The present text succintly exposes both the basis, rather theoretical and methodological, and the justification, mostly political,of a socio-anthropological research which purpose was to identify the immaterial cultural patrimony of Minas de Corrales, asmall town from the North of Uruguay. In the course of the research some deeply problematic issues emerged. Its formulationintends to generate a debate about the conditions of the attribution of patrimonial value to certain cultural objects and itsimplications, among those interested in cultural policies and patrimonial management as well as among those who have focusedcultural identity and its collective construction from an academic approach. In this aspect two questions are particularlydifficult to elucidate: to whom rightly belongs the power to define which cultural objects possess a patrimonial value? Basedon what criteria of epistemological pertinence and social legitimation someone –any individual such as oneself– can attributeto himself the power to establish which objects possess a patrimonial value and which ones do not.