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Panel 12. Paper 12.3: El Camino Tierra Adentro as a rural landscape

Abstract
Camino Real de Tierra Adentro was the Royal Inland Road, also known as the Silver Route. The inscribed property consists of 55 sites and five existing World Heritage sites lying along a 1400 km section of this 2600 km route, that extends north from Mexico City to Texas and New Mexico, United States of America. The route was actively used as a trade route for 300 years, from the mid-16th to the 19th centuries, mainly for transporting silver extracted from the mines of Zacatecas, Guanajuato, and San Luis Potosí, and mercury imported from Europe. Although it is a route that was motivated and consolidated by the mining industry, it also fostered the creation of social, cultural and religious links in particular between Spanish and Amerindian cultures. Nominated by the UNESCO criteria II and IV, is the first and biggest continental rout of America which incorporates 11 States of the Mexican Republic, and its road goes deep through the relief of Mexico organized around a large central plateau and a high plateau . The caravan of carts that every three years undertook the journey of six months along the Camino Real to carry and transporting silver and mercury . The same fabrics as perishable foodstuffs, new settlers, animals, tools, seeds, and provisions. Should cross an average altitude of about 1,000 meters, in general, it loses height from south to north, until it reaches the Rio Grande Valley. It can be divided into two parts, around parallel 23. Thus, the southern area is higher, with about 2,000 meters of average altitude, and much more mountainous, having transversal saws. The northern sector descends gradually from 1,500 meters of altitude and is much flatter. The Altiplano is closed to the west by the Sierra Madre Occidental and to the east by the Sierra Madre Oriental. To the south, it ends at the volcanic axis, which crosses the country from east to west. Along the crossing we can find a lot of rural landscapes that inextricably combines the material and immaterial aspects of the concept, often thought separately, such as prehistoric mural paintings, mining industries, vernacular housing, food production, connectivity, equipment and contemporary infrastructure and development issues accompanied by traditions, religious pilgrimages, sacred places, historical bridges, with lot of historical testimonies such as the evangelization process or the main battles during the independence, reform, or revolution armed movements and wars. Each one fructifies not only with political changes in Mexico but mainly with contemporary cities, prosperity, demographic increase, contemporary urban living styles, new architectures and different uses to construction techniques and materials. Let us indicate the risks of significant interactions between man and the natural environment as a transversal methodological challenge supported on 300 years that represents a real matter for conservation, managing and safeguard as well as political interaction between geographic States, territories and different stakeholders, local communities, heritage specialists or some other social identities or private and governmental institutions. As an …” integrated, interdisciplinary and shared framework creates new relationships among them by means of an innovative scientific perspective that provides a multilateral, more complete, and more accurate vision of history. As a model for a new ethics of conservation that considers these values as a common heritage that goes beyond national borders, and which requires joint efforts…” (Charts of Cultural Itinerary). The framework of the rural landscape along the road is the guide to reconsider the character of the conservation of an entire territory. An entire public politic of rural daily lifestyles and quality of life between north and south. The way those palimpsests let us understand the way cultures of productivity and entrepreneurship can be introduced for recovering the best uses and practices to guide a sustainable process of management integration of industrialization of agricultural production and competition from world markets are revolutionizing traditional social and economic relations with the land. Preventing the way Heritage as a strong column of sustainable goals (SDG) most reduces the pressures and threats of urban globalization as the greatest risks to rural landscapes and the balance between man and nature as a whole transversal and multifactorial issue.
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