Chronicles of the river. Handicrafts and life in El Salto (La Rioja/Argentina)

Authors

  • María Elida Maza La Rioja Artisan Market Secretariat of Cultures Ministry of Tourism and Cultures of the Province of La Rioja, Argentina.

Abstract

In the south of the province of La Rioja (Argentina), inhabits a family that crafts various skills in the artisanal craft related to their way of life and ties with the territory, located in the mountains of Paraje El Salto (Depto. Gral. Juan Facundo Quiroga). Despite the complete accessibility to the region, the connection of the population and the urban centers, the family preserves its habits of rural life, where the artisanal craft (cloth, leather) coexists with the forms of organization for food production, education, connectivity, transportation, among others. Putting in context the multiple relationships that are established between the territory, the human, the non-human and the more than human, there are fundamental elements that determine the existence of crafts, reviving and transforming into new forms of production, intention, uses, technology. We were able to visualize this fabric of relationships through field work for the provincial registry of artisans and artisans of the Artesanal Market of the Secretariat of Cultures of La Rioja; noting the validity of techniques, processes and wisdom (knowledge), which were transmitted from generation to generation and which transcienden generational and residency changes.

Author Biography

María Elida Maza, La Rioja Artisan Market Secretariat of Cultures Ministry of Tourism and Cultures of the Province of La Rioja, Argentina.

She is a designer, cultural manager, dance teacher, poet and mother. With performance in the institutional field linked to the cultural sphere with a trajectory of 30 years. Currently, she is director of the Artesanal Market of La Rioja (2010) of the Secretariat of Cultures, Ministry of Tourism and Cultures. Technical labor training in the Crafts Area, in the Directorate of Cultural Innovation, in the Directorate of the Craft Market and All Culture Space, Provincial Culture Secretariat. In the institutional field, it promotes the validity of a clear, stable and respectable system of cultural rights that contributes to the sector's growth process, giving answers to the challenges that arise, intervening actively and strategically in the field of management following artisanal development. In her role as cultural manager, she intervenes in the planning, design, development, investigation and implementation of comprehensive programs aimed at the artisanal community with a territorial perspective, in terms of promotion, preservation, strengthening and diffusion of the artisanal crafts of the province. He is responsible for the administration of the financial fund of the Artesanal Market, he has carried out consultancy work, jury, dictation of workshops and charlas.

Downloads

Published

2026-01-31

How to Cite

Maza, M. E. (2026). Chronicles of the river. Handicrafts and life in El Salto (La Rioja/Argentina). Memorias Disidentes. Revista De Estudios críticos Del Patrimonio, Archivos Y Memorias, 3(5), 265–277. Retrieved from https://ojs.unsj.edu.ar/index.php/Mdis/article/view/1452

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 5 (2026): Handicrafts. Sensitive art from the margins

Section

Lenguajes Instituyentes

License

Copyright (c) 2026 María Elida Maza

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

  • ícono licencia by-nc-sa


  • The authors retain the rights of autxr and assign to the journal the right to first publication of the work, registered under the Creative Commons attribution license, which allows third parties to use what is published as long as they mention the authorship of the work and the first publication in this journal.

  • Authors may make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (for example, including it in an institutional repository) as long as they clearly indicate that the work was first published in this journal.

  • The authors grant any third party the right to share and use the article (for non-commercial purposes), provided that the original authors and the citation of the version published in this journal are identified.