Performing National Culture in a Bolivian Migrant Community

Author(s): Daniel M. Goldstein

Source: Ethnology , Spring, 1998, Vol. 37, No. 2, Special Issue: Relocating Bolivia: Popular
Political Perspectives (Spring, 1998), pp. 117-132
Published by: University of Pittsburgh- Of the Commonwealth System of Higher
Education

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 t University of Arizona
PERFORMING NATIONAL CULTURE IN A
BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY1

} i 612 Daniel M. Goldstein

FoLklorization of traditional Andean culture by a universalizing nation-state appropriates

indigenous ceremony for political ends, but at the same time creates spaces within which
indigenous people can assert their own claims to be the "true" custodians of the national
cultural patrimony. In a local fiesta modeled on Bolivia's famous Carnaval, the residents
of one migrant barrio in the city of Cochabamba labor to produce a collective identity
based on their control of national foLklore, in order to enhance the legitimacy of their
community and to foster integration with the Bolivian nation. (Folklore, carnival, state
formation, Bolivia)

In 1968, the Bolivian state nationalized popular culture. In presidential decree number
08396 of that year, the military government of General Rene Barrientos Ortuno
declared that folkloric music, deElned as music produced by peasant groups and folk
in general (grapos campesinos y follc en genera[), was now property of the state
(Guerra Gutierrez 1990:43). This same decree created a national Department of
Folklore within the Ministry of Education and Culture, speciE1cally to promote the
cataloging and regulation of Bolivian folklore in its various manifestations. By 1970,
the government of General Barrientos had been twice replaced (Elrst by that of
General Ovando and then by that of General Banzer) (Klein 1992), but the state's
commitment to the ownership and bureaucratization of national folkloric culture
remained steadfast. In a decree of 1970, Banzer's government spelled out the duties
of the national Department of Folklore and its regional subcommittees, most of which
involved compiling registers and inventories of the various dances and musics
classified by the state as folkloric, and promoting and sponsoring folkloric
performances. Especially important in this was recognition of and support for the
annual carnival 51esta, the Carnaval de Oruro, now elevated to a national folkloric
celebration. In yet another presidential decree of 1970, the Bolivian state declared the
city of Oruro to be the Folklore Capital of BoliviaX (Guerra Gutierrez 1990).
This series of presidential decrees can be read as part of a strategy by the
Bolivian state to incorporate popular culXral expressions such as music and dance as
components of a national cultural patrimony (c.f. Garcia Canclini 1995). Occurring
at a moment in Bolivian history when state stability and legitimacy were in doubt,
the state's declaration of owne.rship of all that is culturally produced by its folk
represented an attempt to extend national dominion over the most public and
performative elements of indigenous popular culture, thereby fostering national
consolidation and defining the Bolivian state itself as the legitimate representative of
that totality, athe natural embodiment of history, territory and society" (Cohn and
Dirks 1986: 12). Despite the many changes that occurred in the composition of the
Bolivian state over the next two decades, the consequences of this nationalization of
117
ETHNOLOGY vol. 37 no. 2, Spring 1998, pp. 117-32.
ETHNOLOGY, c/o Deparanentof Antropology,The University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 USA
Copyrighto 1998 The University of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved.

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1 18 ETHNOLOGY

popular culture endured. The national signiElcance accorded to Oruro as Folklore

Capital of Bolivia raised that city's Carnaval to the status of national cultural event,
and its associated dances, costumes, and musical styles have come to serve as indices
of the Bolivian nation wherever they are performed. Oruro thus has become a
folkloric place within Bolivian national space (c.f. Carter et al. 1993; Gupta and
Ferguson 1992), a key site for the maintenance of an often fragile Bolivian national
identity (Abercrombie 1991).
ThisXessay looks at the production of a national culture of folklore in Bolivia and
at the attempts by subordinate groups, speciElcally urban migrants of Oruro origin
to manipulate the discourses of folklore and national culture in contesting state
hegemony and their own sociopolitical marginalization within contemporary Bolivian
society. It is concerned with the ways in which the people of Villa Sebastian
Pagador, a barrio of Oruro migrants in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, creatively
reappropriate the nationalist meaning of folklore to characterize their own expressive
culture. This reappropriation has important consequences for local politics,
specifically in terms of the relationship between this barrio, its neighbors, and the
Bolivian state. By positioning themselves as the true bearers of the national cultural
patrimony, the authentic owners and originators of what has only recently become
national culture, the displaced and dispossessed people of Villa Pagador can articulate
with the national state and the local municipality with the hope of challenging the
state's neglect of their community. Thus the residents of this barrio aim to contest
their own political, economic, and social subordination within Bolivian national
society.
Following a historical consideration of the idea of folklore and its application in
Bolivia, this article turns to an examination of a local folkloric performance in Villa
Pagador, the annual fiesta de San Miguel. An analysis of this fiesta demonstrates that
local cultural phenomena must be understood as part of broader cultural and political
processes extending to the national level and that these processes symbolically
inform local struggles for identity and recognition.

