One of the things I really love sharing at Local Guides is places of memory. I´ve visited many of them in Brazil, Latin America or any other country I´ve visited in the last 22 years (my first trip abroad was in 1997).
I think all of us has a responsability with history to preserve the value of democracy that gives us freedom to speak and to be here freely, for instance.
I´m a heavy user of Google Maps and I´m a Local Guide Level 7, certainly a Level 8 by the occasion of Connect Live in San Jose, 2019.
I really believe that Google Maps and the community of Local Guides will help to preserve places of memory like the Memorial of Resistance (Memorial da Resistência), in São Paulo, Brazil, Auschwitz Concentration Camp, in Osviecim, Poland, or Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, DC, USA.
Those places tell stories and describing them well we can help people to find information useful to experiment good times visiting those places of memory, so important.
In Brazil, the last dictatorship dured from 1964 to 1985, and took away from the brazilians the right to vote for president, governor and mayor. 434 brazilians were dead by the state because of their political views, a non-exact number were arrested (a document recently found in Italy says it was more than 20,000 just in the first days) and thousands were tortured. More than 100 hundred are still missing and I work with federal prosecutors to try to find their bodies.
That´s why History is so important and that´s why I believe that Google Maps and the local guides community has the responsability to show more about Places of Memory and that´s why I devote my time to at least one of them at every trip I took, Brazil and abroad.
Some of those places of memory I´ve been too were listed in this list I´ve prepared in my Google Maps: https://www.google.com.br/maps/@2.315698,-68.9399226,3z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m3!11m2!2sUuHrzmX1JRWzZAx8aBGAb8_mqxbtiQ!3e3
And for my countrymen and foreigners that visit São Paulo I suggest to visit the Memorial of Resistance, in São Paulo, that tell the history of DOPS, a former political police department were many were arrested, tortured tortured and killed.
