The ethics of concealment: When preserving means not showing

Pedro Machado Mastrobuono

President of the Fundação Memorial da América Latina (São Paulo, Brazil) since 2023. Postdoctoral researcher in Social Anthropology at the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul(UFMS). Former president of the Instituto Brasileiro de Museus (IBRAM, 2019-2022).

There are places that require silence, not visiting. One of them is the Serranía de Chiribiquete National Natural Park, in the heart of the Colombian Amazon. There, tens of thousands of pictograms, located in a number of rock shelters, depict scenes of people hunting, dancing, taking part in rituals, and figures of jaguars. Rather than being archaeological remains, they are a living expression of a still vibrant cosmology, carefully guarded by peoples who have chosen to live in isolation.

In 2018, Chiribiquete was recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, in a category that incorporates natural and cultural sites that are particularly vulnerable. Colombia has transformed this recognition into public policy and reinforced the idea of 'sensitive heritage', which is an essential concept in current debates. Sensitive heritage must be known of, but not open to visits, accessible only through mediation material and in accordance with strict ethical protocols that cover consent and cultural security.

The concept of sensitive heritage, which is gradually being incorporated by UNESCO and ICOM, refers to sacred, symbolic or vulnerable assets that may not be explored or exhibited without risk of material or spiritual harm. In these cases, physical visits are replaced by several levels of digital access, always under the supervision of Indigenous technical committees involved in decision-making regarding the documentation, use and dissemination of images and information. Preserving does not only mean conserving an object, therefore, but also respecting the community's right to ensure that its memory is not viewed, displayed or commercialised.

This paradigm entails the concept of geoprivacy: the protection of location details, routes and metadata that might lead to the physical location of a heritage site. Geoprivacy prevents sacred or fragile areas from being tracked, violated or appropriated. In Colombia, preservation agencies have developed protocols that establish different levels of access (public, researcher and community) and require heritage impact studies before any images are released. Digitalisation does not mean providing open access, but sharing knowledge in an ethically responsible manner: the public has access to the records, not the territory. We learn to see without being invasive.

The jaguar on the Chiribiquete walls is portrayed as a foundational entity - a mediator between the human and the sacred, the axis around which the world is organised. It is not a decorative or mythological figure, but an active cosmological principle. By recognising it as a subject rather than an object, Colombian museology breaks with Eurocentric exhibition models and transforms curatorship into an act of listening, respect and protection.

These observations are also based on my recent institutional experience, which has involved dealing with the challenges of reconciling ethics, public policy and heritage preservation in complex Latin American contexts.

As a Brazilian researcher, it is impossible for me not to make comparisons with Brazil. In Colombia, the state explicitly recognises the principle of banning contact and visits in areas inhabited by isolated peoples, and all forms of dissemination are subject to governance committees and established ethical protocols. In Brazil, however, despite its vast amount of archaeological and Indigenous heritage, there are still no clear national guidelines on non-visitable heritage, geoprivacy or levels of digital access. While Colombia is institutionalising protection, Brazil, in many cases, has not yet really embraced the debate.

The precarious situation in Brazil is not only a matter of regulations; it is structural. There are still heritage committees in Brazil without specialists in archaeology or palaeontology and its members have little technical training, and a limited understanding of conservation as state policy. Despite having ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention against Illicit Trafficking in Cultural Property in 1973, there is little effective integration of research knowledge and public policy in Brazil, which compromises the safeguarding of extremely vulnerable assets.

As a member of ICOM, it is difficult not to feel a certain ethical unease at this gap between international debates and the institutional reality in Brazil. The case of Chiribiquete offers us lessons in methods and humility: it shows that preservation can also mean protecting the right for heritage to be left in peace, and recognises that there are memories that should not be displayed, but rather cared for.

Chiribiquete thus breaks important new ground in contemporary museology: heritage, here, is preserved by being left untouched. In times of overexposure and overconsumption of images, it reminds us that true modernity does not always consist of displaying more, but also of knowing when not to display. It should be remembered that preservation, ultimately, is also an act of protection.