Heritage studies have recently adopted a dichotomic perspective in which State-sponsored heritage management and the will of communities are contradictory. This approach understands cultural heritage as an object-discourse used for hegemonic purposes, not as the result of the existing social relations, failing thus to understand it as a process. In this article we will use the case of Qhapaq Ñan to illustrate this conceptual discussion underlying the management of cultural heritage. We will discuss how recent academic publications discuss the topic of Qhapaq Ñan from the perspective of a discourse created by the State that allows its authors to claim to be the interlocutors of the communities, consciously or unconsciously. Then, we will discuss a conception of heritage as a space for social negotiation that precedes official discourses. Finally, we propose that the management of Qhapaq Ñan should be understood as the need to ensure the democratic participation of all the actors involved, without imposing views -as academics or heritage managers-, allowing the actors to have their own voice. Thus, the Qhapaq Ñan can become a dynamic space that facilitates the social recomposition and democratization oriented to co-management policies of the space.