their first home there, depending on the consequent affirmation of the place as a residential neighborhood. Ensuring the viability and cohesion of these two axes, leisure and housing, an urban design was presented with large lots, of low density and occupation, full of native vegetation associated with a pathway that, along the lake shore, accompanied its sinuosity and revealed its attributes, now approaching it, moving away to generate the sites to be occupied by the reference buildings. The synthesis between the functional and the organic that would come to characterize and distinguish the buildings that would rise there, therefore, was already beginning to take shape in the first urban design. Similarly, the curvilinear morphology of the shore would be an important inspiration for the buildings and gardens of the Modern Set, as later recognized by its own authors: Niemeyer said he was inspired by the mountains and Brazilian feminine sensuality for his work and Burle Marx always sought the local element as the foundation of his conceptions. However, it was not just morphology that inspired the authors of the Pampulha. The local topology provided strong indications regarding the location of the buildings: the casino, the main anchor, on a sharp and high peninsula to meddle in the middle of the waters; the ballroom on an islet opposite the lake, but necessarily close, for its complementary function to the casino; the nautical club arranged linearly along the shore, in order to enhance the relationship between passersby, leisure, sport, and water vision; the church is also on the peninsula, but it is triangular, in order to generate a churchyard; the residence within the neighborhood, with privileged views of all equipment, showing how beautiful it would be to live in Pampulha. It was also important that the interval between the buildings was long enough to animate a large portion of the water mirror, but not so long as to tear the co-presence’s texture. Achieving this balance, guaranteed by the cross-views that are obtained from each of the landmark buildings on the waterfront, presents itself as one of the main virtues of the Complex. Here Oscar Niemeyer also adopts a contextualist principle, different from modern interventions, which often deny their surroundings or are opposed to it. Niemeyer’s approach is not only to carefully place buildings in relation to sights and topographical situations, but to establish a formal dialogue with these situations, which is revealed, for example, in the circular shape of the Casino’s restaurant. Finally, as for the landscape, the ridges that delimit the Modern Complex and give it a strong sense of unity are also close enough that the view is not dispersed, without, however, removing its most extensive urban dimension. The slopes that descend from this topographically superior profile are smooth and full of vegetation, which also helps to create the strong feeling of unity and the bucolic character observed in the place. The whole idea, however, is not limited to its relations with the landscape. There is also a design attitude and a formal coherence that creates relationships between buildings, gardens and works of art that, despite a wide variety of formal solutions,
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create an easily perceived unity and generate integrated meanings, which, by their strength, remain through the ages. The design attitude is revealed in the proposition of an eminently Brazilian architecture, at the same time modernizing the ways of living and living in cities, innovative in relation to the world architecture scene—but at the same time referenced in the country’s history—and in the search of the total work of art, where landscape, gardens, murals, and sculptures would be integrated. The meanings it generates are recognized as a founding moment of the country’s culture, associated with a feeling of national pride, due to the social recognition that something innovative and transformative was being done there. Most works of art appear as inseparable elements of buildings, integrating with them and being even responsible for their full expression. There are two main aspects of integrated works of art: the murals with the modern expression of Candido Portinari in harmonic composition with the buildings and the tiles, responsible for the visual lightness of the sealing elements and for the connection with the Brazilian building tradition. The intense search for architectural and structural solutions—exploring different forms and materials in each building—characterizes the Complex. The constructive and formal vocabulary proposed by Le Corbusier—flat slabs, glass panels, independent structural skeleton and freedom of composition of plants and facades—was not only explored there, but challenged to find, in a climate and environment previously unknown to international style, creative solutions, in freer forms and adapted to that bucolic setting. The volumes in free form, the glass cloths, the independent “bone” and the free plan, in the Casino; as well as the slab of the Casa do Baile, like framing the lake, spreading out over your view and creating the illusion that it embraces you, are examples of this innovation and creativity of which its creators treated formal problems, offering masterful solutions, including the integration of the arts and techniques, which made their own expressiveness relative to the benefit of an integrated reading. This view is confirmed by the interpretation of Carlos Eduardo Comas: The compositional, material and significant differentiation of the buildings in Pampulha is a striking demonstration - because it is territorially condensed - of the versatility of a limited number of formal elements and principles. The undeniable stylistic unity does not exclude the variety of the singular manifestation, which is more legitimated by its correspondence with programs of a different nature than with situation characteristics. The singularity is accentuated, in the most extraordinary of programs, by the election of a special structural system, which does not fit the rule of the independent skeleton: declaration of wealth of technical means, but also of the rationality of relating and relativizing the rule in the face of multiple circumstances from the __ century. (Comas 2000, p. 130)
The public buildings were installed in positions adjacent to the lake, between the lake and the perimeter avenue, in order to emphasize their reciprocal relations and give them the desired prominence. The innovative landscaping proposed by Burle Marx is based on naturalistic treatment, with a harmonic chromatic richness, plastically recreating nature and using specimens of flora, which, although not strictly native to the place, are representative of the Brazilian plant wealth. Burle Marx is also notable for the intense dialogue promoted between buildings and vegetation,
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between the volume built and the “landscape volume”, marked by the use of species of regional flora, with preference for small plants, in order to highlight each building. Rare in modern works in the rest of the world, this communion between architecture and landscaping has become frequent in Brazil from the projects of the gardens of Pampulha. In the following years Burle Marx himself would make emblematic and world-renowned gardens such as the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (1955), the Parque do Flamengo (Rio de Janeiro, 1961), and the Monumental Axis of Brasília (1960). His work opened the door to the subsequent gardens of the modern movement after the 1940s, in aspects linked to the treatment of landscape as a work of art (such as the gardens of Carl Theodor Sorensen, Geoffrey Jellicoe, and Carlo Scarpa) or the use of local specimens (as in some Luis Barragán gardens). The Casino (1940, now the Pampulha Art Museum) was the anchor of the whole group, since it was the urban equipment that at the time, in Brazil, presented itself as the great attractor of visitors. The then young architect Oscar Niemeyer had been invited by the mayor, disgusted with the result of the competition recently held, after a national search for a name that could associate the avant-garde with the enterprise. In addition to its prominence in relation to the Complex, given by its implantation a higher terrain, the Casino is the building that presents the clearest affiliation to the Corbusian principles, with its independent structure in concrete, plan, and free facades, modulated by the structure, which emerges as the building’s own formal expression, also an important modern principle. The building consists of three blocks, the first, glazed, intended for games rooms, the second, opaquer in texture intended for the administrative part and support services, and a the third, curved and also glazed, intended for the grill room, mixed with a dancing restaurant and a pocket theater. The building sits on the peninsula of the lake. In order to emphasize its importance, it is placed at the end of the elevated garden path that leads to its entrance. The “promenade” proposed by Burle Marx, which, in uphill led to the culmination of the Casino, is formed by masses—herbaceous and shrub predominantly—made to be seen in elevation and in sequence, since the arrival of the public road. In the middle of them, in a natural depression of the terrain, is the small lake, which presents a new visual possibility, when seen from above. Casa do Baile (current 1940 Center of Reference in Urbanism, Architecture and Design) was conceived as a complementary and alternative urban equipment to the Casino: there would also be a restaurant, balls and shows, intended for an audience that would not be attracted by the game, but only by the charms and life of the new Belo Horizonte region. Unlike the Casino building, Casa do Baile does not have such noble and luxurious finishing materials, standing out for its grace and simplicity. Also in relation to its landscape situation, it differs in that it is located on an exclusive island, close to the water mirror. The small tile and glass “drum” pays reverence to the landscape, with its free-form marquee that frames the view of the water mirror. The entire external area is offered to the street, in a purposely less ceremonious way than the Casino and it is integrated through the Portuguese sidewalk that appears in the entire external area, before, along the entire frontal portion of the land, and after the bridge, reinforcing the public character of the space. Due to the smallness and the
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functions destined for the external areas, the gardens would have to share their space with the party. Its conception is, therefore, minimalist, but it highlights the dialogue with water, which surrounds the ensemble. The richness of the conception occurs in this dialogue with water in its various forms, as a frame for the water mirror, as the swampy nature of the place or even through transparency, in aquatic and underwater beds. The Iate Golfe Clube (1940, Present Yacht Tennis Club) was conceived as the public leisure and sports equipment for the population. Its two pillars would be golf (which never came to be implemented) and yachting, taking advantage of the nautical potential of the water mirror. In the 1960s, the club was privatized. The building is located on the banks of the lake and creates links with it not only through the boat garage that houses the water in its stilts, but also because it presents itself as a large vessel on its banks, intentionality revealed by the deck as a bow and the vertical element that adorns it, as if it were a mast for sails. This building of sober lines also explores several elements of the modern plastic vocabulary: ramps, glass panels, brises-soleil “tape windows”. It also presents works of art integrated to architecture, by Cândido Portinari and Roberto Burle Marx (panel and landscaping), among others. The program of the architectural project was for a common club, providing swimming pools, sports courts, incorporating the lagoon for the practice of water sports such as rowing and sailing. The competitions were well publicized by the press and certainly served as an incentive to promote Pampulha as a sophisticated leisure space. The São Francisco de Assis Church (1940) exhibits, with its inventive and original architectural solution, several possible associations: of the structure with architecture, of the plastic arts and the modern movement with the Baroque from Minas Gerais. Among the works of the Pampulha architectural ensemble, the Church—for the architectural historian Yves Bruand, the masterpiece of the ensemble—is the one that best represents the marriage between architecture and structure: how its architectural elements take shape with the concrete structure itself armed, once the structure was completed, the architecture would be present. In this project, reinforced concrete was extensively explored in its plastic and structural potential. Concrete “shell” structures had been used for some time in various architectural programs—such as industrial warehouses and hangars—but it was in Pampulha that this solution was used to compose a space for religious worship. The building is located on a wide peninsula, in the middle of a large garden designed by Burle Marx, divided into two plots by a street tangent to its facade, decorated by Candido Portinari’s tile panel by. This situation, combined with the canonical rite of turning the door of the temples to the rising sun, explains the Church’s curious orientation, facing the lagoon and not the street. The land where the Church is located receives smaller vegetation in order to frame the church and propose the lake, while the other land is presented as a large park, with 107 species, among trees (ficus, lentils, mango trees, among others), shrubs and ground cover. The Church’s surroundings celebrate the rose as a theme (eleven species distributed in ameboid beds) that makes references to Catholic saints and medieval symbols (according to the description). The gardens surrounding the
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Church have been restored while the others, upstream, only the trees of the original design remain. The Church is composed of a sequence of five articulated “shells”, with different heights, the largest, independent and of variable section, which defines the nave. It fits, on its smaller face, under another dome, which houses the main altar. Between the two, thanks to the shape of this “fit”, an opening projects light on the fresco at the bottom. The altar cover merges with the other three, smaller ones, which originally housed the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, to the left of the altar, and the sacristy, on the opposite side. Countless times, the architect attributed inspiration from the features to the curves present in Brazilian colonial churches. From the colonial chapels and churches, the Pampulha temple draws references from the traditional architectural program, with churchyard, steeple, atrium, choir, nave, pulpit, cross arch, main altar, and sacristy, but reinterprets them in the light of the new possibilities brought by Oscar Niemeyer’s modern and creative convictions, an atheist and communist, but endowed with a great feeling regarding the emotion of the sacred. The baroque ideal of “total work of art” is also rescued here, through the integration between space and works of art. From the facade facing the public road, there is a panel of tiles, most common in the Franciscan orders, in which Portinari portrays Saint Francis, repeatedly, always surrounded by animals, in addition to some other sacred figures, on a background in which fish and birds are repeated forming a mosaic. The integration of this pictorial and architectural work is such that it is difficult to imagine the Church receiving another treatment in this blind wall, whose ordinary function, of mere sealing, becomes valued by that of supporting the artistic panel. The gardens designed by Burle Marx are spread across the small peninsula that houses the church. In spite of the environmental degradation of the lake, the Pampulha Modern Ensemble crossed the twentieth century and won the twenty-first with an increasingly full youth and importance. It is considered by Brazilian history and architectural historiography as one of our most important cultural manifestations, not only for its undeniable and original architectural, urbanistic, landscape and artistic quality, but also for its insertion in the historical-cultural context of the time when it was created. In fact, the Ensemble represents an important chapter in the world history of modern architecture, presenting itself as a new synthesis, in the Americas, of the precepts of the new architecture and of the new ways of living announced from the first decades of the twentieth century, as a result of a universal interaction that resulted in particular appropriations of an intercultural dialogue, mixing local traditions and values with universal trends and, in return, influencing and modifying the direction of these trends worldwide. The architectural and artistic expressiveness installed there helped Brazil to build its identity, in a historic moment where the young American nations sought their autonomy from the colonizers. The strength of the ensemble provided by the shapes of its buildings and the relationship established between them and these with the landscape, inaugurates its own architectural language based on formal freedom and inspiration in our most authentic historical past of a mulatto nation and of our exotic plant specimens. The ensemble presents itself as the conjunction of various forms of artistic expression in an integrated whole where the constructive
