Uruguay’s carnival museum documentation center renovated with CAF support

(Montevideo, Nov. 1, 2012). CAF –development bank of Latin America– and Uruguay’s Carnival Museum launched the museum’s Documentation Center: History and Memory of a Popular Festival, a joint project that contributes to the rescue, preservation and promotion of the nation’s cultural heritage through research and recovery of the carnival’s living tradition as a popular feast and the community development it fosters. This presentation finalizes the first stage in the consolidation process of the documentation center, created in 2009 and which CAF has supported since 2011.

During the event, books based on research conducted during this project were also presented, including Tablado de Barrio: Estirpe de una Fiesta; and Curtidores de Hongos: Misteriosa Leyenda. The exhibit Un siglo curtiendo murga was inaugurated on this occasion.

CAF Director Representative in Uruguay, Gladis Genua, said, “We are immensely pleased to contribute to the preservation of one of Uruguay’s most deeply rooted cultural traditions such as the carnival, as through it we are reaffirming our commitment to social and community development as well as to a nation’s identity.”

Carnival Museum Manager Graciela Michelini said, “Today is a day of celebration, because we're completing six years, and closing a stage in which we have achieved everything we intended.” In reference to CAF, Michelini said, “For the museum, it has been extremely important to find someone who believed that it mattered to cooperate with our country, with our city, with the work the museum is doing about the feast.”

The Documentation Centre is available on www.museodelcarnaval.org and it seeks to collect materials on Uruguayan carnival’s history and present. It was made possible by digitalizing materials belonging to the museum's collection and other donations, in order to improve the Center for Documentation and Research infrastructure and services.

Montevideo Mayor Ana Olivera said, “This place combines identity, creativity, future, present and past,” and “the political will of three institutions that have been working for the development of this initiative and that have had continuity beyond term changes.” The mayor closed her speech describing the museum as “a living place” that permanently offers activities.

Both the exhibit Un siglo curtiendo murga and the book Curtidores de Hongos: Misteriosa Leyenda are the result of research led by historian Milita Alfaro at the head of a team of researchers, documentalists, digitalizers and communicators about the 100 years of history of the Curtidores de Hongos “murga,” the name given to a special type of South American Carnival music band.

Tablado de Barrio: Estirpe de una Fiesta, a book by journalist Guzmán Ramos, is the result of research focused on the recovery of tradition in Montevideo’s Escenarios Populares (Popular Stages) and the work the museum jointly carries out with them.

Attendees at the event also included officials from the Carnival Museum, Carnival and Popular Entertainment Directors Guild (DAECPU, by its Spanish acronym), Departmental Board Chair Gloria Benítez, National Development Corporation President Adriana Rodríguez, as well as other officials and personalities.