Photo: @DiazCanelB

Havana, May 18 (RHC)-- The Chapter Acts of the Havana City Hall were inscribed Thursday in the International Memory of the World Register and declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for their high historical value.

From the Jose Nicolas de Escalera Art Gallery, Grisel Terron, director of Museums of the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana (OHCH), said that the material is part of the Historical Archive of the entity that began as an active-administrative documentary set of the Acts of the Government of the city from that date to the present.

The specialist explained that in 1930, Emilio Roig, Havana's first historian, rescued those documents and founded the Archive, which had been abandoned and whose conditions improved under the tutelage of his disciple Eusebio Leal Spengler.

The file that was presented of the Proceedings to hold the title of Memory of the World covers 273 books from 1550 to 1898, but its volume is larger, he said.

He also said that the OHCH is proud of this distinction, given the importance that the largest of the Antilles had for the Spanish crown and its geographical position in the continent.

Yahima Esquivel, Cuba's permanent representative to Unesco, said in her Facebook profile that the inscription of both the Acts and the Cuban cinema posters -which obtained the same status- is of special importance for the nation and evidences the effort to strengthen the preservation and promotion of the country's documentary heritage.

Esquivel evoked Roig, Leal and Alfredo Guevara and thanked the teams of creators, graphic artists, curators and restorers who worked hard to achieve a goal such as the one achieved this Thursday before experts and the Executive Council of Unesco.

Both declarations are made public within the framework of the celebrations for International Museum Day on May 18.