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technology and the specific language of each artistic modality (architecture, landscaping, painting, sculpture, ceramics) are relativized due to the expressiveness of the whole. The Pampulha Modern Ensemble justified its candidacy as World Heritage by three criteria: Criterion (i) representing a masterpiece of human creative genius; Criterion (ii) exhibit an evident exchange of human values, over time or within a cultural area of the world, which had an impact on the development of architecture or technology, monumental arts, urbanism or landscaping and Criterion (iv) be an exceptional example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape that illustrates (a) significant stage (s) of human history. For the first criterion (masterpiece), Pampulha was highlighted as a seminal and referential moment in the architectural and cultural history of humanity and, for its original qualities, representing a moment of a new synthesis in the evolution of world architecture, especially because the set materializes an integrated conjunction of various forms of artistic expression (sculpture, painting, landscaping, and architecture) and cultural movements, at the same time, of universal and local character, such as Brazilian modernist “anthropophagy” and organicist and rationalist currents architecture, among others. For the second criterion (exchange of human values), the aspect of universal interaction between cultures was highlighted, which resulted in particular appropriations of this intercultural dialogue and the affirmation of Latin American national identities. For the third criterion (exceptional stage of human development), the innovative character of its architecture and landscaping, the technical-constructive developments that provided it with its materiality and creative construction in virgin territory open to human action were reinforced. In addition to these criteria, UNESCO also demands that the property be shown to be intact and authentic, to which Pampulha also responded well: in terms of integrity, the complex created in the 1940s still maintains its basic attributes despite the effects of the passage of time and, for authenticity, the ensemble is still attracting a large audience for its beauty and its meaning, abundantly recognized by historiography and by succeeding generations, who recognize it as an Belo Horizonte icon. Thus, the synthesis of the Declaration of Outstanding Universal Value of the Pampulha Modern Ensemble was drafted, as presented to UNESCO: The Modern Complex of Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) presents an important chapter in the world history of modern architecture. It also represented and represents a new synthesis, in the Americas, of the precepts of new architecture and new ways of living, announced from the first decades of the 20th century. It symbolizes, in its materiality, the universal interaction that resulted in particular appropriations of an intercultural dialogue, mixing local traditions and values with universal trends and, in return, influencing and modifying the direction of these trends worldwide. Historically inserted at a time when young American nations sought to build their own identities, the Conjunto Moderno da Pampulha is the Brazilian response to the international discussions then underway. Through the strength of the ensemble provided by the shapes of its buildings and the relationship established between them and these with the landscape, it inaugurates its own architectural language based on formal freedom, collage of references from various sources, use of local values and nature, in addition to the reaction against strict functionalism. It thus expresses a pioneering contextual approach in the context of modern architecture, in contrast to the indifference to the surrounding context that often characterized it, constituting a reference and influencing the new paths of
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international architecture. Conceived from a demand from the government, in 1940, as a set of buildings around an artificial urban lake with the function of leisure and culture, housing in new standards of “garden city” and vector of city growth, the Modern Complex provided the conjunction of various forms of artistic expression in an integrated whole and in a new architectural synthesis characterized by an innovative and purposeful architectural language, where the constructive technology and the specific expressiveness of each artistic modality (architecture, landscaping, painting, sculpture, ceramics) are integrated and relativized due to the expressiveness of the whole, in great harmony with the pre-existing landscape. This unique enterprise contributed to the meeting of some of the main Brazilian artists of the 20th century, such as Oscar Niemeyer, Roberto Burle Marx and Cândido Portinari. The Modern Complex of Pampulha is, therefore, of great significance for present and future generations of humanity, presenting itself as a living, integral and authentic landmark of the History of World Architecture and of Brazilian and Americas history.
It is worth noting here the three strategies among many that were adopted for the candidacy, which deserve mention for their greater importance: • The narrative established in the Dossier should reinforce two fundamental aspects: The first, the importance of the set and the integration of the arts performed in it, as more important than the personalization of its authors; the second, its historical importance as a seminal moment of Brazilian (and also worldwide) architecture, strongly inserted in a historical period of great transformations; • In spite of all the indications, the candidacy would not be presented in the “cultural landscape” category (although, in the end, it was entered in this way) because of all the controversy and the lack of consensus on the concept and that it had already taken the refusal of other important candidacies such as the city of Buenos Aires; • The reduction of the “core zone”—previously foreseen as the entire lake—for the portion where the buildings designed by Niemeyer were concentrated, not only due to the state of degradation of the lagoon, but also to avoid the dispersion of focus to the “most historic” region in the group. In this new meaning, the part of the remaining lagoon was the first buffer zone.
2 The Participation of UNESCO Consultants As is customary in applications for World Heritage, the process foresees two moments of visits by technicians to the candidate. The first one, still with the dossier under construction, aiming to correct directions and verify the relevance of the adopted criteria and another at the end, where the role of the consultant is not so much to “correct” the dossier, since this is already in its final phase, but above all, through in situ evaluation, generate a report for the group designated by the World Heritage Committee to evaluate the candidacy. The first visit took place in September 2014 and the architect Rúben García Miranda from Uruguay was appointed as the consultant, who briefly made the following main recommendations: • Enhance the idea of the whole, to the detriment of the individual importance of each work. It was already possible to see here that the strength of the candidacy was not only in the buildings, but in the strong landscape created by the group.
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This, even before the consultant’s visit, was already the approach that had been agreed upon by the Dossier preparation team; Incorporate Praça Santa Rosa into the core zone. The square as it stands today is a late project by Burle Marx that replaced that of the 1940s. The consultant understood that, despite the question of dating, it constituted value for the group. However, the Team preferred to keep it out for historical coherence reasons, which ultimately did not succeed on the recommendation of the second consultant and the World Heritage Committee in the same direction as the architect Rúben. Reduce the scope of the proposed buffer zones, for fear that the management of so much area would be too complex. This recommendation was also not accepted by the team, as it considered it necessary and had already been practiced over time in the city, a reason that the consultant, being unaware of the city’s dynamics, was unaware of; Emphasize the Management Plan, a criterion already very important for the analysis of the World Committee that saw in the management plans an important and necessary pact for the effective conservation of the property; Create a Steering Committee for the group. This measure was accepted and later carried out with relative success.
The second visit took place in September 2015, when the Dossier was almost finished and was carried out by Architect Maria Eugenia Bacci, from Venezuela, who already brought with it additional values such as the emphasis on landscaping and the landscape and a strong concern with the increasing tourism in sustainable ways. The consultant made her report directly to the Committee’s analysis and the local team was not aware of it until the Evaluation Unit’s analysis in December 2015, which, despite the praise for the quality of the Dossier, presented the following points to reformulate (in italics, free translation of the recommendations issued in a letter addressed to IPHAN): • Justify the issue of the new architectural language brought by Pampulha in the section of Comparative Analysis. Initially the dossier had worked on Comparative Analysis more in relation to historical issues and, after this observation, it also started to approach aspects of architecture theory and language of forms, including those related to landscaping; • Clarity of the new architectural language also in terms of landscaping: including landscapes designed by Burle Marx and other original features. Here you can see the presence of the Venezuelan consultant who had already warned of this issue. The dossier reformulation included several examples in the Comparative Analysis; • Lack of attention from public management with some of the main elements of the complex, notably the restoration of Burle Marx’s gardens, Niemeyer’s buildings and lagoon waters. In fact, some of the buildings had specific conservation problems at the time and, of Burle Marx’s gardens, only the Cassino and Casa do Baile gardens remained, even so in a precarious state of conservation. The part of the lagoon that had been considered a buffer zone was in very bad shape, very silted and dirty;
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• The coherence of the whole as a whole: reconsider the inclusion of the JK Residence. Juscelino Kubitschek’s residence (now Casa Kubitschek), was built in 1943 and was removed from the core protection zone by this UNESCO indication, not for the sake of quality, but for its position outside the waterfront and because it is was not a public building (when designed); • Context of the whole as a whole: strengthening the vicinity of the buffer zones. This recommendation contrasted with the appointment of the first consultant, but what it effectively required was the reinforcement of internal regulations in each of the zones. For the application to be submitted in 2016, the Dossier’s reformulations had to be delivered by March of the same year, which was effectively done for several reasons, including political ones, at the expense of a better English version of the document, which was criticized by UNESCO.
3 The Recognition of the Whole as a World Heritage Site and UNESCO Comments and Recommendations The recognition of the ensemble took place at the Istanbul meeting, from 10 to 20 of July 2016, in the midst of sessions troubled by an alleged revolutionary movement in Turkey, which forced the members of the Committee to interrupt their work and be imprisoned in their hotels, compressing the decision-making sessions into shorter periods than they normally do, leading to a less deepening of the particularities of the candidacies and an absence of time for negotiations between the parties, generating some controversial, not to say wrong, decisions regarding the reality of the Pampulha, which we will deal with here. The Draft Decision: 40 COM 8B.33 of the World Heritage Committee established that “having examined documents WHC/16/40.COM/8B and WHC/16/40.COM/INF.8B1, the Pampulha Modern Complex is inscribed on World Heritage List as a cultural landscape based on criteria (i), (ii) and (iii)” and, in summary, justifies it: (i)
Represent a masterpiece of human creative genius: Niemeyer, Burle Marx, and Cândido Portinari collectively created a landscape set that, as a whole, is notable for the way it manifests a new and fluid modern architectural language integrated with the visual arts and design, all in interaction with the context of the local landscape. (ii) Show an evident exchange of human values, over time or within a cultural area of the world that has had an impact on the development of architecture or technology, monumental arts, urbanism or landscaping. The Pampulha Modern Ensemble was connected with the reciprocal influences between Europe and North America and the Latin American periphery and particularly as a poetic reaction to the perceived austerity of modern European architecture.
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By establishing a synthesis between local regional practices and universal trends, as well as creating a dynamic between architecture, landscape, design and plastic arts, Pampulha inaugurated a new direction in modern architecture, which, from then on, was used to guarantee new national identities in the newly independent countries of Latin America. (iii) Constitute an eminently representative element of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape that illustrates a significant stage in human history. The Pampulha Modern Ensemble and its innovative architectural and landscape concepts reflect a particular stage in the history of architecture in South America, which, in turn, reflects a wide range of socioeconomic changes in society beyond the region. The economic crisis of 1929 generated demands for people to seek inclusion in the construction of nations. These circumstances influenced the design of a new garden city on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte as a place that could reflect a creative and cultural autonomy through buildings with an innovative architecture designed for public use, based on a landscape designed as “natural”, enriched with public spaces for leisure and exercise. Although the Committee’s justifications coincide with those formulated in the Dossier, in other words, they reveal some peculiar issues regarding applications for world heritage. First of all, UNESCO was being criticized at the time for the composition of its list of world heritage sites, which until then had reserved a predominant role for Europe and certain types of goods, in addition to a systematic disregard for goods of the twentieth century. Pampulha was in line with UNESCO’s “rehabilitation”: it presented itself as a “peripheral” candidacy and as a property of modernist architecture. However, this finding does not detract from the shine of the Conjunto Moderno da Pampulha, but, on the contrary, it only corrects the Eurocentric matrix that has marked the organ’s vision and that is observed in small slips such as the one noted in the drafting of the justification of the criterion (ii) where it says that “The Modern Complex of Pampulha was connected with the reciprocal influences between Europe and North America and the Latin American periphery” (emphasis added). Second, its classification as a “cultural landscape”, to the amazement of the local team that prepared the Dossier, would rescue a category that was being criticized for the lack of criteria within UNESCO, although this classification, in relation to Pampulha, had been presented in a superficial way, without further comments and/or insertion in the subcategories of the world convention that regulates the theme, which has caused confusion to the team and to IPHAN itself. The World Committee document still advances on some issues: Regarding the control of perilacustrial buildings: In more general terms for the project’s concept of the set - and which gives it coherence - it is visually impossible to separate the green areas on both sides and the road that surrounds the lake from the set. The green area of 10 meters on the opposite side of the perimeter and the first row of houses beyond are part of the coherence of the complex and need to be managed as such to guarantee the integrity of the whole.
