"¡Qué viva la mamita!": territoriality (ies), temporal thickness (es) and resistances in the practices of a group of devotees of the cult of Urkupiña in the city of Salta-Argentina

Abstract

The investigation focuses on the case study of a group of families who claim to be the owners of one of the oldest images to the Virgin of Urkupiñain the city of Salta - Argentina. The Marian invocation of Bolivian origin is celebrated, in the case analyzed, by novenas, processions and a party different from the worship rituals of the local Catholic Church. The differentiation process occurs in a double sense: spatially and in the celebration modalities. The work starts from studies in communication / culture in dialogue with contributions from sociology and the anthropology of beliefs to think that the experience analyzed weaves complex processes of territoriality and identification, which are constructed through negotiations / appropriations of devotional practices of Diverse cultural provenance - like the andean in general, the bolivian and the ´salteña´, in particular - where the temporal thickness of the practices makes possible to think the cultural heterogeneity. The inquiry seeks to understand the passage that occurs in a migrant cult that is appropriate / disputed in the Argentine Northwest.