The purpose of this article is to study the creation and operation of the Municipal Historical Museum "Brigadier General Don Juan Manuel de Rosas", located in La Matanza, province of Buenos Aires, from its inception in the 1960s until 2008. It poses questions about the actions of the parties involved in the heritage development process through three dimensions: the discourse, the practice and the usage. Applying the methodology of qualitative content analysis, local periodicals articles, decrees and ordinances, files from the National Commission of Monuments, Places and Historical Property, and documents from the museum's registry have been used. From a discourse perspective, the recovery of the site draws on the building appraisal, different from the one that resulted on its declaration as a National Historic Monument in 1942. The value of the property as an antiquity was replaced by its linkage to the figure of Juan Manuel de Rosas. Regarding the parties and their practices, on one hand, the neighbors who acted acquired, in the process, a social place of influence, established power relationships, legitimacy and local prestige in the cultural field in general, and in the historiographic field in particular. On the other hand, the municipal government actively participated in the recovery of the site and, the dictatorial and democratic contexts, marked different political usages for the building. There was a big divergence between the usage and the discourse of appropriation and conservation of the site and the real condition of the property during the period covered.