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Recommends, as reinforcement: i) Protection controls and planning of the first blocks of houses on the other side of the avenue that face the lake in order to guarantee an appropriate character for the Complex and ii) Protection in the buffer zone in order to guarantee an environment green to the lake.
The finding and recommendations portray the observation of the Venezuelan consultant who had criticized the implementation of a horizontally extensive building in front of the Yacht Club, a hotel, which, based on three lots, clearly contrasted with the typical situation of Pampulha houses, lot by lot, with lots of green around. This observation was considered in the revision of the Management Plan prepared in 2019. As for the Yacht Club: The fourth component, the Yacht Club, is currently compromised by internal changes and recent additions and by the absence of the Burle Marx gardens that were designed there. There is a commitment to develop the necessary restoration work to allow the Club headquarters building to return to express its original architecture and interior decoration and to be reunited with the projected landscape and the lake shore. Recommendation: (i) Restore the headquarters building of the Yacht Club and its landscaping;
In fact, the club’s mischaracterization exists not only due to the presence of a huge annex that disfigures it, but also due to the lack of environmental quality in its free areas, which is a problem to be solved. However, this is a long-term issue as it is a private area, with consolidated buildings and uses, which, despite its legal irregularities, cannot be resolved by magic, subject even to judicial comings and goings. Its expropriation—announced “strategically” at the time the Istanbul conference was taking place—did not materialize with the change of the municipal administration, but in any case, it did not seem the most appropriate measure: the necessary resource for the administrative act would be better used in other more urgent needs of the city or its heritage. Negotiated solutions seem to be the most suitable and this takes time. As for the Burle Marx Gardens in the São Francisco Church: As for the Church, currently only a part of Burle Marx’s gardens is restored, but there is a commitment to restore the rest in Praça Dino Barbieri in order to reconfigure and respect Burle Marx’s original proposal. Recommendations: (ii) Propose a new design for Praça Dino Barbieri that reflects that of Burle Marx and submit it for review by the World Heritage Center by its advisory bodies; (iii) Once approved, implement the relocation of Praça Dino Barbieri;
This recommendation is controversial. Burle Marx’s project encompassed an area much larger than the current one, which, over the years, was divided by a route that separated it into two portions, one adjacent to the Church that had been restored by Burle Marx’s office, for his holder Haruyoshi Ono (Burle Marx was already deceased at the time) in 2005, and another that became Praça Dino Barbieri, which, from the original design, had only preserved the hoses, having received, including a circular building, very useful to Pampulha, and that was being considered as a tourist receptive. In addition to colliding with the strategic objectives of the municipality, it represents a questionable investment of resources in a site that is intact,
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functioning and of great appropriation by the population. Although IPHAN carried out a restoration project (?) Of that portion, it was criticized by experts who were surprised, not only because of the “retrofit” action, by UNESCO’s intervention in theoretical restoration criteria, for its normative and imposing, as if there were no critical mass and competent professionals in the country to conduct the best option for requalifying the area. For this same reason, there is no point in “submitting it to the World Heritage Center for review by its advisory bodies”: would UNESCO become a fourth instance of project approval beyond IPHAN, IEPHA/MG and municipal heritage? As for Casa do Baile (recommendation iv) restoring the original entrance, the demolition of the guardhouse was required, which, although recently built, was a reconstruction of something that had already existed in past times. As for the pollution of the lake: Pollution of the lake remains an important issue in relation to the idea of a beautiful landscape that allows leisure activities directly related to water. This issue must be resolved so that the lake can recover its condition as an element that unites the buildings, the projected landscape and provides recreation. Recommendation: (v) Promote the improvement of the lake’s water quality for the classes recommended for recreation, within the presented schedule;
Pollution of the lake has also been a challenge for decades of successive municipal administrations and, due to its financial and political dimensions, is not easy nor quick to solve. A synchronous view of the problem may appear to be recent as nothing has never been done previously. Many proposals have been put forward since the 1970s when the siltation and pollution of the lake proved unsustainable, many international funding was sought and high cost was always imposed as the main obstacle. The removal of sediments that had reduced the volume of the lagoon by 50% and the water mirror by 30% was not only a financial issue, but also an environmental one: where to create a new “mountain” in the territory? The solution found in the early 2000s, for sediments, was the creation of an ecological park by concentrating them in a portion of the lake and covering it with vegetation. The park would not only solve the problem of scattered sediments, but also two others: it would create an area for receiving large flows of visitors (on an edge marked by the absence of greater public spaces) and would function as a “dike” to prevent the material that continually reached the lake (in smaller and smaller proportions, due to the greater urban control of the basin, but still existing) if it spread through the water. The sediments dammed by the dike should be removed in the months without rain (May, June, July, and August, in Belo Horizonte), but the Municipality did not always do so, contributing to the negative aspect at the time of the consultants’ visit. The sewage issue was largely solved by capturing a new pipeline on the right bank of the lake and by creating a River Water Treatment Plant (ETAF) on the left bank. In any case, much had already been done, although this did not seem evident to UNESCO. It is clear that there is much to be corrected, but what has been accomplished before was little considered by the international body. As for the great sports equipment:
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In terms of visual integrity, the presence of two gigantic sports facilities very close to the property impacts the Church’s view from the lagoon. These impacts must be mitigated through curative work on the landscape.
As always occurs in matters of heritage, there is a strong subjectivity in the interpretation of image issues. Perhaps for a foreigner, the presence of great sports equipment upstream of the lake could be striking, but for the people of Belarus, they are part of the landscape and vocation of Pampulha, even complementing its sights. For many, the scale of this equipment, although large, is far away and does not negatively qualify these targets. In any case, it is not clear what the possible technical solution would be for a “curative mitigation of the landscape”. The document also takes a position on the issue of Authenticity: If the integration of architecture with other arts is fully understood, there is a need to restore Burle Marx’s landscapes, which make up a crucial aspect of the ensemble. Only two components (Casino and Casa do Baile) present their gardens completely researched and restored. For the other two components, part of the Church’s gardens was restored, but not the arboretum after it, in Praça Dino Barbieri and no work has been done so far on the landscaping of the Yacht Club (despite the existing documentation). There is a commitment to resolve these issues and carry out the necessary restoration work in the gardens.
As previously mentioned in this text, this is really an important gap, but it must also be interpreted critically, avoiding reconstitutions of something that never existed or the use of specimens that are difficult to maintain by the government. In any case, a municipal vegetable garden dedicated to the creation of seedlings of Burle Marx’s palette has recently been created. The document is particularly attentive to the issue of the Management Plan, on which it makes the following comments and recommendations: The Management Plan establishes a matrix of responsibilities. This plan needs to be expanded in order to provide strategic guidelines that can create a wide range of management and decision-making as formal commitments for the development of certain key areas and provide a clear enough understanding for the protection challenges not only of buildings in its landscape environment, but also of the essential characteristics of the traditional neighborhood that complements the set and, together, forms the complexity of the historic urban landscape. The Plan also needs to provide for more effective ways of monitoring indicators related to the protection of the Universal Outstanding Value Management plan recommendations (i) (ii)
(iii) (iv) (v)
Include strategic guidelines that can create a wide range of management and decisions as formal commitments for certain key areas; Incorporate the challenges of protection more clearly not only in the key buildings and its surroundings, but also in the essential characteristics of the traditional neighborhood that complements the complex; Adopt the HUL (Historic Urban Landscape) methodology to preserve the neighborhood Include a tourism strategy; Include more detailed indicators that reinforce the Exceptional Value
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(vi) Reinforce the involvement of the local community in management processes. The Management Plan, although initially considered excellent by the international technicians who previously examined it, seemed to have gaps. There are some comments on these points: • “Clearly assumed commitments”: in fact, the document initially sent was laconic in terms of responsibilities and investment forecast, which stems from the institutional structure of the Brazilian state and its constant lack of resources, vertical disintegration and lack of sequence among the constants government discontinuities. It seems obvious to us that UNESCO must consider the limitations of a developing nation that does not have the same investment capacity as those of the first world and should not expect this to be fully resolved beforehand; • “Community presence in decisions”: this is also a vague concept, since there are already several instances of community participation, whether in heritage councils, in the drafting of laws, municipal conferences, etc. Only UNESCO does not know them; • Standardization: A further study of existing standards was also not carried out by UNESCO. If there are some flaws, they do not appear due to the absence of norms, but due to specific issues that escaped the legislator at the time they were made. All standards must be monitored and corrected, of course; • Pampulha’s tourism strategy is really timid, far below its potential, especially after the title. There are no mechanisms to attract tourists and their receptivity, only the provision of points of interest or other minor things. Pampulha is not easily accessible to visitors and there are no visitation programs available. It is, in fact, a Brazilian problem that, despite its current tourism potential, has a poor performance in this sector.
4 Conclusion The process of recognizing the Pampulha Modern Ensemble as World Heritage leaves us with several lessons, but it seems to us that they should not be just “top to bottom”. It seems to us that UNESCO and the World Heritage Committee must also consider some aspects in order to grow in their mission. First, they must evaluate the heritage assets under consideration diachronically and locally, avoiding the search for an immutable photograph or the freezing of the good, I understand it within the dynamics of time and the web of relationships that it creates or has been creating with their community, understanding their transformations and conflicts as part of the process. Second, avoid superficial analysis of the information, limiting itself to only what is inserted in the main corpus of the dossier. Given the size limitations of this document, a lot of important information is described in the annexes and they can elucidate many of the recommendations that are made if only based on its main part. Third, greater respect for the country’s problem-solving capabilities, its installed technical capacity and the ways in which each country deals with its problems and practices, avoiding
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immediacy or imposing solutions. If, on the one hand, there is a positive aspect to the “recommendations”, which is to force government officials to commit themselves to solving problems, on the other hand, they must be carefully judged so that they are feasible or committed to the aspirations of local societies, after all, it is for them that cultural heritage exists. As it is already known today, the patrimonial issue does not only concern objects, but also subjects that give it value and meaning. Heritage is a field of polysemy and dialectics par excellence: may these issues also permeate World Heritage processes.
