Portugal supports the application of Campo do Tarrafal to UNESCO
“IT IS a project that unites us. And it unites us in the sense that memory does not normally unite two countries. Because Tarrafal corresponds to the history and memory of the fight against the Portuguese dictatorship, but as it also corresponds to the memory of the fight against colonialism. And both the dictatorship and the colonialist past were somehow resolved with a transition to democracy in Portugal and it is extremely important for us to project the future, we always officially preserve the memory”, said Pedro Adrão e Silva, who today began a visit to the archipelago.
Pedro Adão e Silva, the minister, visited the minister during the afternoon with his Cape Verdean counterpart, Abraão, for four days, with the process in recovery and the intention of applying to UNESCO for the space scheduled for the meeting.
Located in the town of Chão Bom, the former Tarrafal Concentration Camp was built in 1936 and received the first 152 political prisoners on October 29 of the same, having operated until 1956.
It reopened in 1962, with the name of “Campo de Trabalho de Chão Bom”, intended to incarcerate the anti-colonialists of Angola, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.
This is a trauma that is shared with distinct dimensions and memory of them. the work of preservation is fundamental and, in the end, to overcome, associated with the Turtle, what is perhaps a fair honor, the place”, he also stated that he did not preserve the former concentration camp, it has now been converted into a museum.
For the Portuguese official, the two countries want, as is the case of the former Tarrafal Concentration Camp, “concrete projects that bring together and that imply exchanges and institutional commitments between the two parties” and promised “Portugal’s commitment to help in the technical component, namely through the Directorate-General for Cultural Heritage”.
“Which, by the way, has similar experiences that are currently under development. The Peniche Fort, which was also a particularly violent political prison during the Estado Novo, during the Portuguese dictatorship, is also undergoing a process of musealization and major investment in works There are experiences that they can share in what is and what is the construction of many spaces of memory and traumatic memory”, he underlined.
“We are talking about a very important dimension, which is the sharing of experiences and processes, methodology in the recovery of these spaces. and at this moment it will be a museum dedicated to Resistance and Freedom, a bit to the image that takes place in Tarrafal, which, I emphasize, has that double dimension of things that was the resistance to the dictatorship in Portugal, but also the memory of the memory of resistance colonialism”, he emphasized.
In all, more than 500 people were imprisoned in this “camp of slow death”: 340 anti-fascists and 230 anti-colonialists. After its activation, the complex since 2000 has functioned as a military instruction center and the Resistance Museum.
The space was a National Cultural Heritage and integrates the Indicative List of Cape Verde to UNESCO Heritage.
“It has enormous significance for what the Portuguese-speaking community is and we have to know, as we approach the 50 years of Portuguese democracy and also the 50 years of the independence of the various countries, to know how to look at this past, in its dimensions traumatic experiences, based on that shared experience, to build a future sharing of fraternity and collaboration, a past still from Pedro Adão e Silva.
It announced in July 2021 that the candidacy of the former Cape Verde Concentration Camp from July 2021 to World Heritage Sites will be one of eight places that Cape Verde from July 2021 already had the potential for classification by UNESCO, now with the Government, according to the Minister of Culture and Creative Industries presented today, Abraão Vicente, still without concrete data to see.
“It will not be delivered because there is no open door for its delivery”, said the Cape Verdean minister, recording that it is a process with its own procedures for “each of the cultural goods, both material, immaterial, built goods and, in this in the case of the concentration camp candidacy, to places of memory linked to authoritarian totalitarian regimes”.
“We will wait and we will have more time to work on the dossier”, he added, regarding the candidacy process.
He also underlined the objective-seeing objective in the future candidacy to Guinea-Bissau and Portugal
“It is very significant for the history of Cape Verde, for the construction of post-independence identity, because we adopted the symbology of the concentration camp to promote the Republic of independent Cape Verde”, concluded Abraão Vicente.
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