Le Morne Cultural Landscape
Le Morne Cultural Landscape, a rugged mountain that juts into the Indian Ocean in the southwest of Mauritius was used as a shelter by runaway slaves, maroons, through the 18th and early years of the 19th centuries. Protected by the mountain’s isolated, wooded and almost inaccessible cliffs, the escaped slaves formed small settlements in the caves and on the summit of Le Morne. The oral traditions associated with the maroons, have made Le Morne a symbol of the slaves’ fight for freedom, their suffering, and their sacrifice, all of which have relevance to the countries from which the slaves came - the African mainland, Madagascar, India, and South-east Asia. Indeed, Mauritius, an important stopover in the eastern slave trade, also came to be known as the “Maroon republic” because of the large number of escaped slaves who lived on Le Morne Mountain.
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1259
Le Morne Cultural Landscape encompasses a natural fortress that was used as a retreat for escaping slaves in the 18th and early 19th century. These escapees (the maroons) took shelter in caves and on the mountain slopes of Le Morne Brabant. Now it is a spiritual sanctuary, with high symbolic value and oral traditions about the resistance to slavery.
The slaves on Mauritius came from throughout the Indian Ocean: Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique, India. They worked in the sugar industry.
The site is described as an associative cultural landscape, for its powerful cultural associations with the natural element rather than material cultural evidence. Its visual dimension is a crucial part of its importance. Le Morne is located on a peninsula, mostly surrounded by sea.
Le Morne is also known for the (untrue) legend "that slaves jumped off the mountain into death to escape from slavery".
http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/site.php?id=1259
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