Leticia Cultural Center

The Banco de la República Cultural Center in Leticia is a place for research, encounters, and discussion on the anthropological, artistic, and cultural knowledge of the Amazon. Both the socioeconomic and geopolitical factors that characterize the city of Leticia and its cultural richness as the meeting point of diverse indigenous and mestizo ethnic groups from Colombia, Brazil, and Peru, mean that the region contains invaluable cultural heritage that we seek to recover, preserve, strengthen, and share through the cultural programming and services of the Cultural Center.

The cultural activity of Banco de la República in Leticia revolves around four lines of work: library service, museum service, music, and visual arts. One of its spaces is the Ethnographic Museum, an important cultural and anthropological research epicenter in the region. It also has a general library, a children's room, and a specialized room, the Amazon room, whose documentary collection on the region's cultural heritage includes a wide selection of books in Spanish, Portuguese, and the indigenous languages of the Amazon.

The Ethnographic Museum, library, and Amazon room offer services for all types of audiences. The collection of the Ethnographic Museum is outstanding. It includes pieces, panels, and videos that are exhibited in the corridors, halls, and gardens of the cultural center, as well as an indigenous medicinal plant garden that displays some of the natural and cultural wealth of the region.

History

The Banco de la República Cultural Center in Leticia has been in operation for 25 years, during which it has continuously offered varied programming of a very high caliber. However, in 2011 the Cultural Center registered a total of 109,032 visits, so a decision was made for the Cultural Center’s services and spaces to be expanded and improved.

In 2015, a plan for the Cultural Center’s new direction was developed. Architectural plans for expansion and improvement of the physical infrastructure and the relocation of objects (ethnographic, archaeological and audiovisual material) were drawn up. The collection was also expanded with archaeological objects and graphic and multimedia material in addition to the existing ethnographic pieces. In addition, scientific-academic textual support was developed for the collection, containing not only a description of the pieces but also an account that brings visitors closer to the geopolitical, environmental, economic, and historical particularities of the Amazon region.

On November 30, 2015, the new Ethnographic Museum and the new infrastructure of the Cultural Center were inaugurated by Banco de la República’s general manager José Darío Uribe, co-directors Carlos Gustavo Cano and César Vallejo, the director of the Gold Museum, María Alicia Uribe, and the branch manager, Clara Gabriela Marín, accompanied by the group of branch employees, representatives of the indigenous societies of the Amazon, local and national journalists, authorities from Leticia and Brazil, and users of cultural services. More than one hundred people attended the event, which launched a two-year process involving the community and led by the Gold Museum and anthropologist Roberto Pineda. The result is a space that fosters cultural encounters among the residents of Leticia, indigenous people, farmers, and people of African descent in the region.