In the Andean context, the multiple voices, experiences, stories, and colonial past are fundamental to understanding how people (re)exist and create meaning-making cultural heritage. The existence of multiple voices in (re)existences implies recognizing the contradictions and dissonances part of the identification and heritage meaning-making. This presentation reflects on the ethnographic-based research I conducted in the southern Ecuadorian Andes in a kichwa indigenous community in Saraguro canton and a historic urban neighborhood in Cuenca. In the face of institutionalized instrumentalization of heritage, the lessons from local experiences show how heritage meaning is a constant dispute and negotiation process. The tensions result from different collectives and standpoints claiming heritage are, in fact, the strength of heritage as a catalyst for discussion and reflective creative processes and changes. I argue that heritage relevance relies on social cohesion, the political dimensions of identity claims, and the creation and reinvention of cultural referents. In the fieldwork, people experience and explain heritage imaginaries that emerge from creation processes as part of a reflexive continuity of traditions. I developed the previous reflection based on two examples: the celebration of Inti Raymi in a Saraguro indigenous community that shows how the modern and the ancestral are articulated, allowing identification processes from the different ways of living and being indigenous Saraguro. The second example is La Pasada del Divino Diablito (Divine Little Devil Parade) in a Cuenca. This shows how urban identities also seek to challenge conservative and traditional representations of the city and where cultural productions like this transgress and cause disagreement about how tradition is represented. I find a similarity between the creation of Inti Raymi and La Pasada del Divido Diablito. Both are initiatives by groups of young artists who challenge conservative positions and seek new ways to reaffirm their identity and represent heritage.