References Bruand Y (2005) Arquitetura contemporânea no Brasil. Perspectiva, São Paulo Carsalade F (2007) Pampulha. Belo Horizonte: Conceito, 94 p. (Col. BH A cidade de cada um, v. 10) Comas CED (2000) O encanto da contradição. Conjunto da Pampulha, de Oscar Niemeyer. Arquitextos, São Paulo, ano 01, n. 004.06, Vitruvius, sept. http://www.vitruvius.com.br/revistas/read/ arquitextos/01.004/985. Accessed 07 Aug 2019 ICOMOS (2015) Pampulha Modern Ensemble (Brazil) – Interim report and additional information. Ofício GB/MA 1493, Dec. 21. 2015 IPHAN (2017) Dossiê de candidatura do Conjunto Moderno da Pampulha para inclusão na Lista do Patrimônio Mundial. IPHAN, Brasília Macedo DM (2008) Da matéria à invenção: as obras de Oscar Niemeyer em Minas Gerais, 19381955. Câmara dos Deputados, Brasília Niemeyer O (2003) “A forma na arquitetura”. In: XAVIER,Alberto (org.). Depoimento de uma geração: arquitetura moderna brasileira. Cosac Naify, São Paulo Niemeyer O (1998) As curvas do tempo: memórias. Revan, Rio de Janeiro Niemeyer O (1978) A forma na arquitetura. Avenir, Rio de Janeiro
Ouro Preto: World Heritage Benedito Tadeu de Oliveira
Abstract Ouro Preto, formerly Vila Rica, in the state of Minas Gerais, is one of the most important and emblematic cities for Brazilian history and culture. Its formation process, its rich cultural heritage and the successive efforts to preserve it have been the object of study and attention by not only specialists in various fields, but also by national and international authorities. The then Vila Rica was the mining centre in the 18th century, stage of the Inconfidência Mineira (The Minas Gerais’ Conspiracy) (1789) and source of inspiration of the modernists who in 1922 identified it as one of the birthplaces of national identity. As the main centre of gold extraction in the 18th century, it provided innovations in architecture, painting and sculpture, following the example of the great artist Antonio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho. According to French art historian, curator and restorer Germain Bazin, Aleijadinho was the “Michelangelo of the Tropics”. In 1789, Vila Rica was the stage of the Inconfidência Mineira, led by Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, the Tiradentes, the greatest expression of Brazilian heroism. Tiradentes and Aleijadinho constitute what the poet Manuel Bandeira called “the two great shadows of Ouro Preto”. In 1823, after the Independence of Brazil, Vila Rica became the capital of the then province of Minas Gerais and received from Dom Pedro I the title of Imperial City of Ouro Preto. Declared a National Monument (1933), its architectural, urban and landscape ensemble was listed by IPHAN (1938) and inscribed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO (1980). Ouro Preto is going through a disordered growth process, which has contributed to its partial disfigurement. In light of the problem and of the challenges for the construction of a sustainable heritage policy for the city, a question arises: which have been the actions aimed at associating urban development to heritage preservation? Keywords Heritage · Development · Preservation
Benedito Tadeu de Oliveira—Fundação Oswaldo Cruz—Instituto René Rachou—Fiocruz Minas. Web page: https://portal.fiocruz.br/. B. T. de Oliveira (B) Fundação Oswaldo Cruz—Instituto René Rachou—Fiocruz Minas, Belo Horizonte, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_29
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1 Brief History Ouro Preto is one of the most important and emblematic cities in Brazilian history and culture. Its formation process, its rich cultural heritage, and the successive efforts for its preservation have been objects of studies and attention not only for specialists but also for national and international authorities. The city materialized in its heritage, throughout the twentieth century, the conflicts between different conceptions about tradition, preservation, and modernity. Almost everything that happened in Ouro Preto interfered in the heritage policies and vice versa, the changes in the institutional plan and in the preservation policies have always been reflected in the city. Ouro Preto, like other “gold villages” in Minas Gerais, has a peculiar formation, the city did not follow the traditional radial or nuclear urban organizations of Colonial Brazil. Its organic and linear configuration anticipated the urban situation, now known as a conurbation, which is the formation of a city from the connection of several nearby urban centers. The grouping of the various villages—Cabeças, Caquende, Pilar, Paulistas, Antonio Dias, Encardideira, Alto da Cruz, Padre Faria, São Sebastião, Ouro Podre, Santana, São João, and Piedade—arose due to the discovery of gold in 1698. It gave rise, in 1711, to the old Vila Rica de Albuquerque, which in 1720 became the capital of the Captaincy of Minas Gerais. The connection of the arraiais was consolidated in the second quarter of the eighteenth century, through significant urban interventions, promoted by the Gomes Freire de Andrade government, Count of Bobadela (1735–63). During this period, bridges and fountains were built, and the administrative center was set up in Morro de Santa Quitéria, currently Tiradentes Square, delimited by the construction of the Governor’s Palace (today Escola de Minas) and later by the old Town Hall and Jail (today Museum of the Inconfidência). The trunk path that runs through the old villages is developed in an east–west direction, the same as the valley and the Serra de Ouro Preto. The ridges of this path are in the old village of Cabeças, in Morro de Santa Quitéria, where the Tiradentes Square was implanted, and in the old village of Alto da Cruz. According to Sylvio de Vasconcellos, one of the most important scholars in Ouro Preto, the Tiradentes Square is not a point of origin, but a consequence of the existing settlement (Vasconcellos 1977). From the unification of the villages, Vila Rica stood out as the main eighteenthcentury gold extraction center, providing great innovations in the arts, such as painting, with Manoel da Costa Ataíde, and sculpture and architecture, with the great artist Antônio Francisco Lisboa, known as Aleijadinho (Fig. 1). For the author, the buildings perfectly match with the local topography and the result of the Vila’s implantation is a spontaneous architecture that merges with the landscape. Or, the implantation of the city resulted in a perfect integration between architecture and nature, in which the urban complex functions as a figure and the landscape functions as a background. In 1789, Vila Rica was the stage of the Inconfidência Mineira, led by Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, Tiradentes; it had the participation of priests José de Oliveira Rolim and Carlos Correia de Toledo e Melo; lieutenantcolonel Francisco de Paula Freire de Andrade, poets Tomas Antonio Gonzaga, Inácio
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Fig. 1 The old villages and the urban formation of the old Vila Rica according to Sylvio de Vasconcellos
José de Alvarenga Peixoto and Cláudio Manuel da Costa, and mine owner Inácio de Alvarenga, among other representatives of the mining elite. According to Manoel Bandeira,1 Tiradentes, alongside Aleijadinho, represent the two great shadows of Vila Rica (Bandeira 1938) (Figs. 2 and 3). The city’s first decline, the one of “economic origin,” occurred at the end of the eighteenth century, with the exhaustion of gold mines and the supply crisis, resulting in its decay, which was followed by the dispersion and emptying of the population after the Inconfidência Mineira. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the main function of the city, which received from D. Pedro I the title of Imperial City of Ouro Preto on March 20, 1823, was the capital of the province of Minas Gerais. In the following decades, the city was modernized with urban expansions in Pilar, toward Barra, and along Estrada Real. The urban landscape of the city has undergone transformations with the implantation of cemeteries outside the churches, and of levels structured by stone walls with dry joints in the gardens and backyards, and the inauguration of the Botanical Garden of Ouro Preto at the end of the eighteenth century. The city also had its infrastructure improved with the implementation of the railway line and facilities for telephony, telegraph, lighting, as well as water and sewage networks (1887–93). From the second half of the nineteenth century onward, some buildings from the colonial period were renovated and replaced by buildings of neoclassical and eclectic taste. The Pilar headquarters had its facade completely renovated between the years 1848 and 1852, and the church of São Francisco de Paula was built, between the years 1804 and 1878, already under the neoclassical influence. 1 Bandeira
(1938: Chap. 5).
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Fig. 2 Church of the Rosary, at the bottom Rua Alvarenga, implanted meandering the top of the hill, where, according to Sylvio de Vasconcellos, “the houses support each other.” Photo by unknown author and date. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture - IFAC/UFOP
Fig. 3 Rua São José, implantation in harmony with the local topography. Luiz Fontana’s photo 8/2/1953. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture—IFAC/UFOP
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Fig. 4 Map of Ouro Preto, 1888. National Library of Rio de Janeiro, RJ
At that time, urban interventions of planting trees were carried out, boulevards of classic taste and chalets with carved wooden eaves appeared in the city, as well as buildings with neoclassical facades and iron balconies. However, these interventions respected scales, rhythms, volumes, implantation solutions, and pre-existing structures of the city. The creation of the School of Pharmacy (1839), and the School of Mines (1876), founded by French Professor Claude-Henri Gorceix at the initiative of the Emperor D. Pedro II, and the construction of the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts (1886) in eclectic style, were of great economic and social importance for the development of Ouro Preto in the nineteenth century. The implantation of the railway and the inauguration of the railway station on July 23, 1889 by the Emperor D. Pedro II, accompanied by the imperial family, was the last major work in the capital of the province of Minas Gerais. With the proclamation of the Republic in 1889, the image of the Imperial City of Ouro Preto with its urban layout proved to be inadequate for the Republican Positivist ideals and scientific rationality. Ouro Preto kept symbols and marks of the colonial past that the Republicans wanted to erase, its image was incompatible with the ideals of the Republic (Fig. 4). There were, however, attempts to avoid moving the capital to Belo Horizonte: in 1892 through the elaboration of the Ouro Preto Improvement Plan and in 1893 through a city expansion plan commissioned to engineer Blaksley. The first plan consisted of the construction of a new theater, a new seat for the Chamber and the modernization of the stretch between the railway station and the Matriz do Pilar through the implantation of a tree-lined boulevard. The second plan consisted of creating a modern expansion area at Morro do Cruzeiro with about 2 (two) square kilometers. This area would be divided into three sectors consisting of squares and geometric blocks of different dimensions. In order to connect the “historic” city with the “modern” city, the construction of inclined planes and a viaduct that would house highways and trams was planned, the latter would cross with an extension of the railway (Meniconi 1999). These plans were not carried out and the moving of the capital to Belo Horizonte in 1897 produced an exodus of almost 50% of the population and caused both physical
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and economic deterioration of the city, thus characterizing the second decline of Ouro Preto, the one of “political origin.” In the history of urbanism, we find several examples in which the economic and political decadence of cities is responsible for their “conservation,” like Siena in Italy. Ouro Preto had its image preserved in its physical and formal integrity due to its distance from the economic development that stimulates urban renewals.
2 Problems and Conservation Actions From the end of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, a process of recovering the memory of the characters and the most significant events in Ouro Preto began, as well as the recognition of its symbolic and historical values. This process has the participation of several intellectuals, among them, José Pedro Xavier da Veiga (1846–1900), Diogo Luís de Almeida Pereira de Vasconcelos (1843– 1927) and Alceu Amoroso Lima (1893–1983), known as Tristão de Athayde. The appreciation of the city is accompanied by the warning about abandonment and the need to preserve Ouro Preto. In 1924, the modernists Mário de Andrade, Oswald de Andrade, and Tarsila do Amaral, accompanied by French poet Blaise Cendrars, visited Ouro Preto placing the city at the center of the nationalist and modernist discourse. Headed by Mário de Andrade, the modernists identified it as one of the cradles of national identity and chose the Baroque from Minas Gerais as the art reference for the whole country. In the same decade, the then student at the National School of Fine Arts Lúcio Costa, made a study trip to Ouro Preto. Later the poets Manoel Bandeira, Cecília Meirelles and Carlos Drummond de Andrade also visited the city several times, divulging its historical and artistic values (Figs. 5 and 6).
Figs. 5 and 6 The old market (demolished) in front of the church of S. Francisco de Assis in 1881. Photo Marc Ferraz. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture - IFAC/UFOP. The Largo de Coimbra, in 2007. Photo by the author
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Figs. 7 and 8 The chapel of Padre Faria, before stylistic intervention, according to Viollet-le-Duc criteria. Photo by Luis Fontana, undated. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture—IFAC/UFOP. The chapel of Padre Faria, after the stylistic intervention. Photo by Luis Fontana, 1931. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture - IFAC/UFOP
Gustavo Barroso, director of the National Historical Museum, was in Ouro Preto in 1926 and in 1928. At the time, noting the state of abandonment of the city, he asked the state government for actions to preserve it. The first effective measures for the conservation of Ouro Preto were then taken in the Antônio Carlos government, under the supervision of Gustavo Barroso. Several civil and religious public monuments were restored using criteria similar to those employed by French engineer-architect Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79), that is, the search for the unity of style in buildings. Still in the 1920s, several bills were drafted for the protection of Brazilian historical and artistic heritage and in 1931 and 1932, Mayor João Batista Ferreira Velloso (1931–1936) enacted two municipal decrees, which not only obliged conservation of the buildings’ facades of the city, but also prohibited new constructions that altered the colonial aspect of Ouro Preto (Figs. 7 and 8). On July 12, 1933, Decree 22,928 was promulgated, establishing Ouro Preto as a National Monument. In 1933, the Historical Monuments inspectorate was created linked to the National Historical Museum and, in the following year, Gustavo Barroso proposed a Restoration Plan for the city, including churches, bridges, and fountains, which was under the responsibility of the engineer Epaminondas Macedo. In 1937, under Gustavo Capanema’s administration at the Ministry of Education and Health, the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN)2 was created, which on January 20, 1938, promoted the entire town of Ouro Preto as national heritage. The architectural and urban set consisting of 45 monuments listed separately and approximately 1000 buildings listed together were inscribed in the book of Fine Arts; registration No. 39, page 8 Process 070-T-38. In successive years, known as “heroic times” of SPHAN, under the direction of Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade, several interventions and restorations were carried out in the city, which followed the guidelines of the architect Lucio Costa. In this period, the construction of the 2 In
1993 the municipal administration created the Technical Advisory Group (GAT), composed of the National Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (IPHAN), Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP), State Historic and Artistic Heritage Institute (IEPHA), State Forests Institute (IEF), and Municipality of Ouro Preto (PMOP). The GAT was extinguished in 1997.
