The Costa Rican Cultural, Historical and Architectural Heritage: a Constitutional Debt

Abstract

The Article 89 of the Politic Constitution of Costa Rica is based on a Social State, not a Cultural State of Law. Culture refers to as a political and not a legal right, subject to protection, which seems to belittle the legal interests. In this line, the constitutional provision reflects the absence of a minimum conceptual core around heritage, whose protection is then diffused. This omission involves the reduction of an architectural historical value to an artistic one, limiting cultural interest in general and the architectural, specifically. In order to facilitate understanding of the (dark) regime tutelary existing provisions of the Law of Historical Heritage Architectural Nº7555 (1995) and Regulations (2005), the article reviews the legal concept of heritage in two directions: first, the constitutionalization of heritage cultural property (section A); second, the objectification of culture in general, and the historical architecture in particular, in the light of legal interest (section B). This examination allows delineate an integrative concept of cultural heritage and within this, the architectural history; which ultimately could favor their protection.