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“Gold has less fame than carnivals in El Callao" says Benito Irady, perhaps the most active, consistent and successful advocate of Venezuelan cultural diversity. "The secret in the preservation of traditions lies in feeling the collective as own.”
With some fifty years dedicated to the investigation, promotion and rescue of the most representative and symbolic of the national identity, he has been presiding over the Foundation Center of Cultural Diversity of Venezuela for 12 years. There he has managed to achieve the unprecedented result of inscribing, in five consecutive almanacs, equal number of manifestations in the selective list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, sponsored by Unesco.
The appointment of El Callao Carnival this December, along with the Cuban rumba, the Dominican merengue and the Mexican charrería, maintained that uninterrupted sequence of inscriptions initiated in 2012 with the dancing devils of Venezuela.
“El Callao is a town in the state of Bolivar, consisting mainly of descendants of slaves who came to the gold mines from the islands of the Antilles, and generally from four continents. Precisely this is the great value: the extraordinary mixture of customs synthesized in a festive representation, its carnivals” explains Irady.
The declaration makes Venezuela the first country in the continent that, in a short period of five years, has been able to incorporate the elements of national culture into the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The entry of significant expressions in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, as Benito said, represents “a real national challenge.”
“The challenge is not that a tradition is declared a World Heritage, but the commitment that represents the preservation of the manifestation in time for the State”. It is“confirmation that this country understands well that its heritage is the melting pot of cultural diversity”.