Performative Dimensions of Community Formation among Andean Residents of Buenos Aires

• In Event: Identidades urbanas

Abstract

This paper examines community formation and identity transformation among Andean residents of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I focus on the changing ways in which Andean people have used visual and performative domains to claim their new home in this city. Andean people—many of Aymara and Quechua heritage—have a long history of relocation in Buenos Aires, but over the last half century migration from Peru has outstripped Bolivia’s established predominance. Even migrants of urban origin encounter unfamiliar new opportunities and challenges in metropolitan Buenos Aires, with more than 13 million people. The area’s vast scale and demographic surge have further complicated already tense relationships between newcomers and long-term residents; the former apply creative ways to forge community ties even as the latter contest displacement from their traditional neighborhoods. In this paper, I pay special attention to popular Argentine conceptions of nationality as they intersect with race and ethnicity, often forming xenophobic impediments to newcomers’ efforts to become Argentine. Centering on the increasing racialization of nationality by which all immigrants from Andean nations become categorized as indigenous, I explore how this process calls into question a dominant historical notion that Argentineness is fundamentally European derived. I address these issues by focusing on Peruvian and Bolivian migrants’ self-representation within cultural performative realms and coalition building with Argentine indigenous activists. I intend to show how art exhibitions and artisanal fairs—often combined with a nation of origin’s celebratory events—provide crucial avenues for guiding the cultural politics of incorporation into Argentine society.

Author

• Blenda B Femenias, University of Maryland-University College