BIO

Alicia Carmona received her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from New York University. Her research interests include immigrant cultural production, mobility and personhood, work and leisure, and hemispheric constructions of community and diversity. A native nuryorican, she has lived in Buenos Aires since 2003, after having moved there to learn about other Latino immigrant experiences. Her thesis, titled “Bailaremos: Participation in Morenada Dance Fraternities among Bolivian Immigrants in Argentina,” deals with community and identity formation among Bolivians in Buenos Aires, (Capital Federal) Argentina.

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This article explores “folkloric devotional practice,” the intersection of religion and folklore, in Bolivian immigrant dance practice in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Focusing on both how dancers prepare for performances of la morenada in a local patron saint fiesta as well as a particular dancer’s interpretation of her experiences, it demonstrates how the legitimacy of enacting religion provides a means by which to challenge multiple material and symbolic exclusions from national Argentine society. Through preparation, dancers also negotiate new relationships and assess the proper ways that gendered roles should be performed. The intimacies and intense feelings that emerge through practice inform how individuals interpret exclusion and the suffering of dislocation while also constructing new belongings and elaborating their individual agency.

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