ECAS 2013

According to the UNESCO's evaluation of Cidade Velha de Cabo Verde, the outstanding value of the place lies in three facts: the monuments testify the commercial importance of the city during the 16th and 17th centuries; the city was a major place of enslavement; due to this, it became a centre of multiculturalism.

Thus, after the 2009 UNESCO's classification, the city hall, Instituto de Investigação e do Património Culturais and the Proim-Tur have worked with those unquestionable values.

However, by being filled with the desire to catapult the Cidade Velha to the map of the world's most compelling places to visit, the management committee has systematically failed.

Thereby, with this paper we aim to demonstrate that, sometimes, we have to go backward before we move forward. Actually, the core of this paper lies in the fact that there are still some forgotten values that could contribute to the valorisation of Cidade Velha.

In fact, if we want to understand the present, past and future of Cidade Velha, we have to comprehend that one of the values of the place lies in the fact that, since the 20th century, as a Portuguese colony, Cidade Velha was the center of multiple heritage conservation/management experiences.

In conclusion, we aim to analyse the core problems of the management of Cidade Velha and, consequently, establish a comparison with multiple programs developed during the colonial times, in order to contribute to a brighter future to this world heritage site.

After nearly sixty years of cultural resistance to the Portuguese colonial project and its Postcolonial offshoot at the Republic of Cape Verde from 1974 onwards, the communities of Rabelados at the island of Santiago seem to have conclude their nativist and isolationist project. With de death of the last of their prophets in 2005, the Rabelados are seeking various strategies for promoting their integration into the national economy and in the whole Cape Verdean society. If some Rabelados have chosen the migration and others have accepted any job in the "mainstream" market, a group of young Rabelados from the village of Espinho Branco has developed an intense artistic activity. This artistic production, the actual "art of the Rabelados", has received some national and international recognition. In this context, the production of a "folk art" or "ethnic art" has forced themselves to questioning the foundations of their own cultural tradition and offer an image of it that be in line with the expectations of the tourists visiting the village. At the same time, the growing visibility of the "arte dos Rabelados" has caused a realignment of most Cape Verdean cultural sectors facing these productions. This realignment has also provoked controversies about the foundations of Cape Verdean identity, the crioulidade, embodied ideally by the communities of Rabelados for someone, notably differen of the Rabelados' tune por the others

In Benin, since the early 1990s, the Ouidah 92. Rencontre Afrique-Amériques. Festival des arts et de la culture vodun and the itinerary of The Slave Route under the aegis of Unesco, have been significant occasions aimed at connecting voodoo with the commemorations of the slave trade. Today, the official acknowledgement of an intangible and moral heritage of slavery's past goes hand in hand with the promotion of sacred sites and various events that expresses the (sometimes rediscovered) vivacity and legitimacy of ancient beliefs and cults. This relationship between the uses of memory and the worship activities can be observed through conflictual discourses on history and on the contemporary practices of ritualization and signification of "traditional" and popular religion as a form of globalized culture. Thus the question of the memory of the slave trade influences the local modes of transmission and representation of so-called voodoo social manifestations. In this context, the institutionalization of "memory places" appears to be marked by various discrepancies among made sacred restitutions of both transatlantic (diasporic) and communal interpretations of slavery. If these spaces are supposed to link present identities and memories of the past, the analysis of ethnographic situations observed in the towns of Ouidah, Grand Popo and Abomey shows how a discursive and cultural transformation of the "pagan" past communicates with a process of updating of the origins.

Este trabalho tem como objetivo discutir as implicações do Projeto Aluka no processo de digitalização e preservação dos arquivos na África, especialmente na África Austral. Nos interessa ainda pensar sobre as circunstâncias em que foram produzidos o processo de cooperação entre as instituições e os impactos do projeto de cooperação para a construção de uma política patrimonial em Moçambique, investigando as condições em que se encontra o Arquivos Históricos de Moçambique.

Compreender a dinâmica de institutos estrangeiros de cooperação com a África, especialmente as agências americanas de fomento a pesquisa, pode nos ajudar a redimensionar a experiência brasileira de cooperação na área de preservação e digitalização das colecções, bem como as tentativas de repatriação de artefatos no complexo processo de luta pelas memórias dos povos pós-independência.

Trás di Munti is a village located on the Santiago island of Cape Verde with a history of pottery production. In the past, this domestic activity constituted a relevant economic resource and complementary to agriculture, but since the second half of the twentieth century pottery production fell into decline. In 2006, a project to revitalize and re-establish this activity was implemented by a Portuguese artist. The purpose of the project was to promote development and improve the quality of life of the local population through the recognition of pottery as a cultural value, constitutive of the heritage and traditions of the place. However, in the field different perspectives about the cultural and economic significance of pottery emerged, leading to controversy. The aim of this paper is to highlight the ambiguities between the external perspectives of the project and the local meanings and values related to specific social and economic aspects of the place. In particular, I will focus on the multiplicity of discourses and practices related to concepts of culture, heritage and development. Furthermore, I will emphasize that development strategies linked to culture are not impartial and do not always correspond to the expectations and ambitions present on the field.

Island of Mozambique, in the north of Mozambique, was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1991. The cultural richness of this small island is connected to its inclusion in the routes across the Indian Ocean. It was a slave market place and the different communities that lived in the Island, Swahili, makua, Arabs, Indians and Portuguese, marked its architecture and cultural heritage. The influence of the Island in literature is also clear (see for example the anthology A Ilha de Moçambique pela voz dos poetas, published in 1992), indeed the Island inspired many Mozambican writers, which identified it as a metonymical representation of the nation for its multicultural identity. A documentary by Licínio Azevedo made in 2010, A Ilha dos Espíritos, shows how the islanders live a present characterized by tourism and cultural preservation, which includes also the recuperation of slave memory. Indeed the Island, inserted in the routes of the Indian Ocean, is part of the world heritage sites in connection with slavery and slave trade. Our intention is to reflect about the recent historical, economical and cultural challenge represented by the Island of Mozambique. Considering also the importance of the literary and cultural production influenced by the Island, our aim to reflect about the capacity of the initiatives and programmes developed by UNESCO to rediscover a complex past and to preserve the tangible and intangible cultural heritage developed in the small but significant space of the island.

En esta comunicación planteamos un estado de la cuestión sobre estas políticas, intervenciones y enfoques en los últimos decenios, centrándonos en la cooperación española al desarrollo con África.

Efectivamente, en los últimos años se han ido desarrollando normativas y conocimientos desde y para los diferentes organismos relacionados con áreas de patrimonio cultural, sumando proyectos tanto bilaterales como multilaterales. Uno de los ejemplos más importantes es el programa de Patrimonio para el Desarrollo de la Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional al Desarrollo, que se ha desarrollado preferentemente en el área latinoamericana pero también se ha introducido con diversos proyectos en países africanos. El objetivo general de la denominada Estrategia Cultura y Desarrollo es fomentar las oportunidades y capacidades culturales de personas y comunidades como elementos sustanciales de desarrollo humano sostenible, en claves de patrimonio e identidad cultural, aunque hasta el momento se cuenta con escasas evaluaciones de resultados.