FOLKLORE AND BOLIVIAN NATIONAL CULTURE

The concept of folklore has its origins in the mid-nineteenth century, when
scholars of a romantic bent, anxious over the accelerating pace of technological
change, industrialization, and urbanization in Europe, coined the term to designate
the culXral traits of a predominantly rural society that was seen to be rapidly
disappearing. The idea of folklore as the expressive culture of the folk or people
connoted this sense of the retrospective, a longing for the cultural traditions of the
past; where it referred to contemporary peoples, it implied the notion of survivals,
as in the Tylorian conception of cultural elements from the past surviving into new
social states (Williams 1976). Following Herder, folklore also referred to the
essential elements of national cultures, where the Volksgeist represented the organic
spirit of the nation and its people. Folklore was also closely linked to the idea of the

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 NATIONAL CULTURE IN A BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY 119

premodern peasant community, whose intrinsic Gemeinschaft (community,

communalism) joined its people in bonds of unshakable solidarity. Such people were
viewed as essentially agrarian, communitarian, and somehow outside the flow of
modern history, living examples of the nation's past (Rowe and Schelling 1991).
These conceptions of the essentially rural, autochthonous, and timeless character
of folklore and the folk who created it are evident in the application of this idea in
contemporary Latin America, where the term simultaneously refers to the cultural
practices of the indigenous peasant communities of the countryside, and to those of
the nation in which these people typically occupy the lowest position in the
socioeconomic hierarchy. Folklore at once refers to the expressive culture of the
Latin American peasantry, its origins lost in the ancient past, and to the cultural
traditions of the modern nation, in which folklore aconstitutes the essence of the
identity and the cultural patrimony of each country," as the Charter of American
Folklore (created by the Organization of American States in 1970) asserts (Garcia
Canclini 1995:152). Implicit in this dual definition is a particular understanding of
history that views the rural producers of folklore themselves as being trapped in the
past, while rescuing folkloric objects and performances as fully emblematic of the
modern nation-state. Folklore, then, is seen as something profoundly traditional,
descended as it is from the past? while simultaneously representing the modern
nation, or the continuity of the national essence through time (Alonso 1988).
National folklore is thus a repository of the cultural inheritance of the nation; it
constitutes a patrimony which the state, identifying itself as guardian of the nation
and national tradition, can employ to stabilize and expand its hegemony (in
Gramscian [1971] terms) over a heterogeneous population. By positioning itself as
defender and guarantor of the nation's essential property (i.e., its folklore), the state
consolidates its own legitimacy in an effort to make its inherently arbitrary power
appear more natural and inevitable. Folklore is thus one means among many for
generating the collective consciousness that is central to establishing a legitimate state
(Corrigan and Sayer 1985), one whose domination is taken for granted by those it
dominates (Abrams 1988 [1977]). As Garcla Canclini (1995:108) puts it,

Precisely because the cultural patrimony is presented as being alien to debates about modernity, it
constitutes the least suspicious resource for guaranteeing social complicity. The group of goods and
traditional practices that identify us as a nation or as a people is valued as a gift, something we receive
from the past that has such symbolic prestige that there is no room for discussing it. The only operations
that are possible-to preserve it, restore it, disseminate it-are the most secret basis of the social
simulation that keeps us together as a group.... The perentiial character of these goods makes us
imagine that their value is beyond question and turns them into a source of collective consensus, beyond
the divisions among classes, ethnic groups, and other groups that fracture society and differentiate ways
of appropriating that patrimony.

As a counterpoint to modernity, folklore tends to evade interrogation as a site for the

production and legitimization of state power. At the same time it is folklore's
hybridity, its careful blending of tradition and modernity, that enables it to stand as
emblematic of the modern, progressive nation that has not lost touch with its past.

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 120 ETHNOLOGY

The diverse meanings and applications of folklore are evident in the recent
history of state formation in Bolivia. It is perhaps not surprising that the Bolivian
state should turn to its indigenous population in search of resources for promoting
national consolidation: a spirit of indigenism (indigenismo) and a revalorization of
Indian culture and identity were at the heart of efforts to acreate the national
character" (Tamayo 1975 [1910]) following the 1952 national revolution. Liberal
intellectuals, seeking to imagine the new Bolivian citizen, rejected the dominant
European-derived model that valued Spanish-descent physiognomy and culture at the
expense of the indigenous. In its place, the nationalist intellectuals of the Bolivian
revolution (such as Jaime Mendoza, Roberto Prudencio, and Fernando Diez de
Medina) elevated the idealized Indian to the status of national figure transforming
the previously despised altiplano native into the new Bolivian man (Dfez de Medina
1950; Francovich 1956; Morales 1992). Aymara and Quechua peasants, though still
confined to the margins of national political and economic life, became symbolic
Elgures in state-directed efforts to imagine a Bolivian nation.
The indigenistas also labored to produce a new national mythology and folklore,
claiming to find in the expressive culture of the countryside the essentially Bolivian
features of their newly constituted nation. Their work in this endeavor drew in large
measure on the earlier writings of Franz Tamayo, the so-called apostle of nationalism
in Bolivia (Morales 1992). Tamayo saw in the Indian a representative of an authentic
Bolivian race (raza), whose physical and spiritual connection to the Bolivian
landscape made him the most authentic resource in the effort to constitute the
Bolivian national character. Tamayo deElned national character as that essence which
unifies a nation and distinguishes it from all others (FerruE1no Llach 1987); it is a
biological property, made manifest in the customs and practices of Bolivia's
indigenous inhabitants.

