What is the future for a past that nobody claims? Options for the Paramaribo World Heritage Site

Abstract eng:
Important heritage sites are often subject to multiple claims but it is also possible that major sites, designated on the basis of the perceived intrinsic values of the resources involved, may be claimed by nobody. This paper describes one such situation, explains the absence of claims upon the heritage, traces the consequences of this deficiency and speculates on future scenarios. In 2002 UNESCO inscribed the whole central area of Paramaribo, Suriname on the world heritage list as ‘a unique example of the contact between the European culture of the Netherlands and the indigenous cultures and environment of South America in the years of intensive colonization of this region in the 16th and 17th centuries.’ Paramaribo, the capital of Suriname was founded by the Dutch West Indies Company in 1614 and developed to exploit the inland sugar and coffee plantation economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. The result is a compact inner city comprising 250 designated historic monuments.The lack of claim stems from the exclave/enclave nature of the heritage (i.e. the heritage of one people in the territory of another), compounded by two characteristics of this heritage, namely its associations with colonialism and slavery. The ethnic groups that comprise the population of modern Suriname have historical, spatial and political reasons not to claim a heritage with which they do not identify and which does not contribute to, and even distracts from, the nationbuilding task of contemporary multi-ethnic Suriname. Those who built it and for whom it was built (the Dutch) are also reluctant to claim it. The consequences of this lack of claim is neglect, physical decay, some demolition, vacancy, an absence of effective management structures and a weakly developed heritage tourism. Concern about the deterioration of the heritage resource led ICOMOS in 2013 to threaten advise the world heritage committee of UNESCO to delist the site if the current situation continues. Salvation depends upon either local action through the establishment of an effective and adequately funded management structure, which is unlikely for both economic and political reasons (including the personal aversion of the current President) or by external intervention. The most obvious external claim would be from the Dutch and indeed Dutch public and private agencies have financed some restoration projects and given technical assistance, including to the original WHS application. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands includes Suriname as a priority area in its ‘mutual heritage’ programme. However external intervention is limited by the absence of popular interest in the Netherlands, especially as manifested through heritage tourism, by the reluctance of Suriname to compromise its decision-making authority and by the post-colonial sensitivities on both sides. This case has unique, even extreme, elements but has also a wider relevance to post-colonial exclave heritage and more generally to the dissonant heritage of the North Atlantic slave trade in many other places. There are comparable situations in many ex-colonial states engaging in a nation-building agenda for which the colonial heritage is at best irrelevant and at worst contradictory, raising questions of sovereignty, self-image, extra-territoriality and coming to terms with unattractive or currently unacceptable pasts.

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