Diverse Approaches from a Participatory Perspective: The Experience of Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Church in Tabladitas (Jujuy, Argentina, Argentina)

The documentation, diagnosis, and intervention of historic earthen architecture require diverse strategies to understand the phenomena affecting it, its historical trajectory, and the social meanings superimposed over time. Recently, incorporating local communities into these processes through participatory methodologies has gained increasing relevance. However, the field of participatory conservation remains under discussion regarding its scope and the role of professional knowledge. This paper proposes that participation is not a methodology per se but a broad perspective that frames various methods. The experience between 2019 and 2022 with the Community of Tabladitas in conserving its nineteenth-century earthen church offers a fertile context for this analysis. At the community's request, a multi-faceted strategy based on a participatory approach was developed. This included (1) collaborative fieldwork in dialogue with historical documentation studies, (2) material characterisation in the laboratory, and (3) structural analysis through computational models based on the Finite Element Method. This strategy produced a consensual intervention project resulting from long-term collaboration. This paper addresses the strategy deployed, its various actions, and the implications of the participatory approach, considering the contradictions encountered during the project. Additionally, it will present and discuss concrete results from the dialogue between different actors, contributing to discussions in participatory conservation.