PROCESOS DE PATRIMONIALIZACIÓN, TURISMO DE BASE LOCAL Y SOSTENIBILIDAD. EL CASO DE EL CASTILLO (RÍO SAN JUAN, NICARAGUA)

Abstract

In recent decades we have witnessed important changes in heritage processes and in the evolution of the concept of heritage itself. The processes of heritage activation, previously confined to the work of technicians and academics, have been joined by new agents, from business groups to collectives belonging to social movements. In the Social Sciences there is a general consensus in conceiving heritage as a social construction and as a process, and there is also a convergence of the cultural and natural dimensions in its conceptualisation, with the notion of sustainability being incorporated in recent years. In this article we propose the use of the concept of socio-ecological resilience to analyse the extent to which heritage processes generate, maintain or undermine the sustainability of a socio-ecosystem. As an example of its operationalisation, we present the case of El Castillo, a locality in the south of Nicaragua, whose process can be defined as positive, since the heritageisation carried out and the development of locally based tourism based on the heritage elements has contributed to the strengthening of the factors that make up the social and, to a large extent, ecological resilience of this socio-ecosystem, thereby contributing to its socio-ecological sustainability.