[The rlational character] is the true manifestation of a biological law, expressing itself as a nation. And
how can it be seen, and where can it be found? Everywhere and in all manifestations of the nation: In
its intelligence, above all in its customs, in its tastes and tendencies, in its afElnities and repulsions: it
is the genius of its history and the hue that colors all of its national activity. (Tamayo 1975 [1910]:45;
my translation)

The Bolivian national character, then, is defined by the customs of the

countryside, which give the nation its distinctiveness and its collective identity. This
distinctiveness is celebrated and displayed every year in nationalist cultural
performances most notably during the folkloric festival of Carnaval held in the once-
prosperous mining city of Oruro. Although Oruro's Carnaval has long been an urban
phenomenon (Boero Rojo 1991), its costumes, dances, and themes reference
folklorized versions of the persons and practices of native Bolivians, the rural
indigenous people who provide the cultural resourees for constructing Bolivian
national identity. The elaboration of Carnaval as a national cultural celebration
represents an attempt to folklorize indigenous customs: to take them ffom the hands
of their producers by performing them in contexts that contribute to greater national

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 NATIONAL CULTURE IN A BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY 121

consolidation (Garcia Canclini 1993; Hill 1991; Turino 1993). At the same time, the
producers are themselves relegated to the margins of national life, where they occupy
the lowest rung in the national socioeconomic hierarchy. In recent years, many
indigenous people have left their places of origin in the countryside, migrating to
Bolivia's cities in search of a better life for themselves and their families. So while
Bolivia's indigenous people remain marginalized within national society, folklorized
representations of indigenous culture are performed in Carnaval as authentic emblems
of the nation.
But another side to the process of folkloric identity production is one in which
some indigenous Bolivians have struggled for greater inclusion and participation. This
can be seen in the reappropriation of national folklore by the people labeled Indians
or cholos (urban Indians") and relegated to the fringes of national life. In making
the folkloric appropriations that constitute the national cultural patrimony, declaring
itself sole proprietor of national culture, the state (through its ofElcial discourse,
exemplified by pronouncements such as the presidential decrees described at the
outset of this article) creates contradictions that indigenous Bolivians can exploit to
contest this appropriation. Locating Bolivian national culture in Oruro, for example,
though useful in transforming that place from defunct mining center to robust tourist
attraction (Morales 1992), presents a problem for state hegemony. The association
of folklore with Oruro produces a contradiction in which those who are natives of
Oruro's countryside can claim to be masters of folklore (despite folkloric Carnaval's
urban character2), thereby depriving the state of exclusive ownership of national
culture. The symbolic prestige which Garcia Canclini observes as being attached to
folkloric items is thereby made available not only to the state but also to those who
can claim to be the authentic producers of that folklore. This is true even in urban
migrant communities, where displaced people from Oruro (orurenos) exploit
strategies of identity formation and self-presentation to make themselves heard by the
state in demanding improved conditions for their communities. By presenting
folkloric performances on the order of Oruro's Carnaval, self-identified orurenos try
to confer on their own communities a measure of the prestige that Oruro enjoys at
the national level, thereby attaching some of that national signiflcance to their own
local communities.

VILLA SEBASTIAN PAGADOR AND THE FIESTA DE SAN MIGUEL

Who, precisely, are the folk in BoliviaS the supposed producers of all this
folklore for national consumption? The people of Villa Sebastian Pagador claim that
they are Bolivia's folk, despite having left their rural places of origin and migrated
to the city. Founded in 1977 by a group of migrants from the department of Oruro,
Villa Pagador was settled as part of a wave of immigration from the rural pueblos
of the altiplano region to the cities of Bolivia. In Cochabamba, many of these
migrants settled illegally on the outskirts of the city, on land that was purchased and
occupied without attention to the municipal government's established norms of

