Toward a Methodological Framework for Cultural/Religious Performances: The Case of El Señor de Quillacas

Abstract

This paper seeks to address the religious festivity in honor of the Señor de Quillacas, held in the city of San Salvador de Jujuy. The religious performance presented here is a celebration dedicated to the patron saint of a locality in Oruro, Bolivia, where it has been celebrated for approximately two centuries. In the city of San Salvador de Jujuy, the image of the Señor de Quillacas studied here dates back to 1922.

We consider it highly important to present this celebration, since it shows how the members of a faith group display their culture and identity in a context that, at times, proves adverse to certain manifestations related to Bolivian migrant identity. In turn, the religious celebration reveals how a large-scale symbolic form—such as the festivity—accounts for both the intra-group and extra-group relations established by the group of devotees at a given moment, in a given society.

As a theoretical-methodological tool of analysis, we resort to performance. This theoretical-methodological model is commonly used in the study of verbal manifestations, although it has different meanings that, in the form of a continuum, range from less marked instances, such as the narration of an anecdote arising spontaneously in conversation, to others with a higher degree of planning, such as so-called public rituals. The latter fall within what are known as “cultural performances”.