Technical evolution of the colombian coffee cultural landscape: means of transport, industrial heritage and territorial structure

Abstract

The work highlights the role of the technical evolution of coffee growing and transport in the construction of the Colombian Coffee Cultural Landscape (CCL). Despite the fact that its UNESCO declaration (2011) has a group of attributes related to technical modernization, it ignores the territorial and patrimonial structuring value of road and technical networks, like the railway networks, that since the 19th century have sustained and modernized the coffee production structure. With the objective of putting the use/disuse of the railway in a historical context and evaluating in an interscalar way the ruptures and continuities that it generated in the territory, we propose four technical periods that range from the antioqueño colonization to the present (1870-2020). We analyze them diachronically based on the consultation of historical archives, interviews with local actors and urban surveys, evaluating the background and impacts of the railways at the regional (CCL), metropolitan (West Central Metropolitan Area -AMCO) and local scale. As a result, it is argued that the technique is a narrative element that allows identifying elements that shape a coffee industrial heritage, hitherto unknown in the CCL. This heritage has great potential to boost or hinder urbanization processes, conformation of peri-urban spaces and metropolitan and regional fabrics.