MEMORIES AND migraTIONS

ORGANIZATION:

(M.P.)  Fafe Town Council (Antero Barbosa Fernandes)

 L’objectif recherché par les différents pays est commun:

 Carine Rouah

Today the economic social and cultural History, associated to the migrations, constitutes one of the amplest forms of knowledge of the human being.

The amplitude, wealth and particularities of the phenomenon, as a consequence of the quantitative dimension of the human movements and the qualitative one, which is visible in the biographies, as well as in what is the particular history of local and regional character, constitute one of the wrinkled central points of the scientific curiosity of our days, in which the biggest expressions of the human life experience are present.

The glorious deeds and tragedies, lived deeply in the destination and exit territories where the rupture and suffering were faced, many times, with the breaking of Human Rights, promoted the crossing of cultures and defined the perspective of Modern and Contemporary History, marking strongly and positively the present time in its material and symbolic visibility.

Sociology and anthropology have given significant contributions to the study of the migrations and the complexity of human mobility phenomena. This has great weight in the social and cultural interaction and the Schools of Education look for approaches for multicultural education.

The museums and archives, as places of study, preservation and defense of the historical and social memory, make it possible to value the cultural identity of those who are migrants, looking for new directions and perspectives.

Finally, the conjunction between science and new technologies allow new approaches to the migrations phenomenon, articulating contents, methods and procedures, namely by its use on a great volume of information and, on the other hand, on the technologies in the web communication field.

The Museum Nuclei come basically from the Room of the Memory and constitute thematic places, organizing a “multinucleus” museum, drawn to give value to the places and the museum material associated to the emigration and the return. In the case of Fafe, as already studied, the nuclei show the material and symbolic expressions of the cycle of Emigration and Return from Brazil, which are the reference for the construction of the museum nuclei.

Project Director / Coordinator

Miguel Monteiro

MESSAGE

Those who emigrated,  in the nineteenth century were mainly the sons of landowners and farmers, composing the middle class or middle high class of Minho, with strong predominance of singles, below fourteen years old, who returned,  a lot of them definitively to stand and live in the nearest city, Porto or Lisbon.

This return is reflected in the architecture, urbanization and industrialization of all the country and  it causes the increase of the commercial activity, stating the “Brazilian” and his descendants like an active bourgeois class  involved in public life, at a time when the political regime was changing.

This participation in the local and national administration is present in the florescent press and the philanthropic acts are visible in  the building of hospitals, asylums and schools.

The “ Brazilian” is  the lettered actor  of a modern Portugal, and the traveller connected with the world, being the cosmopolitan Brazil the centre of knowledges to the young who left a small and rural country.

Museum of Emigration: Communities and Luso - descending

MESSAGE

The Portuguese Museum of Emigration and Return

The recent implementation of several museums that focus on the migrations, adopted as the main theme of the constitution of the respective material and inspiring the animation initiatives that are developed within the respective venues, translates the growing importance that is given to the migration phenomena, all over the World.

Institutions assuming themselves as Emigration Museums, in countries that were, or still are, emitting migratory flows, or as Museums of Immigration, for those essentially receiving these flows, can be found today in Sweden, Finland, Italy, Germany, San Marino,  Portugal, France, Australia, the United States of America, Canada, Brazil, and more.

In this perspective, the background of the "narrative" that these museums offer to their audience is the analysis of the innumerable forms that can define the mobility of human beings: showing the traced itineraries between origin places (at the time of departure and return) and the places that were looked for as destinations; the forms and the different processes through which such mobility happened; the own migrants and their histories of life, in part influenced by structural factors from each involved places, but also for the conjunctures of each place and each historical moment.

It is this complex picture that is being shown and made known, illuminating the way of the visitor among the depths of expectations and individual decisions, and the following consequences of the collective trends that form the distinct migratory flows, in each country and every time. But, what does a museum of this nature look for - a Migration Museum - what is its conceptual architecture and what are the objectives that it essentially tries to reach?

The answer is undoubtedly about registering relevant facts that were memorised selectively and cannot be lost; organizing the documents that define and characterize these facts; presenting, for the benefit of a previously defined public, objects that are considered significant, the ones of daily use as well as those representative of special moments, and whose existence helps to recreate past atmosphere, to remember celebrations, to reconstitute rituals and to liven up the memories of past life.

Together with documents and objects, the fixed or animated pictures have an indispensable presence, that help to visualize past times and better understand contexts and environments. Thanks to the progress of communication technology and data processing, today all these components of the museum can assume a digital form, not only making information accessible at any distance, but also allowing interactive sophisticated forms to deal with the corresponding contents.

The Portuguese Museum of Emigration and Return located in Fafe obeys to this logic. Linked to a multi-nuclear physical establishment, installed in city buildings and accessible places to the visitors, the Museum has a "virtual" component, organized in "thematic rooms" (www.museu-emigrantes.pt) and endowed with a clear, attractive and  efficient navigation system.

