‘¡Y tenemos que ser más unidos!’: Carnaval y Política en una zona rural de la Quebrada de Humahuaca, o cómo mantener las tradiciones que se pierden en el pueblo

Abstract

Since some years ago, the academic reflections that from the Anthropology have been developedabout diverse events of the social life, emphasize the performatic dimension of certain dramatic genres,as the cases of rituals and parties. In the frame of the ethnographic field works carried out during thesummer of 2008, we had the opportunity to take part in the different events that shape the carnivalthat every year is feasted in the gorge of Pipintu Grande, Jujuy. Immersed in the festive climate of thecarnival, trying to take the pulse of the rituals of the ‘entierro’ and the ‘desentierro’, so prolific ofcouplets of unusual ingenuity as in ‘ch’allas’ and ‘machas’, we began to think about the manners ofarticulation between the performatic genres, the identities and the processes of resistance, that aremodulated around a tension between the perception of an agonistic development that threatens theinterfamiliar union, threat represented in the politics, and the putting in act of ‘traditional’ symbolicelements, where the fear to the loss of the traditions and customs articulates the speeches that areunfold during the carnival.

Keywords

• Carnival
• Politics
• Performance
• Traditions
• Jujuy