While exploring the literature available about the Pastos people, this paper describes the alleged tensions between academic narratives and oral history. This paper argues the existence of "politics of memory" within chronicles, essays, papers, books, dissertations, and other sources written about the subject. However, from the author´s point of view, this literature dives into a permanent dialogue with other non-official narratives, being answered, subverted and resignified by the same people it represents. Throughout the article, several narratives collected during ethnographic fieldwork carried out by the autor together with members of the Pastos community, show that oral history is one of the crucially important non -official narratives for the history and memory of their people.