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122 ETHNOLOGY

urbanization. Villa Pagador was founded on agricultural land that

not intended to be used for urban habitation, and so the barrio c
as illegal or clandestineS part of the zred zone" (zona roj) of settlements in
Cochabamba's southern sector. This sector is known throughout the city for its high
concentration of so-called marginal barrios (barrios marginales) the poor settlements
of which Villa Pagador is one.
Situated on the far southeastern fringe of Cochabamba, a city of some half-
million people, Villa Pagador has grown over the last twenty years to a barrio of
about 20,000 inhabitants. Most barrio residents work as small-scale ambulant vendors
in the city's enormous open-air market (the cancha) or as laborers or construction
workers holding temporary and low-paid positions. A small percentage of the
population is involved in home-based clothing manufacture, sewing pants and T-shirts
with fake North American labels for sale in the cancha. People in the barrio are
poor, with a majority (53 per cent) earning less than 570 Bolivianos (about US$100)
per month (DISU 1996). Spanish is spoken almost universally in the barrio, and
many people are bi- or trilingual, speaking Quechua and/or Aymara, two indigenous
languages of Andean South America. Church membership among the barrio populace
is also diverse: while the majority of the population is nominally Catholic,
evangelical churches have been present since the founding of the community, and
today the Catholic Church must compete for adherents with seven other congrega-
tions (Pentecostal Baptist, Adventist, Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Union Cristiana
EvangelicQ, and Asambleas de Dfos). As a whole the barrio suffers from the neglect
of the municipal authorities, lacking such basic infrastructure and city services as
paved streets, running water, and police protection. More than half of all property
owners do not possess legal title to their lands and homes, due to the illegal manner
in which these were purchased and developed.
Villa Pagador is typically viewed by nonresidents as a marginal barrioS owing not
only to its geographical location on the periphery of the city of Cochabamba, but also
to its lack of basic services and its perceived isolation from the mainstream of urban
political, economic? and social life. Despite these conditions, Villa Pagador today is
also recognized throughout the city of Cochabamba as a progressive, well-organized
community, active in its own development and frequently involved in conffontations
with the municipal government in making demands for increased city services and
improved infrastructure in the barrio. To most outside observers, and to the
pagadorenos (the residents of Villa Pagador) this level of organization and political
force is attributable to the community's maintenance of indigenous tradition,
observable most vividly in the annual fiesta de San Miguel. This fiesta is a powerful
expression of what local people call their folklore, for it is then that people organize
in dance fraternities and perform the folkloric dances characteristic of the great
Carnaval de Oruro. The San Miguel fiesta is viewed in Villa Pagador as proof that
pagadorenos have maintained their cultural traditions (despite having experienced
rural-to-urban migration) and that they are a living example of the ancient customs
that comprise Boliviavs national cultural patrimony.

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 NATIONAL CULTURE IN A BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY 123

The fiesta de San Miguel is for many of Villa Pagador's residents the highlight
of the year. Even the evangelicals in the community, proscribed from dancing or
drinking by their church doctrine, speak of the f1esta with excitement and real
feeling. The day devoted to the local saint, the Archangel Michael (San Miguel), is
September 29, and the fiesta celebrating this devotion spans some flve days before
and after the official saint's day. Preparations for the fiesta begin long in advance:
an aspiring fiesta sponsor (pasante), for example, may begin saving his money and
incurring reciprocal obligations years ahead of the time of his actual sponsorship.
Participants in the fiesta are grouped into dance troupes, called fraternities
(comparsas or fraternidades), with membership of both women and men. Each
fraternity names its sponsors, the married couple who will provide the band, the
refreshments, and the party that all the members of the dance troupe will attend.
Preparations and rehearsals for the fiesta are organized sporadically throughout the
year, but begin in earnest in June, when the fraternities meet in the evenings or on
Sundays to learn their dance steps and co-ordinate their movements. These rehearsals
continue throughout the (South American) winter, culminating in the convite (big
dress rehearsal), which takes place on the Sunday before the entrada (parade) that
marks thebegiImingofthefiestaweekend. Inthedress rehearsal, all ofthedifferent
dance troupes that have been preparing independently convene for a run-through of
the entrada, which culminates in a visit to the saint to ask for success in the fiesta.
The fiesta de San Miguel officially begins on a Friday with the entrada, when all
of the dance troupes line up in a predetermined order and parade through the barrio,
each group dancing its particular folkloric dance (e.g., the Morenada the Diablada,
the Tinku) to the characteristic music of the brass bands that accompany them. Along
the way the parade winds through the streets of Villa Pagador, which are lined with
waving and cheering spectators. The parade crosses the neighboring community of
Valle Hermoso and ends up at the chapel that houses San Miguel, perched atop a
small hill overlooking Valle Hermoso and Villa Pagador beyond it. Here the sponsors
kneel before the saint, asking that he recognize their devotion and bestow his
blessings upon them. Afterwards, the fraternities dance around the church performing
for one another, later returning to the homes of the individual sponsors for food and
drink, and a party that lasts all night. At sunrise the next morning (Saturday)
everyone returns to the chapel for the salute to the sunrise (alba), which involves
more dancing and drinking, and the preparation of a cornmeal soup cooked by
submerging a hot stone in the broth, rendering a porridge called q'alapari. This is
followed by a mass said in the chapel, and then more parties in the sponsorsv homes.
Saturday night there are weddings, as those sponsors who have never been married
in the Catholic Church take the opportunity to religiously formalize their civic vows.
The wedding is followed by another party, which again lasts all night.
On Sunday the partying continues into the afternoon, when the demostracion is
held. This is the formal competition of the fiesta, held on the main football field in
the barrio. One by one the dance groups take their turn performing their steps on the
field, dancing before a reviewing stand where a group of dignitaries sits to judge

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124 ETHNOLOGY

which groups are the best. Barrio residents and visitors crowd the edges of the field,
elbowing one another for a better view of the performance. Later, prizes are awarded
in several categoriesS including best band and best dancers. This exhibition is
followed by more parties. On Monday, the last official day of the fiesta, the sponsors
of each fraternity pay a visit to the home of the couple that has been designated to
serve as sponsor for next year's fiesta, and adeliver" the fiesta to them in a simple
ritual called the kacharpaya. Parties follow this event and continue for a day or two
afterwards essentially until all the beer and chicha (corn beer) have been finished.

