Visible but not equal: state management of interfaith dialogue in two municipalities in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area

Abstract

This article analyzes how Interreligious Dialogue spaces promoted by municipal governments in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area shape representations of local religious diversity. Through a qualitative design, the cases of Merlo and Moreno are examined between 2018 and 2025, using participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and social media analysis. The results reveal two distinctive models: Merlo deploys an occasional congress format linked to a progressive political-social agenda influenced by Pope Francis's pontificate, where religious minorities obtain symbolic visibility but limited practical influence. Moreno implements a continuous assembly format that seeks territorial autonomy and greater horizontality, generating more substantive practices of interreligious coexistence, although with structural restrictions. Both cases show that municipal religious affairs offices actively construct categories of religious legitimacy, operating between diversity as symbolic recognition and pluralism as material equality, confirming unresolved tensions in local state management of religiosity.