Materializing the Immaterial: Heritage Designations of Pasto's Black and White Carnival

This anthropological study describes how heritage designations for the Carnaval de Negros y Blancos in Pasto, Colombia—inscribed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage (2009)—have been leveraged as a means for touristic development and global recognition by different stakeholders. The process of acquiring heritage designations for the Carnival required multi-scalar negotiations that produced formal institutions to document and manage the event’s operations. In the post-designation era of the Carnival, local spectators and participants in Pasto have found new ways to navigate, understand, and engage with this heritage practice. Today, the Carnival has become part of a heritage-scape that has permitted its temporospatial scaling-up and cultural commercialization. Contemporary local debates about Carnival practices reveal local ambivalence as the Carnival represents both a source of pride and of discontent. The transformations produced by the heritage designations have additionally created alternate constructions of materiality within the event’s affiliated heritage and touristic practices.