A magnificent building in downtown Medellin houses a priceless legacy, one that can help examine the recent past and guide the way to building a future.
Record keeping began with Spanish colonization in 1692, and the bulk of the records are in Spanish. The carefully preserved treasures might sound disappointingly dull – tax papers, documents about births and deaths and attendance records of labourers building the railroad, to name just a few. Occasionally, an intricately painted coloured first page catches the eye. Church records are among the most extensive of the texts in the archive, appearing to be lifeless stacks of paper bound together for posterity.
But this is the stuff that history is made of. The history of ordinary people, of the men and women who toiled, fought, paid taxes, loved, married, raised children and died. The documents are testimony to the troubled past of slavery and exploitation. Rows upon rows of bound volumes testify to the slave trade which began in the early 16th century. Detailed records exist of slaves shipped from Western Africa to work in the gold mines, emerald mines, sugarcane, cotton and tobacco farms. Cartegena on the Colombian coast was the gateway for the entry of slave labour to South America. While records in that coastal town were destroyed, the Department of Antioquia has preserved records of this slice of history. Slavery was abolished in 1851, but no compensation was given to the former slaves who till today live in penury and deprivation. The archives are a valuable record for Afro-Colombians (who comprise about a quarter of the population of Colombia) wishing to trace their descent from families in Arica they were torn away from centuries ago. Jose Luis, also, points out the elaborate hand-designs on the fore edges of ledgers and registers, an ingenious method of protecting the records from tampering or single pages being torn out.
Jose Luis proudly displays the more ‘exciting’ items in the archive, precious to the sea-faring Spanish conquistadors – sketches showing a step-by-step construction of a ship. A document dating back to 1797 is a navigation map of the Cuban coast. It is easy to spot Guantanamo.
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"Hri" - a sound or a vibration, the utterance of which awakens the empathy that is an inherent part of every sentient being. Regionalism must no longer remain a prisoner of platitude, since there is a consensus that geopolitical friction, poverty and pressing environmental issues as well as cultural and social dislocation must be addressed through the regional framework. There is a need to revive and energise discussions of regionalism on the platform of mainstream politics, public information and research, with a dynamic Southasian sensibility.
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