The artistic-religious performances of the San Baltazar festival (Corrientes, Capital): characteristics and space-time transformation.

Abstract

The festival of San Baltazar began in the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata (17th century) when the Catholic Church and power groups offered enslaved Africans permission to perform native music and dances without being punished. For this, they had to create brotherhoods in honor of San Baltazar or San Benito de Palermo.

In 1994, in the city of Corrientes (Argentina), San Baltazar brotherhood was refounded to publicly honor him every January 5 and 6 in the Camba Cuá neighborhood, turning the public space into the scene of two artistic-religious performances called “Salute to the saints of the neighborhood” and “Torch Procession”.

Taking into account what was observed, interviewed and recorded photographically and audiovisually between the 2016 and 2020 editions, this article aims to understand, from the description of artistic-religious performances, how it is transformed from public space to sacred space. And, in this way, realize the important role that drums and percussionists have in establishing and transforming space-time from public/everyday to sacred during artistic-religious performances.