POPLINE Document Number: 018181
Author(s):
Buechler HC
Source citation:
In: Mangin W, ed. Peasants in cities: readings in the anthropology of urbanization. Boston, Massachusetts, Houghton Mifflin, 1970. :62-71.
Abstract:
The fiesta system in the northern Bolivian highlands was analyzed. As social interaction is simplified in the fiesta system, the latter provides a useful tool for analyzing complex or changing social relationships. Fiestas in the northern highlands of Bolivia are based on a variety of systems of sponsorship combined with a system of reciprocal presentations. Sponsors who agree to accept a specific commission, or "cargo," are aided by relatives, friends, community, or neighborhood members, and by persons who want to "pass" a cargo at some later date. Most fiestas include 2 types of sponsors: the prestes and the dance group leaders. Sponsorship obligations often accompany political office. Because Aymaras and Mestizos are involved in wide networks of social relationships, they participate in fiestas at considerable distances from their homes. The relationships between the ritual and social dimensions of a small fraction of this network are analyzed, i.e., the fiesta participation of Aymara peasants from Compi, a Lake Titicaca community. Such an analysis entails a step by step description of fiestas in Compi itself, followed by those in the county capital and ending with the fiestas in the city of La Paz where many Compenos have migrated. The analysis revealed that the relationship between the center and the periphery of old La Paz is very similar to that of counties and their surrounding free communities. Similarities in La Paz market fiestas and town fiestas demonstrate that La Paz constitutes merely 1 of a multitude of interconnected market sites, albeit a more complex one. The dance group formation in voluntary associations reveals that La Paz is not a closed system, because these associations maintain intimate ties with the home towns of their members. La Paz fiestas are not unique in kind. The city's fiesta system viewed as a whole is distinguished not so much by individual ritual patterns as by the concentration of such a large number of different patterns and the extent of their linkages outside the city's boundaries. 1 La Paz informant compared the fiesta system to a root growing in many directions at the same time. The analysis of fiestas indicates that it is through such linkages and parallels with institutions in smaller settlements rather than by seeing cities, towns, and peasant communities as separate, bounded entities, that changing Andean social systems can best be studied.
Keywords:
BoliviaIndex page
South America
Latin America
Americas
Rural-Urban Migration
Migration, Internal
Migration
Population Dynamics
Folklore
Culture
Developing Countries
South America, Central
Developed Countries
Demographic Factors
Population