Historical narrations are configured under the particular cover of the gaps between facts and reports of events. Despite these gaps, people participate in history as agents and narrators. This article provides a reflection on the public aspects of academic contributions that analyse the use of the past, memory and history of relationships of the inhabitants of the Magdalena river banks (Rio de la Patria) from an approach of historicity anchored in particular contexts, gaps and times. For some decades, Colombian academy has embraced discussions and interventions that nowadays could be categorized as public history. Interpretations that evidence the polyphony of the memory, the fluctuation of history and the formulation of new enquiries, research lines and forms of political intervention have been jointed and disjointed from those discussions.