The International Council of Museums (Icom) has published Brazil’s Red List, a publication that lists the cultural goods most subject to illegal removal from the country and illegal commercialization in the international market. Brazil thus becomes the twentieth country or region to have its own Red List of Cultural Goods at Risk.
“This is one of the biggest challenges: combating the illicit trafficking of our cultural goods,” said Culture Minister Margareth Menezes at the Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo.
According to her, this type of trafficking is one of the activities that generates the most money in the world.
“Brazil ranks 26th on the list of countries with the highest number of stolen cultural goods and has an extremely low recovery rate. The illicit trafficking of cultural goods represents a huge loss for Brazil because it interferes with the testimony of our people’s civilizational process. Caring for memory and strengthening our history is a record of the map of our cultural evolution,” said the minister.
The database of the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (Iphan) listed 974 Brazilian cultural goods sought after being stolen or misappropriated. From this list, only 48 goods have been recovered.
Red Lists
Red Lists have been published since 2000 by Icom. According to Emma Nardi, Icom’s global head, the objects highlighted in the Red List have not been stolen but are examples of types of objects at risk of trafficking, described and illustrated by photographs. These images help surveillance agents identify possible illegal movements.
“To develop the Red List, it is important to know if the country has strong legislation. Only objects that are under protection can be included in a Red List. Brazilian legislation is quite robust, but Brazil is a country of continental size, and its borders are very porous. Therefore, it is necessary to understand if there is trafficking and interest in the market, and only then do we begin to map which categories should be listed,” said Roberta Saraiva Coutinho, who helped develop Brazil’s Red List.
The Brazilian list took eight years to be prepared. It includes five categories most targeted by traffickers: archaeology; sacred and religious art; ethnographic objects; paleontology; and books, documents, manuscripts, and photographs. Each of these categories contains images illustrating objects that could attract traffickers, such as indigenous headdresses and funerary urns, and the terracotta sculpture of the Immaculate Conception.
“Brazil’s Red List is a recognition of the existing risks in our region, but also of the recognition and visibility of the diversity and richness of Brazilian heritage,” said Renata Mota, executive director of the Museum of the Portuguese Language and head of Icom Brazil.
The list will be distributed to police and customs authorities around the world so that the Brazilian goods most threatened by trafficking can be identified.
Source: Elaine Patricia Cruz – Agência Brasil – São Paulo