ABU DHABI – The tango, the religious processions during Holy Week in Popayan, Colombia, and a fertility dance performed by Indians in Mexico are among the new additions to UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Representatives of the 24 member states of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Heritage decided to include several dozen new items on the list at their meeting in Abu Dhabi.

The list assembled by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization includes customs, performances, expressions, knowledge and techniques that communities and groups recognize as integral parts of their cultural heritage, which is transmitted from one generation to the next.

The Committee agreed to place 76 new entries onto the list, including six from Latin America and others from countries such as China, Japan, Romania, Croatia and Spain, the latter of which saw the irrigators’ tribunals of its Mediterranean coast and the whistled language of La Gomera in the Canary Islands recognized.

The tango, presented by Argentina and Uruguay in a joint candidacy, “now familiar around the world, was developed by the urban lower classes in Buenos Aires and Montevideo in the Rio de la Plata basin,” according to a communique from UNESCO.

From Mexico, UNESCO recognized the places of memory and living traditions of the Otomi-Chichimecas people of Toliman: the Peña de Bernal.

Also included on the list was the ritual ceremony of the Voladores (“flying men”), “a fertility dance performed by several ethnic groups in Mexico and Central America, especially the Totonac people in the eastern state of Veracruz, to express respect for and harmony with the natural and spiritual worlds.”

From Colombia, the Committee included the Black and White Carnival, which arose from the native Andean and Hispanic traditions, “a great celebration” observed Dec. 28-Jan. 6 in the southwestern town of San Juan de Pasto.

The Committee will continue to meet until Oct. 2.

So far, there are 90 entries on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. EFE