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Grande Hotel by Oscar Niemeyer (1939), the implantation of the Pantheon of the Inconfidentes in the old Chamber House and Jail (1942) and, later, of the Museum of the Inconfidência (1944) took place. In the various interventions carried out at the time, the idealized vision of Ouro Preto as a finished work of art and as a homogeneous monument promoted the extension and application of the criteria for architectural intervention throughout the city. The use of Viollet-le-Duc’s stylistic restoration concepts led SPHAN technicians to invest against eclectic architecture, promoting corrective actions of a “mimetic” character and even proposing the demolition of nineteenth-century buildings. Examples of this type of intervention are the demolition of the market in front of the church of São Francisco de Assis, the renovation of the eclectic building next to the Chafariz dos Contos and the renovation and reuse of the building that housed the Lyceum of Arts and Crafts as a cinema. In these interventions, one style was privileged over another and the concepts of restoration of the nineteenth century were applied in the middle of the twentieth century (Figs. 9, 10, 11 and 12). The installation of Alcan (now Novelis) in 1950 boosted metallurgy and mining activities in the municipality, which caused population growth and the demand for new housing in the city. Such facts led SPHAN to elaborate the first norms of approval of projects, which started to recommend the traditional architectural elements of the colonial period, giving rise to an architecture popularly known in the city as “heritage style” (Motta 1987) (Figs 13, 14, 15 and 16). And from the 1960s onward, in Ouro Preto, the first projects along the lines of garden cities appeared, such as Vila dos Engenheiros and also the first occupation of hillsides, such as Vila Aparecida. The contour highway (Rodrigo Mello Franco de Andrade), built to deflect the traffic of vehicles from the city, was inaugurated on September 19, 1969. The substitution process of traditional materials and structures also began in a diffuse way, the enlargements of buildings caused changes in the original volumes and in the green areas of the city. The occupation of backyards, slopes,
Figs. 9 and 10 The eclectic building, at the time occupied by a bank, next to the Chafariz dos Contos, before the interventions of the 1950s. Photo by Luiz Fontana, undated. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture - IFAC/UFOP. The building, now occupied by the State Prosecutor’s Office, in 2007. Photo by the author
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Figs. 11 and 12 The former Lyceum of Arts and Crafts, before the interventions in the 1950s. Photo by Luis Fontana, 05/18/1952. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture IFAC/UFOP. Cine Vila Rica, in 2007. Photo by the author
Figs. 13 and 14 The beginning of the occupation of Barra in the nineteenth century. Photo with no author and date. Vila Aparecida in 2007. Photo by the author
Figs. 15 and 16 Transition area between Rosário (left) and Pilar (right) in 1881. Photo by Guilherme Libeneau. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture - IFAC/UFOP. The neighborhoods of Rosário and Pilar, in 2007. Photo by the author
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Figs. 17 and 18 Viana de Lima Plan, “Non Aedificandi” Zones, proposed Green Zones and legend. Noronha Santos IPHAN Archive, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
and transition areas between the old villages began to cause significant changes in the image and urban landscape of Ouro Preto. SPHAN did not have the technical and human resources or the appropriate legislation to face the new challenges and most municipal administrations did not take on their responsibilities and, in some cases, even encouraged irregular works and occupations (Figs. 17 and 18). The various problems and rapid urban transformations that emerged in the 1960s alerted national public opinion and encouraged public bodies to develop plans for the protection of Ouro Preto’s cultural heritage (Meniconi 1999). At the time, the reformulation of conservation concepts, which had been elaborated in Europe and especially in Italy since the end of World War II and which were consolidated and disseminated by the Venice Charter, chose planning as the main instrument for safeguarding urban cultural heritage. The first plan was developed by the Portuguese architect Viana de Lima and took place due to the approximation of Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—UNESCO. It consisted of an analysis of the causes of degradation using data collected in a first visit to the city carried out between October and December 1968 and recommendations to serve as the basis for a preservation program that were formulated in 1970. It consisted basically of the zoning of the city and its surroundings, with the proposal to create expansion areas rigidly separated from the historic center, declared a “Non Aedificandi” area and protected by a green belt. Another attempt of city planning was the “Ouro Preto and Mariana Conservation, Valorization and Development Plan” (1973–75), carried out by the João Pinheiro Foundation—FJP. This plan discouraged the growth of the historic centers of Ouro Preto and Mariana, as well as proposing areas of expansion with different treatments and occupations, due to the proximity of these centers. It dealt not only with the issues of preserving urban cultural heritage, but also with the development and promotion of improved living conditions in the city (Fundação João Pinheiro 1975). Similar plans were successfully implemented
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in Europe, but in Ouro Preto these proposals were made unfeasible probably due to administrative difficulties, the lack of political will, the high value of resources needed for their implementation and for being distant from the urban and political realities of the time (Figs. 19 and 20). Between the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, torrential rain caused serious damage to the city. In March 1979, Aloísio Magalhães took over the direction of SPHAN with the proposal of involving local communities in the preservation of their cultural assets. His first action in the city was holding a seminar that gave rise to a document called “Projeto Ouro Preto,” with diversified and comprehensive proposals to face its problems of cultural and environmental preservation. For its implementation, an agreement was signed between SPHAN, the Federal University of Ouro Preto—UFOP and the Municipality of Ouro Preto—PMOP. At that time, the
Figs. 19 and 20 João Pinheiro Foundation Master Plan - land use zoning and interurban system. Source FJP (1975)
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SPHAN office was set up in the city with a construction team to serve the community, major slope containment works were carried out, and the occupation projects for the Jardim Alvorada neighborhood and the new UFOP campus at Morro do Cruzeiro were developed. It was a period of integrated articulations involving both communities and institutions responsible for preserving the city. In September 1980, Ouro Preto was declared a Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, as it represents a masterpiece of human creativity and an exceptional testimony to the cultural tradition of the civilization in which it is living or disappearing. In the following years, three state conservation units were created around it: Itacolomi State Park, Tripuí Ecological Station and the Environmental Protection Area (APA) of Cachoeira das Andorinhas. On September 15, 1986, Ouro Preto was also inscribed in the books of Tombo Histórico (inscription 512, page 98) and in the Archaeological Ethnographic and Landscape (inscription 98, page 47); and in 1989 its perimeter was defined by SPHAN. However, in the following decades, the city continued its process of densification and expansion, without adopting any effective instrument of urban planning. In the twentieth century, the last attempt to reconcile the urban development of the city with the protection of its cultural and environmental heritage took place in the 1993–96 municipal government. In the new Master Plan, initiated in this administration, a Special Protection zone was created, three Landscape and Environmental Protection zones, five Landscape and Environmental Control zones, three Density zones, as well as an Expansion zone. However, the legislation of the zones was not even detailed by the City Hall and the new Master Plan, approved by the City Hall in December 1996, and it was not developed and implemented by the next government. During this period, several institutions worked in an integrated way for the preservation of the city, and IPHAN developed the “Guidelines for Urban and Architectural Interventions in the Special Protection Zone”.3 According to these guidelines, which started to be applied in the following years by IPHAN, the block face is the parameter for evaluating the interventions and the characteristics of unity and harmony of urban groups take precendence over individualized buildings, both in the definition of criteria and in the analysis and evaluation of projects (Figs. 21 and 22). Ouro Preto entered the twenty-first century not being able to stop its process of disordered growth, with the occupation of slopes and areas at risk, slums in the hills, in addition to the invasion of public spaces, green areas, and archaeological sites. With the de-characterization of its surroundings, which is part of the heritage protected by IPHAN and UNESCO and functions as a frame for the historic center, Ouro Preto can be considered to have been undergoing a systematic and permanent process of destruction along the edges. This process, which emerged from the second half of the twentieth century and accelerated in recent decades, characterizes its third decline, the one of “physical origin” (Oliveira 2003a). In addition to the occupation of the slopes, the chaotic traffic of the city, without hierarchy of the road system and 3 The guidelines were only published on 4/2/2004 in the Official Gazette of 5/04/2004, pages 9–12.
These guidelines were changed and published under the name of Ordinance 312/2010 published on 10/20/2010.
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Figs. 21 and 22 The church of Santa Efigênia, from the parish church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição of Antônio Dias. Photo by Luiz Fontana, undated. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture—IFAC/UFOP. The church of Santa Efigênia, from the mother church of Antônio Dias, a situation in 2007 characterized by disordered occupation. Author’s photo
with a lack of parking areas, has been causing physical damage to the traditional structures (stone, adobe, and mainly pau-a-pique) of historic buildings. Most of the listed properties are in reasonable condition and have uses compatible with their structures (Figs. 23, 24, 25, 26 and 27). Some hundreds of lawsuits are in progress at the State and Federal Prosecutors. Another difficult problem to solve concerns the land issue regarding the existence of vacant land and possessions, as well as irregular lots and allotments. The main problems are densification, alteration of internal spaces, great presence of cracks, precariousness of electrical and gas installations, as well as replacement of original materials and construction systems. There is a great demand in the city for additions, elevations, and reforms, in addition to a large number of irregular works. The city’s various conservation problems were raised at the City Statute and Urban Cultural Heritage Seminar, promoted by Caixa Econômica Federal—CEF and UNESCO, held in Olinda PE, from July 31 to August 2, 2002.
Figs. 23 and 24 The Escola de Minas (former Governor’s Palace), Tiradentes Square in the background. Photo by Rômulo Caravello, undated. Source Collection of the Institute of Philosophy, Arts and Culture - IFAC/UFOP. And the density of the historic center; Escola de Minas and Tiradentes Square, in 2007. At the bottom left, Vila Aparecida. Author’s photo
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Fig. 25 Occupation of Morro de Santana, 2004. Photo by the author
Fig. 26 Truck accident at the Pilar fountain, 11/06/2002. IPHAN Ouro Preto Collection
This seminar aimed to assess the state of conservation and the ordering and management conditions of the nine Brazilian urban sites inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. On the occasion, a report was presented4 based on the guidelines of the technical team that organized the Seminar and illustrated with a lecture with a set of images that revealed the real state of conservation of the city of Ouro Preto. Faced with the seriousness of the situation in Ouro Preto, those present at the Seminar unanimously voted a Motion for urgent measures for the preservation of 4 The
report and presentation were made by the architect Benedito Tadeu de Oliveira, director of the then sub-regional of IPHAN in Ouro Preto.
