THE CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE PUBLIC AGENDA OF LATIN AMERICA: A KEY ISSUE IN THE LATIN

LACARRIEU, MONICA

París

Congreso; Crossroads 2012; 2012

Association for Cultural Studies

During recent years, in a context where the transnational public agenda... the culture as a resource, Latin-American countries have placed cultural heritage at the center of the political scenario. Even though heritage was nodal at modern times and in the creation of states-nations ? the Brazilian case has been highly obvious in that sense -, it has recently become critical in many of our countries, not only in relation to cultural policies, but also to different key public policy issues as a whole. The heritage field expansion in Latin American has been accompanied by the emphasis given to policies that recognize cultural differences. From that point, there has been a turning point similar to what happened transnationally: While the historical and built heritage was a key factor at modernity, it is the intangible heritage that is acquiring more sense nowadays. However, we can briefly say that the different types of heritages have turned into political and management strategies: on the one hand, the architectural and historical heritage has turned into a resource of the urban requalification process, taking into consideration local spaces in capital cities, and also in small and middle cities; on the other, concomitantly with the emphasis given to interculturality recognition, intangible cultural heritage has become a support in negotiating otherness.   From the point of view of Argentina, we are interested in focusing on the emergence of cultural heritage as a political issue, not only as a tool to build identity and cultural - or "ways of life" - policies, but also as a resource of the political issue, in the most complex and integral sense of the term. The case of Colombia, self-defined, today, as a post-conflict country, is a paradigmatic example of the place given to heritage at present.