Starting from the contemporary debate on the perspective of 'anthropology of heritage', this paper explores the link between the developments of museography and of cultural heritage politics in Colombia, and the historical debate...
moreStarting from the contemporary debate on the perspective of 'anthropology of heritage', this paper explores the link between the developments of museography and of cultural heritage politics in Colombia, and the historical debate on this country's national identity. In Colombia - whose history and present days are marked by persisting deep conflicts -, regional differences, cultural and ethnic heterogeneity, the weakness of the legitimacy of the political elite, and the very limited degree of effectiveness of citizenship rights, make the recognition of the elements of internal diversity in the Nation State very difficult. In 1991, with the new political Constitution, the State officially abandoned the idea that Colombian national identity had to be founded on a process of mestizaje that should bring all the population to assimilate the values and cultural codes of the elites descended from Europe, and it finally adopted the principle that Colombia is a ' multicultural' and 'multiethnic' nation. Nevertheless, it has been noted that, especially in the case of indigenous and black minorities, the official acknowledgement of cultural and ethnic pluralism has been informed by a trend to conceptualize both identity and diversity, cultural as well as ethnic, in a reified, stereotyped and abstract way. This paper argues that such a logic operates in two, and, at first glance, distinct fields of the State politics: one related to citizenship rights, and another related to the identification and safeguard of all that constitutes the national cultural heritage, especially the 'intangible' one. Finally, it is questioned if and how the mainstream theoretical trends in social sciences in Colombia have been interacting with the construction of these two fields of political action.
