Saberes y Prácticas. Experiencia de Revitalización del Patrimonio Vivo del Pueblo Macabeo en Ecuador

In Ecuador, until 2006, the notion of heritage policy emphasized the preservation and restoration of tangible and material assets. Institutional processes linked to safeguarding living heritage also saw the emergence of processes for the protection of intangible assets. This article describes the experience of systematizing ancestral knowledge and practices in the Ecuadorian Amazon, approached from the historical perspective of the Macabeo people and their characterization of the study site, memories, and oral traditions within the framework of their ritual and symbolic processes. The study aimed to record and catalog ancestral knowledge and its uses to determine processes for revitalizing living and intangible heritage. The analysis, understanding, and description of ancestral knowledge have a profound relationship between human beings and the land, human beings and nature, and human beings and the cosmos (Caillois, Man and the Sacred, 1984). There is a profound Andean-Amazonian worldview with dimensions of time and life that interpret the sacred and collective memory. For the study and research of ancestral knowledge, there are no clear and reliable methodologies that are relevant to our Ecuadorian context. Therefore, this study contributes to the human and social sciences a methodology for the systematization of knowledge, based on an ancestral and holistic perspective. The methodology developed in this research project consists of three phases: a literature review for the development of the conceptual framework, and documentary and procedural analysis. The second phase involved working with documentary sources, including council minutes, maps, plans and land scales, church archives, institutional documents, family albums, and available bibliography. The third phase involved scheduling personal interviews with qualified interlocutors, conducting focus groups, and engaging with Macabeo families to verify and compare the information, as well as sampling the vegetation of primary trees and shrubs. The fieldwork was carried out between 2006 and 2007 in the Morona Canton, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Systematization of Ancestral Knowledge (SISA) methodology was used to document ancestral knowledge. This methodology facilitated the integrated classification of knowledge and practices, encompassing spirituality; cultural territories; gastronomy, life strategies, and health; ancestral technologies; and orality and communication. This experience has enabled the identification and appreciation of initiatives for the social appropriation of living heritage, stemming from the perceptions, dynamics, and experiences of a specific group of people acting within a particular context and under specific circumstances. The main findings included reflections on the cultural revitalization process, framed within the ongoing concern for the experience of public policies concerning ancestral communities and the work of memory. The document also revealed the characte.