BIO

Tobias Reu is a PhD candidate at the Department of Anthropology at New York University. His research interests include folklore, popular religion, and the public sphere, and he has done extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Cochabamba, Bolivia. His PhD research with the association of folkloric dancers at the Bolivian festival of the Virgin of Urqupiña analyzes the forms of subjectivities and participation in the political process that emerge in the context of the saint's festival. As a spin off of his research, he has co-initiated the community website of the folkloric dancers of Urqupiña at http://www.affvu.org.

CLOSE

Urqupiña, the name of the Marian advocation of Quillacollo, Bolivia, is Quechua and translates as “She is already up on the hill.” It is the phrase a young shepherdess used to tell her people about the whereabouts of the miraculous lady with whom she had convened. According to the legend, she thus inaugurated this specific Marian shrine. Departing from Mary of Urqupiña's primordial being already up there, this article is a free mediation on the themes of mobility/displacement and agency as they relate to a Marian image in several contexts. While this text exclusively follows Mary of Urqupiña through some of the contexts of her existence, it aims to provide some associative suggestions for a consideration of the specific material, spatial, and temporal conditions that define the modes of displacement and participation in social practice that are characteristic for Marian images more generally.

CLOSE