Rebuilding the Pre-hispanic Religiosity in an Urban Area: the Case of the Urban Sikus Bands in Buenos Aires

The emergence of the first urban sikus bands in the late 19 th Century was closely related to the performance of such ensembles in traditional Andean Catholic religious celebrations. At present, the relationship between Catholic devotion and these bands is preserved among the small populations of the Andean region of Bolivia, Peru, northwestern Argentina and northern Chile. By contrast, in the context of the current processes of re-ethnicization, the sikus bands in large cities have not only lost the strong bonds with the Church, questioning its role during the Spanish conquest, but have adapted and recreated pre-Hispanic beliefs and appropriated Eastern notions and ideas of the sacred as reformulated and disseminated by New-Age movements. I will explore and analyze the contrasting narratives that dispute "religious authenticity" among the members of sikus bands in contemporary Buenos Aires. This article is based on data gathered in my ethnographic fieldwork conducted in several phases between 2001 and 2012 in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, through participant observation in different sikus bands and from interviews with key informants. During the 1990s, a great influx of migrants of indigenous descent came from Bolivia and Peru and settled in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area. These communities brought religious practices that belong to Catholic tradition - the religion to which the vast majority of people from these countries belong- that had long disappeared from the city. The most important celebration for the Andean region migrants is a big parade to venerate Our Lady of Copacabana, patron saint of Bolivia.