HUMANITY´S GUAJIRO FEELINGS

Almost at the end of 2017, Cubans proudly received the news that our punto guajiro had been included in the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The specialists of the National Commission for the Safeguarding of Heritage were on a long journey to hand in a detailed dossier to the twelfth session of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco). This is the second occasion on which a Cuban artistic manifestation is included in the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The first time was in 2016 and it was the rumba. To know about the investigative route to prepare the dossier, Arte por Excelencias magazine spoke with Gladys Collazo, the president of the Consejo Nacional de Patrimonio (National Heritage Council) of the Ministry of Culture of Cuba. «We did not start from scratch. There was already a work developed in 2011 to declare the punto cubano as Patrimonio de la Nación Cubana (Cultural Heritage of the Cuban Nation) the following year. That is one of the requirements that Unesco demands to make the declarations worldwide. The dossier for Unesco had to answer five questions with rigorous parameters in only two hundred and fifty words. It includes photographs and a video with important technical requirements of no more than ten minutes. It was a very important and emotional moment. Each declaration becomes a celebration. «Many challenges are ahead. We already have an important list of declarations of the National Heritage of Cuba. That is just the starting point to continue working in different dossiers, such as rum making know-how and the parrandas of the central region. The commission has a lot of work to carry out to be able to obtain the declaration of some other manifestation to be included in the representative list or as good practices of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity».