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Preface IntersectingValues in Caribbean Heritage Preservation Peter E. Siegel Dictionary definitions of heritage include: “1: property that descends to an heir; 2 a: something transmitted by or acquired from a predecessor: Legacy, Inheritance; b: Tradition 3: something possessed as a result of one’s natural situation or birth:birthright” (Merriam-Webster 2003:582).This broad definition may apply to individuals,families,communities,towns,cities,nations, and blocks of nations. Homo erectus remains and associated artifacts might be thought of as humanity’s collective heritage. “Heritage is at once global and local” (Carman 2002:11).We may also distinguish between cultural and natural heritage. Cultural heritage might be easier to characterize as cultural compared to something that is exclusively natural. If natural heritage signifies a landscape or environment that has not been imprinted with a trace of humanity or culture then it may be an ideal or elusive concept, at least for the last 300,000 years or so, depending on what part of the planet we’re talking about. Thus the discipline of historical ecology explicitly investigates the synergy between human culture and physical environment (Balée 1998; Crumley 1994;Redman 1999).Heritage enters into this enterprise when we understand that people look to their past, real or imagined, as it may be inscribed on the landscape and which is a powerful device for cultural identification (Anico and Peralta 2009). That said,we do not live in a static world.Ideas about how we view,define, and manage heritage change with shifting societal values and needs. People and communities don’t have monolithic views about how to view or value heritage. One group’s revered past may be another’s oppression. Look at the Euro-American myth “how the American West was won” and the Native American reality “how the American West was lost.” Sharon Macdonald referred to “unsettling,competing or contested,memories,narratives and heritage ” (Macdonald 2009:93). Conflicting views of the past may have real implications for how we treat that past or whether we even want to preserve viii / Peter E. Siegel it. A prime example of this conflict is currently being played out on Trinidad .Trinidad gained independence from England in 1962.“Seen through the prism of independence politics [the British architecture in Port of Spain] became symbols of an unpleasant past, with negative associations with slavery and colonialism” (Shaftel 2008:D8).As such, much of this historic architecture has been demolished and replaced with drab office buildings and stores. So here’s a twist on heritage management:If the heritage we’re talking about relates to a painful past of colonial oppression then there may be incentive not to preserve or protect it and in fact to demolish it by neglect or removal. Reg Murphy (this volume) makes the same point in regard to British colonial architecture on Antigua and Barbuda. He observed that to modern Antiguans ,heritage that is looked on favorably includes “music,food,and carnival .”Values associated with heritage result in such notions as Afro-Caribbean is the “good” heritage,worthy of preservation,whereas vestiges of the colonial past constitute the “bad” heritage,deserving to be excised from the landscape and eventually from memory. An alternative perspective might be to passionately preserve those symbols of a horrendous past, lest we forget what happened. Look at Nazi Germany and the gas chambers and crematoria that vaporized six million Jews (Macdonald 2009).“Without reconstructive and preventive efforts,these evidences of the evils of indifference and intolerance might be lost for future generations, taking their lessons into oblivion with them” (Samen 2009:17– 18). The current president of Iran would applaud and even recommend acceleration of such oblivion.You can be sure that the State of Israel and Jews around the world will make sure that those edifices of extirpation will not be destroyed; they are heritage and paraphrasing the dictionary are properties that descend to their heirs. In the Nazi case, the heirs of that heritage are both the descendants of the murderers and the victims. Heritage is intimately linked to the core of community. And communities are diverse, frequently consisting of multivocal constituents. Every human group or subset thereof has a past in which fundamental values and notions of identification are centered. Issues of great importance in community organization and structure that link past to present include in- and out-migration of distinct ethnic groups;commingling and merging of ethnic groups resulting in new social formations; and social, economic, and political inequalities. Individual...

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