Documents about the first circumnavigation of Fernão de Magalhães are included in the Memory of the World Register of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The first canal tour, which took place between 1519 and 1522, is part of the list of 64 new collections inscribed in the Register of Memory released by UNESCO this Thursday. With the registration of another 64 collections, the Memory of the World Register now has 494 registered collections.
The journey, led by Fernão de Magalhães and completed by Sebastian Elcano, is “a milestone in human history for several reasons”. “Most obvious is that the men who completed this journey were the first to fully orbit the Earth,” reads the UNESCO statement released today.
UNESCO points out that the first circumnavigation “had a significant impact on the common knowledge of mankind, as it made it possible to perceive the vastness of South America and the Pacific Ocean, opening the way for a new and more concrete understanding of the dimension of the earth”.
The documents, which were jointly filed by Portugal and Spain, “show the preparation of the trip, the complementary relationship between Portuguese and Spanish, as well as the first testimonies of these discoveries”.
Established in 1992, UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program aims to “prevent the irreparable loss of documentary heritage – documents or collections of documents of significant and lasting value, whether in paper, audiovisual, digital or any other medium”.
With this program, UNESCO wants to “protect this heritage and make it more accessible to the general public”.
Registration of collections in the Memory of the World Register had been suspended in 2017 “due to disagreements between the states involved in the nomination process”.
“A major collaborative effort allowed the procedure to be redesigned and nominations to be ‘relaunched’ in 2021.
Among the 64 collections now on the register are also the legacy of Brazilian biologist, congresswoman and feminist Bertha Lutz, “Feminism, Science and Politics”, candidate for Brazil, and the archives and manuscripts of the Temple Kong Tac Lamb in Macau.
Bertha Lutz (1894-1976) was one of the founders of the Brazilian Federation for Women’s Progress, founded in 1922, which “fought for equal rights for men and women, for women’s access to education and the labor market, and contributed to the conquest women’s votes, guaranteed in the Constitution of 1934”.
The collection related to the Kong Tac Lam Temple, “dated from the end of the Ming Dynasty to the mid-20th century”, the application of which was filed by the Macau Special Administrative Region of China, “includes more than 6,600 books with archives and manuscripts in 2,300 titles, rare books, Bayeux writings, old photographs and paintings”.
The list released today includes new records in Memory of the World, Cuban cinema posters, handwritten notes and notes by the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881), the collection of works by the Armenian composer Komitas Vardapet (1869 – 1935) and the archive of the Czech composer Antonin Dvorák (1841–1904), the photographic archive of the newspaper El Popular, official organ of the Communist Party of Uruguay, active between 1957 and 1973, and the archives of the Swiss writer Johanna Spyri (1827-1901 ), about the character Heidi, later popularized in an animated series of the same name.
Documentation on the lives of enslaved people, in the former French and Dutch colonies, in various registers, the material and the negative of the long documentary “Shoah”, by Claude Lanzmann, about the Holocaust, and testimonies of the ” Heritage of Babyn Yar”, about the Nazi occupation of Kiev during World War II and the massacre of more than 30,000 people, mainly of Jewish descent, in this ravine of the Ukrainian capital, are now also included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register .
Portugal has been present in this register since 2005, with the inscription of the Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha, which was later followed, among others, by the Treaty of Tordesillas (in candidacy with Spain), manuscripts of the Discoveries, the script of the first Vasco da Gama’s journey to India, the documentation of the first South Atlantic flight, the commentary manuscripts on the Book of the Apocalypse of Lorvão and Alcobaça, the Codex Calixtinus (together with Spain), and the books of visas granted by the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1939-1940), who facilitated the escape of the Jews from Nazi persecution in France occupied by Hitler’s troops.
Source: DN