A HISTORY OF THE FIESTA

Given the centrality of the event to barrio identity and social life, it is curious to
note that the fiesta de San Miguel predates the founding of Villa Pagador by some
50 years. Since the early 1920s, the people of neighboring Valle Hermoso (a
formerly agrarian community that borders Villa Pagador to the west) had observed
the day devoted to their local patron saint, San Miguel. San Miguel appeared
miraculously to a peasant in the form of a glowing stone on the hilltop where the
chapel stands today. This peasant, an old man with the family name of Costa,
reported the miracle to the rest of the community, and a temple was built in the
saint's honorS a painted image of San Miguel beating down the devil with his blazing
sword hung on the wall over the altar. The Costa family became the zownersr
(duenos) of the saint, charged with maintaining and protecting his image. The
granddaughter of this same old man is the present owner of the saint.
The origin of San Miguel in the Cochabamba valley is a fact freely acknowledged
by pagadorenos, who value the fiesta's history in the region despite the fact that it
predates their own. In the early days of the barrio, residents of Pagador would
wander over to observe the San Miguel celebration next door in Valle Hermoso.
People describe the Valle Hermoso fiesta in those days as being small and loosely
organized, with just a few small groups of dancers marching in a parade that lasted
only through the course of a single day. In 1979 Don Eleuterlo Mayta, a leader of
the barrio, received an invitation from an acquaintance in Valle Hermoso, asking him
to be sponsor of their community's dance troupe for the coming year. Don Eleuterio
was urged by the people of Pagador to form a separate dance troupe in the spirit of
the altiplano, whence the pagadorenos had migrated. Barrio residents persuaded
Eleuterio to form his own dance fraternity in Villa Pagador, one that would dance
the Morenada, a dance with strong connections to the altiplano and specifically to
Oruro's Carnaval. Thus in 1980 the Morenuda Central Pagador paraded for the first
time in the San Miguel H1esta.
The Morenada Central Pagador became the 51rst dance fraternity in Villa
Pagador. In that H1rst year, the Central marched with only seven dancersS accompa-
nied by a band with seven players. With time though, as more and more people
settled in Pagador and sought to participate in the f1esta, other Morenada fraternities
formed out of the Central. Thus the Morenada Central is sometimes called the mother

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 NATIONAL CULTURE IN A BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY
125

of the fiesta, for out of it were born all the other fraternities in the barrio. Following
the introduction ofthese new Morenada groups, several other fraternities were
formed in the barrio, comprised mostly of young people and teenagers. These youths
introduced new dances into the fiesta apart from the Morenada, which they found
unappealing, due to the heavy costumes and clumsy, plodding movements of the
dances. As one friend puts it, these young men and women were possessed of zan
inspiration to move their bodies, and so formed the fraternity Tinkus Pagador. The
Tinku, a form of ritualized combat from the north of Potosi, though not strictly an
Oruro dance, holds much appeal for young people due to its lively style of
movement, and in its folklorized version is much practiced throughout Bolivia, most
prominently in Oruro's Carnaval. Later, in 1989, another group of young people
founded the fraternity Valleymanta, which performs the Caporales dance, another
familiar Carnaval theme popular among young people.
The changes that the f1esta de San Miguel experienced as a result of the
participation of pagadorenos can be described as the transformation of a small,
semirural, Cochabamba iSlesta into a mini-Carnaval, on the model of Oruro's
national, urban extravaganza. Beginning in 1980, when Don Eleuterio formed the
f1rst San Miguel dance troupe in Villa Pagador, pagadorenos began to take the local
fiesta and recast it in an Oruro idiom, incorporating many of the folkloric features
that now characterize San Miguel. Dance groups in the manner of Carnaval
fraternities were organized, and Carnaval dances (especially the Morenada) were
introduced to the saint's day celebration. Wealthier sponsors in Villa Pagador began
to hire Carnaval bands to accompany the dancers, bringing them down from Oruro
in rented buses. Carnaval costumes were also hired in Oruro and shipped to
Cochabamba for the local dancers to wear. Other speciElcally Oruro features were
incorporated into the fiesta schedule, including the addition of the Sunday exhibition,
the Saturday morning salute to the sunrise, and the Friday entrada parade. The
practice of holding a series of rehearsals prior to the Elesta, culminating in the dress
rehearsal, is a direct appropriation from Carnaval de Oruro. Special foods eaten only
during Carnaval were prepared for the San Miguel iFlesta, and speciElcally altiplano
rituals like the q'owa (Bouysee-Cassagne et al. 1987; Martinez 1987; Rocha 1990;
van den Berg 1985) began to be practiced. From a small, agrarian affair, then, the
San Miguel flesta was transformed by the Oruro migrants into a miniature Carnaval,
in an explicit effort to introduce the traditions of Oruro to their new valley home.
As this brief history indicates, the fiesta was a local Cochabamba event colonized
by the arriving Oruro migrants, and transformed according to a model that they
superimposed over the existing fiesta. Such an observation runs counter to the idea
that urban-migrant fiestas represent something like linear urbanizations of rural
tradition brought by migrants to the city and reproduced in the new environment. The
barrio Elesta described here varies greatly from accounts in the anthropological
literature of rural Andean fiestas, as it does from other urban flestas in Bolivia (for
La Paz, see especially Albo and Preiswerk 1986; Buechler 1980). Unlike rural
events, the flesta de San Miguel in Villa Pagador does not comprise part of a larger

