MOZAMBIQUE is one of four portuguese-speaking countries with new documentary heritage registered in the “Memory of the World” programme of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which recently announced the list of 74 items.
The list of projects recognised in the 2025 edition of the UNESCO programme, which aims to preserve the documentary heritage of humanity, also includes Angola, Brazil and Cape Verde.
Mozambique submitted an application with Angola and Cape Verde. The three countries present books and records of slaves. “Census of slaves in Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique determined by Portuguese decree of 14/12/1854” is a project that includes 79 slave registry books in these countries, created mainly between 1856 and 1875”.
UNESCO states that these registers, issued by decree of the Portuguese Crown, documented all enslaved and freed individuals in its overseas territories, laying the foundations for the abolition of slavery in 1869.
Regarding the importance of this nomination from three Portuguese-speaking countries, UNESCO states that these registers are about “a time when slavery had opponents all over the world” and these books “provided detailed records, including names, sex, place of birth, age, physical characteristics, occupations and information on slave owners”.
However, Brazil has two nominations recognized: the “Carlos Chagas Archive” and the “Ethno-Historical Map of Curt Nimuendaju: a cartographic encyclopedia at the service of the languages, cultures and memories of indigenous peoples".
In Cape Verde, the project "Documents on Slavery in the Archives of the General Secretariat of the Government (Cape Verde, 1842-1869)" was chosen. These are manuscripts from the Fonds d'Archives du Secrétariat Général du Gouvernement and date from 1674 to 1954, with most of the documentation from 1803 to 1927.
Created in 1992, UNESCO's Memory of the World programme aims to preserve humanity's documentary heritage, promoting its protection against oblivion, deterioration and destruction. It is a legitimizing body that recognizes and guarantees the value of collections, engaging, in this process, various categories of experts to analyze the applications.
(By MozaVibe)