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Fig. 27 Collapse of residence in Jardim Alvorada, 2004. IPHAN Ouro Preto collection
Ouro Preto, which was forwarded to several government entities (former Ministry of Culture—MinC, IPHAN, IEPHA, City Hall Municipality of Ouro Preto) and international entities, such as ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and UNESCO (Figs. 29, 30, 31 and 32). Fig. 28 Acidente em obra irregular, 11/12/2002. Foto Eduardo Trópia
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Fig. 29 and 30 Fire at the old Hotel do Pilão, April 14, 2003. Photo: Eduardo Trópia
Figs. 31 and 32 Irregular occupation at the archeological site of Morro da Queimada, 2004. IPHAN Ouro Preto collection
From the motion for urgent measures for the preservation of Ouro Preto, some initiatives were taken to reverse the serious situation of the city. Among them, there is the creation of the Curatorship of Historical Heritage and the Environment, which works together with IPHAN and the Consultative Committee of Ouro Preto, who brought together several nongovernmental and governmental entities in the various spheres of public administration (Oliveira 2003b). In response to this document, the UNESCO World Heritage Center requested ICOMOS to carry out a monitoring mission in Ouro Preto. The mission’s visit to the city between April 7 and 14, 2003 generated the report State of Conservation of the Historic City of Ouro Preto, Brazil, which made several recommendations to the Municipality, the State and the Federal administrations. Various initiatives, such as the revision of the 1996 Master Plan, the drafting of a Law for the Use and Occupation of Soil by the municipal government (2001–2004), and the creation of working groups by IPHAN for the elaboration of the project to implement the Park Archeological Site of Morro da Queimada. In the municipal government (2005–2008) the Municipal Council for the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Heritage and the Technical Advisory Group (GAT) were
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Figs. 33–36 Completed works of the Monumenta/IDB Program. Casa da Baronesa, Ponte do Rosário, Municipal Theater and Revitalization of the Botanical Garden and Vale dos Contos. Author’s photos
reactivated and the Secretariat for Heritage and Urban Development was created, which worked in partnership with IPHAN (Figs. 33, 34, 35 and 36). Several restoration works foreseen in the Monumenta/IDB Program5 were completed in 2002: Capela das Dores, Adro de Antônio Dias, Casas do Folclore, da Baronesa, Gonzaga, dos Inconfidentes, Rocha Lagoa, and Solar Baeta Neves; Bridges of Marília, Seca, Rosário and Palácio Velho; Municipal Theater, in addition to revitalizing the Botanical Garden and Vale dos Contos. The Monumenta Program was also involved in landscaping, signage, and urban furniture projects and financing the restoration of private properties, also in the construction of a road integration terminal and in the traffic ordering project. The Government of the State of Minas Gerais restored Casa Bernardo Guimarães, where the Ouro Preto Art Foundation— FAOP also implemented, with the support of the Monumenta Program, the Núcleo de Oficinas, with the objective of (re)qualifying civil construction professionals to operate in conservation and restoration works. In addition to these works, there were also the inauguration of the Cultural and Tourism Center in the Tiradentes Square in 2006, financed by the Federation of 5 Program
for the recovery of the Brazilian urban cultural heritage, from the former Ministry of Culture in partnership with the municipalities financed by the Inter-American Development Bank— IDB. It started to be financed by the Brazilian state in the Lula government (2003–2010) and was called PAC of Culture in the Dilma Rousseff government (2011–2016).
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Industries of the State of Minas Gerais—FIEMG, the Ouro Preto—Mariana Cultural Tourist Train, with the restoration of two stations in the municipality of Ouro Preto and two in Mariana, financed by Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD) and the modernization of the Museum of the Inconfidência. In the last two projects, as in the restoration works of the Chapel of Padre Faria (2004) and the Chapel of Taquaral (2009), Churches of Santa Efigênia (2011) and São José (2012), tax incentives provided by Rouanet Law were used as resources. As of 2016, financed by the Growth Acceleration Program—PAC for Culture, or Historic Cities, there were restoration works of 22 (twenty-two) fountains, and the churches of Santo Antônio de Glaura and Nossa Senhora da Conceição de Antônio Dias, and the urban redevelopment around the Chapel of Padre Faria (Figs. 37 and 38). In order to assess the current state of conservation of the city of Ouro Preto, it is important to take the 2003 UNESCO recommendations as a parameter: – that a clear definition should be made of the limits of the area of the city declared as World Heritage and its buffer zones, and that the state should provide resources for its preservation. The clear definition of the area of the city declared a World Heritage Site and its buffer zones was the first measure taken and complied with; – that the Ministry of Culture should grant the technical office of the local IPHAN greater technical and economic resources. This request was partially met, but as of 2007 and especially in 2009, there was a dismantling of the Technical Office of IPHAN in Ouro Preto carried out by the 13th Regional Superintendence of IPHAN, leading to a situation similar to that of 20026 ; – that the State of Minas Gerais should guarantee greater technical and economic resources to the State Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage—IEPHA/MG. This request did not directly benefit the preservation of the cultural heritage of Ouro Preto since, at the time, there was only one cultural asset with state registration in the municipality; – that the Municipality of Ouro Preto should create a Municipal Administration Unit for the historic center and provide a team of qualified professionals with experience in managing the historic center. In the years of 2002 and 2003,7 the city hall was totally unprepared to manage the historic center of Ouro Preto. After the “Moção de Olinda” and the media’s disclosure of the possibility of losing the title of Cultural Heritage of Humanity, the city government hired a company to develop a Traffic Ordination project and a Master Plan consisting of the Land Use and Occupation Law, revision of the Posture and Works Code. The city government temporarily hired some architects to monitor the works mentioned above and to analyze projects. In this administration, the Municipal Councils of Tourism and Cultural Heritage functioned precariously and the inspection of works in the city was done only by IPHAN. A municipal administration unit with a team of more qualified professionals for the administration of its historic center was only structured in the following administration with the creation of the Secretariat for 6 Ironically,
this action was promoted by IPHAN’s 13th SR under Leonardo Barreto’s management (2006–2012). 7 Administration Marisa Xavier Sans (2001–2004).
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Figs. 37 and 38 Work that used tax incentives provided by Rouanet Law. Centro Cultural e Turístico FIEMG, in 2007. Casa Bernardo Guimarães, work by the government of the State of Minas Gerais, in 2007. Photos by the author
Heritage and Urban Development. This secretariat8 sought to operate throughout the municipality, working together with IPHAN within the protected area and with greater intensity in the Special Protection Zone—SPA. Subsequently,9 the Secretariat for Culture and Heritage was created, following the breakdown of two secretariats: the Secretariat for Culture and Tourism and the Secretariat for Heritage and Urban Development. With the extinction of the latter, the Heritage Sector was absorbed by the Department of Culture and that of Urban Development 8 Administration 9 Administration
Angelo Oswaldo Araújo Santos (2005–2012). José Leandro Filho (2013–2016).
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by the Department of Labor. The fragmentation of discussions on heritage and urban development proved the lack of commitment by that administration to the integrated conservation agenda in the city; that the Municipality of Ouro Preto should implement the Master Plan as soon as it was delivered at the end of September 2003. The Master Plan of Ouro Preto was created by Law 29/2006 and approved in December 2006 by the City Council of Aldermen. In the following years, with the structuring of the Secretariat for Culture and Urban Development and the hiring of architects, engineers, historians, administrators, and specialized consultants, architectural and urban projects began to be analyzed using the Master Plan and the Law of Land Use and Occupation as a parameter. The Master Plan was amended through Complementary Law 91/2010—Amendment to the Law Establishing the Master Plan of the Municipality of Ouro Preto and Complementary Law 93 of 2011 that alters the Law of Land Use and Occupation. The latter underwent two changes, the most significant of which was Law 153/2014. For this reason, there was a setback in the policy of preserving the cultural assets of Ouro Preto, acting only in specific actions; that the Municipality of Ouro Preto should have an interest in regulating and controlling the use of land, so that Ouro Preto does not lose its environment, which is an important part of the complex declared as World Heritage. Despite the approval of the Law of Land Use and Occupation, the City Hall was unable to fully regulate and control the city’s urban development. The irregular occupation of the slopes continued to advance and accentuated even more from 2013 onward. Of the various problems in the city, this one is the most serious and in recent decades it has never been totally interrupted; that the municipality, IPHAN and IEPHA, should protect, release, and preserve the archeological site of Morro da Queimada. One of the 10 (ten) measures identified in order to stop the deterioration of the city’s cultural and environmental heritage. The project to implement the Archeological Park of Morro da Queimada, today coordinated by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation—Fiocruz,10 has been concluded and will bring many benefits to the city. In addition to protecting the archaeological site, it also meets another UNESCO recommendation, protecting a significant part of the landscape of the architectural and urban complex of Ouro Preto. Morro da Queimada is not only the part of the city mostly charged with history, but also one whose landscape is more directly integrated into the city. Unfortunately, this project was not contemplated either by the Monumenta Program, or later by the PAC da Cultura; that the City Hall should adopt a system of taxation and incentives for the preservation and restoration of the Historic Center. In 2010, the Municipality of Ouro Preto approved tax incentive laws in the protected area, which exempt 10% of
10 Fiocruz works in a partnership formed through technical and cultural cooperation agreements with
the Federal University of Ouro Preto (UFOP), the Gorceix Foundation and the Sacred Art Museum of Carmo/Pilar Parish. The project is also supported by the Morro da Queimada community and by several non-governmental organizations in the city.
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the IPTU tax for properties in the SPA that are in good condition. However, these laws have not been properly applied and there is no control over the conservation state of the properties; – that IPHAN, IEPHA, and the municipality should create a workshop school to train technicians needed for the maintenance, conservation and restoration of monuments, buildings, old bridges, and fountains in Ouro Preto. This proposal was fulfilled by the Ouro Preto Art Foundation—FAOP. In addition to FAOP, two federal institutions located in Ouro Preto also started to contribute to the preparation of technicians to work in the city. The Federal Institute of Minas Gerais—IFMG, which already had a technical course in Environment, created in 2006 the undergraduate course in Conservation and Restoration Technology. At UFOP, the Architecture and Urbanism course was implemented in 2008; – that all institutions responsible for the conservation of cultural and natural heritage, as well as for the development of Ouro Preto, should establish in the Consultative Committee,11 a policy that seeks to reconcile preservation and sustainable development with a plan prepared conjunctly with Municipal, State and Federal administrations, foreseeing the urban expansion of the city and a program of popular housing. Despite the elaboration and approval of the Master Plan, a city expansion plan was never dealt with efficiency and popular housing programs were also studied, but never implemented (Fig. 39).
3 Conclusion Due to the immense “environmental liability” accumulated over the last decades, the various works that were carried out, most of which were occasional interventions, proved to be insufficient to stop the alarming and accelerated process of deterioration of the city’s cultural landscape. Of UNESCO’s recommendations, only the definition of the delimited area declared a World Heritage Site and its buffer zones have been fully carried out. Some recommendations went forward without reaching an ideal situation and then suffered setbacks, such as the technical reinforcement of the local IPHAN office, the implementation of an administration unit in the historic center with a team of qualified professionals and the implementation of the Master Plan and the regulation and control of Land Use. Others were precariously implemented, such as the tax incentives system for the preservation and restoration of the historic center, or were not implemented at all, such as planning the urban expansion of the city and 11 The Ouro Preto Consultative Committee—CCOP was created by the Presidency of IPHAN through Ordinance 275 of 11/28/2002, with the main objective of articulating the use and occupation of land with the preservation of the cultural heritage of Ouro Preto. It consisted of technicians from the areas of architecture, urbanism, engineering, geography and history of the following entities: IPHAN, UFOP, IEPHA, IIEF, Ouro Preto Municipality and City Hall, Association of Friends of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of Ouro Preto—AMO Ouro Preto, Ouro Preto Commercial and Business Association—ACEOP, Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Ouro Preto— FAMOP and Cultural Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The CCOP was extinguished with the reactivation of the Technical Advisory Group (GAT) in 2005.