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 126 ETHNOLOGY

annual fiesta cycle, governed by the Catholic ritual calendar, but

as the single barrio fiesta of the entire year. The office of fiesta
form part of a fiesta-cargo system as it does in the rural commu
(Isbell 1978; Mangin 1954), and fiesta sponsors do not necessar
other offices in barrio leadership. In addition, the division of the
and spectators is a feature that distinguishes the rural fiesta from
(Garcia Canclini 1993). In the traditional rural fiesta, partici
generalized throughout the community; in the urban fiesta,
community is more segregated as performers/audience, as is e
entrada and demostracion.
The fiesta also incorporates many features borrowed from the rural fiesta context
(e.g., the preparation of the q'alapari; the performing of rituals like the q'owa and
altiplano versions of the ch'alla, an offering of alcoholic libations to the Pacha-
mama), making it comprehensible as a kind of hybrid cultural construction (c.f.
Garcia Canclini 1995). But the larger model for the fiesta as a whole is Oruro's
urban Carnaval. As one early sponsor of the fiesta attests

All the steps, everything, everything, is a copy, basically, of the original, the authentic. So that each
group in this place rVilla Pagador] has to try to push itself one step further, to make itself stand out.

Carnaval de Oruro serves as a frame according to which the fiesta de San Miguel has
been organized since it became part of life in Villa Pagador. Though the experience
of the fiesta varies for each participant, when asked to interpret the fiesta to an
outsider people invariably invoke symbolic meanings constituted at the national level,
adopting the terminology of folklore to describe their local fiesta. For pagadorenos,
San Miguel is afiestafolklorica, a festival that they perceive as a performance of
their folklore, the folklore of Oruro, which in turn has become the folklore of the
Bolivian nation. In voicing their own interpretations of their local fiesta, the people
of Pagador endeavor to summon folkloric meaning in descriptions of their own fiesta
practice.

LOCAL INTERPRETATIONS OF THE FIESTA

The takeover of the local saint's fiesta is described by the people of Villa Paga
as a necessary function of their superiority as orurenos over Cochabamba nativ
matters of folklore. In the speech of many pagadorenos one notes the use
discourse in which a claim to a command of folklore is asserted on the bas
origin. In this discourse, the mention of specific places (Oruro, or the altiplano
general) invokes a battery of meanings given importance through their associat
with national cultural celebrations. Regarding the fiesta de San Miguel, for exam
one man asserts that because of their altiplano origin pagadorenos knew how a f
should be organized; this special knowledge is seen as being responsible for
success of the fiesta, measured by its growth and elaboration.

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 NATIONAL CULTURE IN A BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY
127

We got ourselves organized and made a beautiful fiesta, because at that time, here in Cochabamba, it
wasn't like that They contracted with a few small bands of eight, twelve members, no? I don't know,
a few, no? And they didn't sound good, no? But vve know, we understand how it is done on the
altiplano, and so at the time [of the Elesta's founding in Villa Pagador] we brought a group of 25
musicians, well organized, that sounded good, we dressed them alike. And in that way began the filesta
which now is big, no? Really big.

This discourse of the altiplano as a folkloric place is evident as well in the speech of
Don Eleuterio, the founder of the f1rst dance fraternity in Villa Pagador, who
criticizes the residents of neighboring Valle Hermoso for their ignorance in matters
of folkloric dancing.

Olhers have told me that at first there were some prejudaces by the valley people against the magrants
that came here.

Yes. That exists in the entrada. Yes, they wanted to enter Elrst [in the parade] because they didn't want
to come after us. No, that prejudice exists. They don't enter in an orderly manner, like we do. We enter
in an orderly manner, we show respect. In the demostracion as well, they interrupt us.... They don't
have order. Nor do they dance like we dance. There is a lot of difference in that.

How do they dance?

They donst know the stepst In Oruro, for example, the Diablada is beautiful....

But they dance it here in Valle Hermoso.

Yeah, they dance it because someone, also an orureno, taught them.

The power of the local discourse of folklore comes from the steady indexing of
offlcial state discourses on national culture, which have defined Oruro as a special
place in the life of Bolivia. As self-identifnled orurenos, pagadorenos hope to gain
prestige and national recognition by promoting themselves as bearers of this national
culture, reiterating their connection to Oruro in public and private discourse.
References to Oruro as the folklore capital of Bolivia punctuate everyday speech;
when asked about Oruro, for example, people invariably speak of its wonderful
traditions, a faraway look in their eyes, and then point out that Oruro is nationally
recognized as Bolivia's folklore capital. This theme is reiterated in official barrio
discourse, not only on fiesta occasions but during public civic festivity as well. For
example on the cover of the program produced for the barrio's anniversary
celebration in 1995 is the phrase '4Oruro . . . Capital del Fol/clore de Bolivia; below
this legend is the official emblem of the department of Oruro, and below that the
announcement of the nineteenth anniversary of Villa Sebastian Pagador. This
metonymic juxtapositioning of Villa Pagador with Oruro and its associated national
image serves to transfer some of this prestige from Oruro to the barrio: the
community of transplanted orurenos stands as Oruro in miniature, just as they would
have San Miguel stand as a miniature Carnaval.

