Between inheritance and presence: the cultural heritage of black reference in Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes actions taken to acknowledge black inheritance through policies of memory and heritage during the first democratically elected government of the state of Rio de Janeiro in the 1980s, especially the protection of Pedra do Sal and the Monument to Zumbi. In order to understand these actions, firstly, the ways in which heritage policies at the federal level were transformed in the context of the country’s redemocratization are analyzed, and how they were in dialogue with the policies implemented at the state level of Rio de Janeiro. We verify the paradigms that underlie such narratives, while moving from macropolitics to the field of struggles of memory as intertwined universes. In the second section, events related to the patrimonialization of black heritage in the city in the 2000s are analyzed, namely, the recognition of Pedra do Sal as Quilombo in 2005, and the world heritage titles attributed to the city by Unesco in 2012 and 2017. Thus, it seeks to capture the representations of the heritage city and verify the values that prevail in each situation, identifying the presence of two paradigms that tension the field of heritage, here called the modern paradigm and the paradigm of heritage as a right. The notion of historical value triggered in the analyzed situations is one of the guiding threads through which analytical connections are established between heritage paradigms, historicity regimes, and the perceptions of past and present time.

KEYWORDS:
Pedra do Sal; Monument to Zumbi; Rio de Janeiro; Memory and heritage policies; Historical value; Black inheritance