Paper short abstract:

My paper revolves around the contradictory mechanism of mobilizing heritage by dominant nation-state narratives and re-emergent indigenous communities in Argentina.Tensions between 'authenticity', culture, tradition and art are highlighted through combined ethnographic and archaeological analysis.

Paper long abstract:

Following the 2001 economic crisis, Argentinean society was shaken in its very foundation as a homogeneous modern nation and forced to turn its nostalgic sight to cultural links to the rest of the continent. The 2003 inclusion of the Quebrada of Humahuaca in northwestern Argentina on the World Heritage List, turned this, once-marginal, region of the nation-state imaginary into a cornerstone of reconfiguring the very notion of the Argentinean self as part of the larger scenario that conforms to Latin America. Through a combined use of archaeological, historical and ethnographic methods, my work elaborates on the argument that the construction of heritage constitutes a new arena of contention in which different interests are at stake. In addition to the state and global interests aiming to capitalize on 'difference' as part of new economic alternatives prompted by tourism and heritage industries, this 'heritage fever' also constitutes a platform for the re-emergence of indigenous communities keen to challenge historical exclusion through cultural re-vindication while claiming to be part of a cosmopolitan, dynamic and changing world. I contend that the contradictions and dissonances observed in the different strategies manifested in the display of material culture (art, craft, architecture) expressions and performative aspects (pilgrimages, rituals, deeds), blur the binaries commonly related to notions of heritage, craft and art, and also bring the concepts of modernity and tradition under a new light.