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Fig. 39 Project to implement the Archeological Park of Morro da Queimada
a popular housing program. Others moved forward without suffering setbacks, such as the creation of a workshop school for the training of technicians necessary for the maintenance, conservation and restoration of the listed heritage and the protection and preservation of the archeological site of Morro da Queimada. The latter will only be concluded with the implantation of the Archeological Park of Morro da Queimada, which will partially meet another UNESCO request: preservation of its natural framework, which is an important part of the complex declared as World Heritage Site. It is important to note that future investments in Ouro Preto should focus on largescale preservation actions that can cause major positive impacts on the city. The Monumenta Program contemplated a few large-scale actions, the PAC da Cultura concentrated all its actions on assets listed separately, which significantly reduces its results. Monuments that are restored in isolation soon enter a degradation process due to lack of preventive maintenance. The city continues to run at the risk of suffering a major fire since, up to this date, an efficient system for preventing, detecting, and fighting fires has not been implemented yet. Other projects should be considered, such as the revitalization of the Botanical Garden, the removal of buildings in an area of geological risk and vegetation and landscaping projects on the slopes. The restoration and conservation of Ouro Preto’s cultural and environmental heritage involves broad and diversified initiatives, such as actions in the areas of historical and archaeological research, preventive maintenance of built heritage, and heritage and environmental education. This task can generate hundreds of permanent local jobs, also contributing to the increase of tourism and the dynamism of the regional economy.
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Ouro Preto needs to safeguard its cultural heritage with joint and continuous actions involving the local community, the Municipal, State, and Federal governments. An inestimable part of the national memory and a landmark of universal value of human creation, Ouro Preto has gone through a process of disordered growth for decades, with the occupation of slopes and areas at risk, slums in the hills, in addition to the invasion of public spaces, green areas, and archaeological sites. With the mischaracterization of the surroundings, constituted by the natural framework, which is part of the heritage protected by IPHAN and UNESCO, Ouro Preto can be considered to be undergoing a systematic and permanent process of destruction through the edges. Considering that UNESCO’s recommendations have not been fully complied with and that the few advances (some with setbacks) achieved in recent years are mainly due to the report’s recommendations, we believe that a new survey is necessary to re-evaluate the city’s preservation conditions, aiming to take the necessary steps to stop the degradation process of Ouro Preto, a World Heritage Site.
References Bandeira M (1938) Guia de Ouro Preto. MES, Rio de Janeiro FUNDAÇÃO JOÃO PINHEIRO (1975) Centro de Desenvolvimento Urbano. Plano de Conservação, Valorização e Desenvolvimento de Ouro Preto e Mariana. Belo Horizonte Meniconi ROM (1999) A construção de uma cidade monumento: o caso de Ouro Preto. Belo Horizonte: Dissertação de mestrado, Escola de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, UFMG Motta L (1987) A SPHAN em Ouro Preto; uma história de conceitos e critérios. Revista do Patrimônio nº 22, p. 108 a 122. Rio de Janeiro Oliveira BT de (2003a) É urgente uma ação conjunta para reverter a deterioração de Ouro Preto. Revista Projeto Design (artigo), p. 24/26, nº 279, maio, São Paulo, S P Oliveira BT de (2003b) Em defesa de Ouro Preto. Revista Arquitetura e Urbanismo (interseção), p. 63 a 66, nº 113, agosto, São Paulo, S P Vasconcellos S de (1977) Vila Rica. Editora Perspectiva, São Paulo
World Heritage and Living Monument Junno Marins da Matta
Abstract This article proposes the reading of the Architectural and Urban Complex of Diamantina, Minas Gerais, within its attributes and transformations, throughout the 20th century, as Brazilian Cultural Heritage and World Heritage. The federal overturn (Process nº 64-T-38) occurred in 1938 by the newly created National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN), now IPHAN, the same year that other urban centers of the 18th century also originated from the gold cycle (Serro, Tiradentes, São João Del Rey, Mariana and Ouro Preto) and were recognized as Brazilian cultural heritage. Keywords Diamantina · World Heritage · Preservation · Arraial do Tijuco · Minas Gerais
1 Urban Training and Institutional Protection: Synthesis Called Arraial do Tijuco and under the blessing of St. Antônio, this new settlement occupied, around 1714, the banks of the Rio Grande and Pururuca rivers, in the Serra dos Cristais Valley (or Serra de São Francisco, as the former residents call it). Located at the northern end of the Royal Road, the Tijuco quickly excelled in gold production and subsequently presented one of the largest diamantiferous productions on the planet in the eighteenth century. Not by chance, still in 1734 (only two decades after its formation), the so-called Diamantino District was constituted, as an administrative
Architect graduated from Universidade Federal Fluminense (2001) is head of Iphan’s technical office in Diamantina, where he works since 2006. Master in Civil Engineering with emphasis on construction systems in historic buildings, also by UFF (2004) with the dissertation: “Study of Procedures for the Preservation and Conservation of Non-Monumental Real Estate; Case Study: Conjunto Vila Lage in São Gonçalo”. Currently coordinates works for the recovery and preservation of movable assets in the city of Diamantina. J. M. da Matta (B) Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Christofoletti and M. Olender (eds.), World Heritage Patinas, The Latin American Studies Book Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64815-2_30
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unit, still linked to the Chamber and the Ombudsman of Vila do Príncipe of the recent Captaincy of Minas Gerais.1 This administrative rise, leveraged by large mineral production, quickly increased interest in the region and consequent population increase, especially of slaves, who were employed in the mining. Arraial experienced its inevitable urban growth and maps were made by accurately recording the streets, churches and chapels, the courts and the houses, as well as waterways. It is noteworthy that the maps of the eighteenth century portray this urban fabric, which in analysis with current maps, it is easily verified that it was transported practically in full to the present. The layout of its roads, blocks and urban spaces marked by the force of an almost inevitable quadrangular density are easily noticeable today. These characteristics are the testimony of the history of this place, and for its remarkable quality in the composition of the Architectural and Urban Ensemble of Diamantina, were determinant for the understanding and motivation of its recognition for the listing as Brazilian Cultural Heritage (Fig. 1). In the process of listing, it is emphasized that, immediately, there was no delimitation of the listing perimeter, as in several other Historical Sites protected at the time. There was an understanding that the area through which the toppling would fall would correspond to the entire urban area built of the city, including its public places, that is, we are dealing with historical architecture and urban fabric. In the first possible identification of value suggested by the head of the agency, Dr. Rodrigo de Melo Franco de Andrade2 was taxing the mention of the public interest, not only in the conservation of the houses of the urban area, but also of the general aspect of the historical city. The city is defined as a monument for its exceptional historical and artistic value, that is, its listing falls on that urban complex without other descriptions of relevant buildings. In the coming years, other cultural assets, especially eighteenth-century churches and civil architecture buildings, would also be individually listed. In the process of listing in the initial period of IPHAN, there was an understanding of a basic goal in the preservation of the cohesive architectural collection, even without larger texts that deepened its values, attributes or more specific characteristics. It was a fact that the Architectural and Urban Ensemble was deserving of legal protection and, therefore, was listed for federal toppling. At the time of the listing of the Diamantina set, Decree-Law No. November 25, 1937 was a very recent legal instrument, its implications being still unknown or even unpredictable by most residents and even their public managers. However, the imperative need to preserve this set constituted an irreversible process. The various understandings and other complexities about the values of this Historical Site are not the goal of this text. The references to its listing are taken here as 1 The
captaincy of Minas Gerais was an administrative division of colonial Brazil created on September 12, 1720 from the captaincy of São Paulo and Minas de Ouro, whose capital was Vila Rica (present-day city of Ouro Preto). 2 Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade, a lawyer from Minas Gerais, commanded the National Historical and Artistic Heritage Service (SPHAN, now IPHAN), from its foundation in 1937 to 1967.
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Fig. 1 Detail of the map of the Diamantina historical site is part of the listing process. Noronha Santos Archive
the basis of a view of the importance of the preservation of the Historical Site as a testimony and memory of our colonial society of the eighteenth century, in the Captaincy of Minas Gerais.
2 Architectural and Urban Transformations of the Historical Site in the Twentieth Century Shortly before its listing, still in the 1930s, the city of Diamantina suffered, perhaps, the greatest blow to its architectural and urban integrity to that moment. The demolition of the old Cathedral, built in 1750 for the construction of a new Cathedral, implanted no longer facing The Right Street, but built with its right side to the most important street of the city. This intervention enables the emergence, in the heart of the Historical Site, of a new Cathedral with different style and proportion, in which past decades and without deserving the new building or its principles, irreversibly
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Fig. 2 Rua da Quitanda. Early twentieth century. Source Noronha Santos Archive
changed the reading of the most important space of power of the city. During the twentieth century, the city experienced other urban and architectural transformations, but this time as to evolve its urban infrastructure (Fig. 2). Its streets were gradually paved by a special type of stone3 slabs instead of the old pavement and its charming capistranas.4 This pavement still remains in the city today with its masterful geometry. Unfortunately, its conservation has still been a great challenge by successive municipal administrations due to lack of investment in materials, research and well-trained calceteiros, but the situation has gradually improved in recent years by experiments in its recomposition because of the increasing traffic demands of the city. The replacement of the old pole of the electricity grid and public lighting, the wooden poles that are still in the center of the roads for concrete poles and, later, underground cabling in many parts of the city, “cleared” the view of several streets of the tangle of wires, which are necessary for the supply of electricity and telecommunication, but harmful in the enjoyment of the beauty of houses (Fig. 3). Another inevitable and salutary intervention was the implementation of the first water and sewage networks. The buildings were also adapting to the new times with constructions of bathrooms, kitchens and use of concrete in these wet areas. The lack 3 The
pavement system of the Historic Center is based on guide stones (long) and fill stones (rectangular or square) that form panels following the streets longitudinally. 4 Type of paving of stone slabs implanted only in the center of the streets—as a sidewalk—to make it easier for the pedestrian, since the pavement was uncomfortable for kids and women’s shoes on longer walks.
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Fig. 3 View of Rua do Rosário, 1966. Noronha Santos Archive
of water supply could no longer be accepted, as it being such a basic element for human existence and public health, once the city’s fountains and underground tanks could no longer be held responsible for supplying the precious liquid. In several restoration interventions or renovations in general, we find in concrete slab buildings built on floors and wooden barrouting for the organization of kitchens and bathrooms. Given the quality of the wood, these structures resisted for decades, and most of them were condemned by the deterioration of the wood by infiltrations of the pipes, and not by the failure of their load capacity. It is noteworthy that these interventions, of course, are not adequate in the current view because of the separation of structural systems. In the 1940s and 1950s, the listing image of the city’s architectural complex and its technical and legal developments was debated (through letters and telegrams) for a better understanding of this act by municipal administrators with the responsible federal agency. At the same time, new buildings would appear in the city completely breaking the massively existing architectural line of Portuguese origin. These new, revolutionary and sophisticated buildings were implemented in the Historical Site as a political action to modernize society and the economy, and not as an opposition to historical heritage as a mistaken symbol of antiquity and retrogression. They were not inserted in the city as a destructive intervention or the imposition of a new urban order. It was not necessary to ruin colonial properties for its implementation; they were built respecting the urban fabric.
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It is recorded here the description of implementation of the four modernist buildings designed by renowned architect Oscar Niemeyer (1907–2012), which were introduced into the city in the wakening of the progressive vision of the politician from Minas Gerais and Diamantinense, Juscelino Kubitschek de Oliveira. The Hotel Tijuco (former Lyte A Tourism Hotel), Júlia Kubistchek State School, the headquarters of the Diamantina Tennis Club and the Faculty of Dentistry,5 on Rua da Glória: these extraordinary constructions were built between 1949 and 1954 and marked the city of Diamantina, but its coexistence with historical architecture is respectful and harmonious. Such bold interventions, contrary to common sense, do not affect the preservation of the Historical Site; do not overshadow fundamental landmarks or targeted buildings. Interesting is the partnership of Juscelino Kubitschek with Oscar Niemeyer, who left this incredible legacy in the city, even without the organization and logic of the Modern Set in Pampulha(in Belo Horizonte) and of course, in the greatest example of the extraordinary collaboration of the construction of Brasilia with its unmistakable trait in palaces and public buildings. In the 1950s, another fact occurred in the city that could have been the lever for a new radical intervention in the listed Site, but with negative effects on the urban complex. After the fire of Radio Diamantinense, there was a movement for the unlisting of blocks of Beco do Mota and Beco do Alecrim, adjacent areas to the plot of the burned building. The justification for the unlisting and consequent demolition of that sector has as a backdrop the removal of the bohemian area of the city, associated with lupanares on site, for the construction of the bus station that would require space to be opened in the dense urban fabric of Diamantina. Fortunately, the municipality’s proposal was rejected by the Advisory Board of IPHAN at the time, based on a technical opinion by Rodrigo Melo Franco de Andrade. In a document that denies the proposal, he explains the importance of preserving the city’s building as an integral and inseparable part of a whole, the historical monument represented by the urban complex. None of these interventions carried out—postlisting—the modernization introduced in the twentieth century to harm the Historic Sites as a National Monument. That is, the essences of the values of this cultural heritage are maintained and preserved. The testimony represented by its built masses, its urban voids and its historical tracing remain sovereign, functional and present in our daily lives.