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 128 ETHNOLOGY

Although people in the barrio have strong emotional ties to th

in Oruro and to the expressive cultural traditions of the countrys
San Miguel as a folkloric carnival celebration was done with explicitly political
intentions. Faced with the diff1culties of life on the urban periphery, the lack of
services and infrastructure, of potable water and decent schools and a voice in city
politics, people in Villa Pagador felt compelled to transform the conditions in which
they found themselves. In the absence of any formal means to address the authorities
of the municipality and the national state to make their needs known and to attract
the attention of those with the potential to aid the barrio in its struggles, people
turned to folkloric performance as a means to call attention to themselves and their
community. Recognizing that many of their difficulties stemmed from their marginal
position as illegal migrant settlers on the periphery of the city, people saw folkloric
performance as a way to counter this peripheralization by asserting their centrality
to national life and national identity. This is not to suggest that people in Villa
Pagador, either at the time of its founding or today, have not also participated in the
San Miguel fiesta for other reasons: the religious dance out of devotion to the saint,
the young dance for fun, others dance because they value their alleged cultural
traditions, in which they include the flesta tradition. But the San Miguel iSlesta also
manifests this political potential, to transform Villa Pagador's marginal identity into
one that is more integral to the nation itself.
Asserting an Oruro-based identity is critical in this regard. The fiesta as an
Oruro-derived celebration is made to stand for the community as a whole, especially
in people's efforts to represent themselves in broader political contexts. In their
dealings with the municipality, for example, people in Villa Pagador strategically
employ a national folkloric identity when making demands for improved infrastruc-
ture and city services, representing themselves to the authorities as achildren of
OruroX or zorurenos in Cochabamba,- implying their mastery of national culture.
Community leaders in particular recognize the discursive force associated with Oruro,
and mobilize that force in their dealings with the municipal government. In civic
celebrations like the anniversary mentioned above, repeated references are made to
Oruro as the point of origin of Pagador's residents. This public discourse serves to
promote a local identity for the barrio as a community of migrants that has not
severed its connection with its Oruro origins. The San Miguel fiesta is represented
as an example of pagadorenos' constancy, and their ongoing connection to tradition.
Don Eleuterio recognizes the contemporary political and economic significance of this
Elesta.

It's important to maintain one's customs. And this will attract progress to the villa, to the area.

How so ?

For one,
street ne
countrie

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 NATIONAL CULTURE IN A BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY 129

for sure, someone is going to create a lodging, a [multi-story] building, and the tourists will stay there.
So, economically, there is money that will stay in the villa.

In these words one notes the almost efifortless segue from maintenance of
tradition to economic development in the barrio. Villa Pagador holds little economic
opportunity for its residents within its own boundaries, and tourism represents a
chance to bring resources into the community, much as it has transformed the
faltering economy of Oruro. People frequently compare San Miguel to the fiesta de
Urkupina, held in the nearby provincial town of Quillacollo. In recent years, the
fiesta de Urkupina has evolved from a small, regional flesta celebrating the
appearance of the Virgin to a peasant into a folkloric festival of national proportions,
attracting thousands of pilgrims every year and injecting much-needed resources into
the local economy (Lagos 1993). Looking down the road to Quillacollo, as well as
to Oruro's Carnaval, pagadorenos see the potential economic gains for their
community if San Miguel could become a national tourist attraction. Already, local
promoters refer to the San Miguel fiesta as a second Urkupina, imagining the kinds
of hotels they would build to attract and house the tourists who will come to watch
the Elesta. Such a fiesta would also serve to elevate the profile of Villa Pagador,
helping it to stand out as a folkloric center among the other, nondescript, marginal
barrios of the Cochabamba periphery.
The collective self-representation of Villa Pagador as a community of orurenos
has relevance in terms of both national and regional politics. As an island of
Oruro," pagadorenos express the belief that they are performing a service to the
nation, maintaining national cultural traditions though they have been uprooted from
their places of origin. Because of this service, they believe they deserve not only
recognition from the state as the bearers of national folklore, they also want
improved infrastructure and city services for their barrio, better schools for their
children, and an expanded voice in municipal politics. It is because of their command
of national folklore that pagadorenos believe they deserve national attention, as Don
Demetrio Canqui states.

What is missing here is communication. I believe that the leaders [of the barriol are a little closed, they
are not making [the barriol known to the city of Cochabamba, because, not simply to the city of
Cochabamba, but at the national level. We believe that, from 1981 to '96, there is so much growth [in
the fiesta], from fourteen to filfteen fraternities. So I think it's necessary to gain recognition, at the
national level, through the written and oral press. That is what is missing, communication.

But why? V#ay is it necessary thut they be aware of the barno at the saalional level ?

Because it is necessary, that here too we exist, an island of Oruro. It's necessary. It's necessary.

