Appendixes 243point of stressing the pioneer role of Haiti and the value of the example set by its
struggles, which indissolubly linked together liberation from slavery and the winning
of political independence.
There is one other basic feature of the Caribbean to which I should like to
draw attention here. This is the welding into an original identity of the differing cultural
traditions coming from Africa and elsewhere. The old-time slave-traders were accus-
tomed to split up ethnic and linguistic units so as to dominate more easily the groups
subjected to the slave trade by reducing them to the single elementary status of slave.
However, by some miracle, despite this forced separation, a real cohesion survived.
This miracle is essentially that of culture, a community of culture. It was linked to
shared values and beliefs, and to religious, spiritual and artistic forms of expression
which made it possible to create a sense of common origin and active solidarity.
Thus, through this very uprooting, culturally integrated communities were created
all over again ; while they used borrowed languages, they none the less provided the
foundation for the awareness of a collective consciousness, which itself became the
basis for a will to common action.
This meeting will also have to take into account this cultural integration both
to understand the past with its independence and abolitionist movements and to
look into the future. Your meeting is indeed called upon at the end of its work to
frame practical plans for future action. The results of your work will primarily contri-
bute to the drafting of the chapters and sections concerning the slave trade in the
General History of'Africa. However, they should also open up new avenues of research,
including the organization of collective undertakings and the publication of books
intended for the general public, and works of reference. In this connection, I have
asked for a study to be made of the possibility of supplementing the Guide to the
Sources of the History of Africa series published under the auspices of Unesco, with
a publication on archival sources relating to the slave trade to be found in the Americas
and the Caribbean.
In addition, organized efforts to stimulate the collection of historical documents,
and the reproduction of texts which are difficult to find could supplement documen-
tation now available.
Your recommendations should also be directed towards strengthening Unesco 's
programmes concerning relations between Africa and the Caribbean and, I would
say, America in general. These programmes should, moreover, help to increase our
understanding of the way in which ethnic groups and peoples transported from dif-
ferent African regions were welded into a national community.
I have the intention of proposing, at the next session of the Unesco General
Conference, the convocation of a meeting of experts on the black African cultural
presence in the Americas and the Caribbean. It would be the purpose of such a
meeting to facilitate the framing of a research and cultural dissemination programme
on the African diaspora.
Arrangements are also being made to assemble and translate for publication
oral traditions transmitted in the African languages. At the same time the exchange
of information and cultural programmes, specialists and students, between Africa
and the African diaspora will be encouraged. This will contribute by the same token
to strengthening the bonds of solidarity existing between Africa and the peoples of