City and heritage: practices and tensions in the historic center of San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina (1990-2019)

Abstract

The historic center of San Miguel de Tucumán is made up of the founding area (1685) and the expansion area (1872). In total, it brings together 252 blocks that concentrate the largest number of expressions of the local architectural and urban heritage and, as a palimpsest, the traces of the founding grid, the nineteenth-century urban interventions and the imprint of the constructions of the XIX century are still being read. However, over the last decades of the twentieth century, notes of modernity have been manifested, producing deep tensions. In a pluritemporal environment, the coexistence of the historic center with the central area finds a paradoxical condition, permanence and change, in a scenario of constant tension as in most of its Latin American peers. This image enables us to reflect on the complexity of the heritage approach nowadays.In the 1990s, the Institute of History (FAU-UNT) made a significant contribution that provided, among other topics, technical-legal bases for the protection of heritage. The results obtained marked the pulse of heritage in the city and even after more than 20 years its footprints remain.On the basis of this methodological and normative construction, an in-depth study is carried out from the historical-heritage perspective. The lines of these ideas-actions in the evolution of the city are analyzed and different notions are recovered and expanded, allowing to interpret the conflicts and opportunities along the processes of change and transformation, exposing their tensions and divergences, as well as its safeguard mechanisms.