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Alert on the situation of the “Public Archive of the State of Bahía”

By 17 de November de 2021No Comments

“UNESCO’s Memory of the World (MoW) Program maintains that “the world’s documentary heritage belongs to everyone, it must be fully preserved and protected […] and it must be permanently accessible […] without obstacles” https://en.unesco.org/program/mow. MoW works with society and States so that this vision is assumed and the conditions are created for it, promoting knowledge, training and awareness of the responsibility of humanity with the legacy received and with what must be transmitted to the new generations.

The Program has an international committee, three regional committees (Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean – MoWLAC – and Africa) and more than 90 national committees. In all three areas, and other things being equal, archival and bibliographic documents are called “Memory of the world”, examples and symbols of the value of documents for the history and culture of all humanity.

Due to the aforementioned, the Regional Committee for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Memory of the World Program (MoWLAC) has the duty to draw attention to the serious situation facing the Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahía – APEB. According to what they inform us, its building, a Jesuit farm of the century. XVI, you run the risk of being sold to pay a debt. In its collection, of about 10 km of documents, there are four sets nominated Memory of the World by the Brazilian Committee: “Tribunal da Relação do Estado do Brasil na Bahía (1652-1822)”, in 2008; “Entry records of passageiros no porto de Salvador (Bahía): 1855-1964”, in 2010; “Cartas Régias (1648-1821)”, in 2013; “Companhia Empório Industrial do Norte (1891-1973)”, in 2016.

Given the repercussions of the event, the judicial execution was suspended and the state government was ordered to present, within 60 days, a plan to safeguard and remove the collection. MoWLAC knows that planning the removal of a collection of such importance and dimension requires innumerable care and the elaboration of such a plan and its effective implementation cannot be done in a hurry, at the risk of incalculable losses.

For this reason, MoWLAC warns that the preservation of documentary heritage and its public access, duties of everyone for everyone, requires a building in safe condition, adequate material for the storage of the collection, qualified personnel for its treatment (preservation, organization and description) and the production of microfilm copies or digitization. Without such conditions, the Memory of the World is irretrievably destroyed.

Recognizing the centuries-old effort of the APEB to preserve the collections in its custody, MoWLAC believes that the current situation can be reversed. We hope that the corresponding authorities will urgently address this situation by giving it the best solution to the imminent danger, ensuring a strong archive, with real conditions to face the challenge of preserving and giving access to such important collections, MoWLAC is available for everything it can help Bahian and Brazilian society in this task.

Sandra Moresco

President of MoWLAC – UNESCO