OnePager #6: The importance of community archives in Buenaventura
The CAPAZ Education and Science Diplomacy project continues to press forward with its OnePagers. This, the sixth, is titled Semillero Navegantes de la Memoria – Nadelam. Four years of “navigating” community archives in Buenaventura, Colombia.
The initial text was written by Erika Paola Parrado and Jefferson Jaramillo, professors at the School of Social Sciences of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. It was revised and corrected by the members of the Semillero Navegantes de la Memoria.
The Nadelam rsearch seedbed
The Nadelam research seedbed was founded in Buenaventura, Colombia, to study and safeguard the archives and memory of Buenaventura, Chocó. Several local partners supported the project, including Fundescodes, Cormepaz, the Banco de la República Cultural Centre, the Buenaventura Centre for Hostory, Proceso de Comunidades Negras, Universidad del Pacífico, and Universidad del Valle (Pacífico campus). Throughout its journey, the seedbed has also received support from academic institutions outside the territory, including Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá), Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Germany) and Red Nacional de Lugares de Memoria. At international level, it has been supported by CAPAZ and Memoria Abierta (Argentina).
The project
What all the projects of the seedbed have in common is the location, identification, mapping, characterisation, and management of different sensitive documentary collections for Buenaventura, as well as the collaborative work with several of the custodians of these archives, whose central axes are the defence of life, dignity, and territory.
“The seedbed has been and continues to be interested in managing local archives as “technologies” of re-existence in the neighbourhood, community, and district. For this reason, the Nadelam seedbed takes the archive beyond a set of acts of documentation, and perceives it more as a practice of affirmation of life in contexts of multiple vulnerabilities”.