IN STEREO

Now, the importance of valuing [Potosí] as a historical heritage city: I believe what I said a while ago, that it has to be not only messages from the institutions that are in charge, but training the ordinary citizen. Because there are quite a few people who do not know why they are here in the city or what they are doing. There are many people who don’t know the same story that we should all know, so they completely disregard it. They don’t know and they do not take on the heritage value of what it is to live in this city. It’s fundamental because if the people are not educated, what’s the point of having certain labels? It serves no purpose. As long as there is this ignorance in the people who live here in the city, of the places considered patrimonial, there will always be a series of voluntary or involuntary attacks. It’s very different to be informed [than] to be educated. 

 

Being informed happens in the background, but when one is educated and has knowledge of what it is that this term ‘heritage’ actually involves, they can take precautions, take care of it, maintain it. There are other enviable cities, like Cuzco, for example. The people like us there have information and knowledge. Instead, here the patrimonial place is not being made. There are no authorities, there are no institutions that really care to generate that heritage feeling, so that people know what value this city has. Living in one of these houses, what a value it has. There are many people coming from abroad, to see. And they say that Potosí has been frozen in the colonial era, its infrastructure. The people here are living like ghosts because we do not know why we are living in this area.  – Luis