MAMNBA Project: political and institutional context, conceptual and technical developments

Abstract

The article approaches the Black Religious Monuments and Sites Mapping Project (MAMNBA) as an important indicator of two converging movements that take shape in the 1980s in Brazil. The first one is the emergence of the "national heritage" as a field of political struggle appropriated by black social movements that seek the affirmation of their cultural rights and the breaking of the Portuguese-Brazilian monopoly of the representations of the history of the country.
The second one is the extension of the old concept of historical and artistic heritage until its gradual
replacement by the notion of cultural heritage. It also addresses the way in which the Federal Constitution of 1988 welcomed these movements and how their guidelines regarding Afro-Brazilian
heritage were absorbed in the policy of cultural heritage preservation, especially at the federal
level. Taking this sphere of public power as a focus, the article also deals with the conceptual, methodological and practical developments that the protection and safeguarding of this particular
cultural heritage has produced within the scope of the Institute of National Historic and Artistic Heritage (Iphan), since the listing of several Terreiros de Candomblé in Bahia and in other states
of the country as cultural heritage. Finally, the article addresses the conflicts and contradictions that emerged from the day-to-day management and preservation of these cultural properties between the conceptions of Iphan’s technical staff on the conservation of these religious spaces and what the cult communities consider their cultural heritage and how it should be preserved in these sites.