Collection housed at Itamaraty is chosen as Memory of the World Latin America

The collection "Barão da Ponte Ribeiro: Latin American Identity Formation (1794-1884)" was registered by the selection committee of the Memory of the World Latin American Programme (MOWLAC) as a regional Memory of the World. The collection includes textual and cartographic documents assembled or produced by Barão Duarte da Ponte Ribeiro and is under the custody of the Center for Historical Documentation of Itamaraty, in Rio de Janeiro.

The Memory of the World Programme was created by Unesco in 1992 with the objective of assuring the preservation of documentary heritage with worldwide significance, assisting universal access to documentary heritage and increasing the dissemination of knowledge about the existence and significance of documentary heritage.

Duarte da Ponte Ribeiro was born in 1795. Doctor, diplomat and cartographer, he worked for Brazil in Spain – where he negotiated the recognition of the country's independence –, as well as in Portugal, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. His diplomatic work in the establishment of Brazilian borders is comparable to that of Alexandre de Gusmão in the colonial period and that of Barão do Rio Branco’s in the Brazilian republican era.

This is the 21st time that a Brazilian collection has been named Memory of the World Latin America since the creation of MOWLAC, in the year 2000.

Among the previously recorded registries are the West India Company Archives, the 1808 Decree on the Opening of Maritime Ports to Trade with Friendly Nations, the Oscar Niemeyer Fund, the Archive of the Indigenous Protection Services – SP, and the Committee Fund for the Defense of Human Rights of the Countries of the Southern Cone (CLAMOR).