ORURO´S DANCES IN BUENOS AIRES: TRADITION AND INNOVATION INTO THE BOLIVIAN CULTURAL FIELD

Abstract

This paper describes research on Bolivian migration to Buenos Aires undertaken between 1999 and 2002. The project described differences between Bolivian Carnival dance practice (specifically, performances of the Diablada) in Buenos Aires, Argentina and in Oruro, Bolivia, which in turn brought into focus the disputes that such transformations generate on the plane of social relations. This paper will analyse the selection, transformation and invention of Bolivian cultural forms in Buenos Aires, and particularly of these dances, as part of the dynamic of relations that occur in within a cultural field where authority and power are key elements. The analysis of these performances as an important component of the identities that Bolivians build in the migratory context will allow a better understanding of culture, contributing to the elaboration of a “new” definition of this concept and a more complex imagining of this “community”. Starting by considering culture as a disputed process of meaning construction, I argue that studying Bolivian cultural fields in which particular social relationship generate a certain practice of dance allows us to understand other aspects of Bolivian migration to Argentina.