A Slavery Museum will be created in Lagos, in an initiative of the local Council and the Portuguese Committee of the UNESCO Project “The Slave Route”.
The future Museum will have two cores, one in the Slave Market building, downtown, and the other on the 0th floor of the Anel Verde car park, in Praça D' Armas, where the museum nucleus will be installed, provisionally designated as “ Poço dos Negros” and the sculptural memorials, in a place to be determined in the execution project phase.
To take this project a step further, the Municipality of Lagos and the Center for Studies on Africa and Development (CEsA) (research center integrated in the Higher Institute of Economics and Management of the Technical University of Lisbon) will soon sign a Collaboration Protocol , where the forms of use of buildings and equipment managed by the Municipality of Lagos are established.
According to the protocol draft approved yesterday at a Chamber meeting, the Lagos Slavery Museum project, to be developed by the municipality and by the Portuguese Committee of the UNESCO Project “The Slave Route”, aims to achieve ten objectives, expressed in the declaration of the Municipality of Lagos of December 16, 2011.
These objectives include the architectural requalification of the paradigmatic Slave Market building, the organization of the Museum Space – the Slave Market center (exhibitions of archaeological finds and other associated) and the “Poço dos Negros” center in the Parking Lot of Anel Verde, or even the publication of several studies, either with regard to the “slave cemetery”, or on Slavery in southern Portugal, a Route of the Slave Route or the publication of cultural-tourist brochures on the Places of Slavery and Slave Trade in Lagos.
A Historical and Archaeological Information and Interpretation Center will function at the Anel Verde car park, where archaeological work carried out in 2009 revealed the existence of 155 human skeletons of former slaves.
For the development of the Project “Museum of Slavery in Lagos”, the Municipality will develop the adaptation works and arrangements, as well as the appropriate museology and museography actions, in collaboration with the Portuguese Committee of the UNESCO Project “The Slave Route” a implement in the Slave Market and in the Anel Verde Car Park.
Once the works are completed, the adaptation works, arrangements and museology and museography actions under the responsibility of the Municipality are completed and all the equipment is installed in the respective nuclei, these will be managed and maintained by the competent services of the municipality, with scientific supervision of the Portuguese Committee of the UNESCO Project “The Slave Route”.
The Protocol will be in force for a period of 10 years, being automatically renewed for successive and equal periods if it is not denounced, by either party, with at least 1 year in advance.
An exhibition is currently on display at Mercado de Escravos to explore, culturally, the connection between Lagos «dos Descobrimentos» and the history of the slave trade.
Historical data, reported in documentary sources and enriched by testimonies recovered in archaeological excavations carried out in the Anel Verde car park, are also disclosed.
This exhibition, which has the support of the UNESCO National Center and the UNESCO “Slave Route” Project, intends to show the insertion of slavery in the new economic context of the voyages of discovery of the West African coast to South of Bojador; the slave as a commodity (incorporated into everyday tasks but discarded without dignity); the fascination for the exotic in the daily life of the Lacobrigenses: evidenced in the taste for consuming and possessing new products and objects that transoceanic voyages allow [ceramics from the XNUMXth century. XV-XVI, from Spain, Italy, China,…] and the assimilation of black slaves by society at the time: baptism.
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