https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/extart?codigo=6984130

This article focuses on the conflicts surrounding two important intangible cultural heritage declarations in the Colombian Caribbean, which impact on the political and cultural processes of the Arhuaco people: firstly, the ‘Traditional Vallenato music of the Greater Magdalena region’ which was inscribed on the UNESCO list as in need of urgent safeguarding in 2015; and, secondly, the inclusion of the Ancestral Knowledge System of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on Colombia’s national-level representative list of intangible cultural heritage in 2017. These two declarations take the form of legal and political mechanisms aimed at protecting and promoting these practices and cultural expressions. But, at the same time, they also constitute complex and subtle forms of ethnic and generational exclusion that hinder the processes by which both Arhuaco ancestral knowledge and traditional Vallenato music of the Colombian Caribbean are strengthened, acquired and promoted.