“Today Faith Summons”: Social Representations and Identities in the Case of the Culto del Milagro in Salta

Abstract

This paper addresses the social representations surrounding the cult of the Señor y la Virgen del Milagro in the city of Salta. From a methodology that includes socio-semiotic discourse analysis, the corpus consists of the statements issued by Archbishop Mario Antonio Cargnello during the festivity that brings together thousands of believers in the month of September.

The research seeks to contribute to studies on local religiosity from a communicational perspective that takes up theories of social representations and notions of identity understood as non-essentialist, strategic, and positional.

In a first stage, the paper addresses categories corresponding to representations specific to the cult of the Milagro, such as “pact of fidelity” and “pilgrim.” In a second stage, it analyzes the nodal representations that appear in ecclesiastical discourse, such as “nation,” “Salta identity,” and “culture.”

The inquiry attempts to show the way in which the cult is inserted as part of “salteñidad” from a colonialist perspective, and the way in which the images of the Señor y la Virgen del Milagro play a truly important role in local society and culture: that of being repositories of certain images of the world promoted by the Catholic Church of Salta.