Ambassador Moreno on Cultural Preservation Efforts

Carlos Moreno

Established in 2000, the U.S. Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation awards grants for the preservation of cultural sites, objects, collections and traditional forms of cultural expression, including music and dance, as well as language in more than a hundred and thirty countries globally.  Ambassador Moreno spoke of the AFCP and its benefits to Belize.

Carlos Moreno, U.S. Ambassador to Belize

“It’s a fund to preserve and protect cultural institutions and elements.  Here in Belize, a number of grants go back to, I believe, about 2003 and involved the preservation of Mayan sites although not exclusively.  I think one of the grants a number of years ago went to preserve the Government House, another one went to preserve an old sugar mill from the middle nineteenth century.  So I think that the purpose of the grant is to recognize that the countries in which the United States has an interest and usually by way of an embassy or consular’s office is interested in helping those countries preserve its rich cultural history.  In this case, the doctor says it’s more in line with preservation because as I understand it one of the principal elements of the project is to build a retaining wall to prevent further deterioration of the site.  I think that’s the primary goal.  Also as the doctor mentioned, the building of a fence to protect the site from vandals or, as I read in the proposal, they’ve been some limited instance of looting by vandals, cutting into the mounds to see if they found any shards or other artifacts and it’s essential that if you’re going to do an accurate and comprehensive accounting of what was there, who lived there and how do they get by on a day to day basis that an archaeologist has an accurate foundation upon which to build their assessment of what was actually there.”

In 2012, Belize benefited similarly with a grant of fifty thousand U.S. dollars for the conservation of ancient Maya ruins of Chetumal at the Santa Rita Archaeological Site.