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RI eyes tourist partnership as Tidore hosts Magellan event
Indonesia is hoping to establish a tourist partnership with 19 cities of seven countries that were passed by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during his voyages to promote tourism and the creative economies of the participating cities, an official has said
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span>Indonesia is hoping to establish a tourist partnership with 19 cities of seven countries that were passed by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during his voyages to promote tourism and the creative economies of the participating cities, an official has said.
Indonesia will host the 10th Global Network of Magellan Cities (GNMC) from Tuesday to Thursday in North Maluku’s Tidore, which was put on the map as part of the Spice Islands following Magellan’s visit to the region in around 1520.
Tidore is one of dozens of cities in the GNMC, a network initiated by Portugal and Spain. Other cities in the GNMC are Lisbon and Sabrosa in Portugal; Seville and Granadilla de Abona in Spain; Ushuaia, Puerto de San Julian and Puerto de Santa Cruz in Argentina; Montevideo, Uruguay; Punta Arenas and Porvenir in Chile; Cebu, the Philippines; and Praia, Cape Verde.
Each of the cities fall along the sailing routes of five ships led by Magellan, who was hired by the Spanish kingdom to look for spices to the west of Europe between 1519 and 1522.
Dino Kusnadi, the Indonesian Foreign Ministry’s director for Europe region I, said Jakarta hoped that the GNMC cities would produce a commitment to developing a partnership that brought about balanced benefits for all at the upcoming event in Tidore. The commitment is expected to be documented as the Maluku Declaration.
“We are hoping that through the GNMC, [the cities] can in the future establish beneficial cooperation for all nations in the fields of economy, socioculture and tourism,” he said after a GNMC pre-event seminar in Jakarta on Monday.
Tidore, along with the Foreign Ministry, would propose two main issues for cooperation: historical and cultural tourism and the creative economy.
In terms of cultural tourism, Dino said Tidore wanted to share with tourists its knowledge of how Magellan and Spanish explorer Juan Sebastián Elcano were able to convince the Tidore sultanate and the local people to engage in the spice trade.
The cooperation agreement is expected to also open up opportunities for the creative economy in Tidore, Dino said.
He said that while Spain and Portugal wanted the GNMC be a forum to showcase the two explorers’ contributions to science, Indonesia aimed to use the forum to “complete the history” behind the journey of Magellan and Elcano to Tidore.
“We need to straighten out and complete the historical narrative. This spice trade journey of Magellan has another side of domination and colonialism,” he said.
The journey, which reportedly brought 40 tons of nutmeg to of Spain, marked the start of colonialism by Western countries in Maluku, as well as in most parts of Indonesia.
Earlier in the seminar, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi emphasized that behind the nostalgia of the maritime spice route to Maluku, Indonesian ancestors had bitter memories of the era.
She said that the trade that occurred at that time was “not just merely a form of trade”.
Retno also used the seminar to call on European countries, particularly European Union members, to not make the same mistakes by discriminating against Indonesia in terms of palm oil trade.
“I ask the GNMC community for fair trade for the raw commodity,” she said.
