ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores how notions and uses of heritage are transformed and act as transformers of the current cultural regimes in Latin America, especially in neoliberal and post-neoliberal contexts. It investigates the relevance of the politics of heritage and the uses of memory in the consolidation of the nation-states, as well as in the current disputes over resistances, hidden memories, undermined pasts, or the politics of nostalgia. The book also seeks to seize the local/global dimensions around heritage with the intervention of UNESCO and other agents. It addresses the problem of heritage linked to diversity, difference, and differentiation as historical, contextual, and political complex phenomena. The book points out the relational character of heritage focusing on transnational and translocal flows and interchanges of ideas, concepts, and practices, and on the creation of contact zones where the meaning of heritage is negotiated and contested.
