Neoliberal Ritualists of Urkupina: Bedeviling Patrimonial Identity in a Bolivian Patronal Fiesta

Abstract

This article examines the complications for regional cultural definition following Bolivian neoliberal democratic reforms. It analyzes Quillacollo's saint's day festival, also a national folkloric event, and the interpretive ambiguities between highland ritualists and local valley, authorities over fiesta ownership. Amid the symbolic multivocality concentrated by the fiesta, the devil's appearance exposes to locals the fragility of their own identity, narrative. While the region's patrimonial claim to the saint enacts a centripetal pull upon national culture, circulating counter-claims still derail the local municipal program, suggesting that cultural attachment to national places is more mediated in postreform Bolivia. (Nationhood, patrimony, regionalism, ritual, agency) The chapel of the of Urkupina stands just short of the top of Calvary Hill, also named Cota (from the Aymara Qota, meaning spring), a small rise three kilometers to the south of the town of Quillacollo, eighteen kilometers west of the city of Urkupina. The trip from Quillacollo to the Calvario, as it is called, follows a recently paved road often punctuated by white banners signaling open drinking establishments. Next to the chapel (a simple, mostly concrete, open-air, and pillared sepulcher, with a corrugated aluminum roof) is a shanty town (villa miseria) called Villa Urkupina, in recent years heavily settled by relocalized miners, and which originally obtained its land through the 1953 Agrarian Reform. The narrow, almost makeshift bridge that spans the contaminated Sapinku River at the foot of the hill provides the only access to the Calvario, provoking a logistical nightmare during the three days of the Virgin's fiesta, when thousands of people clamber across it to teem over the hill and environs. The local municipality of Quillacollo has been promising to build a more accommodating span. From the river, a long and gradually rising cobblestone path lined with algorrobo trees leads directly to the altar of the Virgencita (little Virgin, also given an Aymara accent as Mamita Orqopina, or little mother Urkupina). At the bottom of this path sit vendors selling drinks for parched pilgrims. Further along the path, even during the off period, petty merchants selling candles, beer, and assorted miniature items called alasitas (an Aymara term meaning buy me) ask visitors if they plan to carry away a stone for the Virgin from the mines which dot her hillside. Visually chaotic and precipitous, the mines present a honeycombed spectacle. Years of prospecting have caused the hill to shrink, provoking some consternation over the future of Quillacollo's diminishing patrimony. Just below the chapel is a newer building, currently empty but intended to be a rural medical post. A prominent plaque indicates that it was built through the donations of the devotees, Ontario, California. Urkupina is celebrated abroad by Bolivian expatriate communities in Ontario, Buenos Aires, New York City, and Arlington, Virginia. From the sanctuary, one is afforded a scenic if hazy view of the valley and town to the north. This view includes the bell towers of the San Ildefonso Church in Quillacollo, where the true image of the is permanently housed, venturing out only during the fiesta in August. Inside the chapel, the symbolic center of the Urkupina cult, the Virgin's altar is a modest affair. With the actual image housed in town, the altar sports only a large portrait of the set in palm fronds and surrounded by flowers. Votive candles burn on a table before her, and a little farther away stands an alms box to receive contributions to the Catholic Church in her name. Embedded in the surrounding walls are testimonial plaques, including one from the National Defense Ministry, thanking the for her help and attesting to her powers. Partially hidden from view behind the chapel, and piled haphazardly against the back wall, are heaps of stones (piedras) and half-burnt fictitious paper money (Calvario bills), which extend up the rise of the hill itself. …

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