Maria Fernanda Escallón is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Oregon. Her work has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Program and the Mellon Foundation. Before pursuing doctoral studies, she worked in sustainable development and heritage policy-making in Colombia.

• Preface; Introduction; 1. A new framework of legitimacy; 2. Institutionalizing heritage: bureaucracy, meritocracy, and expertise; 3. Heritage in the face of death; 4. Palenqueras and the trap of visibility; Epilogue; References.

'Becoming Heritage is a carefully designed and brilliantly executed multi-site ethnography. A power blind celebration of cultural difference diverts attention away from the harsh realities of racial and class domination, and transforms collective cultural solidarity into competition to manage and control cultural assets, a competition that positions the most privileged, educated, assimilated, and normative members of the community to speak for the group and derive the greatest benefits from its recognition.' George Lipsitz, author of The Possessive Investment in Whiteness