WILLEMSTAD - The collection of Elis Juliana and Father Paul Brenneker is fully digitized and online. A major achievement, because the documents were in a leaking shed for almost a century, where the paper was literally 'baked' and had suffered water damage. This is reported by the National Archives.
In the 1960s, the two anthropologists found a chest full of documents in a shed near the government plantation Dokterstuin/Pannekoek. It contained the operations of the plantation around the years of the abolition of slavery.
Unique documents that turned out to be the only decentralized plantation archive in Curaçao. A collection with great cultural-historical value, says the National Archives.
It was a government plantation, so it gave a good insight into government policy just after the abolition of slavery. In many ways, it provides a more dynamic picture than the static story of paga tera that would have been leading after the abolition.
The newsletter of the National Archives describes how the restoration of the documents has been approached.
The National Archives received the documents in the 1970s. The material state has not allowed the archives to be made available to researchers. That is why in 2016, when the new restorer, Valerie Martens-Monier, was appointed at the National Archives, this collection was given priority.
The archive, which according to the National Archives is of such obvious importance that it is likely to be recognized as Memory of the World, contains documentary heritage that is of importance to world history and of exceptional universal value to humanity.
Attention is paid to the authenticity of (original) documents, the relevance of the documents to the world, sustainable management and accessibility to the public.