| Popis: |
This article discusses the distinct perceptions of crime, justice and heritage concerning the collection of Afrobrazilian sacred items during their constitution, patrimonialisation, restitution dispute, and final restitution, which is a case of heritage return within a State. The collection belongs to the Civil Police Museum in Rio de Janeiro and was recently transferred to the Museum of the Republic, in a State reparation towards the Afrobrazilian religions. Based on criminology, decolonial studies, and heritage studies, this text analyses the values attributed to the collection across time and how their changes help to explain the collection’s trajectory: from an initial juridical perspective of crime present in the objects, that were crime proofs, to a final perspective of crime based on the deviance and social injury in the State institutional racism, and of breach of law in the State heritage negligence; from colonial justice, where descendants of the colonisers criminalise the objects and practices of descendants of the colonised and enslaved, to decolonial justice, which acknowledges and repairs this oppression; from an understanding of heritage anchored in property to one that stems from cultural value and rights. The article concludes that these shifts in understanding made restitution possible, when they were translated into an institutional language, pointing to a significant State legalism in this internal heritage return. |
