URBAN IMAGINARY AND CULTURAL PRACTICES: THE CASE POPAYÁN IN COLOMBIA

O CASO DE POPAYÁN, NA COLÔMBIA

Abstract

This text, from an interdisciplinary perspectiva, involving studies of the imaginary and cultural geography, seeks to generate an ontological-epistemic discussion related to change social, from theoretical perspective that no longer believes in trascendental determinisms to explain these changes. Rather, we seek to undestand social changes as something symbolically emerges froms imaginaries and pratice that historically and spatially situated societes created for themselves taking into account both memories and social spaces amidts power relations and it a scenario of contestation ower meaning. We will take as a case in point what happened in the city of Popayán, Colombia, when members of the Misak indigenous of community topple the statue of the city´  s founder, the spaniard  Sebastián of Belálcazar from its pedestal in a public space. This was an unprecedented situation in Popayán give the Hispanic and Catholic cultural hegemony that predominates in the city.