The virtual dimension of the Museum is fully pursuing its goal by collecting documents from every corner of the globe; it is livening up its indispensable research activity, carried out by the Research Center of the Museum and shared by resident researchers and all the participating researchers, living in different countries.

In fact, this research network, centered in Portugal and articulated with numerous countries related to us by being classic destinations of our emigration, makes it possible to cross the perspectives, perceptions and knowledge coming from each migration region, contributing to the enrichment of the material, skills and activities of the museum.

Professor Doutor

Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade

José Ribeiro

Mayor of Fafe

In 2001, after municipal deliberation, a project was elaborated to create a museum - "The Museum of Emigration: Communities and Portuguese Descendants ", generically called" The Museum of Emigration and Communities ", based on a strategic principle according to which the future of the localities and the welfare state depend on the knowledge of History, the valuation of the material and symbolic patrimony by the communities and the assumption of social and cultural identity by the citizens.

This local territory, as well as the majority of the peripheral territories, presents an identity to which we are trying to give sense and value.

It is this particular IDENTITY that we are trying to construct, in a social dimension of the history that is assumed today with future sense and appears, simultaneously, as a strategic indicator for development.

In this field, the Town Council started the valuation of the city by identifying, studying and protecting what is substantial at the material culture level, where its history can be found.

We have understood that our city stands as a paradigm for the study of the History of Portugal; and it is possible to revisit all the nineteenth Century study dimensions, from the emigrant as a person and the valuation of emigration.

The palaces, “palace-like” houses, “little palaces”, theatres were built nineteenth century the emigrants, defining an architectural standard which is of academic interest today.

On the other hand, they promoted the development of the City, investing in the first industries of the city region, and they offered the Public Garden, the Hospital, Asylums and Schools to the local community.

They had been involved, as councilmen, in the main initiatives of transformation and modernization of the city, promoting the introduction of the train and the construction of the hydroelectric-power plant.

As the emigrants constantly travelled, they bound themselves to spread ideas, financing the newspapers of the town and also the polemical construction of the cemeteries.

Fafe is therefore a particular place to study century XIX and there are already projects to save, conserve and restore all these places of History and National Culture.

Through the MUSEUM of EMIGRATION and COMMUNITIES, as a conceptual mechanism of articulation, we are willing to give life to this ambitious project.

We will consequently promote the creation of Nuclei and Places linked to Emigration and the Return, starting from a cultural point at the Museum House of the returned Brazilian (Casa Museu de Torna-Viagem) and in the International Centre for the Study of Human Mobility, with the scientific and technician support of UNESCO.

This support was defined at the Meeting of Experts on Migration Museums which took place in October 2006, in Rome, with the participation of the Coordinator of the Museum of Emigration and Communities, Miguel Monteiro, and Professor Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade, Scientific Director, on behalf of the City. It is inserted in a net of protocols of support, study and spreading that already includes centres of study and universities at national and international levels.

Portugal is a country structurally linked to emigration. Between 1834 and 1919 nearly a million and three hundred a thousand Portuguese emigrated. For example, in 1970 a 135 thousand Portuguese emigrated to France, constituting in the same decade the first foreign community in France with 860 000 people. In 1999 the Portuguese abroad were 4 806 353, spread in the five Continents.

The city and region of Fafe were connected to this phenomenon of emigration, since Fafe was part of this migratory movement, such as in other cities of the country, particularly in the North.

Mayor of Fafe

The schools of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, with their travelling masters followed everywhere by their enthusiastic pupils (both migrating to find knowledge), by questioning and diversifying their approaches, by accepting new sources - with prominence to the Arab thought - diversified and enriched the host countries. These migratory movements would be carried on by the universities of the following centuries, better or worse, during periods of war and peace.

Taking Bologna as a privileged place – it is again the destination of reference for European Higher Education -, Frederico I, Purple Beard, already supported the preeminent value of scientific knowledge and the necessity to protect those who taught and studied far from their native lands. After three quarters of a millenium, the European governments recognize the fundamental role played by mobility for the production of knowledge and European development.

Through the Declaration of the Sorbonne, 1989, the Declaration of Bologna, 1999, or the Strategy of Lisbon, 2000, the mobility of researchers, professors and students, is assumed as a primary cause (and unaccomplished) by most European governments.

As a Higher Education school the collective memory of the local communities is of primary importance, and its study and research are a tool to give back to the students, at any age or education level, the dimension of helping and sharing, which is a fundamental reason of knowledge, often forgotten in our way to knowledge and developing curriculum.

The Institute of Higher Education Studies of Fafe is thrilled to take part in this initiative: the dual celebration of scientific research, applied to so rich an area and endowed with a strong power of contextualization of the globalization realities, and of the remembrance of past memories so praised by our local and matrix living.

The Seminar is a strong example of local will as it opens to the world and it is an perennial source of information for students of secondary and higher education and for any member from the local and regional community.

11 April 2007

President of the IESF

(Institute of Higher Education Studies of Fafe)

Dulce Noronha e Sousa