The Mercado Central de Abasto of Tucumán: A Focal Point of Heritage Disputes (1933–2014)

Abstract

The Mercado Central de Abasto of Tucumán, a fruit-and-vegetable market building inaugurated in 1933 in the neighborhood of La Ciudadela, in the city of San Miguel de Tucumán, became, from the moment of its incorporation into the urban fabric, the identity axis par excellence of the area. Playing a decisive role in the daily life of the neighborhood, the market generated a dense labor and social fabric shaped by its tireless commercial rhythm.

The cultural and historical density of the building, the meanings with which it was invested, and its significant aesthetic value contributed to its being declared part of the province’s Cultural Heritage in 1997, shortly before its closure, in order to safeguard its architectural structure as a testimony to the collective memory of the people of Tucumán.

Years later, the old Abasto building underwent architectural intervention, and the Central Tucumano shopping mall (2012) and the five-star Hilton Garden Inn hotel (2014) were built there. Nevertheless, the long period extending from 1997 to 2012 was marked by a complex web of economic interests, political decisions, and interventions by civil society that shaped the heritage treatment of this emblematic fruit-and-vegetable center. This process will be reconstructed through the analysis of discourses in the Tucumán print press during the period in question.

In this approach, I intend to reflect on the Mercado de Abasto as an architectural and cultural relic and to make evident its controversial process of patrimonialization. The use of this concept will allow us to adopt a perspective on heritage as a social construction linked to identity, and to assess the actors involved in this process, as well as the set of meanings, negotiations, disputes, and agreements they reached.