The prestige associated with being the self-appointed bearers of national folklore
is an important instrument in battling racism and discrimination at the regional level
as well. As migrants and orurenos living in Cochabamba, the people of Villa Pagador
have had to contend with prejudice and discrimination, with the insults and abuse of

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130 ETHNOLOGY

the valley dwellers who would characterae their migrant neighbors as ethnically
different Pagadorenos are often classified as tedios, a term of great insult oiften used
to identifbr indigenous people, or are tagged with regional markers of a stigmatized
Andean identity: larisor llameros(llama herders). This climate oftension and
antagonism is particularly evident between Villa Pagador and its neighbor, Valle
Hermoso, whose fiesta was colonized by the invading pagadorenos, resulting in an
enduring enmity between the communities. By appealing to a kind of national
identity, people in Pagador circumvent the insulting regionalisms to which they are
subjected. One older woman, for example, tells of an encounter she had with two
women of Valle Hermoso. They were riding on the bus into the city, which was
crowded with pagadorenos heading to work in the market downtown. One of these
Valle Hermoso women commented to the other that these zllamasX were taking up
all the seats on the bus. Dona Elena angrily turned to inform them that migrants are
not llamas; but even if they were, she said, the llama is a prominent feature of the
national emblem (escudo nacional) of Bolivia. Reminding people of the significance
and folkloric importance of Oruro in the national imagination is another way of
calling them to task for making disparaging comments about the altiplano and its
natives.
In such remarks one can read the tensions and convergences, both nationally and
locallys associated with identity and Elesta practice in Villa Sebastian Pagador. The
meanings attached to Oruro as folklore capital of Bolivia are transferred and applied
to the local barrio contextS lending national force to the local goals of competing with
neighbors and getting attention firom the government. As Don Demetrio observes

I don't want to offend the Cochabamba natives. You see? But those from here in the valley are
somewhat closed. They want to maintain their culture exclusively for themselves. But we have our
culture as well, in spite of everything else we are from the folklore capital of Bolivia. We wanted to
show what we are, being from there. With these intentions we created the Elrst darlces here, the first
dance fraternities of Villa Sebastian Pagador. Which is not to say that we have so much power, but
simply the devotion we have in Oruro, because we have our super Carnavals. So we wanted also to say
that in Oruro this culture is practiced.

CONCLUSION

FolkloreS as it is conceived within nationalist ideology is supposed to be a

product of the essentially rural peasant community. How is it possible, then, for a
barrio of urban migrants to present themselves effectively as the authentic bearers of
Bolivian folklore? In making the claim to be the true custodians of what is essentially
Bolivian, pagadorenos in fact tap into one of the fundamental contradictions
engendered by the folklorization of rural tradition: in becoming folkloreS rural
cultural practice is urbanized, while continuing to stand for the countryside which
produced it. By this deElnition, urban migrants are well positioned to make a claim
for representativenessS as they too can claim to be urbanized without having lost what
is essentially rural in their nature. Thus urban migrants, typically denied full
citizenship and excluded from popular conceptions of the Bolivian nation, are

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 NATIONAL CULTURE IN A BOLIVIAN MIGRANT COMMUNITY 131

equipped with a unique set of resources to challenge the definition of national

identity.
It is this resourceful deployment of popular culture by the poor and disenfran-
chised that anthropologists must take into account when assessing the value of
popular cultural expressions in urban settings. Some anthropologists working in Latin
America (e.g., Garcia Canclini 1993) have argued that the transformation of the rural
fiesta into the urban folklore zshow" represents the death of something filndamental
and authentic in Latin American popular culture, and portends the ultimate collapse
and dissolution of the rural community. This may be so if the only performers in
these urban shows are the national elite, as in OruroSs Carnaval. Elsewhere in
Bolivia, these same shows provide resources to urbanized groups struggling to
transform their situations, permitting efforts at political expression and identity
formation that otherwise would be beyond their reach. In the barrios of Bolivia's
ever-expanding cities, urban folkloric performance represents such a resource,
enabling groups to consolidate new communities in the city, and providing them with
a means to communicate the needs and demands of those communities to the
municipal and national authorities.

NOTES

1. This article was originally presented at the 1996 annual meeting of the American Anthropological
Association. The research for it, conducted from 1994-1996, was funded by the Wenner-Gren
Foundation, the Inter-American Poundation, Fulbright IIE, the Central States Anthropological Society,
the Graduate College of the University of Arizona, the Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute
of the University of Arizona, the Comins Fund of the Anthropology Department at the University of
Arizona, and Sigma Xi. For support with research in Cochabamba I thank the Centro de Estudios de
la Realidad Economica y Social (CERES), especially Roberto Laserna, Alberto Rivera, and Humberto
Vargas. I also tharlk Rob Albro, Pamela Calla, Philip E. Coyle, Chaly Crespo, Kevin Healey, Jane Hill,
Billie Jean Isbell, Tom Kruse, Melissa McCormick, Susan Philips, and Carmen Zabalaga for their
suggestions on earlier versions of this essay.
2. Harris (1982) and Rasnake (1986) provide descriptions of Carnaval in a rural setting.

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