Cuba promotes international recognition of cassava as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage

HAVANA, Cuba, Mar 6 (ACN) Cuba is participating in the preparation of the multinational dossier for the elaboration and traditional consumption of cassava, in order to present its candidacy to UNESCO's Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The document is the first of its kind in the Latin America, reported exclusively to the Cuban News Agency the Master of Science Angel Michel Aleaga Hung, Policy Specialist, from the Intangible Cultural Heritage Group.

He announced that it will be presented before March 31 at UNESCO, with the aim of going through the nomination period (2023-2025), in an initiative corresponding to the Dominican Republic and joined by Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras and Cuba.

The expert recalled that in the case of Cuba, cassava is considered a cultural manifestation that is geographically present with a strong historical component in six eastern Cuban provinces: Camagüey, Las Tunas, Holguin, Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo, although it is known and eaten in other localities.

Its elaboration process and traditional consumption has several patrimonial values and is preserved by the practice of men and women who are bearers of an aboriginal heritage that is maintained both in the countryside and in the cities, he said.

For Aleaga Hung, it constitutes an element of cultural resistance that has been safeguarded generation after generation.

It is a food with many properties that do not affect health or the environment, contribute to food security and good eating, and its production contributes to the economic livelihood of those who produce it.

If the manifestation is registered as intangible cultural heritage at this level, it would achieve greater visibility, respect and safeguarding, based on the recognition of the unity in diversity of each of the countries that have joined together for this purpose.