This Master thesis addresses the rearticulation of authority in cultural heritage within Brazil through international cooperation initiatives since 2008. More specifically, it elaborates an understanding on the engagement of the Institute of Historical and Artistic National Heritage (Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional, IPHAN, in Portuguese), the entity seen as responsible to define who determines the content of cultural national heritage and what should be preserved, within South-South cooperation initiatives. Initially, the following thesis explores the construction of this authority from the narratives that legitimize preservation practices and the destabilization of those at the beginning of the 1980s drawing from the democratization processes in Brazil. In the end of 20th century these processes open space for contestations towards the representation of the sacred cultural heritage, shaping the need to redesign the national identity, which has been forged by the cultural heritage policies. Next, the international debates within the UNESCO and the evolution of the topic of intangible heritage will be assessed as a strategy or necessary condition to rearticulate the Institute s heritage authority. Finally, the extension of the cultural heritage concept and the recognition of new cultural identities raise questions in terms of the correspondence between national identity and territory, problematizing IPHAN s authority. The thesis concludes that the international initiatives in cultural heritage management promoted by IPHAN contribute to the rearticulation of its heritage authority, because they allow through a new reading of the Brazilian s state territory, the reelaboration of the national identity, now recognized as heterogeneous and by its transnational spatiality.