3 Living Old Town It is important to highlight that the listed Old Town was the entire urban area of the city. In the decades following the fall of the new urban areas were expanded from the distribution of adjacent land to the construction of new neighborhoods, however, 5 The
latter is not registered with the Niemeyer Foundation as the architect’s work, but the IPHAN documentation mentions his authorship.
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the historical nucleus remained an economic, political and social center of the city. This concentration of commerce and services combined with the effective residential predominance in the listed area is a differential factor of the city. Not all historical cities maintain this characteristic of the predominant permanence of the traditional population. In the center (downtown) we find the main public agencies of the three existing spheres in the city (Federal and State Internal Revenue Service, INSS, Post Office, Public Ministry), five of the six bank branches of the city, the Municipal Administrative Center and City Council among others. Of course, it is necessary that other places in the city have equipment to facilitate the access of the population as a whole to basic services. The city already has a decentralization with the construction of Campus II of the Federal University of the Valleys of Jequitinhonha and Mucuri (UFVJM) and recently the headquarters of the Federal Institute of the North of Minas Gerais (IFNMG) both away from downtown and large public inducers. Another decentralization initiative is the change of the forum of the listed property of Juscelino Kubistchek Square to a new building, also outside the center. On the other hand, downtown should not be emptied of its services in order to maintain its quality and social and economic life. Discourses on the vocation and incentive for historical centers to be equipped and shaped for tourism (restaurants, shops, galleries, inns, etc.), to the detriment of other branches and services, are mistaken and empty of knowledge of the dynamics of cities. It is a fact that the balance of use of real estate is healthy for its preservation and contribution to a differential factor in Diamantina: its ambience. Walking in the historic center of Diamantina is not a tourist-oriented experience, it is much more than that. The visitor knows a living city with its residents enjoying the historical heritage not as an object of enjoyment, but of real and daily use in the hectic “enters and leaves” trade and services in general. One cannot accept the idea that heritage should be the object of distant veneration. The buildings are designed to house certain uses, but can be adapted for others, and this does not imply their mischaracterization. There is no better way to value the built heritage that respects its basic function of use and not of mere contemplation. It cannot be considered to visit a city where its native population is not found. Gentrification processes derive from the Historical Sites a fundamental part of their existence. They remove their reason for existing; after all, these buildings and squares are built by their residents for their enjoyment. Thus, the absence of the citizen in these properties removes a very important part of its composition, which is the human being who must live in it. The man returns to the real estate the scale of his purpose and should not distance himself from it. One cannot segregate the concepts of preservation and use. The city is notoriously a hub that induces tourism in the region, although seasonal for various issues, but above all at its distance from the capital and precariousness in the supply of transport, including air. Anyway, even in the peak season of tourist demand (January, February and July), the city does not change its interior face. The perception of the local population that appropriates this historical space for their daily needs and demands is not altered by the tourist who visits it.
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Of course, events such as Vesperata, the religious calendar (Corpus Christi and Holy Week), as well as carnival, generate specific movement of large audiences in the city, which alters the downtown routine as in any other city. The normal use of the city’s downtown comes loaded with everything other centers possess. Too many people on the streets, vehicles, noise, lack of parking lots, among others. Regarding that, its historical architectural contour does not make it different from other cities and of similar size to everyday problems. A few years ago, the revolving parking lot was deployed in the city. In the beginning, the proposal was seen as an exaggeration and political action for collection by the public machine. Over time, the measure was understood and recognized for the great benefit to heritage and urban mobility. Parking around the Cathedral has been banned and its wide sidewalks are exhaustively used by the population in short walks next to the historic buildings of the traditional urban fabric. The visibility of the Cathedral is now definitive, without the cars surrounding its facades. The measurement of revolving parking was so efficient that new areas were deployed to this system and traffic and access to downtown improved significantly. When we deal with accessibility and urban mobility the issue gains other contours. The historical almost absence of sidewalks the rugged topography, as well as the implementation of several buildings are not automatically compatible with the widest and most democratic needs today. However, it is necessary to mention that there is competent legislation that establishes guidelines, recommendations and criteria for the promotion of the appropriate accessibility conditions for immovable cultural assets. Also in 2003 IPHAN published the Normative Instruction 01/2003.6 These standards stimulate access to historic buildings and places. In Diamantina, IPHAN itself took the initiative to design interventions such as the accessibility of the St. Francis of Assisi Church, which was executed in partnership with the city hall with local entrepreneurs. The subject is challenging and does not discourage the militancy in favor of access to cultural heritage as everyone’s right. The current times do not allow setbacks in the adaptation of historical cities and, therefore, it is essential to adopt the universal design for enjoyment and experience by the society of cultural heritage in a full way.
4 Diamantina World Heritage Site—1999 In the late 1990s, the campaign for the recognition of the Historic Center of Diamantina for World Heritage was launched and proved to be the winner at the 23rd World Heritage Committee Convention held in Marrakesh (Morocco). The Historic Center of Diamantina, as of December 4, 1999, had the inscription 890 of World Heritage. In the dossier, the Historical Site was understood by its valuable representation of architecture of Portuguese colonial origin, as well emphasized by 6 It provides for accessibility to cultural assets protected at federal level. http://portal.iphan.gov.br/ uploads/legislacao/Instrucao_Normativa_n_1_de_25_de_novembro_de_2003.pdf.
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the accepted criteria (II and IV), in the context of its perfect integration with the rocky landscape, and even inhospitable Serra do Espinhaço. Criterion II: Diamantina is an example of how the explorers of the Brazilian territory, the bandeirantes and representatives of the Crown knew how to adapt the European models to an American reality, creating a culture faithful to their origins although completely original. Criterion IV: The architectural urban ensemble of Diamantina, so perfectly integrated with the severe and grand landscape, is a beautiful example of the blend of adventurousness and refinement, so peculiar to its culture.
When we analyze the two criteria accepted by UNESCO, the understanding of human action is detached, faithful to its origins in the implementation of its culture in a completely different place, and unfavorable and even exotic to its environment of origin. The other important issue was the consideration of the integration of the landscape, described here as wild and inhospitable, but of unquestionable beauty with the set built by those groups. It is noticed that the reading of the Historical Site by UNESCO is broader than the concepts of historical city as are usually perceived. The vision of the dossier elaborated for the candidacy of this architectural and urban complex defends a cultural identity and not simply a built-up grouping, based on the repetition of a constructive pattern dominated by the explorers. The formation of the city in the middle of the imposing rocky complex of the Espinhaço Mountain Range results in a different landscape from other cities originated within the seventeenth century context of the gold cycle. The concept of landscape comes into play in the reading of the understanding of this World Heritage Site and, consequently, expands its aspects and limits of protection in defense of these values and the title itself before UNESCO. The defense of the world title is inseparable from the legal protection instituted by the federal listing of 1938. The protection of the Historical Site, either in terms of Rodrigo Melo Franco’s letters or supported by the new property cards and rules of intervention, is also to defend the recognition of this title. Other measures are needed as a legal framework for protection, but these need to be built and adopted together in partnerships with other institutions. For the inscription as a World Heritage Site, it was a condition that the city had a master plan and it was elaborated in 1999. Two revisions of this fundamental urban management instrument would be carried out in 2011 and 2018, being tested and improved following the evolution of the city’s dynamics. The city hall has made great progress since the city’s first master plan for the development of urban regulation legislation, in the approval and supervision of works, code of postures, visual communication, among others. In this same context, Serra dos Cristais received protection for the state listing carried out by the State Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (IEPHA) in 2000 (provisional listing) and, in 2010, the definitive listing by the inscription on the Book of Tombo I—the Archaeological, Ethnographic and Landscape Tomb and the Book of Tombo III —the Historical Tomb, the Works of Historical Art and the Paleographic or Bibliographic Documents. We highlight the great partnership of IEPHA in the preservation of the Serra dos Cristais, definitely an inseparable part of the historical urban complex as well
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instructed in the dossier sent to UNESCO. Another initiative to protect Serra dos Cristais has been the process of creating and implementing a municipal conservation unit to strengthen the management of the municipality on the site. It is also noteworthy that the Mountain range is in a rural area and much of it is covered by the buffer zone of Biribiri State Park, which gives it other aspects of protection. In this sense, we saw that the city was conceptually revisited with a clear expansion of its reading and understanding as a place and landscape. Here we will not approach other present and pulsing universes such as the intangible heritage, which fills with life the interior of each building and each church.
5 Conclusion The challenge of its preservation increases with each discovery or new perspective of understanding the values and attributes of the Historical Site that, over time, is transformed. It renews itself and adapts to every new moment, while preserving all its cultural and historical essence. This atmosphere is not only a backdrop, but is constituted in its present as something that in this text we call living monument. The understanding established here of living monument is not only about intangible heritage but also in certain legislations, but about the understanding that the built heritage is dependent on being appropriated by society so that its meaning remains equally alive. Diamantina features a historic center with about 1,350 properties and a derisory index of abandoned buildings. This denotes the intense use of buildings in this perimeter, about 50% of exclusively residential use, and 50% other uses such as mixed, commercial and institutional. This situation has been for decades one of the great pillars of the preservation of the built heritage of the city. IPHAN contributes to this when it carries out or collaborates in reforms of several private properties, duly based on legislation. This condition of strong residential trend also entailed several demands for reforms and adaptations for the population. The need for garages and parking areas is strongly driven by the increase in the number of license plates registered in most Brazilian cities. In view of the characteristics of the buildings occupying the entire front of the lot and not allowing the possibility of opening for access of vehicles, these demands of society, before being considered “problems” for preservation, are actually seen as definitive proof of the intention to reside in the city center, that is, positive movements for the preservation of residential use so beneficial for the social protection of historical heritage. The expansion of UFVJM and, consequently, an increase in the number of teachers, technicians, contractors and students, were also responsible for a demand for housing, especially students. In this situation, IPHAN’s technical office in the city witnessed the growth of projects of multifamily buildings or subdivision of traditional buildings. In this context, for project analysis, the technical staff needs to understand this phenomenon and, within the permitted, analyze the impacts of these intervention proposals on the set listed in the short, medium and long term.
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Currently, the demand for student housing has decreased with the construction of housing blocks for students by the educational institution itself, showing once again the social and economic dynamism of society and how cultural preservation needs to be attentive and anchored in its principles of preservation. The transformations are constant and faster in recent decades, but it is a fact that looking to reconcile the new social demands is more feasible than facing a population emptying and abandoning historical buildings and their known lasting effects these properties. The first question will always be faced with technique and social support in the understanding of cultural preservation, while the second depends on public policies that IPHAN only cannot lead, because the dynamics of cities are driving various social and economic factors. Public policy programs, such as the Monumenta Program and the Growth Acceleration Program for Historic Cities, were watersheds in the preservation of Brazil’s built heritage. These programs were responsible for injecting investments, not only in the restoration of notorious cultural assets, but also in integrated actions, requalification of public spaces and also fostering training of municipalities and state governments. These actions have shown very positive results in historic cities. In Diamantina, for example, the program was responsible for the requalification of various cultural equipment and public spaces. These interventions are accompanied by educational actions, fostering the economy (including the creative economy) and renewing the city vision in their own city. Finally, the understanding is that the living and pulsating city that we observe in the historic center is one of the greatest patrimonies of this city. The social dynamics gradually adapts to the historical feature of the city, generating a cultural environment full of meanings, allowing a passage of time in an increasingly renewed city.