Arqueología y pensamiento local en Lípez (Potosí, Bolivia). “Historias de ruinas” y gestión integral del patrimonio cultural en la modernidad

Abstract

As a link between past and present, ruins play for human  groups an active role intheir reality representation, leaving their perceptions rationalized under a triple psycho­ social conflict of cultural identity, spatial ubiquity and temporal continuity. From this proposal, we broach in this paper the tourism incidence on heritage revalorization among Lípez Highland rural communities (Department of Potosí, Bolivia). Taking the communities of Santiago K and Santiago Chuvica and the Lakaya archaeological site as study case, we analyze heritage-tourism relationship from a local point of view, falling into the emic lecture of the progress concept that sees in the past a potentialcultural consumer good to be exploited from tourism = economical development equation. Considering different glances on ruins that are perceived by communities as of their own, we try to grasp the logic that guide its transformation in a tourist­ heritage product, where aesthetic, identity, mythic, psychosocial, spatial, and strategic points of view come together.