Paris, August 21, 2024. With the participation of prominent personalities, Cuba hosts the international event “New narratives: memory, resistance and vindication” to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the UNESCO program “Routes of Enslaved Peoples: Resistance, Liberty and Heritage”, which will take place between August 21 and 23. Figures such as the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, Wole Soyinka, and the prestigious Senegalese jurist and expert, Doudou Diène, member of the International Scientific Committee of the program, attend the important event.
Since its launch in 1994, the UNESCO "Routes of Enslaved Peoples: Resistance, Liberty and Heritage" Programme has contributed to the production of innovative knowledge, the development of high-level scientific networks and the support of memory initiatives on the theme of slavery, its abolition and the resistance it generated. At the international level, the programme has thus played a major role in "breaking" the silence surrounding the history of slavery and placing this tragedy in the universal memory.
Organized by the UNESCO Regional Office in Havana, the "Fernando Ortiz" Foundation, the Cuban National Commission for UNESCO and the Cuban Ministry of Culture, the Conference is part of a series of commemorative activities that have been taking place throughout the year.
The opening ceremony will take place in the Aula Magna of the San Gerónimo University College in Havana, where Dr. Miguel Barnet Lanza, National Prize for Literature and National Prize for Cultural Heritage, will speak, accompanied by Doudou Diène and Wole Soyinka. The program also includes panels with the participation of specialists from various countries, the screening of the documentary Cimarrón, historia de un esclavo, by the filmmakers Juan Carlos Tabío and Miguel de los Santos; as well as visits to museums linked to the history of slavery and to the province of Matanzas, a region with a strong incidence of slavery and of resistance and rebellion against that disgraceful regime.
The 30th anniversary of the program coincides with the closing this year of the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024), an event that will also be highlighted in Cuba with the celebration of the “International Conference Cuba 2024: Decade for People of African Descent” between December 9 and 13.