Morenos and markets, cholitas and sambódromos

ritualizing Bolivian ascension in São Paulo

Abstract

In about ten years, Bolivian folkloric festivals in São Paulo, Brazil, have significantly changed their level – objectively and symbolically. Previously held in small spaces and led by a small group of fraternities (fraternidades), they now burst onto avenues, squares and large public and private structures in the city, such as the Anhembi, demanding more economic resources and, in parallel, actors capable of mobilizing and organizing the movement of other people, goods, narratives, images and instruments of political action. In this essay, which accompanies a set of photographs of these festivities taken between 2019 and 2024, I argue that this expansion of the Bolivian festival in the metropolis reflects the socio-economic rise of many Bolivians within São Paulo's productive dynamics. The festive contexts then function as reinvestments of the same kind made by those who have ascended. This is because, in Andean Bolivia, the party is a social event of its own, in which the meaning is more to ritualize the social than to “celebrate”.